There is a second and equally important point. Fascism is not a
philosophy. Much less is it a religion. It is not even a political
theory which may be stated in a series of formulae. The significance
of Fascism is not to be grasped in the special theses which it from
time to time assumes. When on occasion it has announced a program, a
goal, a concept to be realized in action, Fascism has not hesitated to
abandon them when in practice these were found to be inadequate or
inconsistent with the principle of Fascism. Fascism has never been
willing to compromise its future. Mussolini has boasted that he is a
_tempista_, that his real pride is in "good timing." He makes
decisions and acts on them at the precise moment when all the
conditions and considerations which make them feasible and opportune
are properly matured. This is a way of saying that Fascism returns to
the most rigorous meaning of Mazzini's "Thought and Action," whereby
the two terms are so perfectly coincident that no thought has value
which is not already expressed in action. The real "views" of the
_Duce_ are those which he formulates and executes at one and the same
time.

Is Fascism therefore "anti-intellectual," as has been so often
charged? It is eminently anti-intellectual, eminently Mazzinian, that
is, if by intellectualism we mean the divorce of thought from action,
of knowledge from life, of brain from heart, of theory from practice.
Fascism is hostile to all Utopian systems which are destined never to
face the test of reality. It is hostile to all science and all
philosophy which remain matters of mere fancy or intelligence. It is
not that Fascism denies value to culture, to the higher intellectual
pursuits by which thought is invigorated as a source of action.
Fascist anti-intellectualism holds in scorn a product peculiarly