s 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
demonstrate the comprehensive totalitarian character peculiar to it.
It is only after we have grasped the political character of the
Fascist principle that we are able adequately to appreciate the deeper
concept of life which underlies that principle and from which the
principle springs. The political doctrine of Fascism is not the whole
of Fascism. It is rather its more prominent aspect and in general its
most interesting one.

VII

The politic of Fascism revolves wholly about the concept of the
national State; and accordingly it has points of contact with
nationalist doctrines, along with distinctions from the latter which
it is important to bear in mind.

Both Fascism and nationalism regard the State as the foundation of all
rights and the source of all values in the individuals composing it.
For the one as for the other the State is not a consequence--it is a
principle. But in the case of nationalism, the relation which
individualistic liberalism, and for that matter socialism also,
assumed between individual and State is inverted. Since the State is a
principle, the individual becomes a consequence--he is something which
finds an antecedent in the State: the State limits him and determines
his manner of existence, restricting his freedom, binding him to a
piece of ground whereon he was born, whereon he must live and will
die. In the case of Fascism, State and individual are one and the same
things, or rather, they are inseparable terms of a necessary
synthesis.

Nationalism, in fact, founds the State on the concept of nation, the
nation being an entity which transcends the will and the life of the
individual because it is conceived as objectively existing apart from
the consciousness of individuals, existing even if the individual does
nothing to bring it into being. For the nationalist, the nation exists
not by virtue of the citizen's will, but as datum, a fact, of nature.

For Fascism, on