The truth is that none of these standpoints in isolation suffices for
the student of Italy. Her inner history is the history of social and
intellectual progress evolving itself under the conditions of attraction
and repulsion generated by the double ideas of Papacy and Empire.
Political unity is everywhere and at all times imperiously rejected. The
most varied constitutional forms are needed for the self-effectuation of
a race that has no analogue in Europe. The theocracy of Rome, the
monarchy of Naples, the aristocracy of Venice, the democracy of
Florence, the tyranny of Milan are equally instrumental in elaborating
the national genius that gave art, literature, and mental liberty to
modern society. The struggles of city with city for supremacy or bare
existence, the internecine wars of party against party, the never-ending
clash of principles within the States, educated the people to
multifarious and vivid energy. In the course of those long complicated
contests, the chief centers acquired separate personalities, assumed the
physiognomy of conscious freedom, and stamped the mark of their own
spirit on their citizens. At the end of all discords, at the close of
all catastrophes, we find in each of the great towns a population
released from mental bondage and fitted to perform the work of
intellectual emancipation for the rest of Europe. Thus the essential
characteristic of Italy is diversity, controlled and harmonized by an
ideal rhythm of progressive movement.[1] We who are mainly occupied in
this book with the Italian genius as it expressed itself in society,
scholarship, fine art, and literature, at its most brilliant period of
renascence, may accept this fact of political dismemberment with
acquiescence. It was to the variety of conditions offered by the Italian
communities that we owe the unexampled richness of the mental life of
Italy. Yet it is impossible to overlook the weakness inflicted on the
people by those same conditions when the time came for Italy to try her
strength against the nations of Europe.[2] It was then shown that the