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Title: The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico

Author: Benedetto Croce

Editor: R. G. Collingwood

Release Date: August 15, 2016 [EBook #52814]

Language: English

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THE PHILOSOPHY

OF GIAMBATTISTA VICO.

BY BENEDETTO CROCE


TRANSLATED BY R. G. COLLINGWOOD

FELLOW AND LECTURER OF PEMBROKE COLLEGE, OXFORD


NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1913



TO

WILHELM WINDELBAND




PREFACE


My reasons for believing that a new exposition of Vico's philosophy is
required may easily be inferred from the observations on the effects of
his work and the biographical notes which form respectively the second
and fourth appendices to this volume.

Here I merely wish to state that my exposition is not meant for a
summary of Vico's writings work by work and part by part. It rather
presupposes an acquaintance with these writings, and, where that is
lacking, is intended to induce the reader to procure them in order to
follow better and to check the interpretation and estimate of them here
offered.

On this supposition, though I have made free use of my author's actual
words, especially in the chapters dealing with history, I have not
thought it desirable to mark them as quotations except where it was
important to emphasise the precise phrase of the original. I have in
general combined such passages from fragments scattered over a wide
field, sometimes abbreviating, sometimes amplifying, and always freely
adding words and phrases of my own by way of commentary: and the
continual use of quotation marks would merely have shown up in a manner
more wearisome than valuable the reverse side of my embroidery, which
any reader who so desires can study by the help of the references given
at the end of the book.

In my anxiety to show in every detail of my work, so far as I could,
the veneration due to the great name of Vico, I have endeavoured to
be brief with the brevity at which he himself aimed as the hall-mark
of sterling scientific thought. With this in view I have refrained
even from controversy with his various interpreters, and have either
contented myself with mere remarks, or more often left my details
to be justified by the coherence of my view as a whole. Some of the
interpretations supported by me I believe to be the mature fruit of
the investigations and controversies which form the greater part
of the literature on Vico: all the rest, for which I am personally
responsible, and the general idea of my book, I will defend against
alternative and contradictory views when occasion arises, should it
ever do so, in the detailed and direct manner which I have not thought
it necessary to adopt in the course of my exposition. I hope, in fact,
that the present work will rekindle rather than quench the discussion
of Vico's philosophy: since in him we have, as Goethe calls him, the
_Altvater_ whom a nation is happy to possess, and to him we must hark
back for a time in order to imbue our modern philosophy with an Italian
feeling, however cosmopolitan it may be in thought.

The dedication of my book, besides being a token of respect to one of
the greatest modern teachers of the history of philosophy, is intended
to express the expectation and hope that the gap in this history to
which I have called attention more than once, especially on page 277 of
the present volume, may soon be filled.

B. C.

RAIANO (AQUILA),

_September_ 1910.




TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

This volume represents the author's _La Filosofia di Giambattista Vico_
(Bari, 1911) forming vol. ii. of his _Saggi filosofici_; and also
contains a paper read before the Accademia Pontaniana in March 1912
entitled "Le Fonti della gnoseologia vichiana," which figures here as
Appendix III. The whole of the translation has been revised by the
Author.

R. G. C.

OXFORD, 1913.



CONTENTS


      I. VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: FIRST PHASE
     II. VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: SECOND PHASE
    III. INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE NEW SCIENCE
     IV. THE IMAGINATIVE FORM OF KNOWLEDGE (POETRY AND LANGUAGE)
      V. THE SEMI-IMAGINATIVE FORM OF KNOWLEDGE (MYTH AND RELIGION)
     VI. THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS
    VII. MORALITY AND RELIGION
   VIII. MORALITY AND LAW
     IX. THE HISTORICAL ASPECT OF LAW
      X. PROVIDENCE
     XI. THE LAW OF REFLUX
    XII. METAPHYSICS
   XIII. TRANSITION TO HISTORY: GENERAL CHARACTER OF VICO'S TREATMENT OF HISTORY
    XIV. NEW PRINCIPLES FOR THE HISTORY OF OBSCURE AND LEGENDARY PERIODS
     XV. HEROIC SOCIETY
    XVI. HOMER AND PRIMITIVE POETRY
   XVII. THE HISTORY OF ROME AND THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY
  XVIII. THE RETURN OF BARBARISM: THE MIDDLE AGES
    XIX. VICO AND THE TENDENCIES OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
     XX. CONCLUSION: VICO AND LATER THOUGHT, PHILOSOPHICAL AND HISTORICAL

APPENDICES

      I. ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF G. B. VICO
     II. THE LATER HISTORY OF VICO'S THOUGHT
    III. THE SOURCES OF VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
     IV. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

NOTE.--PASSAGES OF VICO'S WORKS TO WHICH ESPECIAL
REFERENCE IS MADE IN THE COURSE OF THE
EXPOSITION

INDEX OF NAMES



CHAPTER I


VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: FIRST PHASE


The earliest phase of Vico's theory of knowledge takes the form of a
direct criticism of and antithesis to the Cartesianism which had guided
European thought for more than half a century, and was to maintain its
supremacy over mind and spirit for another hundred years.

Descartes, as is well known, had placed the ideal of perfect science in
geometry, and endeavoured to reform philosophy and every other branch
of knowledge upon this model. Now the geometrical method proceeds
analytically till it reaches a self-evident truth, and thence by
synthetic deduction it advances to more and more complex propositions.
Accordingly, if philosophy were to adopt a rigorous scientific method,
it also (thought Descartes) must look for a solid foundation in the
shape of an elementary and self-evident truth from which to deduce all
its subsequent statements, whether theological, metaphysical, physical,
or ethical. Thus self-evidence--the "clear and distinct perception
or idea"--was the supreme test: immediate inference--the intuitive
connexion of thought with existence, _cogito_ with _sum--_ provided the
elementary truth and the foundation of knowledge. By means of the clear
and distinct perception, together with the systematic doubt which led
him to the _cogito,_ Descartes persuaded himself that he had once and
for all made an end of scepticism.

But, by the same argument, all knowledge which had not been or could
not be reduced to clear and distinct perception and geometrical
deduction was bound to lose in his eyes all value and importance. This
included history, as founded upon testimony; observation of nature,
when not within the sphere of mathematics; practical wisdom and
eloquence, which draw their validity from empirical knowledge of human
character; and poetry, with its world of imaginary presentations. Such
products of the mind were for Descartes illusions, chaotic visions,
rather than knowledge: confused ideas, destined either to become clear
and distinct and so no longer to exist in their original nature, or
else to drag on a miserable existence unworthy of a philosopher's
consideration. The daylight of the mathematical method rendered useless
the lamps which, while they guide us in the darkness, throw deceptive
shadows.

Vico, unlike the other opponents of Descartes, did not confine himself
to or waste time in scandalised outcries at the danger to religion
entailed by the subjective method. He did not inquire, like the
schoolmen, whether the _cogito_ was or was not a syllogism, and if so
whether it was or was not defective. He did not join in the protest
of outraged common-sense against the Cartesian contempt of history,
rhetoric, and poetry. He went straight to the heart of the question,
to Descartes' criterion of scientific truth itself, the principle of
self-evidence. While the French philosopher believed himself to have
satisfied all the demands of the strictest science, Vico saw that as
a matter of fact, in view of the need which he set out to meet, his
proposed method gave little or no assistance.

Fine knowledge, says Vico, this of the clear and distinct idea! That
I think what I think is certainly an indubitable fact; but it has by
no means the appearance of a scientific statement. Any idea, however
false, may seem self-evident: that I think it so does not give it
the force of knowledge. That "he who thinks, exists" was a fact well
known to Plautus's Sosia, who expressed this conviction in almost
the identical words of the Cartesian philosophy: "but when I think,
I certainly exist" (_sed quom cogito, equidem certo sum_). But the
sceptic will always reply to a Sosia or a Descartes that he has no
doubt as to thought; he will even strongly maintain that whatever seems
to him cogent is certain, and will uphold it against all objections;
and that he has no doubt as to existence: in fact, he is seeking
after it in the right way by suspending judgment and not adding to
the obscurity of facts other obscurities arising from opinions. But
while asserting all this he will still maintain that the certitude
of his thought and of his existence is the certitude not of science
but of consciousness, and of common consciousness at that. Clear and
distinct perception is so far from being science that since, owing to
Cartesianism, the principle has been applied to physics, our knowledge
of nature has become no more certain. Descartes tried to leap from the
plane of common consciousness to that of science: he fell back into
common consciousness again without having touched his scientific ideal.

But in what does scientific truth consist, if not in immediate
consciousness? How does science differ from simple consciousness? What
is the criterion, or, in other words, what is the condition which makes
science possible? Clearness and distinctness do not take us a step
forward. The formulation of an elementary truth does not solve the
problem. The question concerns not a primary truth, but the form which
truth must have to enable us to recognise it for scientific or real
truth.

In meeting this question, Vico justified his criticism of the
inadequacy of the Cartesian criterion by appealing to a principle
which at first sight may seem trite and obvious. It is trite not
because of the historic theory with which Vico associated it, a theory
later refuted by himself: not, that is, because it belongs to one of
the earliest strata of Italian philosophy; but in the sense that it
was common to and practically inseparable from Christian thought.
To a Christian who declares every day his belief in a God Almighty,
Omniscient, Maker of heaven and earth, nothing is more familiar than
the assertion that God alone can fully know all things, because he
alone is their creator. The primal truth, Vico repeats, is in God,
because God is the primal creator. It is an infinite truth because he
is the maker of all things, and absolute because it displays to him the
internal and external qualities of things, all of which he contains in
himself.

This same principle of religion and theology had been already invoked
in a philosophical context by certain sceptics, as a weapon against
the presumptuous claims of human knowledge. Francisco Sanchez, for
example, in his _Quod nihil scitur_ (1581), in discussing the difficulty
of knowing the nature and powers of the soul, had observed that if man
could have this knowledge in a perfect degree he would be like God,
or rather he would be God himself: since it is impossible "that one
should know perfectly things which he has not created, nor could God
have created things of which he had not perfect foreknowledge, nor
ruled them when created: he himself therefore, being alone the perfect
wisdom, knowledge, and intellect, penetrates all things, is wise
concerning all things, knows all things, and understands all things,
because he is all things and in all things, and all things are he and
in him" (_perfecte cognoscere quis quae non creavit, nec Deus creare
potuisset nec creata regere quae non perfecte praecognovisset: ipse
ergo solus sapientia cognitio intellectus perfectus omnia penetrat
omnia sapit omnia cognoscit omnia intelligit, quia ipse omnia est et
in omnibus, omniaque ipse sunt et in ipso_).[1] But Sanchez appeals to
this thought only in passing, and without grasping its philosophical
import or realising that his hand was resting upon a treasure; while
Vico for the first time drew from the praise of the infinite power
and wisdom of God, and from their contrast with the limited faculties
of man, the universal principle of his theory of knowledge, that the
condition under which a thing can be known is that the knower should
have made it, that the true is identical with the created: _verum ipsum
factum._

This, he explained, is precisely what is meant by saying that science
is to know by causes, _per causas scire._ Since a cause is that which
has no need of anything external in order to produce its effect, it
is the genus or mode of a thing: to know the cause is to be able to
realise the thing, to deduce it from its cause and create it. In other
words, it is an ideal repetition of a process which has been or is
being practically performed. Cognition and action must be convertible
and identical, just as with God intellect and will are convertible and
form one single unity.

Now once this connexion of the true with the created is recognised as
the ideal, and indeed, since the ideal is the truly real, as the true
nature of science, the first consequence of such a recognition must be
that science is unattainable to man. If God created the world, he alone
knows it _per causas,_ he alone knows its genera or modes, he alone
possesses scientific knowledge of it. Did man make the world? Did he
make his own soul?

To man is vouchsafed, not science, but only consciousness, which
merely traverses objects without being able to show the genus or form
whence they proceed. The truth of consciousness is the human side
of divine wisdom, related to it as the surface to the solid: rather
than truth, we ought to call it certitude. For God, _intellegere,_
understanding; for man only _cogitare,_ thought, the faculty that
gleans elements of reality, but can never gather them all. For
God, true demonstration; for man, observations undemonstrated and
unscientific, but either certain through indubitable evidence, probable
through sound reasoning, or convincing because of a plausible guess.

Certitude, the truth of consciousness, is not science; but it is not
on that account false. Vico was careful not to call the theories of
Descartes false: his intention was only to lower them from complete
truth to fragmentary truth, from science to consciousness. _Cogito ergo
sum_ is very far from false. That we find it expressed by Plautus's
Sosia is an argument not for rejecting it, but for accepting it; only,
as a truth of simple consciousness. Thought is not the cause of my
existence, and as such is not the ground of scientific knowledge of
that existence. If it were, since man, as the Cartesians admitted,
consists of body and mind, thought would be the cause of the body: a
doctrine which would plunge us into all the mazes of the controversy on
the mutual effects of mind and matter. The _cogito,_ then, is a mere
sign or indication of my existence, and nothing more. The clear and
distinct idea cannot serve as a criterion even of the mind itself, to
say nothing of other things; since the mind, though it knows itself,
does not create itself, and accordingly is ignorant of the genus or
mode by which it has this knowledge. But the clear and distinct idea
is all that is granted to human thought, and, as the only wealth
it possesses, is beyond price. For Vico, too, metaphysic holds the
highest place among the human sciences, and all others depend upon
it; but while for Descartes it can proceed by a method of absolute
demonstration parallel to that of geometry, for Vico it must be
satisfied with probabilities. It is a science not by causes, but of
causes. And with probabilities it has been content in its greatest
periods, in ancient Greece and in Italy at the Renaissance. Whenever,
intoxicated by the arrogance that declares that "a wise man has no
opinions" (_sapientem nihil opinati_), it has sought to abandon the
probable, it has set its feet upon the path of confusion and decadence.
The existence of God is certain, but not scientifically demonstrable;
and any attempt at such a demonstration must be considered a proof not
so much of piety as of impiety, since to demonstrate God we must create
him: man must become the creator of God. Similarly we must accept as
true all that God has revealed; but we must not ask how it comes to be
true. That we can never understand. Human science bases itself upon
revealed truth and the consciousness of God, and finds there its test
of truth; but the foundation itself is not science, but consciousness.

Just as Vico depreciated metaphysics, theology, and physics, the
sciences upon which Descartes had bestowed honour and attention, so
he reinstated those branches of knowledge which Descartes had in
turn despised; namely, history, observation of nature, empirical
knowledge of man and society, eloquence and poetry. Or rather, he could
vindicate them without reinstating them. Once he had shown that the
lofty truths of a geometrically deduced philosophy were themselves
brought down to mere probability, to statements having the validity of
simple consciousness, the other forms of knowledge were _ipso facto_
conclusively vindicated. All now found themselves upon an equality
in the position, whether high or low, which we have described. The
idea of a perfect human science, holding itself aloof from another
science unworthy of the title, as founded not on reason but on
authority, was shown to be illusory. The authority of observations
and beliefs, whether one's own or others', public opinion, tradition,
the consciousness of mankind, were restored to the position which
they had always held: a position which they held even for Descartes
himself, who, as often happens, despised the resources in which he was
richest and of which he made the greatest use. A conspicuously learned
man, he depreciated learning and scholarship, as one who has received
nourishment from it might give himself the luxury of speaking with
contempt of the common food which by now forms the very blood in his
veins.

The Cartesian polemic against authority had proved in some respects
beneficial. It put an end to the servile attitude, all too common, of
continual appeals to authority. But this error was not more prevalent
than that of private judgment, which presumed to reorganise knowledge
from top to bottom on the strength of the individual consciousness:
a tendency which ultimately, as in the case of Malebranche, leads to
prophesying the immolation of all the ancient philosophers and poets,
and a return to the nakedness of Adam. It is a fallacy, or at least
an excess, which should be avoided by adopting a sound middle course.
This course consists in following private judgment with due regard to
authority; in a true catholic union of faith with a criticism limited
by and helpful to faith; bearing in mind the necessary character of
mere probability which is proper to human knowledge or science, and
avoiding the tendency of the Reformation which elevates each man's
inner consciousness into a divine guide in matters of belief.

To another group of the Cartesian sciences, however, Vico seems to
grant a privileged position, one, that is, not of consciousness but
of science strictly so called, in the sphere not of certitude but
of truth; namely, the mathematical sciences. These, according to
him, form the only region in which man's knowledge is identical in
character with God's, perfect and demonstrative. This is not due, as
Descartes supposed, to their self-evident character. Self-evidence,
when employed in physical science and in matters of action, does
not yield truth of the same conclusiveness as in mathematics. Nor
is mathematics in itself self-evident. What clear and distinct idea
can lead, for instance, to the conception of a line as composed of
points having no parts? But the indivisible point which cannot be
conceived in the world of reality, can be nevertheless denned. By
defining certain names, man creates the elements of mathematics; by
the postulates, he carries them on to infinity; by the axioms, he
establishes certain eternal truths; and, disposing these elements with
the help of these infinities and this eternity, he creates the truth
which he teaches. The validity of mathematics then arises not from the
Cartesian principle, but precisely from Vico's other proposition, the
conversion of knowledge with creation. "We demonstrate mathematics,
because we create their truth" (_mathematica demonstramus, quia verum
facimus_). Man assumes unity and multiplicity, points and figures, and
creates numbers and quantities which he knows perfectly because they
are his own work. Mathematics is a constructive science; not only in
its problems, but even in its theorems, which are commonly supposed
to be mere objects of contemplation. For this reason it is a science
which demonstrates _per causas,_ in opposition to that other common
view which excludes from mathematics the concept of causation. It is in
fact the only one among all the human sciences which truly demonstrates
by causes. Hence its extraordinary accuracy. The whole secret of the
geometrical method lies first in defining the terms, that is, creating
the concepts which are to be the subject matter of our reasoning;
secondly, in establishing certain common principles by mutual
consent of the disputants; and lastly, if required, in making certain
postulates of such a nature that they can be granted, to enable us to
proceed with our deductions, which without such an agreement could
make no progress; then, upon these principles, to advance by degrees
from the demonstration of the simplest truths to the most complex, and
not to affirm the complex propositions before examining singly their
component parts.

It might be said that, as to the validity of mathematics, Vico is in
agreement with Descartes; he differs from him only in his reason for
this validity. And, admitting that Vico's reason must be thought the
more profound, this would only enhance and strengthen the mathematical
ideal which Descartes had set before science. If mathematics is the one
perfect form of knowledge attained by the human mind, obviously we must
found the others upon it, and either remodel or condemn them according
to its pattern. Vico, in short, was hasty in declaring Descartes wrong:
he had found a better argument whose existence the latter had not
suspected. But, however strongly this may appear at first sight (and so
it has appeared to some commentators), on a closer examination it is
seen that the high perfection attributed by Vico to mathematics is more
apparent than real; that the vaunted conclusiveness of its method is by
his own confession gained at the expense of truth: in a word, that the
stress of his theory falls less on the truth of mathematics than on its
arbitrary nature.

The fact is, that man, while occupying himself with the investigation
of the nature of things, and ultimately realising his total inability
to attain it, not having in himself the elements of which they are
composed, which are indeed all external to his nature, is led by
degrees to the intention of profiting by this very fault of his
mind. By means of abstraction--not, be it remembered, abstraction
from material things, for Vico is opposed to the empirical origin
of mathematics, but abstraction brought to bear on metaphysical
entities--he creates two fictions, _duo sibi confingit_: the point in
geometrical figures, and unity in multiplication. Each is a fiction,
_utrumque fictum,_ because the point when drawn is no longer a point,
and the unit when multiplied is no longer one. Then, from these
fictions, by his own arbitrary fiat, _proprio iure,_ he assumes an
infinite process, so that lines may be produced or the unit multiplied
_ad infinitum._ Thus he constructs for his own purposes a world of
forms and numbers, all of which he embraces within himself; and by
lengthening, shortening, and combining the lines and adding and
subtracting the numbers, he performs infinite operations and learns
infinite truths. Since he cannot define things, he defines names; since
he cannot reach the elements of reality he satisfies himself with
imaginary elements, the ideas arising from which admit of no dispute.
Like God, _ad Dei instar,_ from no material substrate and, as it were,
out of nothing he creates the point, the line, and the surface; the
point, assumed as that which has no parts; the line, as the locus of
a point, or as length without breadth or depth; and the surface, as
the meeting of two different lines in one point, that is, length and
breadth without depth. Thus mathematics overcomes the failing of human
knowledge, that its objects are always external to itself, and that the
mind which endeavours to know them has not created them. Mathematics
creates what it knows; it contains in itself its own elements, and
thus forms a perfect copy of the divine knowledge (_scientiae divinae
similes evadunt_).

The reader of these and other similar descriptions and praises by Vico
of the processes of mathematics seems to observe in them something like
a tinge of irony; which, if not actually intentional, certainly results
from the facts of the case. The brilliant truth of mathematics arises,
it appears, from despair of attaining truth; its tremendous power
from the knowledge of impotence. The similarity of the mathematician
to God is not altogether unlike that of the imitator of an object to
its creator. What God is in the universe of reality, man is in the
universe of quantity and number,--a universe indeed, but one peopled by
abstractions and fictions. The divinity which has been conferred upon
man is only, so to speak, a Twelfth-night Godhead.

The different origin assigned by Vico to mathematics results in
a correspondingly profound change in the validity of its truth.
Mathematics no longer, as with Descartes, stands at the summit of human
knowledge, an aristocratic science, destined to reclaim and to rule
over the inferior sciences. It occupies a field as strictly limited as
it is unique, beyond which if it ever attempts to pass it loses in a
moment its magical virtue.

The power of mathematics is met by obstacles both _a parte ante_ and
_a parte post,_ in its foundations and in the superstructure which in
its turn it is to support. In its foundations, because if it creates
its own elements, that is to say, the initial fictions, it does not
create the matter of which they are formed, which is given to it no
less than to the other human sciences by metaphysics, which while
it cannot supply it with its true subject matter, supplies it with
definite images of it. From metaphysics, geometry takes the point by
drawing it, that is by annihilating it as a point, and arithmetic the
unit by multiplying it, that is by destroying it _qua_ unit. But since
metaphysical truth, however certain it may seem to consciousness,
is indemonstrable, mathematics itself rests in the last resort upon
authority and probability. This is enough to expose the fallaciousness
of any mathematical treatise which makes use of metaphysics. Vico seems
to be involved in a kind of circle between geometry and metaphysics,
of which the former, according to him, owes its truth to the latter,
and after receiving it gives it back again to metaphysics, thus in
turn supporting the human science by the divine. But this conception,
the truth of which is more than doubtful, indeed we may frankly call
it inconsistent and contradictory, recalls, whatever its value, the
metaphysical or rather poetical or symbolic use made of mathematics by
Pythagoras and other philosophers of antiquity and the Renaissance,
and has no resemblance to a mathematically-treated philosophy like the
Cartesian. Geometry in Vico's opinion is the one hypothesis by which
metaphysics passes over into physical science. But while making this
advance it remains a hypothesis, a probability, something intermediate
between faith and criticism, imagination and reason; which indeed is
the eternal character of metaphysics and human science in general
according to Vico's point of view in this first phase of his theory of
knowledge.

