⇐ Part II

This is the conclusion to the role of the Leader in a traditional society. It needs to be read meditatively, and not with the intent to refute or falsify it. If read in silence, without the infusion of personal opinions, something very different may be heard.

We said that man first denies himself and then affirms himself: he denies himself in the law and affirms himself in love, which is only the supplementary knowledge of the truth. Now the active life cannot be abandoned to the disordered will of the appetites which would make it an end in itself, while it is only a means whose purpose is clearly determined by the temporal power embodied in the Leader. In order to be truly such, it is necessary that this power be employed by a single man so that every subject contemplates himself in his sovereign, his better part, to whom he must submit himself, the reason that regulates every activity restraining them within their limits and preventing them from gravely obstructing the attainment of the pure values of the spirit.

If the natural end of man is heaven, the starting point is the earth, so that the necessity for making its foundation organized by a liberating action that acts especially on the obstructing element, the body, which abandoned to itself, precludes every possibility of overcoming and attainment. That which is corporeal remains subordinated to the psychic element that is transparently vague through its elusiveness and diffusivity: the virtues inherent in the active life, that the Leader rules and directs, have as their field of action the psychic complex that must be contained and limited by reason as if by a supreme command. But reason is in a certain sense two-edged to the extent that on the one hand it dominates and restrains the lower faculties and on the other, it inserts into a higher order of reality where the intellect extends and, while being human, is the mediator between the human and the divine: likewise the Leader rules in the sign of justice so that a higher stage becomes a reality, whose domain belongs more specially to the Priests, but it is necessary for the Warriors to facilitate this perfection.

Given that, it indicates that war is the condition of peace as long as it is truly conducted by those for whom it is their only given mission and within the limits that make it justifiable and necessary.

In the earthly and human domain, law must make use of force and the symbol and the means of justice is two-edged sword, one of which strikes and points toward the lower, which the other points higher and is bloodless, the point representing the peak of unification of the higher and the lower, the supreme acme, death, or resolution Thus what seemingly appears cruel, is not always so in reality, and the justice that imposes itself with force is often the necessary vestibule of the highest sphere of love. The activity of the Leader in human and earthly life is analogous to that of God, whose direct instrument he is, in order to coordinate the modes of activity pursuant to justice, truth, and love. No one more than the Leader knows that by punishing others he punishes himself and that with an act of justice he fulfills an achievement of love and truth: if he does not know this, if the ignores his purpose, he is not truly a leader, but a slave of his own cupidity, since he cannot command if he is not aware of the raison d’être of his authority, of the divine character of his mission.

A Warrior among the Warriors he must be an ascetic among the ascetics: so he will reach the point to rule others by how much more he will rule himself and to defeat his enemies by defeating himself, and to fight the small wars by fighting the Great War, and to achieve external peace by how much more profoundly and perfectly he will have achieved interior peace, knowing that earthly life is only a stage, but the most important of all, of which he is the orderer. His responsibility is very great before men but especially before God since by betraying his creatures he betrays his Creator and by neglecting justice in order to follow his own impulse he contradicts the nobility of the position that he occupies and abuses the power that is given to him: then he will truly be last among men and servant among the servants. Since there is no justice without a judge, so the Leader is also judge among men and here his task is still more serious and difficult: he must be very attentive and not exceed the scope in which his activity unfolds, since as judge he can affect the case, but not the knowledge of those who have accomplished it. He knows in fact that everything that happens may not happen and that there is nothing open to censure that others accomplish that he himself cannot accomplish, since men are the mirror of man and he, as Leader, is the mirror of the time in which he lives and is also the supreme responsible man for it.

His more or less great adherence to tradition is measured by the degree of greater or lesser spirituality of the era in which he lives and of which he is the judge. He must dematerialize the world, bring active life back within its normal limits, to make action a means and not an end, and contemplation an end and not a means, and force the pure expression of law and power, the assertion of his humility before God, and justice the implacable rectification, and the gift of himself the constant offering.

He is in the world to redeem it, to purify it in the name of God, for the love of God, because he, with the Warriors, is the protector of the Temple and his mission is the respect of the sacred law to which he is subject and through which he is the Leader, since everything that comes from God must return to God, and what is accomplished on earth is only for the dignity of the true man who is a son of God. His true glory, his true conquest will have facilitated it, prepared it, realized the coming of the kingdom of God, having transformed life in a rite redeeming man from his state of servitude, leading him to liberty through to liberation, making of the active life a connecting bridge to the beatitude of contemplation where the divine is only realized, ransoming not oppressing, spiritualizing not materializing.

Only in that way will he be the God’s chosen and his power will receive that consecration from which all authority comes. He knows that man and the world are of God and that everything must flow into the great traditional axis that is sustained by sacred knowledge of which he is the most pious and aware supporter. The active life that he rules and normalizes must be contained within the limits that permit each man to rise to the sphere of contemplation where true life begins, the divine life, and his mission unfolds in the temporal sphere for eternity, on earth for heaven, the center of the innumerable efforts that flows from every point into a single wave, in a single rhythm, for the glory of the one before Whom everything is nothing and the nothing is all.

Supreme bundler of fasces [Fascificatore], the Leader redeems the transience of man and the world with the vivifying rhythm of tradition of which he must be the most intransigent defender in order to establish the constitutive unity of castes, the harmony of principles, the respect of standards, the convergence of all the efforts in the fulfillment of his very high mission, so that the world is truly the mark, the crown, and the sign of God.