typical of the educated classes in Italy: the _leterato_--the man who
plays with knowledge and with thought without any sense of
responsibility for the practical world. It is hostile not so much to
culture as to bad culture, the culture which does not educate, which
does not make men, but rather creates pedants and aesthetes, egotists
in a word, men morally and politically indifferent. It has no use, for
instance, for the man who is "above the conflict" when his country or
its important interests are at stake.

By virtue of its repugnance for "intellectualism," Fascism prefers not
to waste time constructing abstract theories about itself. But when we
say that it is not a system or a doctrine we must not conclude that it
is a blind praxis or a purely instinctive method. If by system or
philosophy we mean a living thought, a principle of universal
character daily revealing its inner fertility and significance, then
Fascism is a perfect system, with a solidly established foundation and
with a rigorous logic in its development; and all who feel the truth
and the vitality of the principle work day by day for its development,
now doing, now undoing, now going forward, now retracing their steps,
according as the things they do prove to be in harmony with the
principle or to deviate from it.

And we come finally to a third point.

The Fascist system is not a political system, but it has its center of
gravity in politics. Fascism came into being to meet serious problems
of politics in post-war Italy. And it presents itself as a political
method. But in confronting and solving political problems it is
carried by its very nature, that is to say by its method, to consider
moral, religious, and philosophical questions and to unfold and