It is the law that at the age of twenty we must present ourselves in our district and do military service for a certain time. Let us for the moment set aside the case in which those called upon to serve rebel and, having seized the power of the government, abolish the law of conscription, and re-establish that of voluntary enlistment. And let us likewise set aside the other case, in which the conscripts violate the law by deserting and going abroad, or hide in a cave, like a hero of Padre Bresciani, or (like a good Tolstoian who applies the principle of non-resistance to evil) allow themselves to be put in prison rather than touch arms. Let us select the case of the peaceful burgess who becomes a warrior that he may not go to prison; or of the good citizen who recognizes his duty of serving his country and for that reason obeys the law. In presenting himself in his district and in the regiment, he has obeyed, not the voice of the law (which is a voice), but his moral conscience, or simply his economic conscience. This has already been demonstrated and we need not insist upon it. But how can he ever obey the law, which directs him to do military service of precisely this or that nature? Each individual has his own temperament, his own talent, his own particular physical strength, and each one will lend his services entirely in his own way, different from that of another. And (be it noted) he will not do so only more or less well or observing the law more or less, but really in a different way, even when all observe the law with equal diligence and scrupulosity. It may seem as if all carry out a military exercise at the same moment, but the fact is that each man moves in a different way to the others; or that in a parade march all walk in the same way, but, as a matter of fact, all (even in the Prussian army) walk in a different way. If we look at it as a whole and from a distance, there seems to be uniformity; if we look at it from near at hand we discover the difference. If we could make the experiment of comparing a regiment of fifty years before with one of fifty years after, leaving military regulations, arms, accoutrements, and everything else unaltered in the interval, the lack of uniformity of the apparent uniformity would leap to the eyes, a lack of uniformity that would have been rendered possible by the changes that had taken place in the surrounding life, in the culture, the moral education, the political conscience, the mode of nourishment, the dwellings, and so on. But the experiment is possible, if not in time, then in space, that is to say, by observing the application of the same military regulations upon two different populations. Thus one seems to have in hand one book written in two different languages; which is literally no longer the same book, but two different books. Giusti translated into Milanese and Porta translated into Florentine are no longer Porta or Giusti, but two new poets.