The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867.

the Papacy, but itself a source of n

ligious dogma. It is the reaction of those superficial intellects which, incapable of taking a comprehensive view of the life of humanity, and tracing an

ed with their moral liberty, find themselves in the presence of a Church destitute of all mission, virtue, love for the people, or adoration of truth or progress,-destitute even of faith in itself. They see that the existing dogma is in flagrant contradiction of the ruling idea that governs all the aspirations of the epoch, and that its conception of divinity is inf

ear away. The day will come when our Italian youth will discover that, just as reasonably as they, not content with denying the Christian dogma, proceed to deny the existence of a God, and the religious life of humanity, their ancestors might have proceeded, from their denial and rejection of the feudal syst

tradition and of conscience whence he came, and to what goal he is bound; he will ask through what paths that goal is to be reached, and seek to solve the problem suggested by the existence within him of a conception of the Infinite, and of an ideal impossible of rea

in a visible form to the external world, the non-Ego. The men who, having succeeded in analyzing the instruments by means of which life is made manifest in a series of successive finite phenomena, imagine that they ha

s an ideal impossible of realization in the brief stage of our earthly existence,-the instinct of free will,-all that constitutes the mysterious link within us

s and origin of things, they childishly deny the existence of such laws, and declare all humanity before their time to have been deluded and incapable,-so be it. Nor should I, had Italy been a nation for half a century, have regarded their doctrines as fraught with any real danger. Humanity will not abandon its appointed path for them;

emerging from a long past of error and corruption, and hesitating as to the choice of its future, may be of serious import. The doctrines of federalism, which, if preached in France at the present day, would be but a

, may be postponed for half a century. Every delay, every error, may be fatal. And the people through whom we have to work are uneducated, liabl

ure them, by all they hold most sacred, to meditate deeply the moral consequences of the doctrines they preach, and especially to study their effect in the case of a neighboring nation, which carried negation to the extre

ose whose duty it is to watc

ccepted by mankind, as the practical consequence of that law,-or we must admit the idea of a ruling force of things, and its p

ty is composed,-an aim recognized by them all, and superior to them all, and therefore religious; or we must accept the sovereignty of the right, arbitrarily defined, of each nation, and its practical consequences,-the pursuit by each individu

eing of the many, the majority will, as they always have done, understand their well-being to mean their positive satisfaction or enjoyment; they will reject the notion of sacrifice as painful, and endeavor to realize their own happiness, even to the injury of others. They will

upon which to found a system of education; you have nothing left but force, if you are strong enough to impose it. Such was the method adopted by the French Revolutionists, and they, in their turn, succumbed to the force of others, without knowing in the name of what

ry ascending life which unites succeeding generations,-of the duty of sacrificing, if need be, the present generation to the elevation and morality of the generations of the future,-of the

ctrine, only recognizes in the universe a finite and determinate quantity of matter, gifted with a definite number of properties, and susceptible of modification, but not of progress; in which certain productive

ntheism at the present day, by confounding the subject and the object in one, cancels alike the Ego and non-Ego, good and evil, God and man, and, consequently, all individual mission or free-will. The wretched doctrine, recognizing no higher historic formula t

fatherland, and make of them a great nation, the artificer of the progress of humanity, present as the first intellectual food of this people now awakening to new life,

noble aspiration towards sacrifice,-they take from them the faith that inspires confidence in victory, and renders even the defeat of to-day fruitful of triumph on the morrow. The same men who urge upon them the duty of shedding their blood for an idea begin by declaring to them: There is no hope of any future for you. Faith in immortality-the lesson transmitted to you by all past humanity-is a

ce; that the thought of a Kepler or Dante is dust, or rather phosphorus; that genius, from Prometheus to Jesus, brought down no divine spark from heaven; that the moral law

tard Machiavellism, that worship of temporary interests, and that indifference to every great idea, which find expression in our