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 to and reverenced by humanity,--"Urbs Orbi." Italy is a religion. And when, in my earliest years, I believed that the _initiative_ of the third life of Europe would spring from the heart, the action, the enthusiasm and sacrifice of our people, I heard within me the grand voice of Rome sounding once again, hailed and accepted with loving reverence by the peoples, and telling of moral unity and fraternity in a faith common to all humanity. It was not the unity of the past,--which, though sacred and conducive to civilization for many centuries, did but emancipate _individual_ man, and reveal to him an ideal of liberty and equality only to be realized in Heaven: it was a new unity, emancipating _collective_ humanity, and revealing the formula of Association, through which liberty and equality are destined to be realized here on earth; sanctifying the earth and rendering it what God wills it should be,--a stage upon the path of perfection, a means given to man wherewith to deserve a higher and nobler existence hereafter.