The primary causal agent is always an idea become person, with a will that pursues determinate ends—a cognizant will that has a program to realize a concrete thought, effective in history. … The few, in so far as they were the conscience and the will of an epoch, were the agents of history. They recognized the forces that were available, and employed that which was really the only active and effective force available to them—their own will. ~ Giovanni Gentile, Italian idealist philosopher