HUMANISM AND RENAISSANCE SHAPING THE HISTORICAL MIND OF ITALY
The spirit of Humanism—the veneration for antiquity which animated
it—was quite obviously different in Italy from what it was elsewhere.
That the difference consisted in the closer affinity of the scholars to
the world they studied is obvious also. No greater proof is needed than
the difference between the architecture of the twelfth, thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries in Western Europe and in Italy. Art, as conceived
by modern æsthetics, is that degree of mind, the function of which is
neither theoretical nor practical, but consists in expressing through
intuition the whole life of the mind. We can, therefore, rightly appeal
to art as the most faithful witness to the spirit that animates an
epoch. Ample documents illustrating the difference between the spirit
of Humanism in France and in Italy can be found in the works of Emile
Mâle on the Gothic art of France, and in any illustrated book of
Italian mediæval Art, such as the small but excellent album of Ojetti.
Romanic architecture flourished in both countries between the eighth
and twelfth centuries, and its monuments in France, such as St. Sernin
of Toulouse, leave no doubt as to the debt of the country to its Roman
conquerors. Even at that time, when the South of France had not yet
altogether lost its traditions as the Roman Province, we can see new
tendencies at work. In Italy, the contemporary buildings, pieced
together with fragments of ancient columns, capitals, architraves,
employed as simple building material, point to the more intimate
co-existence in Italy of the old and new elements. It is sufficient
to recall two churches of the ninth century in Rome, St. Maria _in
Domnica_ and St. Prassede, both following the model of the great
Constantinian Basilicas. While their architecture is inspired by the
classic age of Christian art, and the materials are stolen from Pagan
monuments, their mosaics evince a healthy realism that asserts the
living tradition of local art, despite the obvious and predominant
influence of the East. But this persistence of Roman influences does
not exclude those of the North; Carolingian art greatly influenced
Italy, especially in certain forms of decorative work. The golden
altar of St. Ambrogio in Milan, the canopy above it, and some of the
stuccoes at Cividale, prove the force of these influences in districts
ethnically and historically favourable to their reception.
By the eleventh century feudal society had either lost or assimilated
the pre-Christian elements, legacy of the ancient world, which at first
had cemented together the various racial tendencies extant in Europe
at the close of the Roman Empire, thereby preparing the way for new
thoughts and ways of living. The Northern world had fully realised a
new social order, developing a new spiritual life and consequently
a new art to express it. Although this art contains numerous and
important classical and Eastern elements its originality is manifest.
We are confronted with a new world with its own idealistic and
naturalistic tendencies. The boldness of the architecture, together
with the minute rendering of nature in the decoration testify to that
union of abstract speculation and close study of reality that will
characterise all the subsequent developments of Northern thought. Mâle
has clearly shown how the artists have drawn upon all the theology, the
philosophy and the literature of the age to express at the same time
both the highest spiritual and the plainest practical life.
Italian architecture of the same period, following more faithfully
the old tradition, stands in great contrast to this originality. St.
Ambrogio in Milan is an excellent example of this traditional growth of
Italian art in the days that witnessed the full development of communal
liberty. Very different from the Constantinian Basilica, even as the
Commune was not the exact counterpart of the Roman _Municipium_, its
heavy structure, so eloquent in its massiveness, must have appealed to
its middle-class builders. In other Lombard churches we meet with the
same attempt to create a new style with classical elements. In seeking
to harmonise traditional disposition with the new needs, they tried
to avoid the extreme novelties of the North, too alien to the Roman
well-balanced and unlyrical mentality. The style of such buildings
is present to every mind and reveals better than any description
the unbroken descent from Imperial Rome. Indeed, from Lombardy to
Sicily, from Venice to Genoa, various are the styles flourishing in
the Peninsula; yet it is easy to detect everywhere strong traces of
such descent. The Baptistery of Florence is a very good instance of
this traditionalism and recalls faithfully that of the Lateran of the
time of Constantine. In entering San Miniato in Florence, where the
fanciful details of the decoration follow and are subordinate to the
severely classical architecture, we almost feel on the threshold of the
Renaissance, although still in the eleventh century. In the monuments
of Pisa, Lucca and Pistoia we find the same classical qualities in the
architectural scheme, united to the more poetic fancies displayed in
the decoration. There is thus a conscious dependence on antiquity in
the main architectural features, together with the utmost readiness
to accept foreign accessories. St. Mark’s in Venice displays, even as
the history of the amphibious Republic, all the sumptuousness of the
East, but even in such an exotic scheme the architecture still relies
on Imperial Rome, which had itself absorbed many Eastern elements.
