It is therefore a spiritual conception, itself also a result of the
general reaction of the Century against the languid and materialistic
positivism of the Eighteenth Century. Anti-positivist, but positive:
neither sceptical nor agnostic, neither pessimistic nor passively
optimistic, as are in general the doctrines (all of them negative)
which place the centre of life outside of man, who by his free will
can and should create his own world for himself.
Fascism wants a man to be active and to be absorbed in action with all
his energies; it wants him to have a manly consciousness of the
difficulties that exist and to be ready to face them. It conceives
life as a struggle, thinking that it is the duty of man to conquer
that life which is really worthy of him: creating in the first place
within himself the (physical, moral, intellectual) instrument with
which to build it.
As for the individual, so for the nation, so for mankind. Hence the
high value of culture in all its forms (art, religion, science) and
the supreme importance of education. Hence also the essential value
of labour, with which man conquers nature and creates the human world
(economic, political, moral, intellectual).