Note 2 — SECTION II
Reading edition
Mazzini's idea of neutrality was this:
"A law of Solon decreed that those who in an insurrection abstained from taking part on one side or the other should be degraded. It was a just and holy law, founded on the belief—then instinctive in the heart of Solon, but now comprehended and expressed in a thousand formulæ—in the solidarity of mankind. It would be just now more than ever. What! you are in the midst of the uprising, not of a town, but of the whole human race; you see brute force on the one side, and right on the other ... whole nations are struggling under oppression ... men die in hundreds, by thousands, fighting for or against an idea. This idea is either good or evil; and you continue to call yourselves men and Christians, you claim the right of remaining neutral? You cannot do so without moral degradation. Neutrality—that is to say, indifference between good and evil, the just and the unjust, liberty and oppression—is simply Atheism."