GIUSEPPE MAZZINI (1805–72), Italian patriot, liberal, revolutionary, and nationalist. At one time considered one of the most important thinkers of nineteenth-century Europe, Mazzini is now little known outside of his homeland. His very successful set of homilies On the Duties of Man was originally published in 1840, going through many editions. In the extracts printed below the importance of love of country is stressed, but so also is the compatibility of this patriotism with a love of humanity. Mazzini's is a world in which nationalisms are in conflict with multi-national empires rather than with each other – which perhaps explains why his influence declined in the twentieth century.
From On the Duties of Man
Duties to humanity
Your first duties, first not in point of time but of importance – because without understanding these you can only imperfectly fulfil the rest – are to Humanity. You have duties as citizens, as sons, as husbands, as fathers – sacred, inviolable duties of which I shall presently speak at length; but what makes these duties sacred and inviolable is the mission, the duty, which your nature as men imposes on you. You are fathers in order that you may educate men to worship and to unfold God's law. You are citizens, you have a country, in order that in a limited sphere, with the concourse of people linked to you already by speech, by tendencies, and by habits, you may labour for the benefit of all men whatever they are and may be in the future – a task which each one could ill do by himself, weak and lost amid the immense multitude of his fellow-men.
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