'If we are to succeed, we must preach what the people understand.'
'Pardon me, that is just where you and I differ. Whenever any real
good is done it is by a crusade; that is to say, the cross must be
raised and appeal be made to something ABOVE the people. No system
based on rights will stand. Never will society be permanent till it
is founded on duty. If we consider our rights exclusively, we extend
them over the rights of our neighbours. If the oppressed classes had
the power to obtain their rights to-morrow, and with the rights came
no deeper sense of duty, the new order, for the simple reason that
the oppressed are no better than their oppressors, would be just as
unstable as that which preceded it.'
'To put it in my own language,' said Madge, 'you believe in God.' Mazzini leaned forward and looked earnestly at her.
'My dear young friend, without that belief I should have no other.'
'I should like, though,' said Marshall, 'to see the church which
would acknowledge you and Miss Madge, or would admit your God to be
theirs.' 'What is essential,' replied Madge, 'in a belief in God is absolute
loyalty to a principle we know to have authority.'
'It may, perhaps,' said Mazzini, 'be more to me, but you are right,
it is a belief in the supremacy and ultimate victory of the
conscience.' 'The victory seems distant in Italy now,' said Baruch. 'I do not
mean the millennial victory of which you speak, but an approximation
to it by the overthrow of tyranny there.'
'You are mistaken; it is far nearer than you imagine.'
'Do you obtain,' said Clara, 'any real help from people here? Do you
not find that they merely talk and express what they call their
sympathy?' 'I must not say what help I have received; more than words, though,
from many.' 'You expect, then,' said Baruch, 'that the Italians will answer your
appeal?' 'If I had no faith in the people, I do not see what faith could
survive.' 'The people are the persons you meet in the street.'
'A people is not a mere assemblage of uninteresting units, but it is
not a phantom. A spirit lives in each nation which is superior to
any individual in it. It is this which is the true reality, the
nation's purpose and destiny, it is this for which the patriot lives
and dies.' 'I suppose,' said Clara, 'you have no difficulty in obtaining
volunteers for any dangerous enterprise?'