By Massimo Scaligero
The division that Communism has caused among the Latin peoples, who historically can be regarded as linked by a single ideal bond despite the apparent contrasts and struggles arising from political and territorial disagreements, is a new fact in contemporary history: the division, in fact, has now become a very deep division rooted in the forces of the spirit: it is a fracture of consciences, it is a separation between two worlds that have become strangers to each other: the democratic, socialist and parliamentarian idea on the one side, and the Fascist idea on the other: on one side the Communist principle, and on the other the principle of order and hierarchy.
However, in relation to this division, some rhetoricians from the other side of the Alps have begun to misinterpret the meaning of "Latinity", which they have invoked as a form of traditional conscience, as if it could stand alone and be divorced from its Roman inspiration. Additionally, the article by the French academic Rosny Jeune recently appeared in Lea nouvelles litteraires, in which he asserts that "despite Rome and the Germans, France today is still Gaul". This was in response to the question posed by Marius-Ary Leblond in the historical-polemical work Vercingetorix, concerning the relationship between the French of today and the Gauls conquered by Caesar.
First of all, the concept of Gaul itself can not be conceived except as a world conquered and civilized by the Romans. But apart from the purely historical aspect of the matter, we are interested in examining some of these particularistic and naive Gallic interpretations, masked by the philosophy of civilization. According to some French ideologues, the history of the West would present certain aspects of evolution and revolution, particularly concerning the Latin populations: such aspects would be flatly at odds with the spirituality of those who claim to possess a Latin and Roman culture in the original "orthodox" sense of the term. According to them, the French Revolution, that class struggle created by the democracies, and Spanish Communism, would all be phenomena which, in terms of space, race and nationality, can only be considered Latin; in fact — it is argued — they express a sort of insurgent force of harmony proper to Latin spirituality, since they tend to re-establish a balance that was previously violated by the principle of authority, and violated today by Fascism and National Socialism. Those policies and that culture which today emanates from Rome would therefore be outside of Latin tradition, that is to say, it would represent a return to the harsher and more militaristic form of Romanism.
One should begin by asking these gentlemen what they mean by "tradition" and by "Latinity" and what cultural deficiency should this contrived distinction between "Latin" and "Roman" be, whose substance is like their entire theoretical and political system: mere dialectic. But today there are still those who are moved by dialectical motives and believe in that rhetoric that can be the conceptual justification for certain degenerations in life. What is tradition for them? Perhaps historical heritage, lexicology, university culture, perhaps philosophy? Unfortunately words are too often played with, to such an extent that it is possible to make them lose their real meaning; on the other hand, ignorance also plays tricks on brilliant journalists and learned philosophers.
This is not the most suitable place to begin clarifying that the authentic Western tradition is only one and it cannot be anything other than the Roman tradition, since after the Roman Empire no other universal idea illuminated the face of the West, which is but a partial resurrection of that which derived from Rome. After that, what other higher ideal of civilization has united people spiritually and temporally? Perhaps the scientific and philosophical rhetoric of the humanist period, which is also an emanation of the "Italic spirit"? Perhaps the French revolution? Or perhaps Bolshevism? It would also be necessary to specify the extent to which Roman spirituality has inspired every permanent expression of organic construction of both the intellect and the warrior spirit in Europe, even in periods of decadence. Indeed, many highbrows should be taught how, unlike all psychic complexes, mental forms and philosophical modes known to them, that is to say, unlike a world of absolute "contingency", the intimate character of tradition is perenniality, so that it does not die, but is hidden, in periods in which its external action seems to stop: its essence is spiritual and ritual, its custom is virile and hierarchical, its principle esoteric and necessitating: its action has an imperial constructive motive and its motive is to be found among the scenes of history, behind the most decisive events, behind the great conquests of peoples, certainly not in bookish collections nor through cold, arid morphological examination. Explaining the meaning of the Roman tradition to those who do not know it and do not want to understand it would be a long task; however, it would be a great step in the right direction if they at least began to understand that it is not the one to which they dialectically refer to.
For its unequivocal and universal sense, Tradition is above any sectarian dialectic: it does not shrink in different aspects, but includes every aspect: being Western and Roman, it also gives meaning to Latinity. By virtue of the strength of superior individuals and by fatal necessity, Rome always remains the center of the majestic cycle of struggles and triumphs of the West: its virtue of irradiation of spiritual energies and its function as the source of every organizing current in Europe have, above all, symbolic value, both with respect to the value of determining space (which is precisely one of the arguments used by the defenders of that bastard "Latinity"), and with respect to the virtual progressivity of time: in other words, an essence is not superior insofar as it spatially originated from Rome, but inasmuch as it emanated from the soul of Rome: what is great is Roman, not rhetorically, but because, in relation to an indestructible Western ethic, collateral, as a correspondent manifestation, to the secret and dominant Mediterranean tradition, it cannot help but be inspired by Rome with its characteristics of precision, shaping potentiality, constructive will.
