For Fascism, the world is not the material world as it appears at first glance, in which man is an individual separate from all others, governed by a natural law that instinctively leads him to live a life of selfish, fleeting pleasure. The fascist conception of man is that of an individual who is also nation and homeland, a moral law that binds individuals and generations together in a tradition and a mission. It suppresses the instinct to live only for momentary pleasure in order to establish a higher life based on duty, one that is free from the limits of time and space—a life in which the individual, through self-denial, the sacrifice of personal interests, and even through death, fulfills a wholly spiritual existence where his value as a human being resides.

This spiritualist vision also arises from the broader reaction of the century against the positivism of a weak and materialist West. It is anti-positivist, yet positive: neither skeptical, nor agnostic, nor pessimistic, nor passively optimistic, as are most doctrines that place the center of life outside of man himself. Man can and must, through his own free will, shape his world. Fascism envisions a man who is active and engaged, fully investing his energy in action, consciously aware of hardship and prepared to confront it. It sees life as a struggle and believes that it is up to man to win a life truly worthy of him, by first forging within himself the tools—physical, moral, intellectual—with which to build it. This applies not only to the individual but also to the nation and to humanity as a whole.

Hence the high value placed on culture in all its forms—art, religion, science—and the tremendous importance of education. Hence also the essential value of work, through which man conquers nature and creates the human world: economic, political, moral, and intellectual.

This positive view of life is, fundamentally, an ethical one. It encompasses all of reality, as well as the human activity that seeks to master it. No action escapes moral judgment; nothing in the world can be separated from the values that must be attributed to it in relation to moral ends.

Thus, as conceived by the fascist, life is serious, austere, religious—entirely centered in a world upheld by the moral and responsible forces of the spirit. Fascism rejects the comfortable life.