In his preface the author says, that during the present century legal science has not made any very substantial progress; that the revolution of the last century, while asserting the famous rights of man, forgot the rights of juridic persons, of corporations, and law became an _individualista_—or, individualiser. On the strength of his juridic personality man thereupon engaged in a struggle for his rights on the vast social field, but he found himself alone—an individual and nothing more. As such, he could not form a juridic, social organism, but he merely sought to adapt himself to an actual, external juridic organisation, differing but slightly from old-time despotism. On this basis the State still continues to create municipal and positive laws, more or less adapts them to the facts of reality, arbitrarily creating juridic persons and administrative bodies, such as the _mandamenti_, _circondarii_, _provincie_ of the modern Italian kingdom—all of which are only hybrid administrative _entia_, that do not in the least satisfy a number of local public needs; and therefore, there is no harmony between individual men and the juridic persons, between the public administrative entia and the State, and there is bloody war among the States themselves. The ultimate cause of all this conflict is to be ascribed to the individualism of the law, in not recognising organic, juridic relations; and this, moreover, necessarily called forth the reaction of an exaggerated socialism.... Person has a much wider significance than individual; person cannot be isolated, individual, because, juridically, person implies an exchange of relations with others; hence, juridic persons ought to enjoy a greater legal authority than they actually enjoy in our modern jurisprudence. The _plasma sociale_, or the original social mould, is developed by degrees into a vital, practically real, organism, endowed with a physical body, that needs the material means of nutrition, in order to live, to preserve, and develop itself. These, however, do not exist; because nature furnishes only sufficient means to preserve man in a purely savage, animal condition. But, at least, there exist the sources, or fountain-heads, from which it is possible to derive the desired nutritive materials; on condition of molding or transforming those fountain-heads, and of assuming their efficacious, practical direction. In the individualised or individual system there takes place a struggle among the individuals for the possession of that nourishment, in which case, however, the sources themselves are appropriated rather than the nutritive materials they contain. Such is the exclusive nature of the social means of nutrition, present and future, through which a large number of individuals will be at the mercy of a few, while the notorious “rights of man,” remain powerless....