CHAPTER VIII

BENEDETTO CROCE

Benedetto Croce’s opposition to Mussolini’s government is so well known that to include him among the precursors of Fascism may seem strange. But here Fascism is considered as the political expression of the intellectual or rather spiritual forces which are bringing Italy to the fore and determining the growth of the Italian mind. Hence the necessity of including Croce in this account of the pedigree of the tendencies which have been realised in politics by Benito Mussolini. This naturally does not imply that all the ideas acted upon by Fascists are to be found in the theories of Croce, but that certain needs of Italian minds, more or less consciously expressed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had been formulated and worked out by Croce, who had either found them in de Sanctis or had developed them on lines suggested to him by that great critic.

One of the points on which this penetrating and far seeing man had most emphatically insisted was that the vague idealism which swept over some European artistic centres during the last century was alien to the Italian mind. The assertions that he met with from many quarters as to the impossibility of the artist’s realising his ideal was treated by him as exotic nonsense. An ineffable poem is not a poem at all, a harmony defying expression is not a harmony at all, a vision transcending colours and lines, shadow and light is not a vision at all. Italians had to be reminded of the necessity of being realistic; their greatness as well as the greatness of ancient Rome had always rested upon a sound sense of the relation between means and end. He described the Italian genius as a disposition rather to identify the end and means than to fit the end to the means. He enforced this claim, not only for artistic creation, but for historical researches or theoretical speculation as well. He had evidently realised the short-comings of men such as Gioberti and Rosmini. It was much better to start on particular problems with an adequate preparation, and develop them into speculative theories, than to start with an indifferent preparation on vital questions and come to inadequate conclusions.

Now if there could be in history such a thing as good luck, the friendship of Croce and Gentile, their flourishing at the same time, could be considered the most wonderful piece of good luck for Italy. By luck, however, we usually mean a certain combination of circumstances escaping our attention. Moreover, their being contemporaries of Mussolini, the _one_ man fit to create a political world capable of bringing into living reality their most difficult conceptions—very often, in fact generally, without knowing anything of their theories—is a sufficient proof that there is no possibility here of invoking luck as an explanation of the concomitance of Croce’s and Gentile’s activity with that of Mussolini. It is much nearer to historical truth to state that Italy has reached one of those stages of her history in which she has always yielded a rich harvest of men of genius, speculative, political or artistic.

Any and every practical activity, says Croce, implies theoretical activity, since no action can be performed without knowledge. This however is not to be separated from the action; for the two forms of the spirit are distinct, not separate. Thus in any action, while the practical activity is explicit, the theoretical activity which is knowledge is implicit; in fact they are _concomitant_. The man of thought can no more think than walk without using his will; the importance of the will is just as great for the thinker or the artist as it is for the so-called practical man. But it is only through the wearing of the Pragmatist’s blinkers that one can be brought to see in the will the root of truth.

A distinction is, however, made by Croce between the knowledge required for a practical act, such as the disposing of a regiment of infantry for a review, and that of the philosopher or the artist. The one is an intuition, the other is a conception, and to make the ground of a volition you want both, for the combination is _historical_ knowledge. There, obviously enough, Croce reveals himself a true son of Machiavelli, Vico, and de Sanctis. The Florentine secretary had been hinting as much when he insisted on the necessity of our knowing the _actual truth about things_ (since _human things are always moving_), in order to govern _in harmony with the times_.

This _historical_ knowledge is not an idea that will surprise after all that has been said about the constant tendency of Italy’s best thinkers to test the practicability of any concept on the concrete ground of history. To them, the natural realm of action being history, it was manifest that any knowledge or theory is liable to be acted upon only in so far as it is historical; and such knowledge becomes, under the name of condition of fact, the ground of Croce’s conception of the necessity and liberty of man’s will.

