d when man's
intellect was sufficiently developed for him to be able to do without
symbols.

[Illustration: GIUSEPPE MAZZINI]

The conscience of humanity is the last tribunal. Ideas, as well as
institutions, change and expand, but certain fundamental principles
are fixed. The family would always exist; property would always exist.
The first, 'the heart's fatherland,' was the source of the only true
happiness, the only joys untainted by grief, which were given to man.
Those who wished to abolish the second were like the savage who cut
down the tree in order to gather the fruit. In the future, free
association would be the great agent of moral and material progress.
The authority which once rested in popes and emperors now devolved on
the people. Instead of 'God and the King,' Mazzini proposed the new
formula 'God and the People.' By the people he understood no caste or
class, whether high or low, but the universality of men composing the
nation. The nation is the sole sovereign; its will, expressed by
delegates, must be law to all its citizens.

By degrees certain words acquired more and more a mystical
significance in Mazzini's mind; the very name of Rome, for instance,
had for him a sort of talismanic fascination, not unlike that
possessed by Jerusalem for the mediaeval Christian. When he spoke of
the people or the republic he frequently used those terms in an ideal
and visionary sense (as theologians use the Church) rather than in one
strictly corresponding with the case of any existing nation, or any
hitherto tried form of government. This does not alter the fact that
his theories, which have been briefly summarised, are not hard to
comprehend, as has been said by those who did not know in what they
consisted, nor, taken one by one, are they novel. What was new in the
nineteenth century was the appearance of a revolutionary leader, who
was before all things a religious and ethical teacher. And though
Mazzini never founded the Church of Precursors, of which he dreamt,
his influence was as surely due to his belief in his religious
mission, as was the influence of Savonarola. The Italians are not a
mystical people, but they have always followed mystical leaders. The
less men are prone to ideal enthusiasm the more attracted are they by
it; Don Quixote, as Heine remarked, always draws Sancho Panza after
him.

Mazzini had a natural capacity for organisation, and the Association
of Young Italy which he founded at Mars