Just as mathematics cannot be the basis of metaphysics, the science
from which it is itself derived, so it cannot provide a foundation for
the other sciences, although they follow it in order of derivation.
All objects other than number and size are beyond the reach of the
geometrical method. Physical science is indemonstrable: if we could
demonstrate the physical world, we should be creating it (_si physica
demonstrare possemus, faceremus_): but we do not create it, and
are accordingly unable to demonstrate it. The introduction of the
mathematical method into natural science has not helped it. Without the
mathematical method, science makes great discoveries; by its means it
has made none, whether great or small. The physical science of to-day
is in fact like a house, sumptuously furnished by former owners, to
which their heirs have added nothing, but have occupied themselves
merely in moving and rearranging the furniture. Accordingly, we must
reintroduce and maintain the experimental method in physical science,
as opposed to this mathematical method; the English tendency as
opposed to the French; the cautious use made of mathematics by Galileo
and his school, as against the Cartesians' reckless and presumptuous
employment of it. The English are right in not allowing physical
science to be taught in the mathematical style. Such a style admits of
progress only when the terms are defined, the axioms established, and
the postulates granted. In physical science we have to define not terms
but things: we can make no unchallenged statements; and the complexity
of nature forbids our forming any postulates. Thus in the more
favourable instances this method results in a mere harmless verbalism.
Observations of nature are expounded with the phrases: "By definition
IV.," "By postulate II.," "By axiom III.," and concluded with the
pompous abbreviation "Q.E.D." But all this carries no demonstrative
conviction. The mind retains as much freedom of opinion as it had
before listening to such noisy methods. In these circumstances Vico
could not refrain from satirical comparisons. The geometrical method,
he says, in its proper sphere works unnoticed; when it makes a noise,
it shows that it is doing no work; just as a coward's attack consists
of much shouting and no blows, while a brave man holds his tongue and
strikes home. Again, the man who upholds the geometrical method in
subjects where it fails to carry conviction, when he pronounces this
to be an axiom, or that to be a demonstrated truth, is like a man who
draws amorphous pictures, quite unrecognisable without assistance,
and then writes underneath "This is a man," or "This is a satyr," or
"This is a lion," or the like. Hence it happens that the very same
geometrical method served Proclus to demonstrate the principles of
Aristotelian science, and Descartes to demonstrate his own, though
totally distinct from, if not diametrically opposed to them. Yet each
was a great geometrician, whom no one could accuse of inability to
use the method. What ought to be introduced into natural science is
not the method of geometry, but its conclusiveness; which is precisely
what can never be done. Still less is it possible in other sciences,
in proportion as they are more material and concrete; least of all in
ethical science. For this reason, where the reality cannot be used,
the name is misused instead; till, just as the title "Master," which
Tiberius once refused as too haughty, is given to-day to the humblest
man, so the name "demonstration," applied as it is to arguments at best
probable, sometimes patently fallacious, has impaired the respect due
to truth.

Even for mathematics itself Vico apprehends danger from the
substitution of analytic for geometrical or synthetic methods. He
doubts whether modern mechanics is really a product of analysis; for
analysis blunts the inventive faculty or talent, and though infallible
in, its results (_opere_) is confused in its processes (_opera_); while
the synthetic method is _turn opere cum opera_ infallible. Analysis
presents its grounds by inquiring whether the equations of which it is
in search happen to be present; it appears to be an art of guessing,
a kind of mechanism rather than thought. For similar reasons Vico
attached no value, to the more or less mechanical topics and arts of
discovery and memory invented by Lulle and Kircher.

The sympathy with experimental methods which as we have seen estranged
Vico from the French tendency of thought, that is from Cartesianism,
and directed him towards the Italian and English schools of Galileo
and Bacon, led him on the other hand to a hostile attitude towards
Aristotelianism and scholasticism. Inculcating as he did the pursuit
of the particular and the use of inductive methods, asserting that
man possessed an inexhaustible wealth of physical knowledge which,
thanks to fire, machinery, and tools, was able to issue in the
creation of objects resembling the special products of nature, and
praising his own metaphysic as one subservient to (_ancillantem_)
the ends of experimental science, he was bound to realise how well
deserved was the too universal discredit, as he calls it, into which
Aristotelian science had fallen. If he disapproved of the introduction
by Descartes of physical forms into metaphysics, and of his resulting
materialistic tendencies, he accused Aristotle and the schoolmen of the
opposite error of introducing metaphysical forms into natural science.
Like Bacon he held that the syllogism and sorites produce nothing
new, and only repeat what was already contained in their premisses.
He emphasised the many ill effects of the Aristotelian universal
in every department of knowledge; in jurisprudence, where empty
generalities crush legislative wisdom; in medicine, which aims rather
at propping up systems than at healing the sick; and in practical
life, in which he describes the abusers of universals by the mocking
title of "Thematists." The use of universals results in homonymies
or equivocations which cause all kinds of errors. As against this
distrust of universals in the sense of general or abstract conceptions,
Vico showed a corresponding reverence for the Platonic ideas, the
metaphysical forms, or as he also called them, kinds; the eternal and
infinitely perfect patterns of things. A nominalist in mathematics,
Vico was suspicious of nominalism in all other fields of knowledge. He
asserts the reality of the forms or ideas, and tells how from his youth
up he was attracted by this doctrine, which he learnt from a teacher of
his, who as a Scotist was a follower of the scholastic system most akin
to Plato's.

Taken as a whole Vico's first theory of knowledge is neither
intellectualistic, sensationalistic, nor truly speculative. It contains
all these three elements, harmonised to a certain extent, not by
a hierarchical subordination of any two to the third, but by the
subjection of all three to a recognition of the inadequacy of human
knowledge. Its intention may have been to meet by a tactical manoeuvre
dogmatics and sceptics at once, the former by denying that we can know
everything, the latter by denying that we can know nothing at all.
But its actual outcome is an assertion of scepticism or agnosticism,
tinged, however, with a trace of mysticism. God's knowledge is the
complete sphere of knowledge, the unity of which man's is but a series
of fragments. God knows all things because he contains in himself all
the elements of which he makes them: man tries to understand them by
taking them to pieces. Human science is a sort of anatomy of the world
of nature; it divides man into body and soul, and soul into intellect
and will: from body it abstracts figure and motion, and from these
existence and unity. Of these metaphysics studies existence, arithmetic
unity and multiplication, geometry figure and its measurements,
mechanics the motion of the circumference, physical science the motion
of the centre, medicine the body, logic the reason, and ethics the
will. But this anatomy meets with the same fate as that of the human
body. In the latter case, the greatest physiologists doubt whether,
owing to the effects of death and of dissection itself, it is possible
at all to discover the true position, structure, and function of the
organs. Existence, unity, figure, motion, body, intellect, and will
are one thing for God, for whom they coalesce into one, and another
for man, to whom they remain distinct. For God they live, for man they
are dead. The clear and distinct perception is a proof not of the
strength but of the weakness of the human understanding. Physical laws
appear self-evident just until they are subjected to comparison with
metaphysical. The _Cogito ergo sum_ is absolutely conclusive when man
considers himself as a finite being; but when he includes himself in
God, the one true being, he realises that in truth he does not exist
at all. By means of extension and its three dimensions we believe
ourselves to establish eternal truths; but in fact _coelum ipsum
petimus stultitia,_ since the eternal truths exist in God alone. The
axiom that the whole is greater than the part may seem eternal, but if
we go back to the beginning, we find that it is false: we see that the
centre of the circle contains in itself as much capacity for extension
as the whole circumference. Wherefore, Vico concludes, "he has advanced
in metaphysics who in the study of this science has lost himself."

To hold, as some have done, that these words show Vico a simple
Platonist or a follower of the traditional Christian philosophy,
would entail denying any importance whatever to his first theory of
knowledge. It would be a confession of adherence to the fallacious
method of philosophical criticism and history which looks only at the
general conclusions of a system and ignores the particular content
which alone gives it its true individuality. No doubt, any philosophy
must always in its ultimate conclusions be either agnostic, mystical,
materialistic, spiritualistic, or the like: in other words, it must
have its place in one or other of the eternal categories in which
thought and philosophical inquiry move. But to expound philosophers
in this one-sided manner can only serve to perpetuate the mistakes
repeated over and over again in the history of thought, when it passes
fruitlessly from one error to another, leaving the old only to adopt
the new, itself perhaps an old one born again or painted with the
colours of youth. The Platonismi agnosticism, or mysticism of Vico
is in the fullest sense of the word original, because it forms the
accompaniment of doctrines not only not inferior to the average of
contemporary thought, but greatly in advance of it.

The first of these doctrines is the theory of knowledge as the
conversion of the true with the created, Vico's substitute for the
otiose criterion of the clear and distinct perception. Though this
conversion represents for Vico an ideal unattainable to man, it yet
does not bring with it an exact definition of the condition and
character of knowledge, the identity of thought and being, without
which knowledge is inconceivable.

The second is the revelation of the nature of mathematics, as unique
among the forms of human knowledge in origin, rigorous because
arbitrary, wonderful but unfit to rule over and transform the rest of
our knowledge.

Finally, the third doctrine is the vindication of the world of
intuition, empirical knowledge, probability, and authority, all those
forms of experience which intellectualism ignored or denied.

In these points Vico the agnostic, the Platonist, the mystic, was
neither agnostic nor mystic nor Platonist. He achieved a threefold
advance upon Descartes, and upon all these three heads criticised him
conclusively.

The one thing in which Descartes was still in advance of Vico was
precisely that dogmatism of which Vico would have none. Descartes,
whether he succeeded or not, projected a perfect human science
deduced from the internal consciousness. Vico, on the other hand,
considering the French philosopher too confident and despairing of
the success of his project, proclaimed the transcendent nature of
truth, took his stand upon revelation, and contented himself with
producing a metaphysic worthy of man's weakness, _humana imbecillitate
dignam._ His was a philosophy of humility, as the Cartesian was one of
self-confidence.

Now Vico could not advance even to this position without relaxing
to some extent part of his humility, and taking over something of
Descartes's confidence: without introducing into his Catholic turn of
mind some trace of the leaven of that Protestantism he thought so
dangerous, and venturing to conceive a philosophy rather less worthy of
man's weakness and correspondingly more worthy of man, a creature at
once strong and weak, at once man and God. This advance is to be seen
in the next phase of his thought.


[Footnote 1: In the appendix to his _Opera Medica_ (Tolosae Tectosagum,
1636, p. 110). Windelband draws attention to this thought, _Gesch. der
neueren Philosophie,_ 3rd ed. i. p. 23.]




CHAPTER II


VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: SECOND PHASE


The will to believe, which in Vico's case was very strong, and the
complete sway which the Catholicism of his country and age held over
his mind, bound him firmly down to the Christian Platonic metaphysic
and theory of knowledge; a theory whose inherent contradictions were
prevented by the above psychological facts from coming explicitly
before his mind. The idea of God at once dominated and supported him;
he neither had the audacity nor realised the necessity to probe to the
bottom such problems as the validity of revelation, the conceivability
of a God apart from the world, or the possibility of affirming the
existence of God without in some sense demonstrating and therefore
creating him. For Vico to open up and partially traverse a new path,
which should lead the human mind to transcend that of the Christian
Platonists, providence--to use for the moment an idea of his own which
we shall explain later on--had perforce to deceive him; to lead him by
a long and circuitous way to the commencement of the new path without
letting him suspect where it would end.

The writings in which Vico expounds his first theory of knowledge, _De
ratione studiorum_ and _De antiquissima Italorum sapientia,_ together
with the polemical works bearing upon them, belong to the four years
from 1708 to 1712. In the following decade Vico was gradually led
to devote himself more and more to research in the history of law
and of the State. He read Grotius as a preparation for writing the
life of Antonio Carafa, and plunged into the controversy on Natural
Rights. He pursued his studies of Roman law and the science of law in
general, in order to fit himself for a chair of jurisprudence at Naples
University. He pondered upon the origins of languages, religions, and
states, out of dissatisfaction with his own historical theories as
set forth in the _Be antiquissima_; perhaps also his convictions were
shaken by a well-directed criticism by the editor of the _Giornale
dei letterati._ His profession, the teaching of rhetoric, gave him
continual opportunities for meditating upon the nature and relations
of poetry and the forms of language. Thus even if it is inaccurate to
say that Vico was led to his later position culminating in the _Scienza
Nuova_ by a philological, not a philosophical process (since clearly
a philosophical position can only come into being through a process
no less philosophical), it is at least certain that the material and
stimulus for his new thought were supplied by philological studies.

These studies seem to have impressed upon him a fact of great
importance; namely, that this subject-matter could only be and had
actually been worked over by his thought through the aid of certain
necessary principles, appearing on every page of the history which
he had chosen for investigation. He had once believed that the moral
sciences, as compared with the mathematical method, took the lowest
place as regards certainty. But now, in his daily acquaintance with
these sciences, he had come to hold the opposite view; namely, that
nothing could be firmer than the foundation of the moral sciences!

This certainty was not the simple self-evidence of Descartes, in which
the object, however internal it is said to be, remains extrinsic to
the subject. It was a truly internal certainty, reached by an internal
process. In the assimilation of historical facts, Vico felt himself
to be making more truly his own something that already belonged to
him; to be entering into possession of what was his by right. He was
reconstructing the history of man; and what was the history of man but
a product of man himself? Is not the creator of history simply man,
with his ideas, his passions, his will, and his actions? And is not the
mind of man, the creator of history, identical with the mind which is
at work in thinking it and knowing it? The truth of the constructive
principles of history then comes not from the validity of the clear and
distinct idea, but from the indissoluble connexion of the subject and
object of knowledge.

The importance of this new discovery, the discovery of the truth which
Vico now recognised in the moral sciences, lay in the realisation of
a new implication of the theory of knowledge laid down by himself in
the former period of his speculations; namely, the criterion of truth
consisting in the "convertibility of the true with the created." The
reason why man could have perfect knowledge of man's world was simply
that he had himself made that world. "When it happens that he who
creates things also describes them, then the history is certain in the
highest degree."

Connected as it thus was with his earlier view, the assertion of the
possibility of the moral sciences did not, to Vico's own mind, present
the importance and bring with it the consequences of a revolution
entirely overthrowing the structure of his ideas, and compelling him
to adjust them afresh. On the one hand, this assertion seemed to him a
confirmation of his former doctrine, a new example to be added to those
he had already collected of perfect knowledge; namely, God's knowledge
of the universe and man's of the world of mathematics. On the other
hand, it seemed to be an extension of the field of knowledge, whose
boundaries (for definite boundaries still existed) had at first been
too narrowly drawn. Formerly he had described a small luminous sphere
in the centre of a vast and dimly lighted field; now the luminous
sphere underwent a definite increase in size, and the penumbral region
a corresponding diminution. This increase involved no sort of conflict
with his religious beliefs; in fact, it seemed to support them and to
gain support from them in turn. For did not religion teach the liberty,
responsibility, and consciousness which man has in respect of his own
acts and creations?

Thus Vico did not feel obliged to write a new treatise on metaphysics.
It seemed enough to add a mere post-script to his former work, and
to correct to some extent his earlier assertions. His new theory of
knowledge, while adhering strictly to the criterion of truth enunciated
by him in opposition to that of Descartes--the principle, that is, that
only the creator of a thing can know it--divided the whole of reality
into the world of nature and the world of man. But, while it laid down
that the world of nature is created by God and that therefore God alone
knows it, it restricted its agnosticism to this field. It asserted,
on the other hand, that the human world, being man's creation, is
known by man. In this way it raised the knowledge of human affairs,
formerly considered merely approximate and probable, to the rank of
perfect science; and it expressed surprise that philosophers should
so laboriously endeavour to attain to science of the world of nature,
which is a sealed book to mankind, while passing over the world of man,
the science of which is attainable. The cause of this error he traced
to the ease with which man's mind, involved and buried as it is in the
body, feels bodily things, and the labour and pains it costs it to
understand itself, as the bodily eye sees all objects outside itself,
but in order to see itself requires the help of the mirror.

In everything else his system remained unchanged. Beyond the world
of man lay the supernatural world, inaccessible to man, and the world
of nature, itself also in a sense supernatural. Beyond the perfect
knowledge which man could have of himself lay the metaphysic of
Christian Platonism, now reduced to impotence, but continuing none
the less to embarrass mankind. The natural sciences were now, as
before, regarded as incomplete forms of knowledge: mathematics as a
system of abstractions, absolutely valid in the abstract but in face
of reality powerless. The Aristotelian syllogism, the Stoic sorites,
and the Cartesian geometrical method were pursued with the same hatred
as before; and the same enthusiastic praise was lavished upon the
induction advocated and illustrated in his _Organum_ by Bacon, that
"great philosopher and great statesman," and fruitfully employed by his
countrymen in experimental philosophy.

Vico's frequent claim to have constructed the science of human affairs
on "a strict geometric method" might seem to indicate a change of
opinion as to the applicability of that method. But his continual
warnings, during the same period and in the same works, against the
use in physical and moral questions of the mathematical method, which,
"where there are no figures either of lines or numbers, either gives
us no conclusiveness, or else, instead of demonstrating the truth,
may often give an appearance of demonstration to falsehood," would
flatly contradict the supposed change of front were it not that we
could interpret it so as completely to restore the coherence of Vico's
thought. This interpretation is quite simple. Once the power of
converting the true with the created is seen to attach to the moral
sciences no less than to geometry, these sciences could and indeed must
develop on a method analogous to the synthetic method of geometry,
the method which proceeds from a truth to its immediate consequence.
In this manner they follow the progress of the world of man from its
ideal origin to its perfect development; so that the student must
not hope to be able to investigate these sciences _per saltum,_ but
must traverse them from beginning to end in detail, without refusing
to accept unforeseen conclusions any more than he can refuse to do
so in geometry; but concentrating his attention on the firmness of
the bond between premisses and conclusion. Thus the method could be
called geometric by analogy or synecdoche; in fact, however, it was
essentially speculative, and not to be confused with the application of
mathematics to questions of morals, of which the Cartesians and Spinoza
have left examples.

Nor can we agree without reservation to the opinion of certain
commentators that Vico, in asserting the existence of a single science
of man, to be studied in the modifications of the human mind, was
retreating to the position of a follower of Descartes. This opinion
is often reinforced by another statement of Vico's, namely, that
to conceive his New Science it would be well to return to a state
of absolute ignorance, as if no philosophers, philologists, nor
books had even existed in the world. It is true that with the new
form of his theory of knowledge Vico himself joined the ranks of
modern subjectivism, initiated by Descartes. In a sense, indeed,
he had already done so in his activistic doctrine of truth as the
reconstruction of the created. In this quite general sense Vico might
himself be called a Cartesian. Nevertheless, if he was still behind
Descartes in making his subjectivism a principle not of the whole of
knowledge but of the knowledge of the world of man only, in another
way he was ahead of the French philosopher, in that for him the
truth attained in the world of man was not static but dynamic, not a
discovery but a product, not consciousness but science.

As for the advice that one should proceed as if there were no books,
no philosophical or philological doctrines in the world, its meaning
is merely the necessity of ridding oneself of all prejudice, of all
common habitual assumptions, of all accretions of memory and fancy,
in order to attain "the state of pure understanding, empty of every
particular form," which is necessary for the discovery and apprehension
of any new truth. So far removed is this advice from the Cartesian or
Malebranchian renunciation of learning and authority, that--to mention
one fact only--in the very passage to which we have just referred we
find the warning that the New Science presupposes a comprehensive and
varied mass both of doctrine and of learning, the truths of which
it takes over as already known, and uses them as terms in its new
propositions.

In a word, Vico in his new theory of knowledge became not more
Cartesian but more Vician--more himself. Descartes seemed to him not
even a serviceable path by which to attain proof of the possibility
of constructing the science of mind by means of the mind. The true
path was Vico's own criterion of truth, brought into relation with its
author's observations made in the course of his historical studies.
If we wish to look for precedents in the history of philosophy for
Vico's theory of knowledge in its second form, the division between the
two worlds of reality and the two spheres of consciousness, and the
preference for moral as compared with natural studies, would lead us
back to the position adopted by Socrates as against the "Physiologists"
of his time, and the feeling of religious mystery which brought the
Athenian philosopher to a standstill in face of the natural world and
directed his efforts to the study of the mind of man. Again, as to the
superior transparency of the moral sciences, as dealing with objects
created by man himself, we might recall the Aristotelian division of
the sciences into physical, treating of motion external to man, and
practical and "poietic," which deal with man's own creations. The
distinction passed into the philosophy of the schools: Thomas Aquinas
speaks of nature as "an order which reason contemplates but does not
create" (_ordo quem ratio considerat sed non facit_), and of the world
of human activity as "an order which reason creates by contemplation"
(_ordo quem ratio considerando facit_). But no such reference is made
by Vico, fond as he was of expressing the debt of his own thought to
the ancient philosophers; and admitting that the doctrine had some
force before his time, the divergence between this earlier view and
that of Vico on the knowableness of the world of man is as great as
that between the assertion of the omniscience of God the Creator and
the theory of knowledge which Vico was able to draw from it.

Of this theory, his doctrine of the moral sciences was neither more
nor less than the first legitimate application. Both its author and
the majority of his commentators are using inaccurate language in
describing it as a simple extension of the previous applications--a
second instance, added to that of the mathematical sciences, already
examined.

In the mathematical sciences, the principle of the conversion of
the true with the created had been applied in appearance only.
The principle itself was original and sound: so was the theory of
mathematics. But the connexion between the two truths was altogether
artificial and false. What was lacking was, unless we are mistaken,
an effective relation between the concept of God who creates the
world and, as creating it, knows it, and that of the man who
arbitrarily constructs a world of abstractions, and in doing so either
knows nothing at all, or else, when he ceases to be a geometer or
arithmetician and becomes a philosopher, when he is composing not
Euclid's Elements but the theory of knowledge in the _De antiquissima,_
knows merely that his procedure is arbitrary. If the mathematical
sciences construct their concepts as they please, if they produce not
truth but definitions, they are as a matter of fact not sciences at
all, nor any form of knowledge, and cannot be compared with the divine
knowledge, the knowledge of actual reality. In mathematics, says Vico,
"man, holding within himself an imaginary world of lines and numbers,
operates in this world by abstraction just as God operates in the
universe by reality." It is a luminous comparison; but perhaps its
light is that of metaphor rather than logic.

In the moral sciences, on the other hand, the comparison is so entirely
logical that it should frankly be called coincidence. Human knowledge
is qualitatively identical with divine, and knows the world of man
equally well; it is, however, quantitatively more restricted, and
does not extend like the divine to the world of nature. In the human
field we no longer find the expedients of weakness, definitions and
falsifications; knowledge is here at its highest point of concreteness.
Man creates the human world, creates it by transforming himself into
the facts of society: by thinking it he re-creates his own creations,
traverses over again the paths he has already traversed, reconstructs
the whole ideally, and thus knows it with full and true knowledge. Here
is a real world; and of this world man is truly the God.

It seems undeniable, then, that the application of the _"verum-factum"_
made in the New Science is the only one which corresponds to the
criterion previously formulated. The earlier attempt at an application
of it to mathematics, though important in other respects and well
calculated to free the mind from mathematical prejudice, cannot be
considered a true or strict use of it. It is possible that Vico
was sometimes vaguely conscious of the difference between the two
applications, the strict and the metaphorical, which as a rule he
confused and treated as identical. The science of the world of man, he
says, proceeds exactly as does geometry, which while it constructs
out of its elements or contemplates the world of quantity, itself
creates it; but with proportionately greater reality, since order has
no connexion with human affairs, containing as they do neither points,
lines, surfaces, nor figures. Another indication of his gradually
dawning consciousness that he had now for the first time in his
doctrine of the world of man discovered a true and proper knowledge,
not a mere fiction of knowledge, may perhaps be seen in the much
greater conviction, warmth, and enthusiasm with which he now uses the
epithet "divine": quite a different thing from the chilly, if not
absolutely ironical, _ad Dei instar_ of the _De antiquissima._ The
proofs of the New Science, he says more than once, with fervour, "are
divine in their nature, and should give thee, Reader, a divine joy:
since in God knowledge and creation are one."