The Latin unity of peoples was a powerful creation brought about by Rome: it would not have existed, it would not have had the strength of amalgamation and luminous fruitfulness if the secret virtue of the imperium, translated into a framework of actions, more pontificali and the strength of the warrior tradition, had not given the West its physiognomy: without the necessitative and metaphysical solemnity of "fatal things", objects of veneration inherited from a god or from the god-like power of the ancient Mediterranean cities, without the possession of a secret name that linked a divine force to the destiny of Rome, without the propitiation of supernatural intelligences performed by the priests, the flamens and the Pontifex Maximus, without the mystery ceremonies, without the sacrificial action and the ritual on the eve of great wars and decisive battles, without the presence of a heroic warrior-genius who becomes the inspiration of every Roman event — all of these elements, components of the great weave of authentic tradition — one could have never spoken of a Latin tradition, nor of a Latin spirituality, nor of neo-Latin languages, as signs of the persistence of Latin culture.
The condition of Latinity therefore emanates from Rome: every time that Latinity is detached from the Roman tradition, it returns to barbarism: we believe this to be the case of today's Communism in the Latin nations. On the other hand, the existence of a Latin thought is not particular merely to a new experience, but an aspect related to the absolute permanence of a Roman spirituality. The essence of Latinity is the heritage of a tradition that remains the same, alien to all the degenerations of races that also had the gift of its light: this is useful to fix once and for all.
The authentic Latin virtues are not casual emanations of forces connected to human and contingent goals, they cannot be detached from a "metaphysical" plan of action where sterile dialectical and materialistic controversies cease to have meaning: they act for a power that has a super-temporal and super-nationalistic character, that is to say for an organizational power identical to that which Rome adopted in order to unify and harmonize the whole West with an integrative morality and with a healthy body of laws. Deprived of this super-material sense, that is, outside a Roman tradition, Latinity is no longer such, it is degeneration: it can also become Spanish Communism or French subversion.
Another of the errors common to those historians beyond the Alps who not only ignore the existence of an esoteric tradition of Rome, but also attempt to devalue the meaning of its imperiality, is to believe that the Roman conquest halted the natural development of ancient Celtic civilization, which they think could have made France a great Nation towards the second century. Now, apart from the clumsiness of these forms of historical fantasy, to avoid falling into such a bogus error it is sufficient to take into account that at the time when Caesar conquered Gaul, this people had already given all it could give. Indeed, even according to the opinion of those same authors who support the notion that Western spirituality originated in the North, they admit that the Celtic spirit at that time was in its final phase, so that this race no longer appeared to be the repository of a higher tradition, but returned to primitive forms of culture. A series of positive elements could be reported to attest to the decay of the Celtic spirit at the time of the Roman advent: since the limited space does not permit us to delineate, it is enough to recall that Caesar tasked with the defense of Gaul due to the Germanic invasions and that it was a Gallic poet — with expressions of enthusiastic gratitude — who raised praises to Rome, which had redeemed the entire West with its civilization.
To seek to deny a spirituality in Rome means to deny its own history which is elementarily and outwardly known by everyone: it is enough to go back to the determining cause to arrive at a high system of ideals that were not only political and warlike, but superhuman and transcendent. Precisely because of its superior tradition, Rome was able to affirm its way of life among peoples through warrior custom, not limited by a materialistic vision of the world, but implemented in view of a superhuman plan to be conquered.
The task of reconstructing the history of Rome implies not only the need for a definitive demonstration of the perennial spiritual reference of all warlike action, but also the identification of a "Roman tradition" whose form is knowable only through super-storical communion, of a psychological nature, with a cycle of culture in its own right, by virtue of an inner dignity completely foreign to the academic spirit and beyond simple university erudition.
Finally, it will never be sufficiently remembered by the peddlers of these ideas that the limited development of art and philosophy is a natural fact in a civilization that is ascending, since its action, to be fully such, remains faithful to superior principles of the spirit that constitute the essence of its Tradition, nor does it become entangled in cultural formulas, but tends to implement a system of life, in the act of a higher state of life to be reached through every act: which constitutes the highest form of spirituality, above any rhetoric or abstract conceptions. Rome, in this sense, is once again a teacher, when it teaches how, above all, to import that masculine and realizing way of life which is the manifestation of an inner vitality at work, a synthesis of spirituality and action, and which leads to the effective realization of an imperial regime, after which, in fullness of power, the civilizers can devote themselves to that first art form adhering to action and inspired by a sense of "necessity" which is architecture. It is evident that if the Romans had begun by being philosophers and artists, they would have left us merely a bookish legacy, nor would they have had the power to unify a continent, nor would they have been the custodians of that Tradition which lived as they ritually acted and won. They translated into weaves of strength and imperishable harmonies what was transmitted to them from above by natural virtue: a superior fate whose action proved imperious and ineluctable, whose constant signs in stone and in buildings, as in the soul of the people, absolutely excludes that this was due to a series of external combinations or to mere brute force.
If it is true that during the cycle of Rome no constructions of the aesthetic-philosophical soul emerged, as in Hellas, such as Platonic idealism, the metaphysics of Aristotle, the works of Praxiteles, the medicine of Hippocrates, the astronomical insights by Aristarchus of Samos, the dialectic of Diodorus Cronus; it is, however, undeniable that it was precisely through the spirit of essentially Roman universality that Greek culture spread in the West, acquiring a didactic-doctrinal character to which imperial Rome attached a certain educational importance.