Torcello, Trieste, Murano, show as clearly as the Lombard communes
the slow process of evolution that was to lead to the Renaissance.
Byzantine elements are not as alien as Gothic to Roman tradition. The
contemporary jurists had shown the great contribution of Byzantium to
the development of Roman law, and Byzantine motives were assimilated
more easily than those from the North.
The Roman legions had brought the great expanses of the North into
the orbit of history, but though they left deep and undying traces
behind them, they were unable to destroy the virile qualities of the
Northern races. So when Christianity brought a new intuition of life
to the Western world it developed locally according to the tendencies
of the various nations. The result was bound to be more original
where men were less influenced by the old Pagan culture and further
from the mentality that had produced it, among peoples who “_a cultu
atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt_.” Even though their
growth was to be slower in some respects, such as the cultural, such
peoples were bound to absorb more completely the full import of the
new faith and thus produce a thoroughly original civilisation. It was,
therefore, necessary in order to glorify the new religion to produce
an art as novel as the civilisation which inspired it. In contrast to
this affirmation of an entirely new mentality Italy was influenced by
the Roman traditions that weighed upon her; they stimulated a premature
efflorescence that exhausted her virility for centuries. Her people
were not forced to elaborate afresh all the elements of life; the
Church had preserved for them the framework of Roman life and law. Thus
the energy expanded in France and in England in working out a radically
new society and civilisation, in Italy drifted partly into adapting the
old formulas to the new necessities and partly into acquiring a deeper
consciousness of the intimate relations with the past.
In all the struggles from the twelfth to the fifteenth century with
the Empire and with the Church, the Italians invariably appealed to
the traditions of Ancient Rome; and their appeal was not to a remote
civilisation, but to a living tradition of their own, opposed to the
feudal institutions of the barbarians. At the time of the Communes this
attitude is particularly striking. The peasantry had taken shelter from
feudal oppression in towns protected by the authority of a bishop,
and there with the developments of commerce they grew in wealth and
political power. We thus find a new social class, the burgher, that
contributed immensely to the growing importance of the cities. These
strong practical men were distinguished by that common sense and pride
that to-day distinguishes the sturdy and self-assertive Fascists.
Having established their institutions, they considered them a living
part of their own persons, and brought into political life their sense
of personal dignity and the energy of the mediæval Christian, ready to
die for the ideas represented by his Corporation, even as the Fascist
is ready to die for his symbolic Black Shirt.
The Communes, in spite of their novelty, perhaps indeed in consequence
of the novelty of their self-assertion, were responsible for one of the
strongest historical bonds with the past. For in their opposition to
the feudal rights acknowledged by mediæval law, they appealed to Roman
jurisprudence in order to prove the legal grounds of their liberties.
They instinctively conformed to the past, creating forms of government
rich in future possibilities, and such conformity was not, according to
Professor Reggio, a mere question of high-sounding names. The Communes
reproduced of the actual and essential features of the City-State,
all those that could be revived. Their classicism was by no means
artificial, it was intimately felt as the surest means of destroying
feudalism, at that time the most assertive form of individualism. Even
the present Fascist appeal to Rome is far from being mere rhetoric;
Rome is considered the one force antagonistic to that anti-historical
mentality due to illuminism, that has given rise to abstract demagogy
and individualism.
