ABSTRACT
Even the man who is stirred by the most noble, fervid and daring ethical sentiment must, in any political capacity, act solely and wholeheartedly for the safety of the State, identifying himself completely with its welfare. Sometimes it will happen that he is forced to risk the existence or the prosperity of that State, but only because of the necessities arising from a struggle or in order to increase that State’s power through bold undertakings. These reflections serve to confirm that it is an error of logic to attempt to solve the moral problems of mankind by perverting the State and politics from their own nature, an error which opens the way to dangerous illusions or, in practice, to incongruous and harmful acts. In fact, the phase of the State and of politics is a necessary and eternal phase, but it is a phase and not the whole; and the moral conscience and activity is another phase.
