To look at real life, to turn away from atomistic individualism towards a subjectivism capable of comprehending all the objective world in order to realise finally what should be the Christian world which must be _Liberty and Law_, another century and a half was needed. Now we can look back to Rousseau and detect in him the obscure foreshadowing of the school of thought which was to redeem in the face of reason the irrational activities of Mind, not as the handmaids of reason but in their full autonomy and necessity. Mind is no longer pure reason, and philosophy does not exclude but imply religion and art, the two moments of law and liberty, although such distinction of activities does not destroy the vital unity of man’s conscience. Mankind is no longer the arithmetical sum of X beings reduced to the same type and value, it transcends the individual and can be realised as well in the smaller cell of society which is the family as in the greater cell which is the country. Consequently, for the abstract man of Rousseau a Man can be now substituted who never is Man as Man, but Man in his full reality as son, as brother, as husband, as father, as worker, as citizen, as believer, as artist. To make this possible, however, a long process was required, the first stage being Rousseau and the application of his theories even in their negativity. For to reach Fascism, which really puts men on the same level, it was necessary to break through class distinctions as they existed then, that is to say as static partitions meant to stay as they were. It was necessary so that power should slip from the hands of people, who considered it as their natural birthright, into the hands of those who are actually fit to hold it. Again such a revolution was necessary so that a day should come in which neither the aristocracy nor the proletariat could think of eliminating politically each other. And, as the philosophy of Italy proclaims, ethical reality is neither of the subject in itself, nor of the object, but of their actual relation; so Fascism does not allow class elimination but protects class competition as the best means of raising the spiritual and economical standard of the nation. CHAPTER VII THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN ITALY