The burghers, backed by the recently liberated peasantry, formed the
strength of the Commune, and upheld the memories of Roman municipal
organisation against the prevalently Germanic nobility. The Government
of the Communes consisted of a college of Rectors with an Assembly
of Elders, very much like the Senate of old, with various dependent
_clientele_ that recall the _gentes_; the heads of the various Guilds
were called Consuls and took command of their men in any emergency.
Their defence of civic liberties was essentially the defence of freedom
to attend to their trades and occupations. Here again they anticipated
Mussolini. What matters to the Commonweal is not the individual but
the interest he represents. They considered that this freedom of work
was incompatible with the dependence of the Commune on any superior
temporal authority. This was so deeply felt that the city was placed
under the protection of a Patron Saint, who, according to Ercole
Reggio, was not unlike the eponymous Hero of an ancient city.
In attempting to justify these forms of political and professional life
the citizens of the Commune came still more to consider themselves
the lawful descendants of the Romans. Studies of Roman Law were
pursued with as much zeal and vigour as any other form of practical or
religious life. As long as Pisa, Milan, Cremona, Pavia, preserved their
municipal liberties their whole life was imbued with a strong sense
of classicism which expressed itself both in the intensified study of
Roman Law, as Professor Solmi has clearly pointed out, and in the art
of Niccolò Pisano. Such Roman and classical qualities were to disappear
when the towns lost their municipal autonomy, only to reappear at
the present day in the idealism of Gentile, whose _Filosofia del
Diritto_ is as much impressed by the seal of their realism as it
is influenced by the thought of Hegel. They reappear in the Reform
of the Italian Constitution, tending to substitute actual interest
as the dynamic basis of the State in the place of the static and
naturalistic foundation it has had up till now. They reappear above all
in Mussolini, who told the author he did not wish that a theoretical
legislation should regulate or rather paralyse the development of the
new corporations, but that, following the example of the Romans, he
wished the legislation to grow out of the minutes of every single case
submitted to the Corporation Court. Before they disappeared they had
pervaded all Italian life to such a degree that scholars could say
_we_ in talking of the ancient Romans, and consider Latin as their own
language. Ricordano Malespini says that Frederick II spoke “_la nostra
lingua latina e il nostro volgare_.” They had two national languages,
Latin and the vernacular, the latter itself a degenerate offspring of
Latin, known as the “_romano rustico_,” to which could be traced all
the various dialects in spite of their local corruptions. The Communes
had also a great influence on the formation of the Italian language,
and this influence tended to unification not to differentiation,
as many historians have taken for granted in consequence of their
political individualism.
Francesco de Sanctis says that intellectual culture necessarily
stimulates new ideas, far superior to the material necessities of man,
and thereby calls into existence a more educated and refined class of
citizens, putting it in communication with foreign intellectual life.
The ultimate consequence is a closer connection of languages that
develops not their local, but their common elements. According to him
the first effects of renewed Italian intellectual life were both to
restore the purity of Latin and favour the formation of the vernacular.
Thus we see how the classical revival started at the very moment when
the new Italian consciousness should have been born. This revival
was aided by the establishment of great international centres such as
the Court of Palermo at first, and later the cities of Tuscany and
Lombardy. As the studies of Latin improved, the local dialects became
purer and more refined. The weakness of the contemporary writers for
rhetoric, for verbosity, their exaggerated love for the mere word, to
which they attributed an almost religious value, seems very often the
naïve pleasure of reasserting a family claim on a cherished property.
Both Guelphs and Ghibellines are followers of Rome, the former, as
we have seen, finding in Roman Law the legality of their municipal
institutions, the latter appealing to the traditions of Imperial Rome
to justify the sovereign rights of Cæsar. The whole public life assumes
a religious character as in all constructive periods of history and as
is the case in Italy to-day, where the previous lack of seriousness has
been considered by the greatest thinkers to have been the product of
religious scepticism. At that time the object of the common veneration,
the one universal feeling of the most factious of peoples in the most
factious period of its history was the cult of Rome. And as Religion
played such an immense part in their whole life, the Italians were
obliged to christianise Rome and associate it with Christian idealism.