The conversion of the true with the created was bound to react upon
the treatment of certitude in one, perhaps the chief, of the various
meanings in which Vico uses the word, namely, historical fact: the
_peculiare, certum,_ as opposed to the _commune_ or _verum._ This forms
the other important section of Vico's second theory of knowledge. In
the former theory these cognitions were, as we saw, legitimised and
protected by being put on a level with all other kinds of knowledge,
all of them equally weak or equally strong, being all alike founded on
probability or authority, whether of the individual (autopsy) or of
mankind.

But now that the knowledge of the human mind and its laws was rescued
from the region of authority and probability, historical fact, although
still in a sense, by its very nature, founded upon authority, was
placed in a new light. The certain must enter into a new relation,
confronted as it now was not by another certainty, that is, mere
probable knowledge of the human mind, but by a truth, a piece of
philosophical knowledge.

This relation is also called by Vico the relation between philosophy
and philology: the former dealing with necessities of nature,
_necessaria naturae,_ and contemplating the reason from which issues
the science of truth; the latter with decisions of the human will,
_placita humani arbitrii,_ and following the authority whence comes
knowledge of the certain. The one considers the universal, the other
the individual; the one, as Leibniz would have said, the _vérités de
raison,_ the other the _vérités de fait._ With Vico the distinction
is not so clearly expressed: in fact, authority as opposed to reason
sometimes, according to him, becomes a part of reason itself, or is
confused with the knowledge of the human will as opposed to that of
rational volition; but the general sense is none the less quite plain.
By philology Vico means not only the study of words and their history,
but, since words are bound up with the ideas of things, he means also
the history of things. Thus philologists should deal with war, peace,
alliances, travels, commerce, customs, laws and coinage, geography and
chronology, and every other subject connected with man's life on earth.
Philology in a word, in Vico's sense, which is also the true sense,
embraces not only the history of language or literature, but also that
of events, philosophy, and politics.

It is true that philology, the truth of fact or certitude, had not
always been so brutally treated as it was by the Cartesians. Grotius
had given evidence of immense historical learning employed on behalf
of his doctrine of natural right. Gravina, Vico's contemporary and
fellow-countryman, demanded as necessary to the student of law not
only "the art of reasoning" (_ratiocinandi ars_) but "skill in the
Latin tongue" (_Latinae linguae peritia_) and "knowledge of history"
(_notitia temporum_). And Leibniz, whom we have just named, reasserted
the value of learning as against the Cartesians, and extended his
patronage, _en grand seigneur,_ to the varied collection of historical
anecdotes which he scattered freely over his pages. But Vico observed
that the philosophy and philology of his time always remained external
to one another, as they had been almost entirely in Greece and Rome.
All the quotations from historians, orators, philosophers, and poets
accumulated by Grotius were a mere embellishment. Perhaps Vico would
have passed the same judgment upon the liberal use made of history by
Leibniz, if he had known of it and expressed his opinion. In reading
the works of philologists he was conscious of such a sense of vacuity
and weariness in the unintelligent jumble of historical observations,
that he was almost led to agree with Descartes and Malebranche in their
hatred of scholarship: for a time, in fact, he did entirely agree with
them. But these two philosophers--so his later thought ran--ought,
instead of despising erudition, rather to have asked whether it were
possible to reclaim philology to philosophical principles; and the
philologists for their part, instead of marshalling facts for a display
of learning, ought to strive to make them the aim of science. Philology
must be reduced to a science. This was Vico's idea of the relation of
certitude to truth, or philology to philosophy.

What was the meaning of reducing philology, or history, which is
the same thing, to a science or philosophy? Strictly speaking, the
reduction is impossible: not because they deal with subject-matter
different in kind, but because their subject-matter is in point of
fact homogeneous. History is already essentially philosophy. It
is impossible to make the most insignificant historical statement
without moulding it with thought, that is with philosophy. But since
the existence of this philosophical basis of philology was not at
that time realised, indeed it was none too often realised in later
times, and in consequence easily denied; and since most people, as we
have seen, imagined either an aristocratic geometrical philosophy,
hating and avoiding the "profane mob" of facts, or else, as at first
Vico did, a philosophy and a history equally devoid of cogency, and
merely matters of opinion: for these reasons Vico, after the change
of his philosophical point of view, now that he had attained to the
consciousness of the speculative method in the science of man, and
understood more deeply the human mind, was bound to see how much
current history stood in need of reform and extension; to feel the lack
of an improved philology as a consequence of the improved philosophy,
and to express it in terms of the theory of knowledge by the formula
reuniting philology to philosophy: "that this second science, as is
fair, should be the consequence of the first" (_ut haec posterior, ut
par est, prioris sit consequentia_). He was bound, in other words, to
rescue history from its condition of inferiority, where it was a mere
slave to caprice, vanity, moralising and precept-making, and other
irrelevant aims, and to recognise its own true end as a necessary
complement of eternal truth. Philosophy nowadays is full of and
intimate with historical fact: and this gives it greater breadth and a
more lively sense of dealing with concrete reality. This is no doubt
one meaning of Vico's formula concerning the union of philosophy and
philology, and the reduction of the latter to a science.

It is, however, certain that in propounding this formula he had in
view a further and, as often happened, a different meaning. This other
meaning might be most simply illustrated by comparing it, as Vico
himself did with Bacon and his "more certain method of philosophising":
that method which Bacon expressed in the title of his work by the words
_Cogitata et visa,_ and Vico proposed to "transfer from the natural to
the human or political world." In a word, he demanded the construction
of a typical history of human society (_cogitare_) which was then to be
discovered in the facts (_videre_). Thus the ideal construction would
acquire certainty from the facts, and the facts truth from the ideal
construction: authority would be confirmed by reason and reason by
authority. He demanded a science which should be at once a philosophy
of man and a universal history of nations. Now this structure which
he required--something intermediate between _cogitare_ and _videre,_
thought and experience, this mixture of the two processes--is
intrinsically different from the unity of philosophy and philology, in
so far as that is a philosophical interpretation of factual data. Such
an interpretation is living history: the other is neither philosophy
nor history, but an empirical science of man and society, drawing its
materials from schemata which are neither the extra-temporal categories
of philosophy nor the individual facts of history: although it can
never be constructed without philosophical categories and historical
facts. It is an empirical science; and as such, neither exact nor true,
but only approximative and probable, and subject to verification and
correction from the side both of philosophy and of history.

It would be impossible to decide either which of these two meanings
of philology reduced to history is that of Vico himself, since both
are included in his thought: or which is the prevailing one, since in
point of fact now one, now the other prevails: although the second, or
empirical, signification is the more often formulated. We might even
say that when Vico entitled his treatise _Scienza Nuova,_ the principal
meaning he attached to this "invidious" name referred precisely to this
empirical science, the science, that is, which was to be at once a
philosophy and a history of man: the ideal history of the eternal laws
which govern the course of all nations' deeds in their rise, progress,
points of rest, decline and fall. The fact is, Vico did not and could
not unify the two different meanings; he maintained the duality which,
simply because it was never made explicit, presented an appearance
of unity. Thus each of the tendencies shown by his interpreters is
partially justified: one group of whom maintain that Vico laid down
and employed the speculative method; another, that his procedure was
both in intention and in effect empirical, inductive and psychological:
the former believing that he aimed at a systematic philosophy of man,
the latter that he was bent upon a scheme of sociology or social
psychology. Both views are one-sided, but the second more so than the
first. If there actually were in Vico elements both of Bacon and of
Plato, of the empiricist and the philosopher, yet when we look at his
intellectual personality as a whole, when we penetrate into the depths
of his mind and share in his difficulties and his colossal labours,
we must recognise that whatever he meant and believed Vico was of the
stuff of a Plato and not a Bacon: that even the Bacon of whom he speaks
is in part his own invention, a Bacon tinged with Platonism: and that
the New Science seemed so new to him fundamentally, not because it
was an empirical structure on Bacon's lines--indeed in that case no
science could be older: we need only cite Aristotle's _Politics_ and
Machiavelli's _Discourses,_ --but because it was impregnated throughout
by a new philosophy, which did in truth break into it on every side,
through all his empiricism.




CHAPTER III


INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE NEW SCIENCE


The lack of clearness on the relation of philosophy to philology, and
the failure to distinguish between the two quite different ways of
conceiving the reduction of philology to a science, are at once the
consequences and the causes of the obscurity which prevails in the
"New Science." By this name we refer to the whole mass of research and
theory which Vico was producing from 1720 to 1730, elaborated above all
in three works, the _De uno universi iuris principio et fine uno_ and
the first and second _Scienza Nuova_; it attains its maturest and most
developed form in the last of these, and this is the most important for
reference.

The New Science, agreeably to the various meanings of the terms
philosophy and philology and of the relation between them, consists
of three groups of investigations, philosophical, historical and
empirical. Altogether it contains a philosophy of mind, a history, or
group of histories, and a social science. To the first named belong
the ideas expressed in various axioms or aphorisms scattered up and
down the work, on imagination and the imaginative universal, on the
intellect and the logical universal, on myth, religion, the moral
judgment, force and law, certitude and truth, the passions, providence,
and all the other determinations affecting the course or development
of the thought or mind of man. To the second, namely history, belong
the sketch of a universal history of primitive peoples from the time
of the Flood, and of the origins of the various civilisations: the
description of the ancient barbaric or heroic society in Greece and
especially in Rome, with regard to religion, customs, law, language and
political constitution: the study of primitive poetry, concentrating
upon the determination of the genesis and character of the Homeric
poems: the history of the social struggles between the patricians and
plebeians and the origin of democracy, also studied chiefly in Rome:
and the description of the return of barbarism or the Middle Ages, also
studied in all aspects of life and compared with primitive barbaric
society. Finally, to empirical science belongs the attempt to establish
a uniform course of national history, dealing with the succession both
of political forms and of other correlative manifestations of life
both theoretical and practical, and the series of types successively
drawn by Vico of the patriciate, the plebs, feudalism, the patriarchal
family, symbolic law, metaphorical language, hieroglyphic writing and
so forth.

Now if these three classes of inquiry and theory had been logically
distinct in Vico's mind and united and compressed within the limits of
a single book for literary reasons alone, the result might have been
confused, ill-proportioned, out of harmony, and therefore fatiguing
to the reader, but not obscure. But in point of fact it cannot be
said that the _Scienza Nuova,_ at least in its second form, the final
exposition of his thought given by Vico, lacks a general plan, well
enough conceived. The treatise is divided into five books. The first
is intended to summarise general principles, that is, philosophy. The
second, in addition to a short note on the most ancient universal
history, describes the life of barbaric society, to which the third,
on the discovery of the true Homer, the most conspicuous example of
barbaric poetry, forms an appendix. The fourth is meant to sketch
the empirical science of the movement of national history: and the
fifth to exemplify the movement of "reflux" in the particular case of
the Middle Ages. And yet, in spite of this fine architectonic scheme,
the second _Scienza Nuova_ is the most obscure, just as it is the
most rich and complete of Vico's works. If on the other hand, while
keeping his ideas clear in his mind, Vico had used an unfamiliar
terminology or a style of exposition either too compressed or too full
of allusions or implicit presuppositions, he would certainly have been
a difficult writer, but in this case, as in the other, not obscure.
But such a hypothesis does not suit the facts. Vico is very sparing
of scholastic language; he prefers living and popular terminology.
He is not compressed: in fact, he is fond of repeating his ideas,
emphasising them by repetition with great insistence. And he lays all
his cards on the table: that is to say, he shows all the material by
which his doctrines have been suggested. Finally, it amounts to very
little to say that Vico was not fully conscious of his own discoveries:
such consciousness is more or less deficient in every thinker, and in
fact none could have it more fully. The obscurity, the real obscurity
which we find in Vico is not superficial. It does not come either from
merely general or from secondary causes. It really consists in the
obscurity of his ideas; in his insufficient understanding of certain
connections, and the substitution for them of fallacious ones; in the
arbitrary element, that is, which he introduces into his thought, or
to put it more simply in his own downright errors. One might rewrite
the New Science, recasting the order and changing and elucidating the
terminology--the present writer has made the attempt for himself--and
still the obscurity would remain, or even increase; for in such a
translation the work in losing its original form would lose also the
turbid but powerful strength which may at times take the place of
clarity, and, while it does not illuminate, stirs the reader's mind and
generates waves of thought as it were by sympathetic vibrations.

That Vico's obscurity, his mistake or mistakes, is due to the confusion
or lack of distinction in his theory of knowledge mentioned above, on
the question of the relations between philosophy, history and empirical
science--a confusion which exists no less in his actual thought on
the problems of the mind and history of man--that this is so can be
seen by observing how philosophy, history and empirical science pass
into each other by turns in Vico's mind, and vitiating each other in
turn produce the perplexities, ambiguities, exaggerations and hasty
statements which perturb the reader of the New Science. The philosophy
of mind masquerades now as empirical science, now as history: empirical
science now as philosophy, now as history: and historical propositions
assume the universality of philosophical principles or the generality
of empirical schemata. For example, the philosophy of man undertakes
to determine the forms, categories or ideal moments of mind in their
necessary succession, and in this aspect it well deserves the title or
definition of "eternal ideal history" according to which particular
histories proceed in time; while no fragment however small of actual
history can be conceived in which this ideal history is not present.
But, since ideal history is also for Vico the empirical determination
of the order in which the forms of civilisations, states, languages,
styles, and kinds of poetry succeed one another, it comes about that he
conceives the empirical series as identical with the ideal series, and
as deriving validity from it. Hence he asserts that this series must
always be exactly reproduced in the facts, "even if infinite worlds
were produced from time to time through eternity": an assertion which
is plainly false, since there is no reason why the empirical fact of
Greek or Roman aristocracy should be repeated for ever, with a "must
have been, must be now, must be hereafter"; or why civilisations
should rise and fall precisely as did those of antiquity. And this
very treatment of the empirical course of events as absolute threw
a shadow of empiricism over their ideal course; since the latter
once identified with the former took over its empirical and temporal
character instead of the eternal and extra--temporal character which it
had as originally conceived. The same must be said of the various forms
of mind which, as ideal and extra--temporal, are always all present
in every fact; but Vico, by confusing them with the real and concrete
facts which empirical science splits up into its schemata, destroyed
them in their ideal form and distinction as soon as he had stated
them. It is true that the moment of force is not that of justice; but
the empirical type of barbaric society founded upon force, precisely
because it is a representative and approximative determination, and is
referred to a concrete and total state of things, contains not only
force but justice as well; and when this ideal moment and this type
of society are interchanged and treated as identical, on the one hand
the philosophical concept of force is confused with that of justice
and becomes impure, contradictory and incoherent, and finally annuls
itself: on the other, the empirical type of barbaric society becomes
exaggerated and unduly rigid. The confusion between the philosophic
and the empirical is clearly expressed in Vico's aphorism defining
the nature of things. "Nature of things is nothing else than their
production at certain times and in certain manners: and whenever these
latter are of such a kind, then the things produced are of such a kind
and no other." Here we see the confusion between time and manner,
between ideal and empirical genesis. Similarly, it is perfectly true
that history ought to proceed in harmony with philosophy, and that a
philosophical absurdity can never be a historical event: but, since
the distinction between philosophy and empirical science was not
drawn by Vico, when evidence was lacking and philosophy therefore
inapplicable he felt no less sure of attaining truth. He merely filled
the gap with a conjecture supplied by the schema of empirical science,
and persuaded himself that he had fallen back on a "metaphysical
proof." Or again, if he found himself faced by uncertain facts,
instead of patiently waiting till the discovery of further evidence
should dispel the doubt, he cut the knot by accepting the facts, as
he put it, in conformity with laws: which always means the empirical
schema. A legitimate method, doubtless, when treated as hypothetical.
But this hypothesis became in its turn, for Vico, a "truth meditated
in the idea": so that the comparison with facts, which none the less
he recommends for the sake of confirmation, became strictly speaking
superfluous: or, if the comparison showed that the facts disagreed
with it, the facts, as mere appearance, must be in the wrong, rather
than the hypothesis, which is laid down as philosophical truth, and
therefore indubitable. Hence arises the tendency observed in Vico to do
violence to the facts.

These examples are enough to indicate the deep-seated fault in the
structure of the New Science, and to establish one point in our
exposition and criticism of Vico's thought, in the course of which
many other examples of the same point will arise of themselves, and
those already given will become more clear. But another point which
must be well established is that this fault is the fault of an organism
in the highest degree healthy, and that the different species of
inquiry between which Vico failed to distinguish were composed of
investigations of extraordinary originality, truth, and importance.
It is in fact the fault often found in highly original and inventive
intellects, which seldom work out their discoveries in accurate detail,
while less inventive minds are generally more precise and logical.
Depth and acuteness do not always flourish equally side by side: and
Vico, however much he fell short in acuteness, was always profoundly
deep.

Light and shade, truth and error, which alternate and interweave at
almost every point in the New Science, are variously distinguished
according to the various temperaments of readers and critics: and in
conspicuous cases, like that of Vico, such variations assume the most
sharply defined form. Some minds are self-willed and suspicious, quick
to mark any trifling contradiction, merciless in demanding proof of
every statement, and indefatigable in wielding the forceps of dilemma
to dismember an unfortunate great man. For them Vico's work, like many
others of the same kind, is a closed book. At most, it will provide
them with a theme for what is known as a "refutation": an easy and
congenial task, yet hardly a successful one, since the man they have
demolished generally emerges from the slaughter more alive than before.
But there is another type of mind, which, at the first word which
reaches the heart, at the first ray of truth which dawns upon the eyes,
opens its whole self in desire, abandons itself in faith, and grows
wild with enthusiasm; which refuses to hear of faults and never sees
difficulties, or the difficulties at once vanish, and the faults find
the easiest of justifications: and when it commits itself to writing,
its writings appear in the guise of "defences." For such a mind we fear
that the New Science is a book all too open. No doubt, if these two
attitudes were the only alternatives, if no third choice were open,
one would have to choose the fault of love rather than that of cold
indifference; the excess of faith, which may yet enrich us by one or
two aspects of the truth, rather than the absence of faith which never
lets us realise one. But a third attitude is possible to, and indeed
incumbent on the critic; namely, that which never takes its eyes off
the light, but yet does not conceal the shade; which transcends the
letter to attain the spirit, yet not ignoring the letter, but always
returning to it, always endeavouring to play the part of a free but not
a fanciful interpreter, a warm lover but not a blind one.

The two points above established, the strength and weakness essential
to Vico's intellect, his tendency to confusion or his confusion of
tendencies, supply us with a kind of general canon of interpretation;
namely, that of separating analytically at every step his pure
philosophy from the empiricism and history with which he mixes, and
in which so to speak he embodies it, and on the other hand separating
the latter from the former: and of observing, in the process, the
causes and effects of the mixture. The dross cannot be treated as
non-existent, bound up as it is with the gold in its natural state: but
it must not hinder us from recognising and purifying the gold. Or, to
drop the metaphor, the history must be indeed a history, but that it
can only be if guided by intelligence.




CHAPTER IV


THE IMAGINATIVE FORM OF KNOWLEDGE

(POETRY AND LANGUAGE)


The chief, almost indeed the only, forms of the mind studied by Vico in
the New Science are the inferior, individualising activities to which
he gives the general name of "certitude." These are, in the region of
theoretic mind, imagination: in that of the practical mind, power or
will: and in the empirical science corresponding to the philosophy
of mind, the barbaric society and poetic wisdom whose examination
occupies, in his own words, "almost the whole bulk of the work."

His deep interest in these lower forms, and in the primitive societies
and barbaric histories which display them, is further illustrated
and explained, among his external circumstances, by the studies he
undertook in Roman law and its expressions and rhetorical figures:
by the still living tradition of Italian humanism: by the recently
stimulated pursuit of the archaeological sciences: by his own desire
to investigate the earliest civilisation of Italy, and so forth. But
many of his contemporaries and countrymen were handling the same
materials without acquiring any of his taste for and comprehension of
imagination, simplicity and force: indeed Vico himself, when he wrote
the _De antiquissima,_ had the taste for these things but as yet no
comprehension of them. The full reason for this interest is seen when
we consider the development of Vico as a philosopher, without losing
sight of the complexity of his nature in all its opposition to the
Cartesian type of mind. Cartesianism, with its attention confined to
the universalising and abstractive forms, ignored the individualising:
and this necessarily attracted Vico all the more towards them as
towards a mysterious problem. Cartesianism shrank in horror from
the tangled forest of history: Vico plunged eagerly into that very
department of history where the historical flavour, so to speak, is
strongest; namely, that which is furthest and psychologically most
different from civilised periods. Cartesianism extended the psychology
of civilisation to all periods and nations: Vico was led to investigate
in all their profound divergencies and contradictions the modes of
feeling and thought proper to various times.

The great effort which had to be made, and actually was made by Vico,
in order to penetrate through modern intellectualism and recapture the
point of view of primitive psychology, is expressed in his language
about the "grave difficulties" entailed by his "labour of fully
twenty-five years" in the attempt to "stoop from these civilised
natures of ours to those absolutely wild and savage minds, which we
cannot picture to ourselves at all, and can only understand with great
toil." It is expressed again, rather differently, by his insistence
on the impossibility, now that, even with the common people, the
mind of man is too completely separated from the senses, accustomed
to the free use of abstract terms, sharpened by the art of writing,
and spiritualised so to speak by the employment of numbers,--the
impossibility of entering into the chaotic fancy of primitive man,
whose mind was the very reverse of abstract, acute or spiritual; but
rather sunk in the senses, blunted by passion, and buried in the body:
and of grasping such ideas as that of the "sympathy of nature." This
necessary effort--a painful one, but successful--was another reason
for his feeling that his science was "new." He says indeed that this
study of the ideal form and the historic period of certitude was
entirely lacking to Greek philosophy as a whole. Plato had attempted it
in the _Cratylus,_ but unsuccessfully, because he knew nothing of the
language of the first legislators, the heroic poets, and was deceived
by the altered and modernised forms under which the laws existed in
his time after continual revision at Athens. Among the moderns, J. C.
Scaliger, Francisco Sanchez and Gaspar Schopp had fallen into a similar
mistake when they attempted to explain language by the principles of
logic, and indeed of Aristotelian logic, in spite of its having arisen
centuries after language itself. Grotius, Selden, Puffendorf and the
other writers on natural rights also studied human nature as civilised
by religion and law; so that in retracing the course of history they
began in the middle: that is to say, they confined themselves to the
intellect, ignoring the imagination, and to the will under moral
restraint, passing over the undisciplined passions. Vico himself, while
he had shown his interest in this problem by undertaking to investigate
the "most ancient wisdom of Italy," was yet led astray in his study by
following the lead of the author of the _Cratylus._

In its philosophical aspect, the New Science might, owing to this
prominence given to the study of the individualising forms, above all
the imagination (since the doctrine that primitive man is a poet and
thinks in poetic images is in Vico's words the "master key" of the
work) be called, without undue paradox, a philosophy of Mind with
special attention to the Philosophy of Imagination or Aesthetic.

