sed a criminal
or a hypocrite, and revoke the condemnation, thus uttered by presumption
in the present, of the past labors and intellect of entire humanity;--a
school which may condemn, but will not defame,--will judge, but never,
through frenzy of rebellion, falsify history;--a school which will
declare the death that _is_, without denying the life that _was_,--which
will call upon Italy to emancipate herself for the achievement of new
glories, but strip not a single leaf from her wreath of glories past.

Such a school would regain for Italy her European initiative, her
primacy.

Italy--as I have said--is a religion.

Some have affirmed this of France. They were mistaken. France--if we
except the single moment when the Revolution and Napoleon summed up the
achievements of the epoch of _individuality_--has never had any external
mission, other than, occasionally, as an arm of the Church, the
_instrument_ of an idea emanating from Papal Rome.

But the mission of Italy in the world was at all times religious, and
the essential character of Italian genius was at all times religious.

The essence of every religion lies in a power, unknown to mere science,
of compelling man to reduce thought to action, and harmonize his
practical life with his moral conception. The genius of our nation,
whenever it has been spontaneously revealed, and exercised independently
of all foreign inspiration, has always evinced the religious character,
the unifying power to which I allude. Every conception of the Italian
mind sought its incarnation in action,--strove to assume a form in the
political sphere. The ideal and the real, elsewhere divided, have always
tended to be united in our land. Sabines and Etruscans alike derived
their civil organization and way of life from their conception of
Heaven. The Pythagoreans founded their philosophy, religious
associations, and political institutions at one and the same time. The
source of the vitality and power of Rome lay in a religious sense of a
collective mission, of an _aim_ to be achieved, in the contemplation of
which the individual was submerged. Our democratic republics were all
religious. Our early philosophical thinkers were all tormented by the
idea of translating their ideal conceptions into practical rules of
government.

And as to our external mission.

We alone have twice given _moral_ unity to Europe, to the known world.
The voice that issued from Rome in the past was addressed