For Dante, Christ, and Rome dominate the history of a thousand years.
He views history as a vast moral and religious evolution, as an
indissoluble whole, each portion of which converges irresistibly to
its pre-ordained end. The Birth of Our Lord at the moment when Cæsar
Augustus ordained that all the world should be taxed testified to
God’s approval of the Empire. Christ, in submitting His Godhead to
the judgment of a Roman magistrate, gave Divine sanction to Roman
Law. Dante does not consider the miraculous origin of the Seven-Hilled
City as the only proof of the privileges it holds from God, nor does
he ascribe to it the more important favour of a special historical
process. Rome for Dante is equivalent to Catholicity, to conformity
to the plans of the Divine Providence, and the history of Rome raises
the Roman State almost to Divine rank. Guelphs and Ghibellines find in
the Roman Jurists and the Roman Legions arguments in support of their
opposite claims, and when the advent of the _Signorie_ involved them in
a common downfall, the consciousness of an unbroken descent from Rome
could never after be erased from Italian mentality.
The influence of Rome on all the mediæval institutions of Italy is
obvious to anyone familiar with the period. But the Italians, at
the dawn of modern history, were led by this unbroken tradition of
Rome into a habit of going to Roman history and law for a solution
of contemporary problems, and this, while it secured their supremacy
in the field of jurisprudence, kept their mentality from developing
on original and modern lines. Even when Italy seemed almost to have
withdrawn from all competition in theoretical research, her jurists
and historians stood out to proclaim the immortality of the national
genius. The intimate relations of the past with the present could
never be lost sight of by people who found in the political and legal
activities of ancient Rome the principles from which arose their chief
political idea, the dignity of man as a citizen. They overlooked the
fact that such wonderful citizenship had never been bestowed on man as
man, that the municipal liberties, the privileges of the _Collegia_,
the rule over the barbarians, were the reward of the Romans, not the
pre-ordained lot of Rome. Italian scholars felt with the deepest
conviction that her genealogy alone endowed Italy with a primacy which
they could not renounce. Even had they so wished they could not have
been a modern nation in a modern world. The more they studied, the more
did they convince themselves like Petrarch that they descended in an
unbroken line from Marius and Sulla. Their historical mentality was
already formed and they could not consider the human world otherwise
than as a narrow collaboration of successive generations.
Dante, in his preface to the _De Monarchia_, has stated his idea of
this historical succession. “All men whom a loftier nature leads to
the love of truth seem to be most greatly concerned to hand down to
posterity the fruits of their efforts so that, even as they themselves
have been enriched by the labours of their ancestors, they may to
the same degree endow their successors. Indeed, he who is steeped in
the knowledge of public affairs is certainly far from fulfilling his
duty should he not trouble to bestow the fruit of his studies on the
Republic, not like unto ‘a tree by the rivers of water that bringeth
forth his fruit in his season,’ but rather unto a baneful whirlpool
that swalloweth up all things nor ever restoreth what it hath once
swallowed.” Here we find the empirical expression of what Giordano
Bruno was to conceive theoretically three hundred years later, thus
foreshadowing the Immanentist doctrine of history and society that
Vico was to develop some hundred and fifty years later still. Vico
had, in his turn, to wait until the second half of the nineteenth
century in order to be properly understood. His ideas in 1916 formed
the basis of Giovanni Gentile’s Philosophy of Law, and at the present
day are realised in the Italian Constitution as elaborated by the
Government of Mussolini. But Dante’s scholastic training could not
allow him to have the least inkling of the doctrine of Immanentism;
his ideal Monarch is merely a magistrate appointed and endowed by God.
For Dante all political power could only be lawfully derived from
the Divine law. Scholastic philosophy could not conceive a law that
should not be dependent upon a superior will or a pre-existing law.
None the less, this empirical statement, such as it is, shows already
how no speculation could satisfy the Italian mind unless it avoided
the unhistorical position more natural in those countries that had
themselves evolved an original form of society.