Aesthetic may in fact be considered as a discovery of Vico's, though
with the reservations to which the determination of discoveries and
discoverers is always subject; and although he did not deal with it in
a separate treatise or give it the happy title with which Baumgarten
christened it ten years or so later. It is interesting however to
notice that the terminology of the New Science lights upon a name
similar to one of the equivalents for Aesthetic which Baumgarten passes
in review; namely that of "the Logic of Poetry." But ultimately the
name matters little: what does matter is the fact: and the fact is that
Vico adopted a theory of poetry which was then and was still for a time
to be a bold and revolutionary innovation. At that time, as is well
known, the old practical or didactic theory held the field: the theory
which, starting late in the history of the ancient world, persisting
through the Middle Ages, and transplanted into the Renaissance,
regarded poetry as an ingenious disguise for the popularising of
lofty philosophical and theological ideas. Beside this theory, though
inferior in authority, stood another, which considered poetry as the
product of or means to diversion and pleasure. These views had come
to alter the original meaning of the Aristotelian treatise on poetry,
so as to be at last introduced into it and discovered there as if
Aristotle himself had held and written them. Nor was this mistake
corrected by Cartesianism, which, as we should expect from its general
direction, rather tended to enfeeble and annul the very object of
these definitions, as a thing of no value, or practically none. At a
time when philosophers were trying to reduce metaphysics and ethics to
a mathematical form, and despised concrete intuition: when men were
devising a literature and a poetry suited to disseminate science among
the common people or the world of fashion: when experiments were being
made in the construction of artificial, logical languages, superior to
those of past or present usage: when, finally, it was thought possible
to lay down rules for composing musical airs without being a musician,
and poems without being a poet: in this atmosphere of detachment,
coolness, hostility and mockery, only a miracle could arouse a
different and indeed opposite feeling--a warm and vivid consciousness
of the real nature of poetry in its original function: and this miracle
was worked by the keen, restless and stormy mind of Giambattista Vico.

He criticised at once the three doctrines of poetry as a means of
adorning and communicating intellectual truth, as merely subservient
to pleasure, and as a harmless mental exercise for those who can do
it. Poetry is not esoteric wisdom: it does not presuppose the logic
of the intellect: it does not contain philosophical judgments. The
philosophers, in finding these things in poetry, have simply put them
there themselves without realising it. Poetry is produced not by the
mere caprice of pleasure, but by natural necessity. It is so far
from being superfluous and capable of elimination, that without it
thought cannot arise: it is the primary activity of the human mind.
Man, before he has arrived at the stage of forming universals, forms
imaginary ideas. Before he reflects with a clear mind, he apprehends
with faculties confused and disturbed: before he can articulate, he
sings: before speaking in prose, he speaks in verse: before using
technical terms, he uses metaphors, and the metaphorical use of words
is as natural to him as that which we call "natural." So far from being
a fashion of expounding metaphysics poetry is distinct from and opposed
to metaphysics. The one frees the intellect from the senses, the other
submerges and overwhelms it in them: the one reaches perfection in
proportion as it rises to universality, the other, as it confines
itself to the particular: the one enfeebles the imagination, the other
strengthens it. The one takes precautions against turning the mind into
body, the other delights in giving body to the mind. The judgments
of poetry are composed of sense and emotion, those of philosophy are
composed of reflection, which if introduced into poetry makes it frigid
and unreal: and no one in the whole course of history has ever been at
once a great poet and a great metaphysician. Poets and philosophers
may be called respectively the senses and the intellect of mankind: and
in this sense we may retain as true the scholastic saying "there is
nothing in the intellect which was not first in the senses." Without
sense, we cannot have intellect: without poetry, we cannot have
philosophy, nor indeed any civilisation.

Almost more miraculous than this conception of poetry is the fact
that Vico saw into the true nature of language, a problem much less
canvassed and investigated, and no more satisfactorily solved, by
ancient and modern philosophy down to the present day. Language was
as a rule alternately confused with logic and debased into a mere
external and conventional sign, or else in despair referred to a
divine origin. Vico realised that the divine origin was in this
case a mere refuge of indolence; that language is neither logic nor
convention, and, like poetry, is neither esoteric wisdom nor due to
a decision or agreement. Language arises naturally. In its first
form, men express themselves "by mute actions," or by signs, and
"by bodies having natural connexions with the ideas which they wish
to indicate," _i.e._ by means of symbolic objects. But in the case
both of articulated languages and of common speech, all philologists
have, "with an excess of good faith," which means a deficiency of
insight, accepted the view that meanings are decided at pleasure:
whereas at the so-called origin of language meanings must have been
natural, and every common word must certainly have started from one
single individual of one nation, and been derived from the primitive
language of gestures and objects. In Latin, as in other tongues, it
is to be noticed that almost all the words are formed to express
natural properties, or used by transference: and the greater part of
every language, in every nation, is metaphorical. The opposite opinion
was due to the ignorance of grammarians, who, meeting with a great
number of words expressing confused and indistinct ideas, and not
knowing their origin, which had formerly made them lucid and distinct,
invented for their own peace of mind the conventional theory; and
dragged in Aristotle and Galen as against Plato and Iamblichus. The
serious objection generally brought against the natural origin of
language and in favour of the conventional, namely the variations in
the common speech among different nations, is solved by considering
that owing to diversities of climate, temperament and custom nations
looked at the same useful or necessary objects in different aspects,
and hence produced different languages. This is also seen in the case
of proverbs; which are substantially identical maxims of human life,
but expressed in as many different forms as there are, or have been,
different nations. The insistence, then, with which Vico claims to have
discovered the true origin of languages "in the principles of poetry"
is of especial importance. On the one hand, it entails the assertion of
the spontaneous and imaginative origin of language, and on the other
it tends implicitly if not explicitly to suppress the dualism between
poetry and language.

In these principles of poetry Vico found not only the origin of
languages, but also that of letters or writing. He pronounced the
separation of the two Origins, connected as they were by nature and
appearing, in the primitive dumb language of signs and objects, as
identical, to be a mere mistake of the grammarians. Here again, it
is no case of esoteric wisdom or convention. Hieroglyphics were not
invented by philosophers as a means of concealing the mysteries of
their lofty thoughts: they were a universal and natural necessity to
all primitive peoples: and only the alphabetic scripts arose among
nations by a free agreement. In other words Vico drew a distinction
(though in a confused manner) within the so-called scripts, between
those which are true scripts and therefore conventional, and
others which are directly expressive and are therefore language,
story-telling, poetry and painting. These expressive scripts or
languages are characterised by the inseparability of content from
form. They are poetical just in the sense that the story and its
expression are one and the same thing, namely a metaphor common to
poetry and painting, so that it could be depicted by a dumb man without
verbal expression. As examples, Vico quotes traditional anecdotes;
for instance, the five "real words" (the frog, the mouse, the bird,
the ploughshare and the bow) sent by Idanturas king of the Scythians
to Darius when the latter had declared war on him: and the parable of
the tall poppies which King Tarquin enacted before the eyes of his son
Sextus's ambassador, concerning the means of ruling Gabii--methods
of expression parallel to practices still found among savages and
the lower classes:--and in addition to these, heraldry, flags, and
the emblems upon medals and coins. There is a frivolous legend which
belittles and degrades the true value of heraldry by asserting it to
have been invented in German tournaments as a custom of gallantry
by young men seeking to win the love of noble maidens. But in the
Middle Ages heraldry was a serious thing. It was, so to speak, the
hieroglyphic script of the period: a wordless language to eke out the
poverty of ordinary speech and alphabetic writing. It was only later,
in times of culture, that it became a sport and a pleasure, and gallant
and learned blazonings were adopted which had to be enlivened by means
of mottoes because their own meaning was now merely analogical; while
primitive and natural heraldry was dumb, or rather spoke without
needing an interpreter. Even in the days of culture a few such
expressive forms retained this simplicity and naturalness. Flags or
ensigns for instance form a kind of armed language with which nations,
as if deprived of speech, make themselves understood in the wider
affairs of the natural rights of peoples; wars, alliances and commerce.

Thus in the light of Vico's aesthetical idea poetry, words, metaphors,
writing and graphic symbols are all illuminated and spring to life:
great things and small, epic poetry and heraldry. The doctrine of
imaginary forms was quite a new departure in the history of ideas: for
while Vico opposed his own conceptions to those of the contemporary
schools, especially the Cartesian, he by no means attached himself to
any other more or less remote school or tradition. He himself felt
that he was opposed not to a particular school but to all who had ever
formulated doctrines on the subject. He says that he has "overturned"
all the theories about poetry held by Plato, Aristotle, and so on down
to Patrizio, Scaliger and Castelvetro in modern times, all of whom
had lost themselves in ineptitudes which "even to mention makes one
ashamed." Patrizio made poetry begin with the songs of birds and the
whistling of the wind! As regards language, he had been ultimately
dissatisfied both with Plato and with the moderns Wolfgang Latius,
Scaliger and Sanchez. As regards writing, once the theory of divine
origin supported by Mallinkrot and Ingewald Eling was refuted, or
rather interpreted in his own way, which came to the same thing, he
made an attempt to discredit the futile, vague, ill-founded, misshapen,
pompous and absurd opinions which derived it from the Goths and through
them from Adam and personal instruction from God, or more directly from
the Earthly Paradise, or from a Gothic Mercury as inventor. Finally,
as to heraldry, he remarks that the writers on the subject have never
understood anything about it, and have only by a mere random guess let
fall a hint of the truth in calling it "heroic."

In fact it would be hard to find real and true precedents for Vico's
aesthetic conceptions. At most, we might indicate vague suggestions
contained in various scattered statements which he collects: a certain
immediate stimulus in the discussions of the seventeenth century on
the distinctions between intellect and genius, reason and imagination,
dialectic and rhetoric: and a certain convergence of external
particulars, such as the collection of rhetorical subtleties expressed
in subtleties of language, made by Tesauro, a rhetorician of the time.

These conceptions, however, produced as they were by a remarkable
stroke of originality, no sooner passed from general outline to
particular determinations, from the first idea or inspiration to
concrete development, than they appear to become confused, fluctuating
and unstable. We may set aside the various opinions successively held
by Vico, and bound up with the historical growth of his mind, upon
the subjects of poetry, language or metaphor, beginning with his
academic orations, passing thence by way of the _De ratione_ and _De
antiquissima_ to the _Diritto universale,_ from these to the first and
thence to the second _Scienza Nuova_: a study of these might supply
subject-matter for a special essay, but does not come within the scope
of our treatise. But even in the final form of his aesthetic thought,
contradictory doctrines exist side by side. He is not content with
saying, as he does say, that poetical form is the primary activity of
the mind; that it is composed of feelings of emotion; and that it is
entirely imaginative and devoid of concepts and reflection. He goes on
to add that poetry, as opposed to history, "represents reality in its
best idea," and therefore fulfils the justice and gives every man the
reward or punishment which he does not always get in history, governed
as the latter often is by caprice, necessity and chance. Again, he
says that the end of poetry is "to give life to the lifeless," since
its most sublime task is the attempt to give life and sensation to
insensible objects. He says that poetry is "nothing but imitation";
that children, with their great imitative powers, are poets; and that
primitive races, the children of mankind, were also sublime poets. He
says that poetry has for its special subject-matter "the impossible
made credible": for instance, it is impossible that body should be
mind, and yet it was believed that the thundering sky was Jupiter.
Hence the miracles performed by magicians by means of incantations
were a favourite subject of poetry. He says that poetry is due to
"poverty," that is, that it is a pathological product of the mind.
Since uncivilised man is of low brain-power and cannot satisfy the
thirst he feels for the general and the universal, he fills their place
by inventing imaginary genera, poetical universals or characters.
Consequently the truth of the poet is identical with the truth of the
philosopher: the one abstract, the other clothed in images: the one
a metaphysic of reason, the other a metaphysic of feeling and fancy,
suited to the understanding of the people. From poverty also, that is
from inability to articulate, arises song, and therefore mutes and
stammerers utter sounds which are songs: and metaphor arises from
inability to express things in an accurate manner. He says, finally,
that the aim of poetry is to teach the people to act virtuously.

These sayings indicate very various ideas about poetry, of which
some are compatible with the central doctrine but thrown out in a
disconnected manner and therefore not in fact reconciled with it:
others are quite incompatible. Vico might have been cited in turn, on
the testimony of single passages, as a supporter of the moralistic
theory of art, the didactic theory, the abstract or typical theory, the
mythological theory, the animistic theory, and so on. And if he neither
falls back into the old theories he hated, nor loses himself among
the new fallacies which followed him, it is due to the fact that all
these waverings and inconsistencies were continually submerged by the
thought that poetry is the primary form of the mind, prior to intellect
and free from reflection and reasoning.

Just as he was unable by the use of his leading principle to
distinguish and reconcile the other theories on the nature of poetry
which already existed or had been invented by himself, so he did
not succeed in escaping from the tyranny of old or new empirical
classifications. He struggled to reduce these in their turn to
philosophical form, and tried to deduce successively the various kinds
of poetry, epic, lyric and dramatic: the kinds of verse and metre,
spondaic, iambic and prose: the kinds of figurative language, metaphor,
metonymy, synecdoche and irony: the parts of speech, onomatopoeism,
interjection, pronoun, particle, noun and verb: the moods and tenses of
the verb (in which connexion he refers to a case of aphasia observed
by himself in Naples, "a gentleman seized with a severe apoplexy,
who utters nouns but has completely forgotten verbs"): the kinds of
writing, hieroglyphic, symbolic and alphabetical: and of languages,
according to their increasing complexity, from monosyllables to
compound words and from a preponderance of vowels and diphthongs
to a preponderance of consonants. In the course of these attempts
he frequently offered new and sometimes correct interpretations of
isolated facts: but he did not and could not connect them into a
scientific system. Moreover he never realised the relation between
poetry and the other arts. On the one hand, he unites them, as when he
considers painting and poetry to be fundamentally identical and notes
a number of analogies between the poetry and painting of the Middle
Ages: on the other, he separates them sharply, as when he asserts
that delicacy in art is the outcome of philosophy, and that painting,
sculpture, casting and intaglio are the most delicate arts because they
are compelled to abstract the surface of the material objects they
represent.

These inconsistencies and errors which we have briefly reviewed are due
partly to Vico's insufficient power of distinguishing and elaborating,
partly--and this is the greater part--to that fundamental fault which
we have already seen to exist in the structure of the New Science. In
this case the fault is, more precisely, Vico's confusion between the
philosophical concept of the poetic form of the mind, and the empirical
concept of the barbaric form of civilisation. "This earliest age of the
world," as he himself says, "can be truly said to have concerned itself
exclusively with the primary activity of the mind." But the earliest
age of the world, composed as it was of men of flesh and blood, not of
philosophical categories, cannot have been concerned with one solitary
activity of the mind. This single activity may have preponderated,
as we generally say: the very word reveals the quantitative and
approximative nature of the conception: but all the others must have
been at work simultaneously, imagination and intellect, perception and
abstraction, will and morality, song and arithmetic. Vico could not
shut his eyes to this obvious fact, and introduced into this phase of
civilisation not only the poet, but also the theologian, the physicist,
the astronomer, the _pater-familias,_ the warrior, the politician,
and the lawgiver; but he tried to regard the activities of all these
as "poetical" in character, as he called it, by a metaphor drawn from
the alleged preponderance of the imaginative form of the mind; and
the whole system he called "poetic wisdom." The metaphorical nature
of the terminology is suggested, in fact leaps to the eye, in certain
characteristic passages, as where the "arts," that is, the mechanical
crafts which produce objects of practical utility, are called "poetry
with a certain kind of reality," and where ancient Roman law, because
of the abundance of formulae and ceremonies with which it was adorned,
is said to be a "serious dramatic poem." But the metaphors are
dangerous, since, as in the case of the New Science, they light upon
a soil favourable to their growth into concepts: and in point of fact
the historical phase of barbarism, metaphorically expressed as poetic
wisdom, soon turned in Vico's mind into the ideal phase of poetry, and
transferred all its own attributes to this ideal phase. The former
included theologians, and accordingly Vico regarded poetry as theology,
but an imaginative theology: teachers, and poetry became a teacher,
but of the common people: natural scientists, and it became science,
but the science of an imaginary world. And since these barbarians,
uncultivated as they were and confined to the world of images, could
not think in concepts, the imaginations of poetry, individualised and
particular, and its judgments, always expressed in material form,
were falsely interpreted as "imaginative universals," supposed to be
something intermediate between the individualising intuition and the
universalising concept. Poetry, which ought to represent sense and
nothing else, came to represent a sense already intellectualised; and
the saying that nothing is found in the intellect that has not already
been in the sense, acquired the meaning, that the intellect is nothing
but the sense clarified, and the sense nothing but the intellect
confused. Thus there was no further need for the added caution
"except the intellect itself" (_nisi intellectus ipse_). Conversely,
barbaric civilisation became a kind of mythological or allegorical
representation of the ideal phase of poetry, and primitive tribes were
transformed into crowds of "sublime poets" just as, in the ontogenesis
corresponding to this philogenesis, children had been made into poets.
The concept of the "imaginative universal" unites in itself the double
contradiction of the doctrine; since to the imaginative element must
be joined, in this mental construction, the element of universality
which taken by itself would be a true and proper universal, rational
and not imaginative. Hence arises a _petitio principii_ by which the
origin of the rational universal, the point requiring explanation, is
already presupposed. On the other hand, if the imaginative universal is
interpreted as freed from the element of universality, that is, as a
mere imagination, Vico's aesthetic doctrine would certainly become once
more consistent: but his "poetic wisdom" or barbaric civilisation would
be deprived of an indispensable portion of its organism in parting with
every kind of concept: for concepts are, so to speak, the skeleton of
the body.

To resolve the contradiction it was necessary to separate poetry from
poetic wisdom: and we do find some signs of this separation in Vico. He
sometimes admits, almost against his will, the lack of correspondence
between the philosophical category and the type of society, and in
dealing with the latter is compelled to fall back upon such phrases
as "very nearly" and "more or less." He says, for instance, that
primitive man consisted "exclusively of strong imagination, with no,
or very little, reason": that he was "almost all body, with hardly
any reflection": or again, after making a show of philosophical
distinction between the three languages of gods, heroes and men, he
goes on to observe that "the language of the gods was almost all dumb,
and very little articulate; the language of heroes was composed of
equal quantities of articulation and dumb-show; the language of men
was almost all articulated, and very little in dumb-show." He admits
again in a fine simile that poetic speech out-lived poetic wisdom and
survived far into the historic and civilised period, "as great and
rapid rivers run far out into the sea and keep their waters fresh as
they bear them along with the force of their flow." Even in modern
times we cannot afford entirely to neglect imaginative speech: "to
describe the operations of the pure mind, we must avail ourselves of
poetic language, of metaphors drawn from the senses." It appears that
poetry does not end with barbarism, for poets arise even in civilised
times: and if it is said that the poets of the earliest times were
naturally imaginative, those of later days artificially so, that is,
according to Vico, by deliberately forgetting the proper use of words,
freeing themselves from philosophy, filling their minds with childish
and vulgar prejudices and submitting to the bondage of conventions like
the use of rhyme--all these restrictions, besides being easily refuted,
are merely an unsuccessful attempt to diminish the weight of the fact
above mentioned, namely that poetry belongs to all ages, not merely to
that of barbarism: it is an ideal category, not a historic fact. But
the restrictions prove, as also do the infrequency and the unemphatic
nature of the passages quoted, that Vico was not in a position to
effect the separation of poetry from poetic wisdom, hampered as he was
by the hybrid character of the concept and of the actual method of the
New Science.

If, on the other hand, the idea of poetry as pure imagination had not
remained firmly at the foundation of Vico's thought, in spite of all
the confusions and inconsistencies in which it became involved, and
had not been at work underground, so to speak, in the New Science,
it would have been difficult or perhaps impossible to understand the
leading conception which dominates his philosophy of mind, closely
connected as it is with that idea. This is the conception of the mind
as a development, or, to use Vico's own words, a progress or unfolding
(_corso, spiegamento_); a conception which improved upon, though it
did not explicitly contradict, the ordinary view which was almost
exclusively confined to the enumeration and classification of the
mind's faculties. The doctrine of imaginative universals as spontaneous
mental products, rudimentary universals but not without an element of
truth in them, was at least an adequate weapon against the empirical
theory which made civilisation the outcome of a highly developed and
rational practical wisdom and the personal labour of God or of wise
men who must have sprung from the earth or fallen from heaven in some
unaccountable manner.

Vico clearly stated the dilemma between the two, and only two, possible
explanations of the origin of society. Either it came from the
reflection of wise men, or from a certain human feeling and instinct
among brutish men. He accepted the latter solution, that of "brutes"
which gradually became human: the theory, that is, of the evolution
of thought from the imaginative to the rational universal, and the
progress of social relations from force to equity. But was this an
adequate foundation for "ideal history" or the philosophy of mind? In
the philosophy of mind, it could be translated into a similar if not
identical view--the doctrine which, owing to Cartesianism and a certain
recrudescence of the Scholasticism of Duns Scotus, lasted down to
Vico's own times and expressed the life of the mind by the successive
stages of the concept, obscurity, confusion, clarity and distinctness.
Leibniz, as is well known, made a special study of obscure and
confused perceptions, the _"petites perceptions."_ The doctrine was
essentially intellectualistic, since the concepts, however confused
or obscure, were never anything else than concepts: and hence it was
unable to account either for poetry or even for mental development,
the dialectic of which cannot be understood if it is regarded as
consisting of merely quantitative differences. Such differences are
in reality not differences at all, but identities and therefore the
negation of change: and in fact the whole of this school of thought was
anti-aesthetic and static, devoid both of a true theory of imagination
and a true theory of development. Vico's thought, on the other hand,
was averse to intellectualism and in sympathy with imagination: it was
entirely dynamic and evolutionary. For Vico, mind is an eternal drama:
and since drama demands antithesis, his philosophy of mind is rooted
in antithesis, that is in the real distinction and opposition between
imagination and thought, poetry and metaphysic, force and equity,
passion and morality; although he seems sometimes, for the reasons
given above, to mistake its nature; or rather, although he actually
does sometimes confuse it with empirical inquiries and doctrines, and
with the determinations of history.




CHAPTER V


THE SEMI-IMAGINATIVE FORM OF KNOWLEDGE

(MYTH AND RELIGION)


Vico's doctrine of mythology, while no less original and profound than
that of poetry, is also, like the latter, not entirely lucid: for the
relations between poetry and myth are so close that the shadow cast
upon the one must of necessity extend to some degree over the other.

In proceeding to inquire, as we have hitherto done and shall
continue to do, into the state of contemporary knowledge of the
several sciences and problems with which Vico set out to deal, we
may briefly recall _à propos_ of the study of mythology not only the
great literary collections of myths formed during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, of which Boccaccio had already given an example
in the fourteenth century, but also the learned defences of the two
explanatory theories, already known to classical antiquity and not
entirely unknown in the Middle Ages. These were, first, the theory
of myth as allegory of philosophical truths (moral, political and so
forth), and secondly, the theory of myth as the history of actual
persons and events, adorned by the fancy which made heroes into gods
(Euhemerism). The former tendency inspired among other works the
_Mythologiae sive explanationis fabularum libri decem_ of Natale Conti
(1568) and Bacon's _De sapientia veterum_ (1609); in which, however,
this system had been advanced with a certain hesitation, and with
the explicit caution that, even if it were not valid as historical
interpretation, it would always be of value as moralisation (_aut
antiquitatem illustrabimus aut res ipsas:_ "we shall explain either
antiquity or the facts themselves"). The latter was authoritatively
represented by John Leclerc (Clericus), the learned Dutch Genevese for
whom Vico expressed so much respect and gratitude for the attention he
had deigned to bestow upon his _Diritto universale._ His edition of
Hesiod's _Theogony_ marked an epoch in the study of mythology, and he
was followed among others by Banier, author of the work _Les Fables
expliquées par l'histoire_(1735). A third system, also not without some
ancient precedent, derived myths from particular nations, the Egyptians
or the Hebrews, or from the original works of individual philosophers
and poets. This view, when it neither resolved itself into a pure and
simple historical supposition as to the origin of some or all myths,
nor appealed to divine revelation, clearly involved the theory that
myth is not an eternal form but a contingent product of the mind, born
at a certain time and capable of dying or already dead.