To the generally accepted ideas of means and end Croce was to bring a most radical change. First he proceeds to prove that what is known as the end, the purpose, or the aim is not to be distinguished from the will. When I wash my hands my purpose is obviously that I should have them clean; but then it is equally obvious that this means that I want them to be clean. Turning to the means, the washing of my hands in order to have them clean, supposes a condition of fact which means the availableness of soap and water, for I could not will to wash my hands if I had neither soap nor water. These material means are known by me to be available when I make up my mind to wash my hands in order to get them clean. So that purpose and means are all included in my act of will, which is nothing more nor less than the actual act of washing my hands. If the situation of fact did not include soap and water I could at best _wish_ to wash them, never _will_ to do so.

What is consequently to be rejected once for all is the idea of a definite plan that would not allow the taking into consideration of the continual variation of the means. Thus the men of the Risorgimento had to vary their purpose and to reconsider the means to attain it after and before each campaign, having to take as their actual will only that the realisation of which was in harmony with the then actual situation of fact. So that we can say that their real will, the will which created modern Italy, was exclusively that general will which was individualised in their many splendid deeds of heroism or renunciations of their former plans or ideals; these had been formed without the historical knowledge which alone could make them realise what was the situation of fact.

Now a good deal of admiration is usually bestowed on people of good-will and of pure intentions. Here, however, the very existence of such good-will, such pure intentions, is denied. The longing of the man who wishes he could alter the present state of public affairs in his country is not at all to be considered as a will to do so. For he does not will to do so as long as he thinks it is impossible. A wish of this kind has no value either economically or morally. Whatever the circumstances, if he knows them well, he will know that there must be at least one thing that he can do instead of deprecatingly shaking his head as he reads the paper by the fire. When Machiavelli tried to form a Tuscan Militia to free Florence from her trouble, he did not succeed; but when he left his boisterous and rustic friends over their wine and retired to the small library of his modest villa, he did the only civic duty that was left to him to perform; he plunged his lancet into the corrupted body of his country and prepared the way for the coming centuries. Criticism, that is to say negative criticism, when the country is in danger, or suggestion as to the ideal thing to be done, unless they are part of a plan of reform so in keeping with facts that it can be immediately acted upon, are merely pretending to be acts of will. I cannot keep by my fireside or lean at my window deploring the things which are going on and pretend that “I will to alter them.”

Yet it is often said that we can will the good in the abstract, while unable to will it in the concrete, and this means simply that we may have good intentions and yet behave badly. The answer to this has been already given; it may be well, however, to state it once more. Willing in the abstract, willing without acting accordingly, is equivalent to not-willing, since, according to Croce, a volition implies a situation historically determined from which it arises as an act equally determined and concrete.

The importance assigned in this theory to the knowledge of the actual situation of fact, and consequently to the historical judgment, invests with the greatest importance the possibility of error. Such possibility is, however, excluded by Croce from the theoretical realm of mind; for lack of knowledge, ignorance, is not error. It belongs to practical activity and we cannot err unwillingly. All errors are due to an interference of the will with our apprehension of reality; and as any volition is an assertion of our liberty we are responsible for it. Everyone knows that immoderate passions or illegitimate interests lead insidiously into error; that we err in order to be quick and finish, or to obtain for ourselves undeserved repose—that we err by acquiescence in old ideas, that is to say, in order not to allow ourselves to be disturbed in our repose, and to prolong it unduly, and so on. The possibility of erring in good faith is disposed of in this way by rejecting the possibility of an error not due to our own will. It thus becomes perfectly legitimate and wise to use practical measures to induce those who err to correct themselves, punishing them when this can be of any use. Croce’s defence of the Holy Inquisition, be it of the old Romans against the Christians, of Catholics against heretics, or of Protestants against Catholics must not be found surprising. It is the logical conclusion of his view on the responsibility for error; and he is not to be found shirking the consequences of his system any more than the Fascists. For it is hardly necessary to point out that their abhorrence of all vagueness and indefiniteness is bound to determine responsibilities in practical activity and consequences in theoretical activity. The necessity of having a single man responsible for anyone of the public services has been mostly realised in Anglo-Saxon countries; but where bureaucracy flourishes it is usually a Board, a Committee, in a word an anonymous body which takes decisions and steps for which nobody in particular is responsible. Therefore, to any complaint the answer must be “we thought; the committee held; it was generally supposed; the majority came to the conclusion ... that ...” In such case nobody stands responsible; and each member of the Committee, or Board, throws on the others all the weight of the unhappy step or decision.