The removal of the Papal court to Avignon gave Italy a rude shock in
affecting the good fame of the whole country. The humiliation of the
Papacy is resented all over the Peninsula, and the eclipse of the
Papal dignity diminishes the prestige not only of Rome but of Italy.
A new religion, the cult of Rome, spreads in all Italian hearts, and
its ruined monuments are scarcely less venerated than the relics of
the Apostles. The glorious memories of the Roman Republic, the pride
of the Roman name, give rise both to the unfortunate statesmanship
of Arnold of Brescia and, a hundred and fifty years later, to the
rash adventure of Cola di Rienzo. All those who cannot boast such
an illustrious descent are contemptuously designated as barbarians,
and this distinction gives rise to the feeling of the unity of the
Italian races. The mystical and religious fervour with which the men
of the Risorgimento felt for Rome, so strong that it led them to
trample on their religion, was not stronger than that of the first
humanists. Petrarch and Boccaccio were already preparing the way for
the Renaissance, of which they are rightly considered as the first
pioneers. These enthusiasts, who brought such inestimable benefits to
the intellectual life of the whole world, nevertheless introduced into
their own country the germ of many ills.
The men of France and England could never feel at home in the ample
folds of Cicero’s toga as the Italians did. It was for them, indeed, a
useful garment worn with perfect ease of manners as a ceremonial robe
donned on state occasions, or a protective covering unfurled in their
intellectual battles. Despite its assimilation and survival as late as
the eighteenth century in the ample periods of Dr. Johnson or in the
well-balanced sentences of Bossuet, it did not modify to any degree the
mentality of countries with which it did not have a close affinity,
although it left in the minds a certain number of ideas distinctly
pagan, such as that of birthright. French and English scholars looked
upon Rome as something definitely outside their own world, like the
moon or the sun, and just as illuminating to them as the former is
to the night wanderer and the latter to all the labours of mankind.
This transcendental quality rendered Rome indeed semi-divine in
their eyes, but fortunately kept them from considering themselves
the lineal progeny of Marius or Cæsar. Their cult of antiquity was
just as profoundly religious as that of the Italian scholars with
whom they were often in the closest relations, only their attitude
was more detached. They were thus able to cut themselves adrift from
their masters with perfect ease when they had assimilated all that was
needful to develop their own natural gifts. An abyss stood between them
and antiquity; they were unable to appreciate their real connection
with antiquity. Their historical information as to the intervening
centuries could only be drawn from mediæval chronicles which, full of
detail though they were, did not offer any comprehensive view even
of a reign and much less of a century. They failed to understand the
essential continuity of the history of all countries, and, while not
making the mistake of considering the Romans as their ancestors, they
could not conceive history and society as immanent in man.
Petrarch, on the contrary, considers himself perfectly Roman, although
his lyrics are almost the first assertion of modern individualism.
His familiarity with Livy, Cicero, Virgil, gave him an appreciation
of classical Latin that led him to consider that of Dante barbarous.
What matters to him is the form in which thoughts are expressed, not
the thoughts themselves; he wanted art for art’s sake. Fortunately,
his genius and the fervour of his cult for Rome sometimes animates his
consciousness of the continuity of the past with the present. In the
_Canzone di Signori d’Italia_ the new Italy that was trying to recover
her Roman and Latin tradition appears as a fully grown personality.
Guelphs and Ghibellines, Romans and Florentines have disappeared,
and Italy speaks the proud language of the Queen of Civilisation. As
Francesco De Sanctis puts it, the poet is an Italian, conscious of the
superiority of his race. Marius is mentioned as if he were an almost
contemporary person. So deeply does the young poet feel the classical
world that henceforth he considers the heroes of Greece and Rome as
his ancestors. With personal pride he assumes the military glories of
Marius and Cæsar no less than the ample rhetoric of Cicero. And in this
assumption of a ready-made glory as Italy’s inherent right, cause of
much subsequent political and moral weakness, we may find the first
signs of the contribution that modern Italy is perhaps now on the verge
of bringing to civilisation. It is therefore natural that Fascism
should attack with energy the negative side of the legacy of Humanism,
the Italian fondness for rhetoric, union of lofty words and mean deeds,
while accepting and proclaiming the historical conception that links
man to the generations past and future.
