Many other writers have believed
that men live in the world's memory only by what they have done in the
world, but George Eliot is definite that this memory is all, that
personality has no other chance of surviving. Her hopes rested on
being:
"The sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense,
So shall I join the Choir Invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world."
Both George Eliot and Carlyle over accentuated one the race, the other
the individual.
Mazzini's place in thought was exactly between the two.
He believed in God _and_ Collective Humanity. Humanity in God. He
said: "We cannot relate ourselves to the Divine, but through
collective humanity. Mr. Carlyle comprehends only the individual; the
true sense of the unity of the race escapes him. He sympathises with
men, but it is with the separate life of each man, and not their
collective life."[3]
Collective labour, according to an educational plan, designed by
Providence, was, Mazzini believed, the only possible development of
Humanity.
He could never have trusted in any good and effective development from
Humanity alone.
Nationality, he reverenced, and widened the idea, until it embraced
the whole world.
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