Heathen Imperialism

First published in Italian in 1928 as 'Imperialismo Pagano.' From the back cover: 'Western civilization needs a complete overhaul or it will fall apart one day or another. It has realized the most complete perversion of any rational order of things. Reign of matter, of gold, of machine, of number, it no longer possess breath, or liberty, or light. The West has lost the sense of Action and of Contemplation. It has lost the sense of hierarchy, of spiritual power, of man-gods. 'Are liberation and renewal still possible in this crepuscular world? Is Europe capable today of the level of awareness necessary for such a task? Let us not be mistaken: it is only after having understood the magnitude of the task that we will be able to act. The threatening reality of a destructive spiritual process, whose roots originate almost in the ground of prehistory, whose culminating phases coincide with those which contemporary men exalt as their essential civilisational values, and whose influences now manifest themselves in all fields of thought and action, must be acknowledged. 'This is not a matter of compromises or adaptations. The power of the new Middle Ages is needed – a revolt, interior as well as exterior, of a barbaric purity. Philosophy, "culture", everyday politics: nothing of all this. It is not a matter of turning on the other side of this bed of agony. It is a matter of finally waking up, and getting up.'