The Italians of the fifteenth century continued to revel in the glory
of Rome and gradually forgot that there was an actual and living
reality, hardly consistent with their superior attitude as the sons
of Cæsar and Augustus. Prose and verse improved so long as the cult
of antiquity retained its initial mystic fervour, that provided the
religious element indispensable to all creative art. But when devotion
to classical studies became a question of interest or vanity, it was
only from the very greatest artists, from men whose real religion was
the worship of art, that one could expect sincerity. All the others
were only extraordinarily adept at the clever wording of other people’s
ideas. They could never fail to deck any subject, no matter how mean,
no matter how repulsive, in the full pomp of a Ciceronian oration, rich
in beautiful sentences and displaying the careful study of all the
figures of speech to be found in the classics. Fraccastorius describes
a loathsome disease in the finest of post-classical hexameters.
Politicians could act as meanly as they pleased, sure that the glory
of Rome would raise them above the rest of mankind. Even their real
superiority in historical feeling and in the interpretation of
antiquity was a source of weakness. For when beaten in war they could
always express contempt for the victors and call them barbarians,
consoling themselves with their real intellectual and artistic
superiority for their political humiliation.
In 1494 Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, meeting with no
resistance worth mentioning. It is not surprising, since the despairing
cry of Boiardo
_“Mentre che io canto, O Dio Redentore.
Vedo l’Italia tutta a fiamma e a foco”_
is almost the swan-song of mediæval Italy. At the same time a
twenty-year-old youth, destined to become the greatest poet of the age,
Lodovico Ariosto, could sing with perfect Horatian art and with an
equally perfect indifference for his country
_“asperi
furore militis tremendo
Turribus ausoniis ruinam”_
and with all the selfishness of unconscious indifference
_“Rursus quid hostis prospiciat sibi
Me nulla tangat cura, sub arbuto
Iacentem aquae ad murmur cadentis.”_
He has adopted the measures and harmonies of Horace and Virgil and,
wrapped up in his pride in the glory of Rome, goes on singing his
classical bucolic loves in complete indifference to the fate of his
country:
_“Est mea nunc Glycerae, mea nunc est cura Lycoris,
Lyda modo meus est, est modo Phyllis amor.”_
Reality is a horrible dream, “_improba seclis conditio!_” he is shocked
that
_“nuper ab occiduis illatum gentibus, olim
pressa quibus nostro colla fuere iugo.”_
Such a perfect Latinist could but seek to dismiss this hideous reality
by ignoring it and to find refuge in the glorious memories of the past
or in the creation of a world of fanciful chivalry.[5]
The sixteenth century witnesses the final divorce of Italian culture
from real life, so that for two subsequent centuries, instead of
developing the moral and social qualities of the individual citizen, as
in England, in France and in the Netherlands, it tended rather to the
atrophy of all real patriotism. But at this very moment, in opposition
to this dissolving and negative influence of Italian Humanism, one of
the greatest men produced by a land ever “_magna parens virum_” stands
forth to proclaim that man alone is the creator of the historical world
and arbiter of his own destiny. The public life and the posthumous fame
of the Florentine Secretary are equally unfortunate, but the present
age is better prepared to appreciate the truths contained in the works
of Niccolò Machiavelli.
He, like all the intellectuals of the period, would have said “_we_” in
speaking of the Romans, and he might have used the phrase of Leonardo
Aretino, “_Graecos ΠΟΛΙΣ, NOSTROS CIVITAS appellavisse_,” had he
desired to trace the etymology of that political reality so dear to
his heart. But this identification was not sentimental; he analyses
closely the differences between past glory and present shame. Strictly
speaking, he is not a Humanist at all; like Galileo, he repudiates
Neoplatonism and follows, rather, the experimental method. He carefully
dissects the past for the benefit of the present, and deftly probes the
wounds of the body politic. This empirical standpoint indeed would be
a grave defect, did not his genius and sense of history as a living
reality often lead him to intuitions that transcend both his method and
outlook. The intuitions, the proof of the truth of which was to be one
of the chief conquests of modern thought, are clouded by his prejudices
or obscured by the inevitable limitations of his knowledge of facts.
