For fair renown begets love for the unseen person, as the poet reminds us and as experience often teaches. Frequently we know of the existence and the beauty of a woman whom we have never seen, but who is not therefore completely unknown to us. So also many of us desired to go to school long before we had seen the inside of a classroom. What is dearer than the joy foretasted at the first imaginings of school? We look forward to that new life upon which we are about to enter in the company of our bigger brothers and of our older playmates. They have told us so many things about it. From their accounts and from the fond memories of our parents we already know the school before we approach it, and its pleasing aspects invite us into the classroom. For the same reason we search for books we have never seen, and we are drawn towards new studies and pursuits. There is no leaping from ignorance to knowledge, as from pitch darkness to noon-tide brilliancy. The transition is imperceptible, as when the dim morning twilight merges into the first glimmerings of dawn, which in turn fade away under the dazzling flashes of sunrise. And even from the midst of darkness we yearn for a world which though unseen is somehow present to our consciousness, already illumined by our thought, warmed by our sentiments. Or, in other words, the culture which we do not yet possess, and which we expect to get at school, is already implanted in our mind, where it will sprout and grow and bear fruit, fused and confused with the life of our spirit. Having now reached this point, can we define culture? I am inclined for a moment to assume the rôle of Don Ferrante in Manzoni's novel.[2] By pedantic ratiocinations he proved that the plague could not be a contagious disease: "for," he said, "in nature everything is either a substance or an accident." Contagion, he then went on to prove, could neither be the one nor the other; therefore the plague was but an influx of the stars, and there could be no use in taking precautions; and having proved this, he fell a victim to the epidemic, and died cursing the stars like an operatic hero. Let us follow for a moment in the footsteps of this pedant, whose method, ridiculous as it may seem, has had nevertheless a glorious history, and one which Manzoni himself admired.