the profound morality of such will-power, pursuing its end without hesitation or incertitude, disdainful of half measures, its moral value immanent in the very act of volition. It is no longer possible to continue to identify Machiavelli with immorality or amorality, now that his doctrines have been profoundly analysed by philosophers, jurists, and critics of the value of Ercole, Croce or Gentile. We only find in his works a transposition of the fundamental principles of ethics. What he calls “virtue” is not to be understood in its Christian sense. It is closely allied to efficiency but is an efficiency displayed in the accomplishment of the common good, in the realisation of a strong State. Hunger and necessity can render men industrious but only wise laws can make them good. Indeed the laws bring people to realise the necessity of justice; social intercourse gives rise to all the various conditions of life, including education, religion, habit, law, and ultimately to the standard of goodness. As Gentile points out, for Machiavelli as for Spinoza the common good is a product of society; the distinction between good and evil presupposes society, that is to say a system of laws. Hence the saying put into the mouth of Rinaldo degli Albizzi: “No good man will ever find fault with anyone trying to defend his country, whatever the means he may employ.” In commenting upon this passage Gentile rightly says that those who extend the common good from the country to the whole of mankind do not expand but rather restrict the meaning of the writer. Machiavelli by “Patria” understands the entirety of social and civilised life, that is to say that the State is the only historical and concrete form of mankind. He is fundamentally opposed to any indefinite, unsubstantial idea of man that would strip him of all the historical influences that determine his social and political life, and that would make of mankind a shadowy abstraction. Such ideologies could mean nothing to the sixteenth century Florentine, but they do not mean much more to the modern Italian, and this is the reason why Socialism in Italy never developed its nobler side. Men who, like Andrea Costa, were real idealists of the Marxian school were devoid of any influence, despite the respect due to their high standard of personal life. If the whole of mankind is to be the object of the duties of every individual, one might as well abolish those duties; what is the business of everybody is the business of nobody. Therefore, Italian Socialism was obliged to adopt not the high, if impractical, ideals of Northern Socialism, but an entirely materialistic form of propaganda, harping constantly on higher wages and shorter hours, in order to arouse the interest and secure the support of the masses.