With Croce’s theories such vagueness is destroyed at its root. The will of the people who take a step is their taking of the step, and both action and volition spring from their historical knowledge of the actual situation of fact. Such knowledge is therefore part of the action. The responsibility thus includes the assuming of the information necessary to the taking of the decision. Naturally this has always been the case, where man’s responsibility is really of importance. On board a ship, for instance, the officer in command has always known that his responsibility includes this knowledge. Ignorance of fact is the greatest fault whenever a decision has to be taken, whether the importance of the decision be great or small. This however, must not be held to imply the judging of an action according to its success. Historical judgments are not to be passed on the result of past actions; historical judgment must be passed on acts, not on facts.

The distinction between action and event is by Croce emphasised as being grounded on the distinction between the act of one man and the act of the whole; and one might say that the action depends on the will of man and the event on the will of God. According to this theory the action of the man who shoots at Mussolini is the manifestation of his will, and his failure is the manifestation of God’s will; because the will of the whole, including the will of the chauffeur, who is driving Mussolini’s car, the wills of the people crowding the edge of the street, the wills of the guards told off to keep the road clear for the car and the wills of the Fascists thronging to catch a glimpse of their idol, which are also volition-actions, determine the event; and this is usually termed Providence, or the rationality of history. Thus when foreigners, even those who do not approve of Mussolini’s government, and Italians, either religiously or coldly, repeat at each new attempt, “the hand of God is on his head,” the conviction which they express is perfectly in keeping with Croce’s view, and is by no means equivalent to fatalism.

To express this relation of action to event in a less mystical form it ought to be said that the volition-action of any single man is his contribution to the volitions of the whole universe. On this point Gentile produced another theory some eight or ten years after Croce had given a systematic form to this doctrine which had been implicit in all his former works. This double contribution of Italy to the conception of conduct, if not an entirely new idea of liberty, provides two very original views on that problem, one of those which have always tormented humanity.

The first great step made by Croce was the consequences of his having denied any possible distinction between the volition and the action; for thus he was able to assert the oneness of liberty. We must no longer speak of a liberty of will and a liberty of action.

He quotes here as an example the case of a paralytic gentleman carried into the square in his servant’s arms during the revolt of 1542 and found after the tumult on the top of a church-tower. The terror had aroused in him such a will that he had climbed there. As a rule the paralytic does not will because he knows he cannot, what he can do at the most is to wish that he was in a different condition. It is quite inexact to say that he who is threatened and yields to the threat is deprived of his freedom of action. The old formula _coacti tamen volunt_ says as much. Whenever people have been clamouring for greater freedom of action, what they really wanted was to have the conditions of fact altered. “Everyone knows,” says Croce,[6] “that no _vultus instantis tyranni_ can extinguish the freedom of the soul; no ruler, be he ever so strong and violent, can prevent a rebellion, or when all else fails, a noble death outwardly affirming the freedom within.”

Every step onward in Croce’s theories is admirably consequent upon the statements that have preceded it. As man in his theoretical activity apprehends the world and by knowing it makes it his, so through practical activity he collaborates in its creation. The second being grounded in the first, a will independent of knowing is unthinkable. The blind will is not will; the true will has eyes.[7] Without this it would be difficult to see how actions could be both free and necessary. Indeed one can say that up to these Italian theories all the contentions on liberty were waged between two tendencies, one leading to the ever-recurrent conclusions of Determinism, the other to the assertion of free will. To detect that actions are at once free and determined it was necessary that knowledge of the actual conditions of fact should be considered as the essential ground of any volition.

