re the way for the
_initiative_ of Italy;--which shall, on the one side, undertake the
examination of the dogma upon which Catholicism was founded, and prove
it to be worn out, exhausted, and in contradiction to our new conception
of life and its laws; and, on the other hand, the refutation of
materialism under whatsoever form it may present itself, and prove that
it also is in contradiction of that new conception,--that it is a
stupid, fatal negation of all moral law, of human free-will, of our
every sacred hope, and of the calm and constant virtue of sacrifice.

I invoke a school which shall philosophically develop all the
consequences, the germ of which--neglected or ignored by superficial
intellects--is contained in the word Progress considered as a new _term_
in the great historical synthesis, the expression of the ascending
advance of humanity from epoch to epoch, from religion to religion,
towards a vaster conception of its own _aim_ and its own law.

I invoke the rising of a school destined to demonstrate to the youth of
Italy that _rationalism_ is but an _instrument_,--the instrument adopted
in all periods of transition by the human intellect to aid its progress
from a worn-out form of religion to one new and superior,--and science
only an accumulation of materials to be arranged and organized in
fruitful synthesis by a new moral conception;--a school that will recall
philosophy from this puerile confusion of the _means_ with the _aim_, to
bring it back to its sole true basis, the knowledge of life and
comprehension of its law.

I invoke a school which will seek the truth of the epoch, not in mere
analysis,--always barren and certain to mislead, if undirected by a
ruling principle,--but in an earnest study of universal tradition, which
is the manifestation of the collective life of humanity; and of
conscience, which is the manifestation of the life of the individual.

I invoke a school which shall redeem from the neglect cast upon it by
theories deduced from one of our human faculties alone that _intuition_
which is the concentration of all the faculties upon a given subject;--a
school which, even while declaring it exhausted, will respect the
_past_, without which the _future_ would be impossible,--which will
protest against those intellectual barbarians for whom every religion is
falsehood, every form of civilization now extinct a folly, every great
pope, king, or warrior now in the course of things surpas