Vico strongly opposed the first and third of these views of mythology,
namely the allegorical theory and that of historical derivation.
On the allegorical view, he mentions Bacon's treatise, which had
stimulated him to the study of the subject, out which he considered
"more ingenious than sound": on the other school, which regarded myths
as sacred history altered and corrupted by the Gentiles and especially
by the Greeks, he refers to Vossius's _De theologia gentili_ (1642)
and to a dissertation by Daniel Huet. Myths or fables do not contain
esoteric wisdom, that is to say, rational concepts, subtly concealed by
the veil of fable: hence they are not allegorical. Allegory implies on
the one hand the concept or thing signified, on the other the fable
or medium of concealment, and between the two, the art by which both
are kept in equilibrium. But myths cannot be split up into these three
moments, nor even into a thing signified and a thing which signifies
it: their meaning is univocal. The theory also implies that a believer
in the content does not believe in the form: but the makers of myths
believed fully and ingenuously in their own work. Once, for instance,
that first divine fable was created, the myth than which none greater
was ever afterwards invented, that of Jupiter, king and father of gods
and men, in the act of thundering, the very men who had invented him
believed in him, and with their religion of terror feared, reverenced
and worshipped him.

Myth, in a word, is not fable but history of such a kind as could
be constructed by primitive minds, and strictly considered by them
as an account of actual fact. The philosophers who arose later made
use of myths to expound their doctrines in an allegorical manner; or
deceived themselves into thinking that they found them there owing to
the feeling of veneration which attaches to antiquity, and increases
as our comprehension of it diminishes; or thought it expedient to make
use of such things for political purposes, like Plato Homerising, and
at the same time Platonising Homer: and in doing this they turned the
myths into fables, which they were not originally, and are essentially
not. Thus we may say that the philosophers and students of mythology
who indulged in such strange fancies about the legends were the real
poets, while the primitive poets or myth-makers were the true students,
and intended to narrate the actual facts of their time. For the same
reason, namely, because myth is an essential part of poetic or barbaric
wisdom, and, as such, a spontaneous product of all times and places,
it cannot be attributed to one single nation as its inventor, from
which it passed to others; as if it were a particular discovery of a
particular man or the object of revelation.

This doctrine, superior as it is to the allegorical and historical
theories, is another aspect of Vico's vindication of the non-logical
forms of knowledge as against the intellectualism which denied
them and merely represented them either as artificial forms or as
due to supernatural causes. Nor does the opinion seem acceptable
which attaches Vico to the Neo-Euhemeristic school. He does not
indeed explicitly combat this school, and we may even grant that he
presents certain superficial resemblances to it: but together with
the resemblances there is this radical difference, that for Vico the
stories are not alterations of actual history, but are essentially
history; their supposed alteration is the actual truth as it appeared
to the primitive mind.

Vico did not and could not give a more precise determination of the
nature of myth, precisely because owing to the fluctuating character
of his concept of poetry, itself he was not in a position to lay down
the boundary between the two forms. He talks generally of poetry and
myth as distinct things, but he does not establish the distinction.
And yet Vico was familiar enough with the concept which supplies
this distinctive criterion, and had enunciated it: but instead of
using it for his doctrine of mythology, he had made of it one or
more of his various definitions of poetry. That "poetic character,"
that "imaginative universal" whose introduction into aesthetic as
the explanatory principle of poetry causes so many insuperable
difficulties, is really the definition of mythology, and as such
provides the science of mythology with the true principle that is
required. If the concept of accomplishing great labours for the common
welfare cannot be disengaged from the idea of a particular man who
accomplished one of these labours, this concept becomes for instance
the myth of Hercules: and Hercules is at once an individual man who
does individual actions, and kills the Lernaean hydra and the Nemean
lion or cleanses the stables of Augeas, and also a concept: just as
the concept of beneficent and glorious labour is at once a concept and
Hercules: a universal and an imaginary idea: an imaginative universal.

Again, that sublime task which Vico declared proper to poetry, the task
of giving life to inanimate objects, belongs properly not to poetry
but to myth. Mythology, embodying its concepts in images, which are
always individual things, at last animates them like living beings.
Thus primitive man, ignorant of the cause of lightning and therefore
not possessing the scientific definition of it, was led by the
mythological tendency to conceive the sky as a vast living being, who,
like man himself when, in the grip of his fierce passions, he shouted,
muttered or roared, spoke and meant something by his speech. It is
mythology again, not poetry, whose origin must be traced to "poverty,"
to the weakness of men's minds and their inability to deal with the
problems they would solve, in their incapacity for thinking in rational
universals and expressing themselves in accurate language, whence
arose imaginative universals and metonymy, synecdoche and metaphor
of all kinds. The contradictions we have seen in the imaginative
universal which make it incapable of acting as the foundation of an
aesthetic doctrine are quite in keeping in the doctrine of myth: for
myth consists precisely of these contradictions: it is a concept
trying to be an image and an image trying to be a concept, and hence a
kind of poverty, or even of powerful impotence,--a contrast, a mental
transition where white no longer exists and black has not yet come
into being. Finally, poetic wisdom, that is, the theology, science,
cosmography, geography, astronomy and the whole system of other ideas
and beliefs of primitive nations as Vico describes them, was really
mythology, not, as he says, poetry, for the good reason, given by
himself, that these things were their history: and poetry is poetry and
not history, even more or less imaginary history. The Homeric poems are
poetry in so far as they express the aspirations of Hellenism: the same
poems, in so far as they were recited and heard as accounts of actual
facts, are history: the two things being forms of mental products
which, though they seem to be materially united in a single work, are
not for that reason to be identified.

All this was both seen and not seen, or rather, sometimes realised and
sometimes overlooked, by Vico: and hence he cannot be said to have
succeeded in determining satisfactorily the distinction, and solving
the problem of the relation, between mythology and poetry. Another
problem of importance relating to the science of mythology, and still
the subject of controversy, namely, the question whether myth belongs
to philosophy or to history, might be supposed to have been decisively
solved by Vico: since he repeats over and over again that myths contain
the historical judgments of primitive peoples, not the philosophical.
But in reality when we examine the point closely it appears that he
neither solved the problem nor even propounded it. The historical
judgments of which Vico is speaking are contrasted strictly not with
philosophical judgments in general but with the "mystical judgments
of the earliest philosophy" and the "judgments of analogy" which the
writers criticised by Vico found in mythology. Thus on the one hand his
words repeat the criticism of the allegorical theory and, on the other,
controvert that fallacious method of historical interpretation which
ascribes the ideas and customs of to-day to the nations of antiquity.
The fact is that Vico's theory is just as much in agreement with the
theory connecting myth with philosophy as with that which connects it
with history; and as much with the eclecticism which admits both these
elements as with the speculative view which also admits them both, but
because philosophy and history both in themselves and as constituents
of myth are at bottom one and the same.

Considered as "poverty," myth must be superseded. In the natural
effort of the human mind to rejoin God, the true One, from whom it
has come, and its inability owing to the exuberant animal nature of
primitive man to make use of the faculty, buried as it is beneath his
too keen senses, of abstracting from subjects their properties and
universal forms,--in these circumstances, it constructs for itself
fanciful unities, imaginary genera or myths: but in its subsequent
progress and development, it gradually resolves the imaginary genera
into intelligible genera, poetic universals into rational, and sets
itself free from mythology. Thus the error of myth passes into the
truth of philosophy. Vico knew and employed a concept of error, error
properly so called, which proceeds from the will, not from thought,
which is never in error as regards itself, "for the mind is always
put under compulsion by truth, since we can never lose sight of God"
(_mens enim semper a vero urgetur quia numquam aspectu amittere
possumus Deum_); the error which consists in the arbitrary conjunction
of unmeaning words, "but words very often, by the will of him who
is lying, escape the force of truth and desert the mind, or even do
violence to the mind and turn away from God" (_verba autem saepissime
veri vim voluntate mentientis eludunt ac mentem deserunt, immo menti
vim aciunt et Deo absistunt_); the error, in a word, which exists when,
in his own powerful language, "though men speak with their mouth,
they have nothing in their minds; since within their minds there is
falsity, which is nothing." But he also knows that error is never
pure error, simply because there is no such thing as a false idea and
falsity consists only in the wrong combination of ideas, and therefore
it always contains truth, and every fable has a certain element of
truth. Hence, far from despising fables, Vico recognised their value
as embryonic forms so to speak of stored-up knowledge or of what will
one day develop into philosophy. The poets (which means, in Vico's new
sense of the word, myth-makers) are the senses (that is, in its new
meaning, rudimentary and imperfect philosophy): the philosophers are
the intellect of mankind, that is the more highly developed philosophy
which derives from the former. The idea of God evolves by degrees from
the God who strikes the imagination of the isolated man, to the God
of the family, _divi parentum,_ the God of a social class or country,
_divi patrii,_ the God of nations, and finally to the God "who is
Jupiter to all men," the God of humanity. The fables stimulated Plato
to understand the three divine punishments which not men but only gods
could inflict, oblivion, infamy and remorse: the passage through the
lower world suggested to him the concept of the purgatorial journey
by which the soul is purified of passions, and the arrival in Elysium
suggested the journey of union by which the mind comes to unite itself
with God by the contemplation of the eternal divine ideas.

From the similes and metaphors of the poets Aesop drew the examples
and fables by which he gave advice: and the instance founded upon
a single case which satisfies an untutored mind developed into
induction, drawing its validity from several similar cases, as taught
dialectically by Socrates, and thence the syllogism invented by
Aristotle, which cannot exist without a universal. The etymologies
of words reveal the truths observed by primitive man and deposited
by him in his language: for instance the fact, laboriously proved by
modern philosophers, that the senses themselves create the so-called
sensible qualities is already suggested in the Latin word _olfacere,_
which implies the idea that the sense of smell "makes" the odour. Vico
attaches such importance to this connexion between poetic universals
and rational universals, between myth and philosophy, that he is led
to assert that such judgments of philosophers as cannot find parallel
or precedent in poetic and popular wisdom must be wrong. Here we have
another meaning sometimes assigned by him to the relation of philosophy
to philology: namely, a reciprocal confirmation of common wisdom by
esoteric wisdom and _vice versa,_ both of which are united in the idea
of an everlasting philosophy of man.

Simultaneously with his theory of myth and its relation to philosophy,
Vico expounds his theory of religion, and the relation it bears to
philosophy. Two thoughts on this subject are to be found up and down
the New Science. The first is, that religion arises in the phase of
weakness and savagery from the mind's need to allay its desire to
understand more or less the phenomena of nature and man; for instance,
to explain lightning. The second is, that religion is produced in
the mind by fear of the person who threatens by lightning. We might
describe these two views as theories respectively of the theoretical
and practical origin of religion; and since according to Vico's
doctrine man consists of nothing but intellect and will, clearly
religion can have no other origin than these two. Now, setting aside
religion in its practical aspect, to be discussed later, religion in
its theoretical aspect is surely nothing else than the imaginative
universal, poetic animism, or myth. To it belongs the institution
which Vico calls divination; that is, the methods of collecting and
interpreting the language of Jupiter, the "real words," gestures and
signs of God, formed as imaginative universals and created by the
animating fancy. And as from myth come science and philosophy, so in
like manner from divination comes the knowledge of ground and cause,
philosophic or scientific prediction.

In this way Vico escaped the prejudice which was beginning to prevail
in his time--we may recall Van Dale's history of ancient oracles,
popularised by Fontenelle, and Banier's book already mentioned--and
was to be so powerful for a century, of considering religions as
"some one else's imposture": whereas, he says, they were really due
to "one's own credulity." The man who refused to admit the artificial
origin of myth could not admit it of religion. But just as he denied
no less the supernatural or revealed origin of myth, so at the same
time he proclaimed neither more nor less than the natural, even
the human, origin of religions; and--a fact especially worthy of
notice--placed this origin in an inadequate form of the mind, namely
the semi-imaginative form identical with mythology. Nor need we
attach weight to certain brief and incidental remarks which seem to
contradict this theory, as when he says that religion precedes not only
philosophy but language itself, which presupposes the consciousness
of some community between man and man: such equivocations are due to
the invariable confusedness of his method and his habitual lack of
clearness. The identification of religion with myth, and its human
origin, are ideas not only emphatically expressed, but essential to
Vico's whole system. It is a human origin which in his own words
does not exclude a different concept of religion, namely as revealed
and hence of supernatural origin. In fact he always separates
poetic theology, which is mythology, and natural theology, which is
metaphysics or philosophy, from revealed theology. But this last
concept is admitted by him not because it is connected with the others
and derived from a principle common to them, but simply because Vico
asserted its existence no less than theirs. The human origin, poetic
theology, followed by metaphysical theology, is the form valid for
the Gentile portion of mankind, that is the whole human race except
the Hebrew people with its privilege of revelation. The motives that
led Vico to maintain this dualism and the annoying inconsistencies
in which it compelled him to rest will be seen later on in their own
place. But precisely because Vico left this dualism without mediation,
we must in expounding his thought hold fast both terms of the dualism:
and for the time being we will confine ourselves to the merely human
origin--religion as a product of the theoretical needs of man in a
condition of comparative moral poverty. This conception has only an
indirect connexion with Bruno's view of religion as a thing necessary
to the ignorant and undeveloped mob, and with Campanula's theory
of natural or permanent religion, an eternal rational philosophy
coinciding with a Christianity freed from its abuses. Its parallels
in contemporary authors are few and distant: even when they mention
it in passing, they grasp it only in a superficial way and propound
it without connecting it at all with their other ideas: they attack
religion as a form of ignorance, and omit the wisdom of the ignorance,
or religion as truth.




CHAPTER VI


THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS


Vico's other doctrines on the theoretical reason, that is to say on
the logic of philosophy, of physical and mathematical science and of
historical study, have been expounded above in the statement of his
theory of knowledge, and are drawn almost entirely from his early
works, since in the New Science the phase of the "completely developed
mind" hardly appears except as a limit of the field of study. Here it
will suffice to mention that he also touches upon the problem of the
relation of poetry to history: but, still because of the confusion
of philosophy with social science, he fails fully to solve it. From
one point of view it seems to Vico that history is prior to poetry,
because the latter, as he says, presupposes reality and contains an
"imitation of the second degree": from another, poetry is the primary
form, because among primitive peoples history is poetry, and the first
historians are poets. At any rate he insists upon the poetic element
essential to history: of Herodotus, the father of Greek history,
he observes that not only are "his books full, for the most part,
of fables," but "the style retains a very great Homeric element, a
feature which all subsequent historians retained, using as they did
a phraseology intermediate between the poetic and the colloquial":
"almost the words of the poets," _verba ferme poetarum,_ as he says
elsewhere in a phrase borrowed from Cicero.

Nor are the relations between theory and practice, intellect and
will, explained in detail by Vico, although on the whole he suggests
the general idea that as in God intellect and will coincide, so it
is in man, God's image; whose mind is not divided into thought and
will--thought proceeding according to one method and will according to
another--but his thought and will interpenetrate and form one single
whole: a view far superior to that of the contemporary philosophy
of Leibniz, which retained the idea of a divine arbitrament and
therefore of irrationality. Another view, peculiar to Vico, might
be taken by a hasty interpreter to imply the priority of practice
to theory. He says that philosophers arrive at their conceptions
thanks to experience of social institutions and laws in which men
agree as a kind of universals: that Socrates and Plato, for instance,
presupposed the Athenian democracy and law-courts. But the succession
of religions producing republics, republics producing laws, and laws
producing philosophical ideas, which he calls "a fragment of the
history of philosophy philosophically narrated," is really a theory of
sociological, not of philosophical value.

As regards his doctrines of practical reason, which we are here
beginning to consider, it might be thought that Vico, unlike his
attitude with regard to the theoretical reason, did not stand in sharp
opposition to the thought of his time, but actually united himself with
a contemporary movement, namely the school of natural rights. The head
of the school and leader of the movement, Hugo Grotius, was called by
Vico one of his "four authors," together with Plato, from whom he had
drawn his aspirations towards an idealistic philosophy, Bacon, who had
aroused in his mind the idea of a positive and historical science of
society, and Tacitus, his debt to whom, or at least the debt which he
believed he owed him, we shall examine later on. Along with Grotius he
frequently mentions the other chief authorities on natural rights,
Selden and Puffendorf, omitting their innumerable followers, whom he
considers less as scientific authorities than as "adorners" of the
Grotian system.

His adherence to the school, in a certain sense, is clear, and is
admitted and proclaimed by Vico himself. But it is also beyond doubt
that he was no mere adherent: he was not a follower of the kind that
retains the general or leading ideas while developing and correcting
details. He was a follower in the dialectical sense only, that is,
in so far as he thought it necessary to contest the primary theses,
or to accept them only in a profoundly modified form. Natural right
offered him not solutions but problems: and of these, while some came
before him already clearly formulated, others, and these were the more
important, arose only in his own mind: problems either unsolved or
unrealised, till Vico propounded and in part solved them.

Natural rights presented many aspects and many tendencies: and it
would be well to begin by distinguishing and enumerating these. In
the first place, the school taken as a whole and in its essential
character expressed the social progress by which Europe, on emerging
from feudalism and religious warfare, acquired a new consciousness,
distinctively bourgeois and non-clerical in character; and it
observed that the growth of this consciousness was contemporaneous
with the anti-clerical and bourgeois institution of "masonry." The
word "natural" meant, among other things, "not supernatural": and
hence implied hostility or indifference towards the supernatural,
the institutions representing it, and the social conflicts resulting
from it. It was not by accident that Grotius was an Arminian; that
Puffendorf went to law with theologians; that Thomasius is remembered
as one of the champions of freedom of conscience. The protestations of
respect for religion and the church, habitually and liberally inserted
by these publicists in their works,--which are draped, so to speak,
with a veil of piety,--were merely politic safeguards, enabling the
author to threaten the enemy unobserved and to strike from under cover.
This caution is praised, in Grotius's case for example, by a follower
of the school (the author of _Pauco plenior iuris naturalis historia,_
1719), who extols the master as "the instrument of divine providence,"
coming like Messiah to redeem the "natural light" from its bondage to
the "supernatural," and as such gifted with all the power and ability
he could need: so that after tasting the persecutions of Scholasticism,
"he behaved with caution, to avoid further irritating the jealousy
against his natural and reasonable prudence that had issued forth from
its lair at his threats" (_caute versabatur ... ne maius bilem adversus
prudentiam naturalem et rationalem ex latebris productam tam minis
irritaret_), and in proceeding to separate human from divine laws,
did not execute a frontal assault on the theological school when he
attacked its fundamental errors, but even praised it in the preface to
his work. The word "natural" also denoted what is common to individuals
of different nations and ranks: and hence from a practical point of
view provided an admirable war-cry for uniting the bourgeoisie of
different countries in definite common aspirations and struggles. The
treatises of natural rights were for the bourgeoisie of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries what the "Manifesto of the communists" and the
cry "Proletariates of the world, unite" attempted to be for the working
classes of the nineteenth.

In so far as this school and this publicism were signs of a practical
movement, the philosophical interest held in them a secondary place
and discharged a function of minor importance: so that, secondly, the
works on natural right, philosophically considered, did not as a rule
rise above a simple popular empiricism. The principles on which they
rest are not examined and often not even superficially reconciled: the
concepts which they use are less concepts than general representations:
and the form of the writing is systematic in appearance only. Some
of these writers endeavoured to harmonise their doctrines of natural
right with the Platonic, Stoic or Cartesian philosophies, or appealed
to logical or metaphysical axioms, or made use of deduction and the
mathematical method. But all this was mere aggregation, not fusion;
ornament, not reinforcement: at most, it was of value as a proof of
diligence and earnest intentions.

The philosophy, however, which was more or less implicit in the
pamphleteers of natural rights, and explicit in the philosophers who
set out to elaborate the doctrine, agreed with the spirit of the
time, whose general characteristics are well known. Thus arose the
third or ethical aspect of natural right, namely its utilitarianism;
sometimes more or less concealed, sometimes openly declared, and
worked out from time to time by a philosophy of mathematical or
sensationalistic methods, and of materialistic or rationalistic
tendencies: or else, what comes practically to the same thing, an
abstract and intellectualistic morality, threatening at any moment to
fall into utilitarianism. From this intellectualism and utilitarianism,
combined with the practical and revolutionary character of this mental
movement,--which was bent rather upon bringing about the triumph of
an abstract system of right than upon recognising that which really
develops in history, in all the complexity of its many forms and
vicissitudes--derived its fourth characteristic, the lack of historical
sense, or the anti-historical attitude of the school, which set up the
abstract ideal of a human nature apart from human history instead of
fused with and living in it.

Finally, bourgeois, anticlerical, utilitarian and materialistic as it
was, the movement of natural right had a fifth important trait, namely
its aversion to transcendence and its tendency towards an immanental
conception of man and of society. This characteristic is neither fully
explained nor fully worked out in the doctrines, but is none the less
easily recognised among the total views of the school.

Now Vico's genius was truly and indeed exclusively theoretical, and not
at all practical or reformatory: his method was profoundly speculative
and contemptuous of empiricism, his mind idealistic and opposed to
materialism and utilitarianism: his theory of knowledge eager for the
concrete, for "certitude," and, as such, of historical sympathies.
Consequently his doctrine of the practical reason, though deriving its
impetus from the theory of natural rights, was bound to emerge in a
shape different from or even contrary to that theory in all the first
four characteristics enumerated above. And if it did in one respect
coincide--which it only does in the conclusion, not in the path by
which the conclusion is reached--it did so in the very point in which
Vico would least have wished it: in its immanental or anti-religious
tendency.

But since our subject is not the criticisms and modifications which the
theory of natural right received from Vico's thought, but rather that
thought itself, it is time to pick up the thread of the exposition,
following an order somewhat different from that in which we have
summed up the various characteristics of the theory, and beginning by
observing Vico's opposition to the professed or implicit utilitarianism
of the school, and the ethical doctrine by which he replaced it.

The two chief representatives of utilitarianism in the seventeenth
century, whom Vico always keeps in view, are Hobbes and Spinoza: but in
addition to them, he refers to Locke and Bayle and, in the preceding
century, Machiavelli; and going back to the ancients, the Stoics with
their conception of faith and the Epicureans with that of chance,
Carneades and his scepticism, and finally the unconscious theory
contained in the saying "_Vae victis_" attributed to Brennus, chief
of the Gauls who took Rome. He admired Hobbes's splendid attempt to
enrich philosophy by a theory which had been lacking to the greatest
days of Greece, the theory of man considered in the whole society
of the human race: but he pronounced the result unsatisfactory, and
the attempt, whose outcome, like that of Locke's system, was hardly
distinguishable from Epicureanism, a failure. Hobbes did not observe
that he could never have propounded his problem of the natural rights
of mankind had not his motive been supplied by the Christian religion
itself, which commands not indeed justice but charity to all mankind.
With the Stoics on the other hand, with the fatalism and determinism
which made it impossible for them to reason soundly about the state and
laws, with the so-called "Spinozists of antiquity," he ideally united
Spinoza; the uniqueness of whose utilitarianism, equally removed from
the Lockian spirit and the Hobbist, since Spinoza "judges of the truth
of things by the mind, not by sense" (_mente non sensu de veris rerum
diiudicat_), did not escape Vico's notice. But unique though it was,
it led Spinoza to think of the state in a somewhat undignified way
"as of a mere society of shopkeepers." These utilitarian doctrines,
with their libels upon human nature, seemed to Vico only fit for men
without hope, too insignificant ever to have a share in the state or
proud enough to believe themselves repressed and denied access to the
positions of which in their arrogance they thought themselves worthy.
Among these he counted the unfortunate Spinoza, who, he thinks, having
as a Jew no country of his own, was moved by envy to devote himself to
the construction of a metaphysic "intended to overthrow all the nations
of the world." He passes stern judgment upon the state of contemporary
ethics, which was all that it could be on the basis of a mechanistic
and materialistic metaphysic without a gleam of finalism. Descartes
produced nothing at all in this field, since his few written remains
on the subject do not amount to a doctrine, and his treatise of the
Passions belongs rather to medicine than to morals. Malebranche and
Nicole were equally sterile, and Pascal's _Pensées,_ the one exception,
are "but scattered lights." Of the Italians, Pallavicino's treatise
_Del bene_ offers no very profound depths of ethics: and Muratori's
attempt in his _Filosofia Morale_ was a very unsuccessful one.

