intensity throughout the world. But people have been much more eager
to extol or to deplore than to understand--which is natural enough in
a period of tumultuous fervor and of political passion. The time has
not yet arrived for a dispassionate judgment. For even I, who noticed
the very first manifestations of this great development, saw its
significance from the start and participated directly in its first
doings, carefully watching all its early uncertain and changing
developments, even I do not feel competent to pass definite judgment.
Fascism is so large a part of myself that it would be both arbitrary
and absurd for me to try to dissociate my personality from it, to
submit it to impartial scrutiny in order to evaluate it coldly and
accurately. What can be done, however, and it seldom is attempted, is
to make inquiry into the phenomenon which shall not merely consider
its fragmentary and adventitious aspects, but strive to get at its
inner essence. The undertaking may not be easy, but it is necessary,
and no occasion for attempting it is more suitable than the present
one afforded me by my friends of Perugia. Suitable it is in time
because, at the inauguration of a course of lectures and lessons
principally intended to illustrate that old and glorious trend of the
life and history of Italy which takes its name from the humble saint
of Assisi, it seemed natural to connect it with the greatest
achievement of modern Italy, different in so many ways from the
Franciscan movement, but united with it by the mighty common current
of Italian History. It is suitable as well in place because at
Perugia, which witnessed the growth of our religious ideas, of our
political doctrines and of our legal science in the course of the most
glorious centuries of our cultural history, the mind is properly
disposed and almost oriented towards an investigation of this nature.

First of all let us ask ourselves if there is a political doctrine of