Originality, multiplicity, and energy of types are very scarce in Italy, for everywhere the conventional lie dominates; it is much more difficult to choose models here than it is in certain other countries, for example in Russia; for genius alone can draw inspiration from inferior and ordinary material.
The classical system of education has prevented us from going to the source of social anomalies, mattoids, madmen, etc.
Besides, classicism, which has dominated us for so many centuries, and which has inspired us with its marvellous beauties, has, like the old, (and it is very old,) lost all its vital force. People have made believe to warm themselves by it; but they have not succeeded; they remain cold; and they admire its adepts only in deference to the conventional lie. Yet the entire education of our youth consists of that. It is the same as in religion. People have made Madonnas and Jesuses of it to such an extent that now there is no longer any means of contriving anything new. Naturalism without being the natural foundation of the people is nevertheless sufficiently advanced not to allow of serious inspiration in religion.
Many authors who have sought new paths have been led out of their way by journalism and politics, which always end in exhausting people, even geniuses. SCARFOGLIO, BONGHI, TORELLI, DEZERBI, and FERRI are among the number.
The difficulty of securing a place in the literary world also very quickly exhausts many. Thus many men, especially of Southern Italy, produce a very good work; but they have become fathers too late in life, and have only a single son; such are BERSEZIO, with his Travet, BOITO with his Ballate, VALCARENGHI with his Confessioni d'Andrea.
Political liberty, if it has given an impulse to social and political studies, has prejudiced great literary production, perhaps because under the incitement of foreign domination and of rebellion, the heart draws from a grand source of inspiration, and the pen finds powerful excitation, more powerful perhaps, than liberty gives it.
Art finds more numerous elements of success in minds highly excited. It is the property of great revolutions to elevate the souls of all contemporaries, to impart to them a peculiar disposition unknown before, and which is not slow to disappear. The most humble, the most obscure, those even who have not taken any part in the events and who have hardly studied them, express, a long time afterwards even, sentiments much superior to those which their ordinary condition allows. It is sufficient to have lived during some passionate epoch to issue from it better, purer, and stronger. The new ideas, the generous impulses which then carry away nations, penetrate into all classes and ennoble a whole generation. We had in our revolutionary epoch, Manzoni, Massimo d'Azeglio, Guerazzi, Giusti, Porta, Miceli, Brofferio, Berchet, Mameli, Boerio, Laquacci, Aleardi, Grassi, Prati. Who have we now to compare with them?
Turin, March, 1891. CESARE LOMBROSO.
BOOK REVIEWS.
THE ORIGIN OF THE ARYANS. An Account of the Prehistoric Ethnology and
Civilisation of Europe. By Isaac Taylor, M. A., L. L. D. New
York: Scribner & Welford.