Germanic spirit and it therefore became predominant among the Germanic peoples and wherever Germanism had left a deep imprint even if afterward superficially covered by a veneer of Latin culture.  It is true that Marsilius from Padua is an Italian writing for Ludwig the Bavarian, but the other writers who in the XIV century appear as forerunners of the liberal doctrines are not Italians:  Occam and Wycliff are English; Oresme is French.  Among the advocates of individualism in the XVI century who prepared the way for the triumph of the doctrines of natural law in the subsequent centuries, Hotman and Languet are French, Buchanan is Scotch.  Of the great authorities of natural law, Grotius and Spinosa are Dutch; Locke is English; l’Abbe de St. Pierre, Montesquieu, d’Argenson, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot and the encyclopaedists are French; Althusius, Pufendorf, Kant, Fichte are German.

Italy took no part in the rise and development of the doctrines of natural law.  Only in the XIX century did she evince a tardy interest in these doctrines, just as she tardily contributed to them at the dose of the XVIII century through the works of Beccaria and Filangeri.

While therefore in other countries such as France, England, Germany, and Holland, the general tradition in the social and political sciences worked in behalf of anti-state individualism, and therefore of liberal and democratic doctrines, Italy, on the other hand, clung to the powerful legacy of its past in virtue of which she proclaims the rights of the state, the preeminence of its authority, and the superiority of its ends.  The very fact that the Italian political doctrine in the Middle Ages linked itself with the great political writers of antiquity, Plato and Aristotle, who in a different manner but with an equal firmness advocated a strong state and the subordination of individuals to it, is a sufficient index of the orientation of political philosophy in Italy.  We all know how thorough and crushing the authority of Aristotle was in the Middle Ages.  But for Aristotle the spiritual cement of the state is “virtue” not absolute virtue but political virtue, which is social devotion.  His state is made up solely of its citizens, the citizens being either those who defend it with their arms or who govern it as magistrates.  All others who provide it with the materials and services it needs are not citizens.  They become such only in the corrupt forms of certain democracies.  Society is therefore divided into two classes, the free men or citizens who give their time to noble and virtuous occupations and who profess their subjection to the state, and the laborers and slaves who work for the maintenance of the former.  No man in this scheme is his own master.  The slaves belong to the freemen, and the freemen belong to the state.