Your much attached
Giuseppe Mazzini.
L.
To “Corso”
Brother,
I have received yours of the 8th. That I should write to you at much length on the subject of your letter is not possible. You, however, will certainly not suppose that I evade the discussion, nor that I do not set a right value on your convictions, or do not care about them. No indeed; and you are mistaken in fancying that your frankness of speech could ever offend me. If you but knew how the religion of truth is the religion for me! and how much any real conviction inspires me with respect, if not assent! But this is not a question to be disposed of in a few letters; nor have I time, beset as I am by a thousand distractions through my dream of Italian initiative, to enter on a discussion. And, if I ever have time, I shall compose, I confess to you, a whole volume—but I shall never publish it, unless a Republican revolution should have broken out. For the present, I understand this latest reaction in favour of Christianity, and I see it to be necessary, and acknowledge it as useful. A true knowledge of Christianity—its nature, its mission—will follow from this study. Just as, in my view, reform must naturally precede the securing of independence, liberty, and equality, in political dogma, so do I believe that the political synthesis, or at any rate a glimpse of this synthesis, must, in the new epoch, precede in renovated Europe the manifestation of the religious synthesis of the epoch. Rights were of yore individual; and it was natural that first the individual should be emancipated, that the instrument should be formed to acquire an application of those rights in the political department. At the present time the reverse is the case. The question is that of the social synthesis. The instrument is no longer the individual, but the people. Therefore the people, which is to secure the religious formula, requires to be constituted: therefore a political revolution before the religious one.
Only, you know what I have always said: like advanced scouts, secret sentinels of human nature, intelligences must begin to proclaim that they descry the new lands and the new law. And therefore I should have supposed you to be among them; and I still believe that you will be among them later on. Meanwhile, as you think that my efforts (and be it observed that I am doing nothing) are to subserve the triumph of Christianity, so do I think that yours are to subserve the triumph of the new synthesis, the social synthesis, philosophy merged into religion: because—I do not deny it—my “harmonized dualism” is precisely this harmonizing of philosophy with religion—two things which hitherto have been at odds, and which will end by coalescing. Yours is, without your perceiving it, an eclecticism and no more. Your quid tertium, neither catholic nor primitive (two distinctions as to which I should have much to say), is an Utopia, or rather a chimera. You don’t perceive that that which you call primitive is at bottom nothing except Christianity in the soul, not any social form; that the second epoch—i.e. Catholicism—is rightly the application of Christianity to society; and that the Reformation—a cynical movement, whatever you may say about it—came, in fact, to say of Christianity: “You are not susceptible of any social application, of any national unity, because you are an individualistic formula and no more: stay you in your proper sphere.”
You and I, I perceive, regard the Reformation, and all things, from different points of view.
And now see what is the outcome of the idea, “Christianity is an eternal religion, an unique religious synthesis.” And what of mankind prior to Christianity? Oh in what sense do you understand God, if you admit that He gave the unique eternal synthesis some thousands of years after the race had been created? And the unity of the mind of God? A progressive law at the beginning, and an eternal synthesis later on? But no more of this; you go too far. Believing as I do, with yourself, in continuous progression, there ought to be between us only a question of time, but never a denial of a new synthesis when the time comes. Christianity asserts its perfection and eternity as a fundamental principle: therefore you cannot, without destroying it, say that it is not the whole of truth. But once again, no more of this. Christianity had to profess itself perfect and eternal, and I even admit that. But when did Christianity ever affect to be a social religion? That is the question. Christianity is the formula of the individual, and as such is eternal and perfect to my thinking—for that formula is what no one can nullify. It means liberty and equality; and who can ever henceforth exclude those two bases of progress from the progress of the future? Christianity therefore will endure. Only, behind that formula one seeks for another—the social. Where is the contradiction?
Tell me, my Corso, with your hand on your heart. To the arguments which I scatter in my letters, hurried, unconnected, and almost sportive, the true fruit of profound convictions, and which you (permit me to say) shirk a little in your replies, have you anything to oppose? Do not some of the things which I say, if you think them over seriously, cast some doubts on your mind?