When this follower of Vico in 1802 reached Milan, capital of the Cisalpine Republic, Melzi realised his value and entrusted him with the foundation and direction of the first _Giornale d’Italia_. Four articles written in 1804 are probably those read and meditated upon by Mazzini and are of such a quality that they could be written to-day. To the men who did not see the point in so much zeal for the formation of public spirit he answers by a most coherent demonstration that political reality is spiritual reality. The spiritual building up of the citizen is the real conquest of political autonomy. To achieve such a task it was necessary to foster the love of agriculture, and of the militia—compare Mussolini—and to replace self-love and personal vanity with the love of the country and national pride. The “City” to Cuoco is not one thing and the citizens another, the prosperity of the former depends on the moral and practical efficiency of the latter. He was full of contempt for the dreamers who thought that everything may be expected from the laws. But the men who roused him to real passion were those who argued that the Army, the navy, commerce, were cares that should be left to the great nations, to England and France for instance. To this he objected that those countries had been small, smaller than the Italian states, and had grown through the steadiness and efficiency of their national will. Such efficiency and steadiness of national will he called “public spirit.” The regions whose inhabitants did not think of being or becoming a great country, would never be nations. For the small states there was one law; either to become great or perish. It may be timely to observe that this dependence of a country’s greatness on the conscience and the will of its citizens was asserted by Mussolini when he was still the head of the Socialist party in Forli in 1911. Again in 1804, reviewing in his _Giornale d’Italia_ a philosophical work, Cuoco expresses the desire to see philosophy flourishing in Italy, for the development of speculative thought was in close relation with the political state of society, and it was important that a nation should not be theoretically sterile. “It is a long time since we received it,” he writes, “first from France with the works of Descartes, then from England with those of Locke. The periods of political greatness of each nation always coincide with those of its philosophical greatness. The first strength is Mind; weak is the arm of those who lack it or think they do.” Doubtless this is pointing the way to Gentile’s affirmation of the impossibility of having the theoretical and practical activities of mind separate from each other just as the last quotation was pointing to Mussolini’s policy of “heroicising” the people of his country through giving them an heroic will and a national conscience.