manner of its development appears to be essentially a non-Italian
formation. Its connection with the Middle Ages already shows it to be
foreign to the Latin mind, the mediaeval disintegration being the
result of the triumph of Germanic individualism over the political
mentality of the Romans. The barbarians, boring from within and
hacking from without, pulled down the great political structure raised
by Latin genius and put nothing in its place. Anarchy lasted eight
centuries during which time only one institution survived and that a
Roman one--the Catholic Church. But, as soon as the laborious process
of reconstruction was started with the constitution of the great
national states backed by the Roman Church the Protestant Reformation
set in followed by the individualistic currents of the XVII and XVIII
centuries, and the process of disintegration was started anew. This
anti-state tendency was the expression of the Germanic spirit and it
therefore became predominant among the Germanic peoples and wherever
Germanism had left a deep imprint even if afterward superficially
covered by a veneer of Latin culture. It is true that Marsilius from
Padua is an Italian writing for Ludwig the Bavarian, but the other
writers who in the XIV century appear as forerunners of the liberal
doctrines are not Italians: Occam and Wycliff are English; Oresme is
French. Among the advocates of individualism in the XVI century who
prepared the way for the triumph of the doctrines of natural law in
the subsequent centuries, Hotman and Languet are French, Buchanan is
Scotch. Of the great authorities of natural law, Grotius and Spinosa
are Dutch; Locke is English; l'Abbé de St. Pierre, Montesquieu,
d'Argenson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and the encyclopaedists are
French; Althusius, Pufendorf, Kant, Fichte are German.

Italy took no part in the rise and development of the doctrines of
natural law. Only in the XIX century did she evince a tardy interest