Volition thus is not considered as arising in the void, but in a definite situation, under definite historical conditions, in relation to an event which cannot be eliminated. When the situation changes the act of will changes. This amounts to saying that it is necessitated by the situation in which it arises. But it also means that such act of will is free. For it does not make one with the situation, neither does it produce a duplicate of it. The volition-action produces something different, that is, something new; therefore it is initiative, creation, an act of freedom. Were it not so, a volition would not be an act of will and reality would not change through the action of men, it would not become, would not grow upon itself.

“This consciousness of necessity and liberty inseparably united is found in all men of action, in all political geniuses, who are never inert or reckless: they feel themselves at once bound and not bound; they always conform to facts, but always rise above them. The fatuous, on the other hand, oscillate between the passive acceptance of the given situation and the sterile attempt to overleap it, that is, to leap over their own shadow. They are consequently now inert, now rash. They, therefore, do not fix or conclude anything, they do not act; or, if they do, it is always according to what of the actual situation they have understood, and what of initiative they have displayed.”[8]

If Benedetto Croce had been a prophet he could not have better contrasted Mussolini’s way of proceeding, always surrounded by experts and never the slave of data, with the way in which former governments proceeded in Italy, when ministers thought that by the grace of the people they had received some sort of super-natural light to discharge their duty. No practical activity could have been as vigorous as the theoretical reaction of Croce and Gentile against the futility, the abstractness, the pessimism, and above all the materialism that were slowly but surely destroying the third Italy! But their joint philosophical campaign, however brilliant it may have been, could not arouse the working masses to the new gospel of civic life. This had to be undertaken by a man of faith, endowed with the gifts that make the statesman and the popular leader. But the fact that three such men are contemporaries and that without previous arrangement the theoretical activity of the two former coincide with the practical activity of the third is a good argument on behalf of Croce’s theory of the freedom and necessity of man’s action. The situation of fact is the same for all three, and they therefore arise for the same purpose although they endeavour to realise it through very different means.

Since man’s action, his volition-action, is free, the question whether an individual has or has not been free to do what he has done is equivalent to asking if he has done it or not. Thus again the character of responsibility is emphasised in all human actions. Croce objects very strongly to the way in which criminal lawyers put a poor madman on a level with the guilty, for he who is mad is partially dead. Practical good and evil can be now identified with will and anti-will, with freedom and anti-freedom, with the reality of the will and its unreality. For evil, when real, does not exist save in the good, which opposes and conquers it; it is, therefore, merely the negative of good, and it would be impossible to find an act of will distinctly willing that which is evil as such. A man may want to intoxicate himself with alcohol, but in the act of so doing he expects the warmth that will spread in his limbs and the delightful oblivion that will free him from all cares. Hence that which he expects from drink is good. Such negativity of evil has always been current among theologians even before the days of Thomas Aquinas; but the theory deduced by Croce from it is quite original.

All practical activity is either economic, or both economic and moral. The economic activity is that which wills and effects only what corresponds to the condition of fact in which a man finds himself; the ethical activity, although it corresponds to these conditions, is that which transcends them.

Therefore, any act of the individual’s will is economic, but to be moral it must be an act of the universal will. The former is judged by the greater or less coherence of the action in itself, the other by its greater or less coherence in respect to the universal end which transcends the individual. No act can be moral without being economic, for however universal it may be in its meaning my action must be mine in order to be something concrete and individually determined. In practical life we do not meet with morality as a universal, but always with a determinate moral volition. On the other hand, it is easy to see that our actions always obey a rational law, even when moral law is suppressed; so that, when every inclination that transcends the individual has been set aside, it is necessary to will this or that coherently, not to oscillate between two or more volitions at the same time. And if we succeed in really obtaining our desire, if, while the moral consciousness is for the moment suspended within us, we abandon ourselves to the execution of a project of vengeance and execute a masterpiece of ability, even when, in this case, human society does not approve, we for our part feel satisfied, at least so long as the suspension of the moral consciousness lasts; for we have done what we wanted to do, we have tasted, though but for a little while, the pleasure of the gods.