Utility is not the explanatory principle of morality, because it
proceeds from man's bodily nature, and on that account is subject to
change, while morality, _honestas,_ is eternal. To derive morality
from utility is to confound the occasion with the cause, to confine
oneself to the surface and to offer no explanation at all of the facts.
None of the various modes in which philosophers have successively
called the utilitarian principle to life, fraud or imposture, force,
desire,--none of these accounts for differentiation, that is, for the
social organism. What fraud could ever have seduced and deceived the
supposed simple and frugal first owners of the land, living as they did
perfectly contented with their lot? What force could have succeeded,
if the rich, the alleged usurpers, were few, and the poor, the
robbed, were many? Such explanations are ridiculous, and unworthy of
a serious problem. These strong and powerful men were really powerful
with something other than mere strength: thus they became protectors
of the weak and enemies of destructive and anti-social tendencies:
their rule was one of force, it is true, but "imposed by a more
powerful character" (_a natura praestantiori dictata_); a fact which
the barbarian Brennus may be pardoned for not knowing, but not so a
philosopher. The force which created and organised the earliest states
was nothing but "noble human nature," to which states must always hark
back, although they may have been won by fraud and force, in order
to subsist and maintain themselves: which agrees with Machiavelli's
advice to hark back to the beginnings, but with the implication that
the deepest beginnings are to be found in mercy and justice. Men are
held together by something stouter than utility. Human society cannot
originate and endure without mutual trust; unless people accept each
other's promises and take each other's word for facts they cannot
examine. Could this trust be perhaps ensured by strict penal laws
against falsehood? But laws are a product of society, and this mutual
trust is necessary that society may arise. It may be said, as it is by
Locke, that we are dealing with a psychological process, by which men
gradually acquired the habit of believing when some one spoke to them
and promised to tell the truth. But in that case these men already
understood the idea of a truth which by mere disclosure compelled
assent without any personal teaching; and the psychological principle
of habituation is transcended.

The true cause of human society then is not utility, which only assists
the action of the cause as its occasion, and brings it about that men,
with all the weakness and poverty of their nature, and the divisions
among them due to original sin, are led to extol their social nature
"under compulsion of facts" (_rebus ipsis dictantibus_), in the phrase
of the jurist Pomponius, quoted with approval by Vico. Objects, facts
and circumstances in morality change, though morality itself does not
change: and hence arises the illusion of the utilitarians, who cling
to the external, confine themselves to the appearance and see the
change but not the permanence. Murder is forbidden: but the approval,
bestowed upon the man who when his life is threatened and he cannot
otherwise save himself kills his unjust aggressor, does not imply that
the moral judgment upon homicide varies; since in these particular
circumstances the case is really one not of homicide but of capital
punishment inflicted by the unjustly attacked person finding himself
alone: a power tacitly delegated to him so to speak by society. Theft
is forbidden: but the man who in order to preserve his life steals a
loaf from another does not violate morality because he is exercising a
right founded upon equity.

The only philosophy which carries with it a true ethic seems to Vico
to be the Platonic, resting as it does upon a metaphysical principle,
the eternal idea which draws out of itself and creates matter: while
the Aristotelian ethic is founded upon a metaphysic leading to a
physical principle, that of the matter from which particular forms are
drawn, a principle which makes God a potter shaping objects external
to himself. The ethic of the Roman lawyers was doubtless rich in fine
aphorisms: but it was nothing but a mere art of equity, conveyed by
means of endless minute maxims of natural justice, sought for by the
writers in the reason of the laws and the will of the lawgiver. Hence
it cannot be regarded as a moral philosophy, in which the best method
is to proceed from a very small number of eternal truths, established
by ideal justice in the fabric of metaphysic. For analogous reasons
Vico could not rest satisfied with Grotius and the school of natural
rights: of which in general he makes the perfectly just remark that
their ponderous tomes, in spite of the impressive titles they bear,
contain nothing that is not universally known. If Grotius's principles
be weighed in the accurate balance of criticism, they are all found to
be probable or plausible rather than necessary and incontestable. In
dealing with the question of utility, Grotius missed the exact point by
failing to distinguish the occasion from the cause: nor did he "nail
down"--that is, he did not end--the ancient dispute as to whether right
is a question of nature or of human opinion only, the same controversy
as that carried on by philosophers and theologians with Carneades the
sceptic and Epicurus: he advances the hypothesis of primitive men
who were "simpletons," but quite omits to give reasons for it. And
since these "simpletons" of his, after suffering injuries from their
beast-like isolation, initiated a sociable life, a step to which they
were determined by utility, Grotius himself slipped unawares into
utilitarianism and Epicureanism.

Vico on the other hand answered the question, whether right is natural
or conventional, by the grave aphorism "except in their natural
condition, things neither progress nor endure." To the question,
whence society arises, he replies by mentioning the common feeling of
humanity, the conscience, the need which man feels of escaping from
the internal enemy, which tortures his heart. The origin of society
certainly lies in fear, but it is fear of oneself, not of another's
violence: it lies in the agonies of remorse, the shame whose tinge
suffusing the cheeks of the earliest men lit the first beacon of
morality upon earth. Shame is the mother of all virtues, honour,
frugality, honesty, loyalty to the pledged word, truthfulness in
speech, abstention from others' property, and chastity. In extolling
society, man is extolling human nature.

Shame or the moral consciousness, translated into terms of the
corresponding empirical science, becomes that common consciousness of
man upon matters of human necessity or utility which is the source of
the natural right of nations. This common consciousness, says Vico,
is an unreflective judgment, felt in common by a whole class, a whole
people, a whole nation and the whole of mankind. An unreflective
judgment is not strictly a judgment at all, since reflection is
inseparable from judgment: it is not judgment, because it is felt
and not thought. But on the other hand it is not what is called a
"feeling,"--a vague term unknown to Vico, as it is to traditional
philosophy. It is rather a practical attitude of mind, similar on the
whole in persons living in similar conditions and producing similar
customs in the various social groups, from the customs of a particular
class to those of all mankind. The attitude is quite spontaneous, and
for this very reason unreflective; so that customs arise from within,
not from without, and their similarity does not depend upon imitation
("without one nation taking example from another"). Through this
_sensus communis_ the moral consciousness embodies itself in compact
and unyielding institutions: and thus the _sensus communis_ reduces to
certitude the free will of man, which is in itself quite uncertain.




CHAPTER VII


MORALITY AND RELIGION


But this internal fear, shame or moral consciousness is aroused in man
by religion. The fear is the fear of God, the shame is abasement before
his face. Primitive man wanders over the earth alone, wild, fierce,
without articulate speech, without a permanent mate, at the mercy of
his unbridled and violent passions, a "brute" rather than a man. What
can restrain him? what can rescue him from at last destroying himself?
Wise men cannot direct him, for we cannot say whence or how they can
reach him. The intervention of God cannot save him: God has withdrawn
himself to his chosen people, and has no dealings with the rest of
mankind, the Gentiles. But this "brute" is still a man: God, while
abandoning him, has left a spark of his own essence at the bottom of
his heart. See! the sky lightens: the wild creature stands awestruck
and afraid: in his mind arises the shadowy idea of something greater
than he, something divine. So he conceives or rather imagines a first
God, a Sky-god, a thundering Jupiter: and to this deity he turns to
appease his wrath or invoke his aid. But in order to conciliate him and
secure his help, he must shape his own life conformably to his purpose:
he must humble himself before his God, overcome his own pride and
arrogance, abstain from certain actions and perform others. Thus the
conception of a deity lends power to that peculiar possession of the
human will, the attempt, that is, the liberty, to control the movements
communicated to the mind by the body and to annul or to redirect them
simultaneously. With these acts of self-control, with freedom, morality
comes into existence: the fear of God has laid the foundations of human
life. Altars arise all over the earth: the caves of her mountains,
whither the man now bears the woman, ashamed as he is of gratifying his
desires before the face of the sky, which is the face of God, preside
at the first marriage-rites and shelter the first families: her bosom
opens to receive the sacred trust of the bodies of the dead. The first
and fundamental ethical institutions--worship, wedlock and burial--have
arisen.

This social and ethical power of the idea of God appears again in the
course of subsequent history: since when nations have relapsed into
savagery through warfare, and human laws have no more power over them,
religion is the only means of subduing them. It reappears again in the
individual development of human life: children indeed cannot learn
piety except through the fear of some deity; and when all natural help
fails him man requires a superior being to save him, and this being is
God. All nations believe in a divine providence: tribes living in a
society without any consciousness of God, for instance in some parts of
Brazil, among the Kafirs, and in the Antilles, are travellers' tales,
an attempt to increase the sale of their books by the narration of
portents.

If this is so,--and doubtless it is--then no doctrine can be more
foolish than that which claims to conceive a morality and civilisation
without religion. Just as no well-established physical science is
possible without the guidance of abstract mathematical truth, so
no knowledge of morality can arise except together with abstract
metaphysical truths, without, that is, the idea of God. When the
religious consciousness is extinguished or obscured the conception
of society and the state is extinguished or obscured with it. Jews,
Christians, Gentiles and Mahommedans possess this conception because
all alike believe in some deity, whether as an infinite free spirit,
or as several gods consisting of mind and body, or as one single God,
an infinite free spirit in an infinite body. The Epicureans did not
possess such a conception, attributing to God as they did body alone,
and chance together with body: nor did the Stoics, who made him subject
to fate. And Cicero made the admirable remark to the Epicurean Atticus,
that he could not discuss laws with him unless he first granted the
existence of the divine providence. Hobbes, who revived Epicureanism,
and Spinoza, who revived Stoicism, as we have seen entirely failed to
understand the nature of society and the state. One must consort with
primitive man, stupid, hirsute, unclean and dishevelled, to refute
those learned authors of "desiccated literature," with Peter Bayle at
their head, who maintain that human society can and indeed does live
without religion.

The absence of the idea of God supplied the chief argument in Vico's
criticism of Grotius and Puffendorf, two of these authors whom he held
in great honour as "princes" of the school of natural rights. Neither
of these writers, he says, lays down the principle of divine providence
as primary and essential. Grotius does not expressly deny it: but on
account of his very attachment to truth, he endeavours to exclude it,
and asserts that his system will stand even if all knowledge of God be
removed. Hence Vico accuses him of Socinianism, since he makes human
innocence consist in the simplicity of human nature. Puffendorf is
still worse: he seems to ignore providential direction, and begins
with the scandalously Epicurean supposition that man is thrown into
this world with no help or attention from God, without even that spark
within his heart which is destined to grow into the flame of morality:
and having been reproved for this, he tries to justify himself in a
special essay, but does not succeed in discovering the true principle
on which alone society can be explained.

Now why, in face of all these energetic declarations and arguments
of Vico's on the necessity of religion to morality, did we say above
that the only point of real resemblance between him and Grotius,
Puffendorf and the natural-right school generally was his purely
immanental conception of ethics? Because, if we examine the point
closely, Vico is not in opposition to the method of that school. Like
them, in constructing his science of human society he excludes with
Grotius all idea of God, and with Puffendorf considers man as without
help or attention from God, excluding him, that is, from revealed
religion and its God. As for these two writers, so for Vico the subject
under consideration is natural rights, not supernatural: the law
of the Gentiles, not of the chosen people: the law which arises of
itself among the caves, not that which comes down from Sinai. Vico's
opposition, which he expresses with his accustomed confusion and
obscurity, turns not upon assertions like these, but upon the actual
conception of religion. In one word, the religion of which he speaks is
not the same as that of which Grotius and Puffendorf spoke, or rather
did not speak.

Religion, as we have already seen, means for Vico not necessarily
revelation, but conception of reality: either that which expresses
itself as it does in the period of fully developed mind in the form
of intelligible metaphysic, which passes from the thought of God to
explain logic by its reasoning and to condescend to purify the human
heart by morality: or that which takes concrete shape, as it does in
the earliest stage of humanity, in the form of poetical metaphysics.
One may easily ignore revealed religion when inquiring into the
foundations of morality: but how can one ever ignore this natural
religion, identical as it is with knowledge of the truth? Plutarch,
discussing the primitive religions of terror, asks the question whether
it would not have been better, instead of worshipping the gods in so
impious a manner, that there should be no religion at all: but he
forgot that from these cruel superstitions brilliant civilisations
developed, and no civilisation could ever have grown from atheism.
Without a religion, whether gentle or fierce, rational or fantastic, to
give the idea, more or less clearly defined, more or less elevated, of
something superior to the individual and uniting all individuals, the
moral will would have no object for its volition.

At this point we see the meaning of what we have described as the
second, practical or ethical, signification of the word "religion" in
Vico. In this signification, Vico justifies and vindicates the impious
saying that "fear creates the gods": he even places the source of
religion in the longing for eternal life which man feels when stirred
by a universal sense of immortality hidden in the depths of the mind.
In this second signification, religion is a practical fact, indeed it
is morality itself, as in the first meaning it was truth itself.

If the meaning of religion for Vico, either as the condition of
morality, in the first sense of the word, or as synonymous with it,
in the second, is once understood, it is clear that when he condemned
Grotius and Puffendorf for their omission of this most important
concept, he was substantially doing nothing but clenching his criticism
of the insipid moralising and the concealed utilitarianism of these
two thinkers. On other occasions also he resorted to the valuable
weapon of the concept of religion, with the same end in view. Because
if he sometimes credited philosophy with the task of assisting
mankind by raising and directing fallen human nature, at other times
he decided that philosophy is rather adapted to reasoning, and that
the moral philosophers with the greatest powers of reasoning are of
value only to stimulate the senses by their eloquence to perform the
duties of virtue, while religion alone has the power of making men act
virtuously. Then in the empirical science corresponding to this part of
the philosophy of mind, Vico turns religion (or poetical metaphysic)
and philosophy into two historical epochs, making the former
characteristic of the barbaric period and the latter of the civilised.
He maintains, as he is clearly bound to do, that religion is the sole
foundation of all civilisation and of philosophy itself, and rejects
Polybius's saying that if there had been philosophers in the world
religion would have been unnecessary. How could philosophy have arisen,
he objects, had not states, that is, civilisation, arisen first? and
how could states have arisen without the aid of religion? Thus the
saying ought to be reversed: without religion there is no philosophy.
It was religion, it was the divine providence that tamed the sons of
Polyphemus and reduced them to the humanity of Aristides and Socrates,
of Laelius and Scipio Africanus.

The conception again of the "state of nature," which served in the
treatises of the school of natural rights as an hypothesis and a
means of exposition with a view either to developing the argument
independently of mystical theology without evoking too many protests,
or to conveying implicitly their utilitarian theories, acquired in
Vico's hands a new function and a new content. A perfectly honest
Catholic, having satisfied his conscience by separating revealed from
human religion, he was in a position to assume the state of nature
as a literal and actual reality. It is an ideal reality, in so far
as it represents in the dialectic of the practical consciousness a
moment necessary for the genesis of reality, the pre-moral moment: a
historical and empirical reality, as the approximately actual condition
of those periods of anarchy and disturbance which precede the rise of
civilisations or follow upon their fall. The natural-right school
acquiesced more or less in the traditional doctrine of the church,
namely that the Gentiles, in the dispersion following on the confusion
of Babel, had taken away with them a residuum of revealed religion, a
vague memory of the true God, and that hence arose the possibility of
social life and of false gods, shadows of the true God: and thus the
"state of nature" had been put forward in their system as something
abstract and unreal. Vico worked out strictly the distinction between
Jews and Gentiles, and conceived the state of nature as devoid of
any help coming from previous revelation: as a state in which man
stood alone, so to speak, face to face with his own chaotic and
turbulent passions. It was a state actually without morality, but--in
contradistinction to the utilitarian hypothesis--pregnant with moral
requirements, and was transcended by this implicit character becoming
explicit. But this transcendence was brought about naturally, not by
means of divine grace: the true divine grace is human nature itself,
shared by Gentiles no less than Jews, all equally illuminated by a
divine light.

Man's will is free, weak though it is, to make his passions into
virtues; and in his struggle towards virtue he is helped in a natural
manner by God through providence. Certainly Vico did not intend to deny
the efficacy of direct and personal divine grace as well: but following
his usual method he separates the latter from the natural operation of
providence, which is the only question of importance for him and the
only one he considers. So far as concerns the controversies on grace,
he always likes to maintain a middle position between two extremes
represented typically, according to him, by Pelagianism and Calvinism:
and ever since as a young man he studied the works of Richard, the
theologian of the Sorbonne, he had accepted his demonstration of
the superiority of the Augustinian doctrine, just because it was
intermediate between these extremes. A moderate doctrine of this
kind seemed to him, as he says, to provide a suitable foundation for
a principle of the natural rights of nations which should explain the
origin of Roman and other Gentile law, while at the same time remaining
in agreement with the Catholic religion. He was inclined to admit that
there was a privileged nation, namely the Jewish; and that in the
struggle against the passions the Christian had an advantage over the
non-Christian, because in cases where natural grace failed he might be
helped by supernatural. But, in a word, miracles are miracles, and the
New Science is not a science of the miraculous.

That it is not, is proved by Vico's criticism on the third of the
"principles" of natural rights, against John Selden, a famous man in
his day though forgotten later, and author of _De iure naturali et
gentium iuxta disciplinant Hebraeorum_ (1640). Selden disagreed with
Grotius, in this as in certain other questions, in not denying, and
even in exalting, the value of religion: he conceived moral and civil
life impossible for mankind except through revelation. This revelation,
made by God to the Jewish people, passed from them according to Selden
by several channels to the Gentiles: Pythagoras for instance had learnt
from Ezekiel; Aristotle, at the time of the campaigns of Alexander in
Asia, formed a friendship with Simon the Just; Numa Pompilius acquired
some knowledge of the Bible and the prophets. This was enough to
reassure any believer who had been frightened away from the works of
the natural-right school by their heterodox tendencies. But Vico will
have none of this ultra-religious system. If Grotius ignored providence
and Puffendorf denied it, Selden was wrong, said Vico, in supplying it,
making it a _deus ex machina,_ without explaining it by the essential
character of the human mind. It was a system not only unphilosophical
but incompatible with sacred history, which admits to a certain extent
even in the case of the Jews a natural, not revealed, law: and it was
only because, during the captivity in Egypt, they lost sight of this
that the direct intervention of God with the laws given to Moses took
place. Nor did the theory agree, as to the alleged dissemination of
Jewish knowledge and laws among the Gentiles, with the words of the Jew
Josephus and of Lactantius; and in general, it was unsupported by even
the smallest documentary evidence. Vico's conclusion therefore remains
unaltered. The Jews enjoyed in addition the extraordinary aid of the
true God: but the other nations attained civilisation solely through
the ordinary light of providence.

Whether or no Vico quoted and interpreted Grotius and Puffendorf
accurately is for us a question of small importance. His exposition
and estimate of other philosophers matter less than his own doctrines,
whatever their historical relations, which, to tell the truth, are many
in number. Nevertheless it will be as well to indicate briefly, as
regards the difficulties which may arise upon this point, the answer
which we think plausible. Any one who after reading Vico's censures
opened the _De iure belli et pacis_ and found that Grotius explicitly
includes among his three fundamental principles, with reason and the
social nature, the divine will, and that this ignoring of God amounts
to little more than a mere phrase laying emphasis on the power of the
social nature and reason, which would take effect "even if we were
to grant that God does not exist" (_etiamsi dar emus non esse Deum_)
or that he does not care for human affairs, "which cannot be granted
without the grossest impiety" (_quod sine summo scelere dari nequit_):
any one who opened Puffendorf and read a most solemn denunciation of
the Grotian hypothesis as impious and absurd, and a declaration that
natural laws would remain hanging in the air devoid of force apart
from the will of God as legislator; any one who read these words might
be led to accuse Vico of negligence or even of insincerity in his
criticisms of his predecessors. But in truth Vico did not know what to
make of a God set side by side with other sources of morality, or set
above them as a superfluous source for the sources: he, searching for
God as he did in the heart of man, saw and felt the gulf fixed between
him and those who no longer had him in their hearts and barely kept
him on their lips through habit or prudence. A more subtle question
would be to ask why,--if Vico agreed with the natural-right school in
ignoring revelation, and if he instead of rejecting it deepened their
superficial immanental doctrine,--why he put himself forward as their
implacable enemy and persisted in boasting loudly before prelates and
pontiffs of having formulated a system of natural rights different from
that of the three Protestant authors and adapted to the Roman church.
The supposition that he acted thus through politic caution might be
advanced if instead of Vico we were dealing with, for instance, a
passionate and powerful but deceitful friar like Tommaso Campanella:
but the spotless character of Vico entirely precludes it, and we can
only suppose that, lacking as his ideas always were in clarity, on
this occasion he indulged his tendency to confusion and nourished his
illusions, to the extent of conferring upon himself the flattering
style and title of _Defensor Ecclesiae_ at the very moment when he
was destroying the religion of the church by means of the religion of
humanity.




CHAPTER VIII



MORALITY AND LAW

With the dazzling light of his originality still shining before our
eyes, it is impossible to fix our attention upon those doctrines and
classifications which Vico drew from the traditional philosophy and
placed especially in the first book of the _Diritto universale_: though
it is precisely these that have become favourites with many readers,
and are now almost common property through the frequent quotation of
them. That God is "infinite power knowledge and will" (_posse nosse
velle infinitum_) and man "finite power knowledge and will struggling
towards the infinite" (_posse nosse velle finitum quod tendit ad
infinitum_): that the state is the image of God, and because "it has
all things beneath it, nothing above" (_omnia infra se, nil superius
habet_), therefore "it renders account to God alone and to no one else"
(_uni Deo, praeterea reddat rationem nemini_), and that just as in God
freedom is inherent in his eternal reason, so the state freely obeys
the laws it has itself established: that justice "directs and equates
utilities" (_utilitates dirigit et exaequat_), directing, like an
architect, in the building-up of the state, the two particular kinds
of justice, commutative and distributive, the two divine artisans that
measure utility with the two divine measures, arithmetic and geometry,
so that "what is equal when you measure is also just when you choose"
(_quod est aequum cum metiris, idem est iustum quum eligis_), these
and similar assertions seem not merely lacking in originality but
even false or meaningless, adorned though they may be with the name
either of Aristotle or of Campanella or of other philosophers of the
ancient world or the Renaissance. If, to take one, justice consisted
in measuring, a philosophy of justice would be unnecessary, for the
science of calculation and measurement would be enough. Vico himself at
one point involuntarily and ingenuously discloses the vicious circle
of this metaphor substituted for a concept, by saying that men ought
"to share utility equally among themselves, only preserving a _just_
difference where it is a question of desert, and that to preserve the
equality."

More profitable than collecting these second-hand formulae would be to
collect the many acute observations of moral psychology found here and
there in his writings, expressed in his gem-like style; or to recall
his little-known theory of laughter, which he derives from disappointed
expectation and from the weakness of the mind, and therefore denies
the faculty both to animals and to the perfect man, considering a man
who laughs to be a satyr or faun, intermediate between a brute and a
man. But abstaining from such a collection, which forms no part of our
plan, we would rather observe that even in the commonplace distinctions
and classifications mentioned above Vico shows a certain merit: he
recognises, even while he propounds them, the necessary confusion
and identification of all or many of these distinctions. Thus after
distinguishing the two kinds of justice, the three kinds of virtue and
the three kinds of law, he ends by declaring that these dualities,
triplicities and multiplicities each form a unity.