His conception of “virtue” is perhaps the most characteristic of those
intuitions that allowed him to foresee ideas only to be understood
by the end of the nineteenth century, and only to be acted on by the
present day.
Of course, the idea in itself was not entirely new. One of the ablest
historians of the fifteenth century, Philippe Monnier, has clearly
pointed out that already in the twelfth century the centre of reality
had been lowered from the celestial heights and firmly planted in the
breast of man. The polemics on Frederick II’s definition of nobility
are an assertion of the part played by man’s individuality in the
formation of the world. After two centuries of Humanism, noble birth
is an absurdity. For Piccolomini, Ficino, Landino, man cannot be born
noble, he can only become noble through his own exertions. The Stoic
precept of the absolute autonomy of the human will is frequently
alluded to in discussion on the power of Fortune, against which Leone
Battista Alberti strenuously asserts the power of man to forge his own
destiny. Alberti, typical representative of the Renaissance, in all his
moral works, emphasises the freedom of man from all external influences
and above all from the dominion of Chance, and for him man’s life is a
consequence of man’s actions. Neither Fate nor Chance are a cause of
the varying circumstances of individuals.
Having these doctrines before him, Machiavelli was able to apply to the
life of nations the ideas that governed the life of the individual.
Rome had been powerful and glorious; Italy is weak and contemptible:
the cause is the moral corruption of the Italians. Machiavelli does not
always consider Italy’s invaders as barbarians; he is always ready to
study their institutions and ways of living in order to discover the
reasons for their military superiority. He firmly believes that Fortune
can only display her power where no “virtue” has prepared a resistance.
Italy, “_vituperio del mondo_,” will certainly return to her former
strength could the Italians be aroused from their torpor. His attitude
is identical with that of Mussolini’s government: Italy is slighted
by the Allies, she is financially weak, the cause is the scepticism
and self-indulgence of the people, the remedy a stricter conception of
life for adults and a more religious education for children. Fortune,
however, is not quite identified with Fate, and, while the latter is
unhesitatingly rejected, the former is retained as a kind of background
against which man can display more efficiently his will and “virtue.”
This background, which he calls Fortune or Opportunity, is no less a
conception than Croce’s “situation of facts.” His “verità effettuale
delle cose” is the objective knowledge of the Crocian “situazione
de fatto” and must be ascertained anew before embarking on any new
action, for, according to the shrewd Florentine, “sono le cose umane
sempre in moto.” It is, therefore, necessary to take one’s bearings
before embarking on any course to realise one’s will. The best type of
will is that which draws its strength from an intimate knowledge of
actual circumstances and is consequently steady and resolute. Hence
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.
Machiavelli was obviously too much a man of his age to be able to
surpass the theory of man as an individual attempting to realise his
personality in a world in which he could expand as freely as possible.
He could not conceive the objectivity and consequent importance of the
State as moral reality, and still less the intimate subjectivity of the
objective world in which man realises his will. The very word “Fortune”
kept to indicate actuality was misleading, and veiled his real notion
of freedom; he severed liberty from law and by only retaining the
former he gave the careless or ignorant an opportunity for the vulgar
interpretation of his doctrines.
Time and the works of Bruno and Campanella, stripped of their heretical
outlook, were to further in the mind of Vico the first maturity of the
fruits of which the seed was to be found in the Florentine statesman’s
ideas of “virtue” and political morality. Thus, while the other
modern nations were necessarily getting more deeply embogged in their
anti-historical attitude towards life, Italy, in the political idleness
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was slowly elaborating
those doctrines that may yet prove to be the ballast needed by all
countries to weather the present political and social storms.