The economic form of activity we easily recognise as individual, hedonistic, utilitarian, and economic; the moral form is just as easily identified. To be moral, an action must first satisfy us as individuals occupying a definite point of time and space, and must also satisfy in us the transcendental being who defies time and space. Croce having made this distinction absolutely clear, could face the question concerning the nature of law.

To him law is a _volitional act_ concerning a _class_ of actions. Therefore, where the volitional element or the element of class is wanting, there cannot be law. Obviously, however, the law is abstract; the act of will is, according to Croce, always of the individual, and the element of class is sufficient to deprive the law of anything like concrete life, be it an individual law or a social law. Since the freedom of human actions is logically bound up with his notion of practical activity, it is impossible to object that there is an essential difference between the programme of life laid down by any single man for himself, the programme of action laid down by any association, and the laws laid down by the state, the first being merely a matter of acceptance and the last relying on compulsion. Indeed, it is obvious enough that by compulsion one usually means the alternative of complying with the law or facing a penalty. Such alternative is the ground of a choice, and the citizen usually chooses, but always freely chooses, to obey the law rather than endure the penalty. The fact that some men do rebel is sufficient to prove that freedom cannot be abolished by compulsion.

Then what is the essential difference between individual and social law? An attempt is usually made to differentiate them by saying that the latter has emanated from and is sustained by a _supreme power_. But where is the seat of this supreme power? Surely not in anything like a super-individual, dominating individuals. It is only to be found in the individuals themselves. And in this case its power and value correspond with the power of the individuals who compose it; it is the law of a circle empirically considered to be larger and stronger, but whose will is law in so far as the individuals composing it spontaneously conform to such a will, because they recognise the convenience of doing so. Monarchs who believed themselves to be all-powerful, have realised at certain moments that their power rested in a universal consensus of opinion, failing which their power vanished, or was reduced to a gesture of solitary command, not far from being ridiculous.

Going back to the definition of laws as _volitional_ acts concerning classes of actions, Croce shows that the so-called laws of nature or of grammar are no laws at all, because the act of will is lacking in them. Neither is the jurist, quietly elaborating rules from cases, a legislator. His excogitations will have to wait for a man of will, who alone, and _sword in hand_, will endow them with the character of law. On the other hand the so-called moral law, economic law, are no laws at all inasmuch as they lack the element of class! “Will the good,” “Will the true,” “Will the useful,” are all statements in which a volition is expressed, but then the object of such will is invariably the _universal_, whereas laws have for object something _general_; a _class_, not a concept. In short moral law, logical law, or economic law ought to be called principles instead of laws.

The character of laws being general and not universal, is perfectly in keeping with their mutability; since actual conditions are constantly changing. It is necessary to add new laws to the old, to retouch these or to abolish them altogether. Philosophically speaking, there is but one cause of changing the laws, viz., the will that in its liberty produces the new law in new conditions of fact. The question whether we should recognise Conservatism or Revolution as the fundamental concept of practical life, does not concern Croce in the least. For him every Conservative is also Revolutionary, since he is always obliged to adapt to the new facts the law that he wishes to preserve. Every Revolutionary is also a Conservative, since he is obliged to start from certain laws that he preserves, at any rate provisionally, that he may change others and substitute for them new laws, which he in his turn intends to preserve. Cavour, to use Croce’s own example, was a Conservative in respect of certain problems, and revolutionary in respect of others, to such a degree that he seemed to the Mazzinians to be a Conservative and to the clericals and legitimists a Revolutionary.

