army occupied the Papal territory which, by a plebiscitary vote of 153,000 against 1,507, threw in its lot with Italy. No Catholic Government raised a finger on behalf of the Papal State—in such fashion fell the Temporal Power of the Church and of its theocratic Head, Pius IX. Nor could his successor, Leo XIII, save the Middle Ages, notwithstanding his revival of Scholasticism and of the study of Thomas Aquinas. My hope that other theocratic States might fall in their turn was naturally and logically linked with this world-historic event.
It is no accident that the most recent Italian philosophy should have turned so strongly towards sociology and the study of social phenomena. Apart from a philosophy of history based upon a long and rich tradition, the substance of modern Italian thought reflects the problem of a growing population—a problem which has necessitated a colonial policy and has stimulated the industrialization of the North, the intellectual awakening of the Centre and the South, an increasing consciousness of national and political importance and the practical unification of the country. To me, moreover, Italy symbolized the question of revolution in various forms, particularly in those of secret societies and political outrages. On this subject Mazzini and his philosophy are a living storehouse of ideas.
Somewhat unsystematically, my study of modern Italian literature had begun with Leopardi—on account of his pessimism which had interested me from early youth as a psychological problem of the period. From Leopardi to Manzoni was but a little way, though Manzoni—a follower of Rosmini—preached Christianity and both Leopardi and Manzoni were Romanticists and parents of the newer tendencies in Italian poetry. Then, with a jump, I came to D’Annunzio, who revealed to me the decadent movement and its relationship to Catholicism; and, however anachronistic it may seem that I should have returned from D'Annunzio to Carducci, there is an organic link between them, for Carducci’s blasphemous “Hymn to Satan” belongs naturally to what I call “decadence.” On this matter I shall have more to say when I deal with France. Here I would only point out that D’Annunzio’s political activity is in line with his literary work, for it is a vain attempt to fill his decadent spiritual emptiness. The transition from Romanticism to Realism and subsequently to Futurism and other phenomena of “revolt” are, on the other hand, characteristic of the spiritual crisis in the whole of Europe, not in Italy alone. In Italy, as elsewhere, physicians have arisen to offer remedies for this literary anarchy, some prescribing a return to Dante and others to Leopardi—
