To the Congress of Sciences, Before the Fourth Assassination Attempt
By Benito Mussolini
Gentlemen!
After this extraordinarily thrilling and unforgettable day in Bologna, I am pleased to see that things are a bit calmer in this hall. And I find it perfectly logical that my day — which began with a great review of the young armed forces of the Fatherland — is destined to close at this meeting with the Society for the Progress of Science.
When I was invited, I was a little hesitant to accept it, because I asked myself: what have I personally given to science? Nothing at all.
What have I given as Head of Government? Still very little.
Scientific research in Italy has been going through a period of stagnation for ten years. We must have the courage to admit that we are falling behind. In our country the war has also led to a state of hiatus and crisis. The war has impoverished us. On the other hand, modern scientific research requires a very considerable usage of means. It is not for nothing that I have ordered a chemist to investigate and inform me about the state of the scientific laboratories of the universities, because I believe the situation is, if not deplorable, certainly backward. Just think of the state of certain modern clinics. To understand how serious the problem really is, just think that for the ancient and glorious University of Padua I had to immediately allocate funds to prevent surgeons from all over the world from attending an operation in a wooden shack.
I must tell you again, gentlemen, that I have never crossed the threshold of the quite complicated temple of science. I confined myself to the vestibule.
I have often thought that scientific research — as Aristotle opined, and this is also my humble opinion — originated with the greatest scientist of antiquity: man's curiosity. "Philosophy", he said, "was born out of curiosity". And notice that back then science had no means. It proceeded by analogies; not only that, but it must be remembered that a Greek philosophical school, that of the Sophists, even challenged and mocked any experiment, denying the existence of the phenomenon itself. Now, sometimes I have placed myself before the fact of science, to see my personal position, the position of my spirit in the face of this fact: first of all to define it. I do not claim that my definition is exact, and you can also reject it if you find it inaccurate or insufficient: I believe that science is the investigation and control of the phenomena which fall below our sensitivity and below that of the instruments that we can use. Of course, a phenomenon that repeats itself endlessly can give rise to a law, but one wonders whether or not the strict law — the law of gravity, for example — might have exceptions.
How far can science go? Very far. The nineteenth century made enormous advancements in science. Today science is our life: from the telephone to the radio, from the foods we eat to the means by which we increase the fruitfulness of the earth, science has become an integral part not only of our spirit, but of our activity. I — as Minister of War, Navy and Aviation — I rely very much on science. I need science to tell me if there are any superfluous gases, and above all I need it to tell me what needs to be done with the other gases. You yourselves have seen what developments chemistry made in the last war. As Minister of Aviation, I am confronted with many scientific problems, which are linked by not so mysterious laws to the fundamental phenomena of physical life. I need medicine and surgery in order to put into practice everything that has been achieved by medicine and war surgery.
There is no doubt that science tends to the ultimate end; there is no doubt that science, after having studied phenomena, seeks anxiously to explain the why. My own humble opinion is this: I do not believe that science can ever explain the why of phenomena, and therefore it will always remain an area of mystery, a closed wall. The human spirit must write but one word upon this wall: God. To my mind, therefore, there can be no conflict between science and faith. That is a polemic from twenty or thirty years ago; and I believe that those of us of this generation have already overcome that dilemma. Science has its field, that of experiment; faith has the other field, that of the spirit. Someone once asked: what is the value of all the philosophy of this world if it does not teach me to suffer an evil? More than a search, there is a reserved area for meditation on the supreme ends of life. Therefore, science starts from experiment, but inevitably leads to philosophy and, in my opinion, only philosophy can illuminate science and bring it to the realm of the universal idea.
Please excuse the digression. I declare the Congress open in the name of His Majesty the King.
