William of Orange stands to Locke as Cromwell does to Hobbes, not that the king can be compared to the dictator, but his reign beheld the inauguration of the political system which is the greatest gift of England to mankind; and this practical manifestation of the political genius of that country shows by its coincidence with its greatest theoretical contribution to philosophy how little practice and theory are severed in actual life, that is to say in history. Yet Locke was enforcing the distinction with all his might to avoid the inconsistency already noticed between the theoretical and practical aspects of his work. As Hobbes had done before him in England, and Grotius in Holland, he saw the basis of the State in a contract, but he was the first (although Algernon Sydney had prepared public opinion for such an idea) to assert that the collective will was embodied not in any single person, but in the majority of the people. There he was perfectly consistent with his gnoseology, the multiplicity of the data of sense knowledge destroyed the unity of the metaphysical conception. Only legislation, however, fell to the share of the majority; the executive and foreign policy were to be entrusted to hereditary monarchs. The exigencies of the new notions of liberty and equality of man were tempered by the practical necessity of insuring the continuity and unity of national development, which was the last assertion of historical necessities. Hence politics went on gradually losing touch with historical consciousness. Yet the necessity under which Locke and the best thinkers of English Illuminism were of tempering their theories through practical considerations was symptomatic of the fundamental weakness of the whole system. Theories springing from a synthetic conception of life do not want readjusting to practical life, do not want a period of assimilation under their theoretical form and another of elaboration into practical systems. The best example of this is the simultaneous production of Gentile’s most important theoretical work known to the English-speaking scholars as the _Pure Act_ and of its practical offspring the _Fondamenti della Filosofia del Diritto_, both of 1916, followed at five years’ distance by their political application by the Fascists who had, so to speak, no direct knowledge of such works; to say nothing of his pedagogy, the application of which the author has had the opportunity of carrying out with her own pupils. But then such theories are conceived without abstracting one minute from practical life, and their basis is history and society as they are in real life. Of Fascism the same may be said; its idealism does not prevent it from being the most thoroughly practical and realistic of movements.