Another party must be now considered, and that commands a great deal of respect from any foreigner that may have watched with loving eyes the life of Italy: Nationalism. Corradini and Federzoni may be looked upon as its leaders, and their followers were a mere handful of men. They had a clear notion of what they wanted, and to a certain extent they may be considered as the rightful heirs of the Risorgimento. Again they were all gentlemen, gentlemen being taken as the English equivalent of _vir_, implying the sterling quality of the individual and not at all his social position or his æsthetic refinement, which may be merely the consequence of wealth. Small minorities are always to be found at the origin of any great political movement as it is the conviction of the few which carries away the multitude of men. But then the crucial point is that their convictions must have magnetic attraction for the general public. And the Nationalists had not this. Their ideas were too high and, at the same time, they were obsolete, besides being no more Italian than those of Liberalism or Socialism. The Nationalists’ idea of a nation was as materialist as their aims were idealist.[1] Now this would be sufficient to condemn to sterility the best wills in the world. To state this plainly, the easiest way is to take man as a simile for nation. There are two ways of looking at a man: he is _one out of many_, or he is _the one central reality_. As one out of many he knocks in every sense against the reality of the many, and is therefore identified by his very limitations. Such a conception of the man is evidently negative. He is appreciated not so much by what he actually does, but by what he has done, or possesses; not so much by what he is, but by the rank he occupies, and which may often be determined independently of his ACTUAL value. But as the one central reality a man cannot come into competition with other objects of appreciation; he can no longer be gauged from outside. Now, obviously, from the world of objective and natural reality, we are shifting to the subjective and spiritual world. We have in front of us no longer an individual belonging to the world of things—we have a person. Common wisdom has for centuries professed that to understand a person’s motives it is necessary to put oneself in that person’s position; and daily experience shows that we understand the people we love better, because we can make ourselves one with them and judge them from their own point of view. To appreciate a personality this method is indispensable; for it is not in the deeds of his past that a man must be judged—he may have been a hero in the last war and be a coward in his present family life—they are now extrinsic to him, unless he goes on living them and making them for ever his spiritual experience. He must be judged by what he is doing actually. Neither must one measure him by his property, but by what he is still able to produce;