Justice and virtue also, for Vico, form a unity, since that power of
truth, or human reason, which is virtue in so far as it struggles
with selfishness, is also justice in so far as it directs or equates
utilities. This implies that Vico does not distinguish, at least in the
systematic exposition of the _Diritto universale,_ between law and
morality: a distinction which indeed received little emphasis in the
doctrine of natural rights, and is barely indicated in Grotius, for
instance, as one between a greater and less degree of morality. Vico's
doctrine of punishment is also purely moral, and deduced from the
ethical concept of remorse. It is inflicted, he says, by the law, and
is nothing but a social reinforcement of the individual conscience, in
the case where the offender does not himself expiate his crime by means
of remorse and internal punishment.

But the more the problem of the relation between law and morality is
absent in Vico's theoretical formulation and systematic treatment,
the more present it is in his particular observations; indeed it may
be said to pervade the whole of the New Science. Nor could it be
otherwise, seeing that this relation refers to the distinction between
the moral will and the inferior or earlier forms of will; and we know
that all Vico's tendencies were towards exploring the lower and obscure
region of the mind, both cognitive and practical, in the sphere alike
of imagination, will and passion.

He always realised the supreme importance of the passions; and if
he could not approve of giving them the upper hand, if he always
considered the Epicurean morality a morality "of idlers shut up in
their pleasure-gardens," he did not at all approve of excessively
severe moralities such as that of the Stoics, which was no less than
the other a morality of "solitaries," not one for men living in a
state. Stoicism certainly preaches an eternal and immutable justice,
and makes honour the criterion of human action; but it does violence
to human nature, dehumanises it, annuls it and drives it to despair by
pretending that it is quite insensible to the passions, by ignoring
the utility and necessity of the bodily nature, by inculcating that
rule--a rule "harder than iron"--that sins are all equal and that he
who strikes a slave is as guilty as he who kills his father. The
same doubts must have been aroused in Vico's mind by Jansenism, as he
complains that "out of hatred of probability, Christian morality in
France is becoming rigidified." We ought to follow not these solitary
philosophers but rather those political ones, especially the Platonic
type, which recognises that the passions should be not eradicated but
moderated and "converted into human virtues." Thus out of cruelty,
avarice and ambition, the three universal faults of mankind, Providence
elicits the warrior, the merchant and the judge; the bravery, wealth
and wisdom of states. From these three failings, which would destroy
mankind on the earth, civil prosperity is formed.

Concerning matters of utility, Vico observes that "in themselves," _ex
se,_ they are neither good nor bad (_neque turpes neque honestae_) but
become so merely through their relation to the moral consciousness
("but their unfairness is baseness, their fairness, honour: _sed
earum inaequalitas est turpitudo, acqualitas autem honestas_"). In
the empirical science of utility, he defends against Grotius a "prior
natural law," _ius naturale prius,_ to which belong self-defence and
the procreation and upbringing of children: and this right he connects
with the Stoic _ἀδιάφορον._ That it has no moral authority is proved
by the fact that the law which follows it in the historical order, the
"posterior natural law," _ius naturale posterius,_ defined by Justinian
as "that which is established among all men by natural reason and is
preserved by all nations alike" (_quod naturalis ratio inter omnes
homines constituit et apud omnes gentes per aeque custoditur_), is
prior in the order of right, _prius iure,_ overcomes the former when
they conflict and sets upon it the seal of immutability. Now, although
this first natural law is defined and exemplified in a merely empirical
manner, it is surely at bottom nothing but pure law, law not yet
moralised.

But it is upon the concept of "certitude" that law as distinct from
morality properly, according to Vico, rests. The word certitude is used
by him in many senses, neither clearly distinguished nor harmonised nor
deduced one from another: though they all as we have seen unite, rather
confusedly, in the general idea of the spontaneous as distinguished,
from the reflective form of the mind. Certitude in its practical
signification implies among other things an opposition to the "truth"
of volition, and is, in a word, force as against equity and justice,
authority as against reason, mere will as against the moral will.
These are distinctions occurring to our own thoughts, rather than
stated by Vico, who both distinguishes and fails to distinguish. For
instance, he affirms that "certitude proceeds from authority, truth
from reason" (_certuni ab auctoritate est, verum a ratione_) and
immediately afterwards adds that "it is quite impossible for authority
to conflict with reason, for in that case there would be not laws but
abortive laws" (_auctoritas cum ratione omnino pugnare non potest,
nam ita non leges essent, sed monstra legum_). At any rate, the New
Science seems to him, by reason of this treatment of certitude, to
contain a philosophy of authority, which, he adds, "is the source of
what theological moralists call external justice." That is to say, he
connected the concept of certitude with the distinction and terminology
of external and internal, already employed by the scholastic morality,
which, used about this time by Christianus Thomasius, were destined
without any great philosophical merit on his part to give an impetus
to the investigation of the philosophical relations between law and
morality.

Another and kindred meaning of practical certitude in Vico is the
so-called letter of the law, _formula legum;_ which may stand in
opposition to reason and the moral consciousness, but none the less
has its own peculiar value: "_dura lex, sed certa: durum sed scriptum
est_--the law is harsh, but it is certain; it is harsh, but so it is
written." It is in a word the value of law simply as law, which though
devoid of any real ethical content yet has always the value that comes
from a command over the will. "The certitude of law" (writes Vico) "is
a darkening of the reason supported merely by authority, and makes the
law harsh in practical experience by laying down their certitude, which
in good Latin (_certuni_) means particularised, or in the scholastic
terminology individualised." To a certain extent Vico grasped the
individual character which lies at the root of every law. That one
must "judge according to law, not according to example" (_legibus non
exemplis iudicandum_) is a comparatively late principle: the first laws
were strictly _"exempta,"_ exemplary punishments. From real examples
were derived the ideal examples employed by logic and rhetoric: and
when the intelligible universal was understood, it was recognised that
law had a certain universal character.

The primitive society sketched by Vico is, in its juristic aspect,
the myth so to speak of pure law or practical force. Once upon a time
men lived possessed of immense bodily strength, and proportionately
feeble in understanding, who thought all strength greater than their
own divine, and this belief constituted their law. They thought of
the gods simply as beings stronger than themselves, whom they were
compelled to obey, though with a bad grace: like Polyphemus, who if he
had been strong enough would have fought Zeus himself, or Achilles,
who told Apollo that if only they were equally matched he would not
hesitate to try his strength against him. The wisdom of providence
decreed that these fierce men, not tamed as yet by the rule of reason,
should at least fear the divine nature of force and measure reason by
its standard. This is the foundation of the principle of the "external
justice of war." But the myth of the period of force cannot have the
strictness of a philosophical concept, and consequently these strong
men are considered by Vico from another point of view as ethically the
best: "strongest" and "best," _fortissimi_ and _optimi,_ are regarded
as synonymous terms: and their law, though not truth or rational law,
is not pure certitude, but truth "mixed with certitude," _ex certo
mixtum._ But the very mixture of certitude with, and its preponderance
over, truth, which is here asserted, postulates the concept of pure
certitude as presupposed by Vico.

When Vico accused Grotius and the school of natural rights of
commencing their history half-way, with the civilised ages, and
overlooking the earlier periods, the accusation, in its bearing upon
the philosophy of practice, may be translated into a charge of ignoring
the ideal moment of force and confining the attention to justice,
equity and morality. The moment of force, constituting the other
and earlier "half," was the field chosen by Hobbes, before him by
Machiavelli, and still earlier by Epicurus, all of whom treated of this
moment alone, "with impiety towards God, infamy to rulers and injustice
towards nations." Hence the conclusion is easy, that in refuting the
utilitarians and the theorists of force, Vico was at the same time
recognising and absorbing the need which they represented, their only
mistake having been that they developed this need in an abstract and
one-sided way. His "state of nature" is in some respects like that of
Hobbes, with the difference that mankind transcends the latter owing to
the recognition of utility, the former owing to the religious and moral
consciousness. But Vico does not on this account express any gratitude
to Hobbes or Spinoza, Machiavelli or Epicurus, since he believed
himself to have found in a classical author all the materials and the
stimulus he required, all the counter-poise necessary to the Platonic
philosophy. This was one of his "four authors," the one of whom we
said earlier that we had still to see the use which Vico made, namely
Tacitus. This writer for his part contemplates with his unequalled
metaphysical powers man as he is, while Plato contemplates him as he
ought to be. Just as Plato in his universal science explores every
corner of nobility, so Tacitus "descends into every scheme of utility,"
in order that among the infinite chaotic chances of malice and fortune
the man of practical wisdom may act well. To the union in his mind
of Greek philosopher and Roman historian, which he interprets, as is
easily seen, in the manner usual among the "Tacitean" politicians of
the seventeenth century, Vico attributes his own success in sketching
a real idea of eternal history, "which the wise man would construct
both of esoteric wisdom such as Plato's, and of common wisdom such as
that of Tacitus." To Tacitus, finally, he owed the impulse towards the
supreme task of making concrete his ideal, and realising the republic
of Plato in the "dregs of Romulus."




CHAPTER IX


THE HISTORICAL ASPECT OF LAW

As the cognitive mind passes from feeling without noticing to noticing
with disturbed and confused faculties, and thence to the reflection
of the clear mind, so analogously the volitional mind passes from
the state of nature to practical certitude and thence to practical
truth. In the correlative empirical science, the transition is more
or less that from the savage to the heroic or barbaric condition and
from the latter to the civilised. In these three types of society, all
the manifestations of life correspond: thus there are three kinds of
character, three kinds of manners and customs, three kinds of law and
therefore of states, three kinds of language and writing, three kinds
of authority, reason and justice, and three divisions of history.
Confused and sometimes self-contradictory though Vico may be in fixing
the particulars of these various correspondences, his general idea is
plain. Where reflection is at a low ebb and imagination flourishes, the
passions also flourish, habits are violent, governments aristocratic
or feudal, families subjected to strict paternal rule, laws severe,
legal procedure symbolical, language couched in metaphor and writing in
hieroglyphics. Where on the other hand reflection predominates, poetry
becomes either separate from or charged with philosophy, manners and
customs lose their violence, the passions are brought into subjection,
the people take the government into their own hands, all members of
the family are alike citizens of the state, law is mitigated by equity
and its procedure simplified, language loses its metaphorical clothing
and writing becomes alphabetical. Mixed forms, which some politicians
aim at producing artificially, would be abortions: and though we do
find natural hybrid forms which retain a tinge of the earlier, each
one, by reason of its own unity, always tries so far as possible to
divest its subject of every property belonging to other forms.

Which of the various social types forms the foundation of the others
and supplies the criterion for judging them? or what is the criterion
and standard by which they must all alike be judged? For Vico, such a
question is meaningless. Governments, he says, must adapt themselves
to the nature of the people governed: the school of princes is the
morality of nations. We may shudder at war, at the law of the stronger,
at the reduction of the conquered to slavery, that is, to chattels:
but the society which expressed itself in these customs was necessary
and therefore good. The worship of strength, as we have said, occupied
the position and discharged the function of the as yet impossible rule
of reason. Later came the period of fully developed human reason, when
men no longer valued each other by the standard of force, but by virtue
of their rational nature, which is the true and eternal human nature,
recognised one another as equals. The change of time brought change of
customs: and the new were no less good, but no more so, than the old.

It would be as useless to seek the common measure of these various
social types, as to ask what is the real age of the individual life,
the common measure of childhood, youth, maturity and old age. The
comparison is one presented by Vico himself. As children shape all
their ideas according to their whims and carry them out with violence,
as youths animate everything by their imagination, as grown men guide
their affairs rather by pure reason and old men by sound prudence;
so it is with the human race, which after its feeble, isolated and
poverty-stricken origins, grows at first in unrestrained liberty, then
rediscovers the necessaries, utilities and comforts of life by genius
and imagination (the age of poetry), and finally cultivates wisdom by
means of reason (the age of philosophy). Similarly, natural right arose
first in laws so to speak of just passion and just violence: then it
was clothed in various myths of just reason: and finally it was openly
proclaimed in its pure rationality and noble truth.

By such a method of handling and passing judgment upon governments,
laws and customs, Vico, escaped another of the leading doctrines or
suppositions of the school of natural rights, the abstraction and
anti-historicism we mentioned in its own place, which resulted in the
conception of a natural law standing above positive law and therefore
constituting a kind of eternal code, a perfect scheme of legislation,
not yet fully actual but to be actualised, whose outlines show up
clearly in the works of the school through their veil of doctrine and
philosophy. But this eternal code was in its most important part a
contingent and transitory code; or at least it advocated a code in
agreement with the reformatory and revolutionary tendencies of these
writers, publicists as they were rather than philosophers.

Vico rids himself of the ideal eternal code without seeming to do
so: though he is quite ready to recognise that the "philosophers'
natural right," _ius naturale philosophorum,_ is in idea eternal, and
inexorably laid down "in accordance with eternal reason," _ad rationis
aeternae libellam._ But from this verbal concession of eternity made
out of respect for the old traditional scholastic philosophy, whose
influence he felt now and then, he goes on to deny its real eternity
and supra-historical character; since instead of placing it above
and outside history he puts it in the place which belongs to it,
within history. The law of violence or heroic law, after passing into
the law of uncivilised society, gradually attains a certain limit of
clarity, in which state the only thing wanting to its perfection is
that some school of philosophers should complete it by establishing it
with reasoned principles, upon the idea of eternal justice: and this
reasoning and systematisation is the _"ius naturale philosophorum"_ the
extreme form of the historical development of law, not its unchanging
rule; a product, not a standard. Hence Vico's charge against Grotius
of confusing the _"ius naturale philosophorum,"_ the law composed of
reasoned principles derived from moralists, theologians and, in part,
jurists, with the natural law of nations, _ius naturale gentium_ (in
Grotius's language, confusing natural law with an arbitrary or positive
form of law): of misunderstanding the Roman jurists, who intended to
speak solely of the latter: and of offering to correct and venturing to
criticise writers whose faults on inspection vanish.

The eternal code, considered in its essentials, is a Utopia: and since
the first and greatest of Utopias is Plato's Republic, it is important,
in order better to decide the point at issue, to examine Vico's
attitude towards the political scheme of Plato. If we may listen to
his own words, the _Republic_ was another of his many incentives and
examples when he conceived the New Science. With the study of Plato
began the unconscious awakening in him of "the thought of conceiving
an ideal eternal law, to be expressed in a universal state built on
the idea or plan of providence, on which idea, indeed, are founded
all the states of every period and race: an ideal Republic like that
which Plato ought, as a consequence of his divine metaphysic, to have
conceived." He ought, but could not, owing to his "ignorance of the
first man's fall"; ignorance, that is, of the original state of nature
and of the exclusively poetic or "common" wisdom which followed it:
an ignorance maintained by the error, common to the minds of all men,
of measuring by oneself the almost unknown nature of other people,
as Plato exalted the rude and barbaric beginnings of Gentile man to
the perfect state of his loftiest esoteric knowledge of the divine,
and fancied these earliest men to possess a high degree of this
esoteric wisdom, whereas on the contrary they were really "brutes,
all stupidity and ferocity." In consequence of this learned error
Plato, instead of conceiving an eternal Republic and the laws of an
eternal justice by which Providence governs the nations of the world
and directs it by means of the common needs of mankind, by which it is
led to the common consciousness of the whole human race, "conceived
an ideal Republic and a merely ideal justice, by which nations are
not guided at all." In fact, they ought not to be guided by it: since
among the determinations of the perfect state there are some which are
dishonourable and detestable, such as the community of wives. Thus Vico
took from Plato the idea of an eternal state, but entirely inverted it
by the reservation which he added to it, that the true eternal republic
is not the abstract state of Plato, but the course of history in all
its phases, including the brutes at one end and Plato at the other.
This is the "republic of mankind," the "great state of mankind," the
"universal republic" (_generis humani respublica, magna generis humani
civitas, respublica universa_) of which he means to investigate the
"form, ranks, societies, occupations, laws, crimes, punishments, and
science of jurisprudence" (_formam ordines societates negotia leges
peccata poenas et scientiam in ea tractandi iuris_) and to follow
the development of all these "from their origin, the beginnings of
humanity, under the control of divine Providence, national custom
and authority" (_a suis usque primis humanitatis originibus, divina
providentia moderante, moribus gentium ac proinde auctoritate_), that
is to say, "by means of the various elements of human utility and
necessity, or even by means of opportunities arising by the spontaneous
action of circumstances" (_per varia utilitatum et necessitatum,
humanarum rudimenta, sive adeo per ipsarum sponte rerum oblatas
occasiones_). The "great state of the nations founded and governed by
God" is thus nothing else than History.

While refusing a fixed code and the draft of a model society, we do
not mean to deny the possibility of a practical aspect of the science
conceived by Vico, the New Science in its triple form of ideal history,
typical history and historical history. Every truth has its practical
side, that is to say, its practical consequences: and thinking in this
or that way of the nature and development of mankind involves this or
that practical line of conduct. A man who believes for instance in
the docile innocence of savage races will approach them with a smile
on his face, kindly words on his lips and the alphabet and catechism
of rights and duties in his hand: one who believes in Vico's "brutes"
will adopt somewhat sterner methods, perhaps even fire and the sword.
One who, like Vico, believes that "custom is more potent than law" and
that "custom changes not at a blow, but gradually and slowly" will
not be inclined to hasty legislation, and will not delude himself
into thinking he can remodel human nature after an ideal of his own
devising. Such conduct in any case is not theory, but practice: and
when the attempt is made to reduce it to theory, either a chaotic
confusion of necessary and contingent determinations results, or else
if we avoid these errors and strive to attain a strictly doctrinal form
of conduct, we get neither more nor less than the scientific theory
itself, from which our conduct derived.

The thought of following up the New Science with a practical theory
appropriate to it evidently occurred to Vico. Even in the first
Italian edition of the work he stated two "practical" corollaries:
first, a new art of criticism, to serve as a light to distinguish
the truth in obscure and legendary history; and secondly an art of
diagnosis, so to speak, for determining the degrees of necessity or
utility in human affairs, and as its ultimate consequence, the chief
end of this science, consisting in the recognition of indubitable
symptoms of the conditions of nations. Properly considered, these arts
of criticism and diagnosis unite into one, namely the better knowledge
which it was possible, owing to the principles laid down by Vico, to
obtain concerning the past and present life of nations.

This idea is repeated and explained in other parts of the same work.
The sciences, studies and arts developed up to now, says Vico,
deal with particular objects: the New Science, on the other hand,
investigating as it does the principles themselves which lie at the
source of all studies, is able to establish the ἀκμή or state of
perfection of the entire system, and the degrees and extremes by which
and within which human nature like all other mortal things must run
its course and come to an end: so that through this science we can
answer the practical questions how a nation in its rise may come to its
state of perfection, and how in its decadence it may be stimulated to
new life. The state of perfection would consist in a nation's resting
upon fixed principles both demonstrated by unchanging reason and put
into practice by human habits; principles in which the esoteric wisdom
of the philosopher would extend a helping hand to the common wisdom
of nations, thus uniting men of the greatest academic reputation with
all those of wisdom in the state, the philosophers with the statesmen;
and the science of civil matters divine and human, religion and law, a
theology and morality imposed by command and acquired by habituation,
would be supplemented by the science of natural laws divine and
human, a theology and morality imposed by reason and acquired by
ratiocination: so that to transgress such principles would be true
error, the wandering not of men but of wild animals.

The practical aspect of the New Science, then, was simply a summary or
duplicate of the science itself, emphasising the two leading elements
of spontaneous and reflective wisdom, certitude and truth, and the
necessity of bearing both in mind.

Years later, in one of the elaborations of the second _Scienza
Nuova_ made by Vico, we again meet with the idea and the phrase of a
practical aspect of this science, in the title of a special concluding
paragraph which he proposed to add to his work. It begins thus: "The
whole of this work has now been thought out as a mere contemplative
science dealing with the common character of nations: for this reason
it may seem to offer no assistance to human prudence in order either
to prevent or to delay the entire ruin of nations on the path of
decadence, and thus to lack the practical side which every science must
have whose subject-matter is dependent upon the human will, all such
sciences being called practical." Now in what could such a practical
side consist? "This practical application can easily be found from the
contemplation itself of the course of the history of nations: which the
wise men (statesmen) and princes of states observing, could by means
of good ordinances, laws and examples recall peoples to their ἀκμή
or state of perfection." In other words: a man warned is half saved.
Contemplation is the only principle of conduct which the New Science
can supply. The other half of salvation depends not on the person
warning, namely thought, but upon the person warned, upon action. It
does not occur to Vico to try to determine the "ordinances, laws and
examples" whose adoption would be of value in this or that crisis
or situation. This would not be a philosopher's task, as in fact
he himself clearly recognises next moment, when he says: "The only
practical principles we philosophers can supply are ones which can be
confined to the academic sphere."

It would certainly be rash to claim precise knowledge of Vico's
reasons for omitting this note on practical principles in the final
manuscript of the last edition of the _Scienza Nuova,_ just as he had
omitted in the second work of that title the assertions on the subject
which had appeared in the first. But we may at least venture to guess
that the principal reason was the obvious emptiness of this passage,
promising as it did a practical application which it failed to provide,
and finally confessing that such a practical application was either
impossible or already included in the theory itself.




CHAPTER X



PROVIDENCE



The true and only reality then, in the world of nations, is the course
of their history: and the principle which regulates this course is
Providence. From this point of view the New Science may be defined as
a "rational civil theology of the divine providence." Bacon, among his
historical sciences, had named a _Historia Nemeseos_ (history of Divine
Retribution). What for Bacon was little more than a mere name was for
Vico a clearly stated problem and a developed theory. Philosophers,
according to him, when they did not ignore Providence entirely, as
materialists and determinists, considered it solely in the sphere of
natural law, calling metaphysic by the name of "natural theology," and
supporting the identification of God with the natural order observed
in the motions of bodies, such as the spheres and the elements, and
with the final cause which was seen to exist over and above the other
natural causes. As against all this it was important to work out the
doctrine of Providence "in the economy of matters civil."

It was observed by some of his earliest commentators, and the
observation has been frequently repeated since, that Vico used the
word "providence" indifferently in a subjective and an objective
sense: sometimes to indicate the human belief in a provident deity
controlling their doctrine, sometimes to denote the actual operation
of this providence. The double or triple meaning of a single word in
Vico's terminology is a thing which by now need cause no astonishment.
We have often already been obliged to take pains to distinguish his
homonyms and unite his synonyms. Hence we may at once recognise that
one meaning of "Providence" for Vico might be and indeed is the
belief in Providence, man's idea of God, first in the form of myth
and later in the pure and rational form of philosophy. The Gentile
nations of antiquity, he says, "began their metaphysical poetic wisdom
by contemplating God in the attribute of his providence," upon which
rested augury and divination. Without this idea, then, wisdom, the
consciousness of the infinite, cannot take shape within man, nor can
morality, the fear of and respect for the higher power which governs
the affairs of men, arise. But in this sense of the word a further
discussion of providence is unnecessary, after what we have said on the
subjects of mythology and of the relation between morality and religion.

We therefore pass at once to Providence in its second sense, the real
and strict conception of it; and here it seems advisable to leave Vico
for a moment and to clear up certain points of doctrine.

