18. EDUCATION IN ITALY. In the movement of modern culture, Italy has for many centuries maintained characteristics pe culiar to herself. She forecasts and prophesies, but her work is restricted to the few and has not the power of assimilation to the masses; it is a nursery. of budding genius, which brings forth few flowers or fruit in its garden.. It is in Italy that new thought expands; that the world of intellect is quickened. But this new thought which she has always produced she has never enjoyed. Humanism and the Renais sance began at a distance from Italy with the reformation of the practical energies of life; in Italy, literary culture, the Belles Lettres, were the possession of the few. The philo sophic trend of thought introduced by the Renaissance put an end in to medieval mysticism, discovered new relations between nature and society, affirmed with Bruno the Infinity of Nature (L'infinita nature), and with Campanella II senso come sopere. But else where Spinoza, Schilling and Hegel explained the philosophy of immanence; and elsewhere Cartesio, Locke and Kant propounded the new theory of subjectivity. In Italy, Galileo intro duced the new experimental philosophy; but it was elsewhere, with Bacon, that it became a system of logic and was generally diffused. It was in Italy, some years later, that Vico dis covered many of the fundamental laws which govern society, 'but it was elsewhere that Vico's ideas were developed to their fullest extent. For many centuries the whole history of Italian culture is the history of initiative genius, but it is also the history of prodigious energies that were made of practical value elsewhere, and that exercised little or no influence in Italy.
What causes progress, what transforms and regenerates the education of a people comes from above, from its ideals; from its con science, from its intellect and its culture; from the permeating of its social life and its activi ties with the modern ideas.
But all this could not come to pass in Italy. Here, even as regards education, we have ideas and movements for regeneration without the power to carry them out and make them gen eral. Italy heralded the better part of Human ism, through Vittorino da Feltre; but the scholasticism inaugurated by him was of little benefit to the majority, and, besides, it was nar rowed and spoiled by the meaningless verbal ism of the Jesuits and the other monastic orders.
With the improved political conditions in Italy in the 18th century, and the new aspira tions in regard to civil life, the educative idea gained bolder recognition among Italian men of letters and philosophers, particularly Genovesi and Filangieri; just as the effect of the French Revolution was felt at a distance, there were also signs in Italy of some new idea.
As Italy now found herself face to face with new educational needs, it was necessary that she should have the revolution of 1860, the true national rebirth.
The political revolution of 1860 required a great popular educational reform, in order to make the life of the new nation and the new government orderly, strong and secure. And such a reform was all the more urgently needed inasmuch as all knew that the revolution, which gave Italy its independence and made it a united kingdom, was the work of a cultured few; the effort and the aspiration of the best part of the bourgeoisie, who knew how to har monize their ideas with those of the people.
The revolution of 1860 thus affected philo sophic thought, the arts, literature; but it did not affect the conscience of the common people. Nevertheless, the revolution represented one of the greatest crises of history, inasmuch as it was to give new scope to the moral conscious ness of Italy, and of the world, since it was not possible to overturn the papacy and reconstruct the nation as a unity without touching the deep est life of the Italian consciousness, There was, and is still going on, a moral conflict: the laic government, destined to develop on liberal lines, still finds itself in Italy in the midst of an ignorant and superstitious population. The formula of Cavour *A free Church in a free State,* requires the education of the people on lines of moral, civil and political liberty in order to have concrete value or historical efficacy. There still exists a political conflict in the mind of the nation. For while the new state called the people to public life, they had been for centuries degraded and neglected, 'and were unprepared by special education to value either civil or political liberty. And this is the true reason for the apathy, the conflicts, the confusion and the anomalies of modern Italian life; and this is the true cause of the lack of good administration in Italian parliamentary life. How is it possible that political convic tions should be formed; that there should be an interest in public affairs; purity and integrity in the exercise of electoral privileges, in a country where education is lacking in regard to the institutions by which that country is governed? There is also a serious economic conflict in the life of the nation. Italy is fertile; she abounds in natural wealth, and has, moreover, an abundance of the best kind of wealth: soundness of moral fibre and genius. But this does not suffice. For it is not possible, amid the economic competition of the civilized world, that an uncultivated, uneducated people should produce as much as those nations that are cul tured and educated; or that their products should bear comparison with those of their competitors.