The demand for an eternal code, a universal, rational, or natural justice, in its claim to fix the transitory, is in open contradiction with the historical and, therefore, contingent character of laws. Were Natural Law permitted to enforce itself once for all we should witness, with the formation and application of the eternal code, the cessation _ipso facto_ of Development, the end of History, the death of Life and the dissolution of Reality. Such an end of the world cannot take place because, if it is possible to develop theories which are in contradiction to life, it is quite impossible to make them concrete and actual: God, that is to say Reality, does not allow this to be done. Of such theories the best examples are surely Absolute Monarchy and Communism. Both as an ideal present themselves as an absolute, a perfect form of government and, therefore, would be, if realised, the end of life. Anything perfect in the way of political institutions would put a stop to any further progress since the new needs spring from the actual short-comings of present institutions, and from the new needs the new projects which will bring about new institutions.

The most intelligent Communists know nowadays that the historical necessities which have brought their party to the fore were economic and that that which has been done in passing, such as the improvement of working-class conditions, both materially and intellectually, is indeed what should have been its real aim. But Providence permits men to act upon their own motives; and well it may, since the will of the whole can always have the last word. Communists have done all they that have in the belief that it was done only in the process of getting nearer to their ultimate aim, the abolition of classes. The kings of France who, little by little, destroyed the Feudal order, and by so doing brought about the unification of France and the rise of the _bourgeoisie_, may have thought that they were merely working for the establishment of an absolute monarchy. Their real work, that is to say the task which was laid out for them by Providence, was to create a great nation and destroy Feudalism in France through the necessity in which they found themselves of getting the support of the middle and lower class in order to destroy the petty sovereignties of the great vassals. But when this was achieved the absoluteness in their conception of monarchy was bound to be the cause of its fall. For had it been possible it would have meant the cessation of development. A form of government if it is absolute is perfect, and it is the imperfection which calls for further development. Now Communism makes the same mistake when aiming at bringing about so perfect a society that it would not even need a government. If this came to be it would be the end of the world.

But this is anticipating Mussolini’s realisation of the fact, and it may be sufficient to state that Croce’s ideas, stated here together, were scattered explicitly in several essays published between 1897 and 1900, and collected for the first time in 1907 while they were implicitly pervading the whole of his own writings and those of innumerable journalists as well as running on the lips of the Professors who taught in upper schools and universities.

On this point of the essential mutability of laws and institutions, Croce lays a great stress. “We often meet in history with projects of new laws which are said to be better than the old, or good by comparison with those judged more or less bad, the new ones being proposed as _natural_ or _rational_ justice, whilst the old ones are rejected as unnatural or irrational, just as passionate erotic temperaments, uninstructed by the experience of their past, believe with the utmost seriousness that their new love will be constant and eternal. Such ‘Natural laws’ are historical, are transitory, like all others. All men know how, in certain times, and places, religious tolerance, freedom of trade, private property, constitutional monarchy, have been proclaimed eternal, and in other times and places the extirpation of unbelievers, commercial protection, communism, the republic and anarchy.”[9]

From what has been said it might be taken that Croce has been merely destroying the religious reverence of his countrymen for the actual apparel of law. Nothing can be farther from truth. His contention was that laws being manifestations of man’s will must change with the changes in facts. The ideas of the eighteenth or nineteenth century can no longer be a living reality. The reality which he denies to the law itself he recognises as belonging to the single act done under the law, that is to say to the execution of the law. The indubitable truth, as to the necessity of acting in each case according to historical necessities, has induced people at different times and in different places, to proclaim the sheer uselessness of law. Benedetto Croce is most definitely against such theories. According to him, the best arguments to be used against them can be drawn from history itself, and if they do not rigorously demonstrate the necessity of laws they show well enough that such necessity has been generally felt in all lands and in all times. The necessity of laws, ordinances, justice, and the state, appears at all points of human history. Better a bad government than no government at all; and those who declaim against laws can well do so at their ease, for the law surrounds, protects, and preserves their life for them.