The true idea of a nation implies the consciousness of a common aim, and the fraternal association and concentration of all the vital forces of the country towards the realization of that aim.
The national aim is indicated by the past tradition, and confirmed by the present conscience, of the country.
The national aim once ascertained, it becomes the basis of the sovereign power, and the criterion of judgment with regard to the acts of the citizens.
Every act tending to promote the national aim is good; every act tending to a departure from that aim is evil.
The moral law is supreme. The religion of duty forms the link between the nation and humanity; the source of its right, and the sign of its place and value in humanity.
Such are the essential characteristics of what we term a nation at the present day. Where these are wanting, there exists but an aggregate of families, temporarily united for the purpose of diminishing the ills of life, and loosely bound together by past habits or interests, which are destined, sooner or later, to clash. All intellectual or economic development among them,—unregulated by a great conception supreme over every selfish interest,—instead of being equally diffused over the various members of the national family, leads to the gradual formation of educated or financial castes, but obtains for the nation itself neither recognized function, position, dignity, nor glory among foreign peoples.
These things, which are true of all peoples, are still more markedly so of a people emerging from a prolonged and deathlike stupor into new life. Other nations earnestly watch its every step. If its advance is illumined by the signs of a high mission, and its first manifestations sanctified by the baptism of a great principle, other nations will surround the new collective being with affection and hope, and be ready to follow it upon the path assigned to it by God. If they discover in it no signs of any noble inspiration, ruling moral conception, or potent future, they will learn to despise it, and to regard its territory as a new field for a predatory policy, and direct or indirect domination.
Tradition has marked out and defined the characteristics of a high mission more distinctly in Italy than elsewhere. We alone, among the nations that have expired in the past, have twice arisen in resurrection and given new life to Europe. The innate tendency of the Italian mind always to harmonize thought and action confirms the prophecy of history, and points out the rôle of Italy in the world to be a work of moral unification,—the utterance of the synthetic word of civilization.
Italy is a religion.