It is a common observation that to create a given fact is one thing, to
know it when created quite another. The knowledge of what a fact really
is often comes in the life of the individual years later, in the life
of mankind centuries later, than the fact itself. The very persons who
are directly responsible for a given fact as a rule do not know it, or
know it in a very imperfect and fallacious manner; so much so that the
illusions which are said to accompany human activity have passed into
a proverb. The poet thinks he is singing of purity when he is really
singing of sensuality, and of strength while he is really singing of
weakness; he believes himself to be a dreadful pessimist and is really
childishly optimistic: imagines himself a devil, when he is a good
fellow without an ounce of vice in him. Philosophers deceive themselves
no less. We need not go far to find examples. The philosopher we are
studying supplies a whole series of them; few have been more in the
dark as to the real tendencies of their own thought. The politician
also deceives himself; very often he believes and declares himself
to be fighting for liberty while he is a mere reactionary, or while
believing himself to be serving the cause of reaction is really
inciting to revolt and aiding the cause of freedom: and so on. Such
illusions are easy to understand. Individuals and nations in the heat
of creation, or scarcely yet passing out of such a state, can perhaps
express their state of mind, but cannot treat it in the critical spirit
of historical narration: and accordingly, when they cannot reconcile
themselves to waiting in silence, they compose imaginary histories of
themselves, _Wahrheiten und Dichtungen_ at once. In fact this proved
difficulty of understanding one's actions while acting is one motive
of the wise advice to speak of oneself as little as possible and of
the suspicion with which autobiographies and memoirs are regarded.
Such works are interesting and possibly even valuable; but they never
present the strict historical truth of the facts they narrate.

Human labours are thus veiled in the mists of illusion which arise from
individuals. The superficial historian clings to the veil, and in his
attempt to describe the course of events, uses these illusions to make
his voice carry. In this way the history of poetry takes the form of a
narration of the intentions, opinions and aims of poets, or of those
attributed to them by their contemporaries; the history of philosophy
becomes a series of anecdotes concerning the sentiments, whims and
practical aims of philosophers: the history of politics, a tissue
of intrigue, base interests, gossip and greed. But a more careful
historian, or one of a different type, will have nothing to do with
history of this kind. His first act is to dispel the mists, to sweep
away the individual and his illusions, and to look facts in the face as
they appeared in their objective succession and their supra-individual
origin. Real, true history arises independently of individuals, as a
product growing to completion behind their backs, the product of a
force apart from individual agents, which may be called Fate, Chance,
Fortune or God. The individual, who at first was everything, and filled
the whole stage with his posturing and declamation, is now, in this
second aspect of history, less than nothing; his actions and cries,
stripped of all serious potency, provoke laughter or pity. We look in
terror at the Fate that dominates him, we stand aghast at the strange
coincidence of chance or the caprices of Fortune, we bow before the
inscrutable designs of the divine providence. The individual appears
in turn as the inert material, the powerless plaything and the blind
instrument of these forces. But deeper thought leads us beyond even
this second view of history. The pity which the individual seems to
arouse and the amusement he evokes are in reality deserved not by him
but by his fancies, or rather, by those individuals who mistake fancy
for truth. Real history is composed of actions, not of fancies and
illusions: but actions are the work of individuals, not indeed in so
far as they dream, but in the inspiration of genius, the divine madness
of truth, the holy enthusiasm of the hero. Fate, Chance, Fortune,
God--all these explanations have the same defect: they separate the
individual from his product, and instead of eliminating the capricious
element, the individual will in history, as they claim to do, they
immensely reinforce and increase it. Blind Fate, irresponsible chance,
and tyrannical God are all alike capricious: and hence Fate passes into
Chance and God, Chance into Fate and God, and God into both the others,
all three being equivalent and identical.

The idea which transcends and corrects alike the individualistic
and supra-individualistic views of history is the idea of history
as rational. History is made by individuals: but individuality is
nothing but the concreteness of the universal, and every individual
action, simply because it is individual, is supra-individual. Neither
the individual nor the universal exists as a distinct thing: the real
thing is the one single course of history, whose abstract aspects
are individuality without universality and universality without
individuality. This one course of history is coherent in all its many
determinations, like a work of art which is at the same time manifold
and single, in which every word is inseparable from the rest, every
shade of colour related to all the others, every line connected
with every other line. On this understanding alone history can be
understood. Otherwise it must remain unintelligible, like a string of
words without meaning or the incoherent actions of a madman.

History then is the work neither of Fate nor of Chance but of the
necessity which is not determination and the liberty which is not
chance. And since the religious view, that history is the work of God,
has this advantage and superiority over the others, that it introduces
a cause for history other than fate or chance, and therefore not
properly speaking a cause at all, but a creative activity, a free and
intelligent mind, it is natural that out of gratitude to this higher
view no less than by the suitability of the language we should be led
to give to the rationality of history the name of God who rules and
governs all things, and to call it the Divine Providence. In so naming
it, we at the same time purge the title of its mythical dross which
debased God and his providence afresh into a fate or a chance. Thus
providence in history, in this final logical form, has double value
as a criticism of individual illusions, when they come forward as
the entire and only reality of history, and as a criticism of divine
transcendence. And we may say that this is the point of view which
always has been and always is adopted, as if instinctively, without the
profession of an explicit theory, by all minds naturally gifted with
that particular faculty which we call the historic sense.

If now, to return to Vico, we ask how he solved the problem of the
motive force of history, and what was the precise content for him of
the concept of providence in the objective sense, it is perfectly easy
to exclude the supposition that his was the transcendent or miraculous
Providence which had formed the subject of Bossuet's eloquent
_Discours._ It is easy both because in all his philosophy he invariably
reduces the transcendent to the immanent, and repeats over and over
again here that his providence operates by natural means or (using
scholastic phraseology) by secondary causes: and because upon this
point his interpreters are practically unanimous.

No less insistent is his criticism of fate and chance, or according
to his threefold division fortune, fate and chance. He observes that
the doctrine of fate moves in a vicious circle, because the eternal
series of causes in which it holds the world bound and chained, depends
upon the will of Jupiter, and at the same time Jupiter is subject to
fate; whence it results that the Stoics are themselves entangled in
that "chain of Jupiter" with which they would imprison all things
human. These three concepts, corresponding to that of opportunity when
an object of desire is in question, to that of good luck in the case
of unhoped-for events, and to that of accident in the case of the
unexpected, are distinctions of the subjective understanding rather
than anything else: objectively they come under one single law which
may also be called fortune, if with Plato we recognise opportunity
as the mistress of human affairs: and all three are manifestations
and paths of the divine Providence which is intelligence, liberty and
necessity. The creator of the world of nations "was indeed Mind, since
men made it by their intelligence: it was not Fate, because they made
it by free choice, nor yet Chance, since to all eternity on doing thus
the same results follow."

Vico lights up in the most fanciful ways the comedy of errors formed
by man's illusions as to the end of his own actions. Men thought they
were escaping the threats of the thundering sky by carrying their
women into caves to satisfy their animal passions out of God's sight:
and by thus keeping them safely secluded they founded the first
chaste unions and the first societies; marriage and the family. They
fortified themselves in suitable places with the intention of defending
themselves and their families: and in reality, by thus fortifying
themselves in fixed places they put an end to their nomadic life and
primitive wanderings, and began to learn agriculture. The weak and
disorderly, reduced to the extremity of hunger and mutual slaughter,
to save their lives took refuge in these fortified places, and became
servants to the heroes: and thus without knowing it they raised the
family to an aristocratic or feudal status. The aristocrats, feudal
chiefs or patricians, their rule once established, hoped to defend and
secure it by the strictest treatment of their servants the plebeians:
but in this way they awoke in the servants a consciousness of their
own power and made the plebeians into men, and the more the patricians
prided themselves on their patriciate and struggled to preserve it,
the more effectively they worked to destroy the patrician state and to
create democracy. Thus, says Vico, the world of nations issues "from a
mind widely different from, sometimes quite opposed, always superior,
to the particular ends set before themselves by men: which restricted
ends have been made means to wider ends, and employed to preserve the
human race upon this earth."

It may be gathered from some of our quotations from Vico that he
sometimes tended to conceive men as conscious of their own utilitarian
ends but unconscious of moral ends. This would logically lead to
explaining social life on exclusively utilitarian principles, and to
considering morality as an accident relatively to the human will and
therefore not really moral: an external accretion more or less capable
of holding mankind together, or the obscure work of a supramundane
providence. This utilitarianism especially creeps into a passage where
he says that man, on account of his corrupt nature, being under the
tyranny of self-love which compels him to make private utility his
chief guide and to want every useful thing for himself and nothing for
his fellow, unable to hold his passions in check so as to direct them
by justice, in the state of nature desires only his own safety; after
taking a wife and begetting children, desires his safety and the safety
of his family; after attaining civil life, desires his own safety
together with the safety of his city; after extending his rule over
other peoples, he desires the safety of the nation; after joining with
other nations in wars, treaties, alliances and commerce, he desires
his safety and that of all mankind: and "in all these circumstances
he principally desires his own interest." For this reason "it can be
nothing else than divine providence that binds him down within such
ordinances as to maintain by justice the society of the family, the
state and ultimately of mankind; by which ordinances since man cannot
attain what he wants, at least he wants to attain as much utility as
is permitted: and this is what is called justice." The public virtue
of Rome, he writes elsewhere, "was nothing but a good use made by
providence of grave, unsightly and cruel private faults, that states
might be preserved at a time when human minds, being in a state of
extreme particularity, could not naturally understand a common good."

Utilitarianism was however, as we know, strongly repugnant to Vico's
observed ethics, founded as the latter is upon the moral consciousness
or shame; and hence these statements, which unconsciously tend in that
direction, can only be explained as resulting from the disturbance
sometimes produced in his mind by the lingering remains of the
transcendent or theological conception of providence, and also from the
confused character of his thought, which prevented him from keeping
the idea of individual illusions clearly distinguished from that of
individual aims; so that he sometimes substituted the second when he
ought to have been dealing solely with the first. If the provident
deity is "the unity of the spirit which informs and animates the
world of nations," these do not fail to obtain their particular ends
in order that it may move on to its universal ones, but both alike
are realised in them: and man is at every moment both utilitarian and
moral, or at least supposes himself to be moral when he is utilitarian
or utilitarian when he is really moral.

In any case, and in spite of these vacillations or rather confusions,
the conception of particular ends as the vehicle of universal and
of illusion as accompanying and co-operating with action implies a
dialectical conception of the movement of history, and the transcending
of the problem of evil. This problem is in fact very little emphasised
by Vico, owing to the strength of his belief in the universal
government of providence and of his persuasion that so-called evil is
not only willed by man under the appearance of good, but is itself
essentially a good. In a few rare passages in his earliest writings,
where he encounters the problem of evil, Vico solves it simply in the
sense that we men because of our iniquity which leads us to "regard
ourselves, not this universe of things" (_nosmetipsos, non hanc rerum
universitatem spectamus_) consider as evil those things which run
counter to us, "which yet, since they contribute to the common nature
of the world, are good" (_quae tamen, quia in mundi commune conferunt,
bona sunt_).

Vico's conception of history thus became truly objective, freed from
divine arbitrament, but freed equally from the rule of trifling causes
and gossiping explanations, and acquiring a knowledge of its own
essential end, which is to understand the nexus of facts, the logic
of events; to be the rational reconstruction of a rational fact.
Historical study at this time suffered less from the first of these
errors (the theological conception had been ever since the beginning of
the Italian Renaissance falling into universal decay) than from that
form of history which was just then acquiring the name of "pragmatic,"
which restricted itself to the personal aspect of events, and failing
by these means to reach full historical truth tried to gain warmth
and life by means of political and moral instruction. A monument of
pragmatic history arose in Vico's own country and contemporaneously
with the _Scienza Nuova:_ Pietro Giannone's _Civil History of the
Kingdom of Naples._ The author was a man of his own district and age,
and wrote a great work in the sphere of polemic, and even in certain
respects of history: but such that all its greatness only serves to
emphasise the greatness of Vico's book. If Vico had had to describe
the origins of ecclesiastical property and power in the Middle Ages,
he would have been able to write of something very different from the
guile of popes, bishops and abbots, and the simplicity of dukes and
emperors. And as we shall see, whenever he undertook to investigate any
part of history he actually did discover in it something very different
from these things.




CHAPTER XI



THE LAW OF REFLUX



The mind, after traversing its course of progress, after rising from
sensation successively to the imaginative and the rational universal
and from violence to equity, is bound in conformity with its eternal
nature to re-traverse the course, to relapse into violence and
sensation, and thence to renew its upward movement, to commence a
reflux.

This is the philosophical meaning of Vico's "reflux," but not the exact
manner in which we find it expressed in his writings, where the eternal
circle is considered almost exclusively as exemplified in the history
of nations, as a reflux in the civil affairs of man. Civilisation
comes to an end in the "barbarism of reflection," which is worse than
the primitive barbarism of sensation; for while the latter was not
without a wild nobility, the former is contemptible, untrustworthy
and treacherous; and thus it is necessary that this evil subtlety of
malicious intellect should rust away through the long centuries of a
new barbarism of sensation. We must however withdraw and purge the
conception of "reflux" from historical facts and the sociological
scheme, not only to explain the absolute and eternal character
which Vico attributes to it, but also to justify the historical
representation and sociological law founded upon it, and drawing their
cogency primarily from it.

The laws of flux and reflux, laid down by the philosophers and
politicians of Greece and of the Italian Renaissance, were founded no
less than Vico's upon a philosophy, but upon a very superficial one;
they assumed their object to possess external and empty political
forms, and endeavoured to fix the succession of these forms upon data
of experience or by vague reasonings. But Vico's object is the forms of
culture, including in themselves all the activities of life, economy
and law, religion and art, science and language, and referring them
back to their inmost source, the human mind, he establishes their
succession "according to the rhythm of the elementary forms of the
mind." Thus all the learning which has been expended in comparing the
Vician reflux with the theories of Plato or Polybius, Machiavelli or
Campanella, is practically wasted: the more so that Vico (who, as we
know, though often misunderstanding his predecessors cannot be accused
of wishing to pass them over: in fact, where he thought he found
parallel or identical ideas in them, he was apt to boast of the fact)
felt no need of mentioning this point, or thought it unimportant. The
"circular movement" (ἀνακύκλωσις) of Polybius, the economy of nature
by which states alter, change and return to the same point, has been
thought almost an anticipation of the eternal ideal history; but Vico
sets Polybius with the others, when he asks the reader to consider "how
(little) philosophers have thought with knowledge upon their principles
of civil government, and with what (little) truth Polybius has reasoned
upon its changes." Campanella connected his historical cycles with
astrological laws; and Machiavelli conceives the catastrophe which
opens the reflux thus: "When human craft and malignity have gone as far
as they can go, it happens of necessity that the world purifies itself
by one of the three methods (pestilence, famine and deluge, beside
the human methods of new religions and languages) in order that men,
having become few and chastened, may live more conveniently and become
better." The one precedent to which Vico refers, but only to interpret
it in a way altogether his own and in fact to give it a totally new
content, is the ancient Egyptian tradition of the three successive ages
of gods, heroes and men.

If the philosophy lying at its root gives strength to Vico's
sociological theory of reflux, the historical element with which it is
leavened to some degree weakens it. Vico was especially versed in and
attached to Roman history, which had been the first of his historical
studies and the object of many years' devotion. The history of Rome
accordingly, whether because of his deeper study of it or because of
its complexity, impressiveness and long duration, came to stand in
Vico's mind as the typical or normal history, to serve as a standard
for all others, and be confused with the law of flux and reflux itself.
Rome showed him the asylum of Romulus, that is, the transition from the
state of nature to the political organism: aristocracies, monarchical
at first in appearance only, later not even in appearance: democracy,
issuing from its struggle with aristocracy and ending in real monarchy,
the perfect form of civil life; thence by a process of degeneration,
the barbarism of reflection or civilisation, incomparably worse than
the primitive noble barbarism, and following in its train a second
condition of wandering in a state of nature and a new barbarism, a new
youth, the Middle Ages. It is the history of Rome hardly generalised
at all and supplemented here and there by that of Greece, that appears
in the Vician aphorisms formulating the laws of social dynamics. Men
first feel the prick of necessity, then the attraction of utility:
next they become aware of convenience, and after that take delight in
pleasure; then dissipate themselves in luxury and finally fall victims
to the madness of abusing their resources. There must at first be men
of brute strength like Polyphemus, that man may obey man in the state
of family life, and to induce him to obey the law in the future state
of civil life. There must be noble and proud men like Achilles, not
inclined by nature to yield to their equals, in order to establish
over the family the aristocratic type of republic. Then valiant and
just men like Aristides and Scipio Africanus are necessary, to open
the path to popular liberty. After this arise men of great apparent
virtues accompanied by faults no less great, like Alexander or Caesar,
acquiring immense popular reputations and introducing monarchy. Later
still there must be serious reflective natures like Tiberius to
consolidate the monarchy; and lastly wild, dissolute and shameless
characters like Caligula, Nero and Domitian to overthrow it.

Owing to this rarefaction of Roman history into typical history, and
the simultaneous consolidation of typical history into the history of
Rome, Vico's law of reflux is riddled with exceptions, much more common
and serious than those of the corresponding empirical laws; so that if
as he believes his empirical science is identical with the ideal laws
of the mind, its alleged permanency throughout all eternity and the
whole universe seems the merest irony. He says that Carthage, Capua and
Numantia, the three cities which threatened to dispute with Rome the
empire of the world, failed to accomplish the ordained course of human
affairs: since the Carthaginians were thwarted by the acuteness of the
native African temperament, which by maritime commerce they increased
still further: the Capuans by the soft climate and fertility of rich
Campania: and the Numantines by their suppression in the first burst
of heroism at the hands of Rome, led by Scipio Africanus the conqueror
of Carthage, and aided by the forces of the world. And passing from
ancient to modern times, America would now be traversing the path of
human affairs but for its discovery by Europeans: Poland and England
are still aristocratic, but would have arrived at perfect monarchy had
not the natural course of civil affairs been hindered by extraordinary
causes. As for the Middle Ages, they cannot be considered as in Vico's
estimation a true return to the state of nature, if they open with
the establishment of Christianity, the religion of the true God; nor
in any case does the return to the state of nature and to barbarism
seem the only path open to a nation that has attained its ἀκμή, its
culmination. The alternative is that a decadent nation should lose
its independence and fall under the rule of a better. Nor, lastly, is
decadence inevitable if statesmen and philosophers working in harmony
can preserve the perfection that has been reached and check the
threatened destruction, and if in point of fact, as he observes, the
aristocratic republics which survived his own day as remnants of the
Middle Ages succeeded in preserving themselves by arts of "superfine
wisdom." His own time Vico thought to be one of high civilisation.
A complete humanity, he says, seems to be scattered to-day over
all nations. A few great monarchs rule the world of nations, and
those barbarian monarchs who still exist do so either owing to the
persistence of the "common wisdom" of imaginative and cruel religions,
or because of the natural temperaments of their respective peoples. The
nations which form the empire of the Czar of Russia are of a sluggish
disposition; those of the Khan of Tartary are an effeminate race; the
subjects of the Negus of Ethiopia and the King of Fez and of Morocco
are few and weak. In the temperate zone Japan maintains a heroic
character not unlike that of Rome in the period of the Punic wars;
her people are warlike, her language resembling Latin, her religion
a fierce one of terrible gods all loaded with formidable weapons.
The Chinese on the other hand, whose religion is mild, cultivate
literature and are humane in the highest degree: the peoples of the
Indies are also humane and practise the arts of peace; the Persians
and Turks mingle the rude doctrine of their religion with an Asiatic
softness, the Turks especially tempering their arrogance with pomp,
magnificence, liberality and gratitude. Europe is above all humane,
composed as it is of great monarchies and universally professing the
Christian faith which inculcates an infinitely pure and perfect idea
of God and commands charity to the whole human race. Vico fixed his
attention upon the confederacy of the Swiss cantons and the united
provinces of Holland, which reminded him of the Aetolian and Achaean
leagues, and on the composition of the German Empire, a system of free
states and sovereign princes, which seemed to him a kind of attempt
in the direction of a great aristocratic state; the most perfect
of all, and the ultimate form of civil life, since no other can be
conceived superior to it, reproducing as it does the earliest form, the
aristocracy of patricians each supreme in his own family and all united
in the ruling class of the first state; but reproducing it in a form
not of barbarism but of the highest civilisation. Such is the humanity
by which Europe is on every hand distinguished, that it abounds with
every element contributory to human happiness, mental pleasures no
less than bodily comforts, and all this in virtue of the Christian
religion, teaching as it does sublime truths, supported by the most
learned philosophers of the Gentile races and of the three greatest
languages of the world, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and thus uniting the
wisdom of authority with that of reason, the choicest philosophical
doctrine with the most highly developed philological learning. Can this
lofty civilisation, safeguarded as it is by Christianity, be moving,
or ever likely to move towards a new state of nature? It is difficult
to discover Vico's real opinion on this point. Among his verses there
is a poem of a profoundly pessimistic tone, but this is a youthful
effusion, and in any case refers to the end of the world as imminent,
rather than to a future social decadence. In his letters there is a
melancholy picture of the condition of learning in his time: but it
applies to this restricted field only, not to the sphere of social and
political life. On the other hand, in his last philosophical work, the
_De mente heroica,_ referring to those who declared that all things
were now perfect and that no new tasks could arise, he says that the
tide of progress is flowing at its strongest. "The world is still
young: for only in the last seven hundred years, four hundred of which
were spent in barbarism, how many new discoveries have been made! How
many new arts have arisen! How many new sciences have been developed!"
(_Mundus iuvenescit adhuc; nam septingentis non ultra abhinc annis,
quorum tamen quadringentos barbaries percurrit, quot nova inventa! quot
novae artes! quot novae scientiae excogitatae!_) But we may observe
that the _De mente heroica_ is an official oration, and that Vico may
on that account have suppressed for the occasion his doubts or his
deepest convictions. In any case, how can we reconcile the prophecy of
an imminent collapse with the rise of that creation of providence, the
New Science, shedding upon the life of nations a light which rendered
possible the diagnosis and cure of their ailments? On the whole it is
probable that the difficulty of determining Vico's opinion as to the
fate of contemporary society is due to the fact that he had really no
settled conviction on the subject, and was led hither and thither in
various and contrary directions by the influence of hopes and fears.

If it had not been disturbed by the scheme of Roman history, the
empirical theory of the reflux would never have been forced to admit
so many and serious exceptions; nor would it have fallen into such
painful confusions. It would have accommodated its author's historical
observations with greater ease, and its general characteristics would
have been much simpler and more general. It would have consisted
primarily in the determination and illustration of the connexion
between predominantly imaginative and predominantly intellectual,
spontaneous and reflective, periods, the latter periods issuing out
of the former by an increase of energy, and returning to them by
degeneration and decomposition. Political history shows over and
over again the spectacle of aristocracies declining from their first
strength to a debased and contemptible state and yielding before the
onset of classes less refined or even absolutely uncultured, but of
stouter moral fibre; while these again, after becoming civilised in
their turn and attaining the highest development of the historical
idea whose germ they bear within themselves, enter upon a new period
of decay and fermentation, from which issues a new ruling class in the
vigour of a youthful barbarism. The history of philosophy again shows
positive and speculative periods; philosophical solutions congeal into
scholastic theory and dogma, the mind reverts to the mere unthinking
observation of particular fact, and the speculative process arises once
more. Literary history, too, speaks of periods of realism and idealism,
romantic and classical periods: of a corrupt classicism, Alexandrian or
decadent art, and of a romantic barbarism which arises from it. These
are true cases of Vico's reflux. But since the nature of the mind which
underlies these cycles is outside time and therefore exists in every
moment of time, we must not exaggerate the difference of the periods:
and if on the one hand the outline of the law must be distinct, it
must on the other hand not lose a certain elasticity. We must never
forget that at every period, aristocratic or democratic, romantic or
classical, positive or speculative, and even in every individual and
every fact, moments both aristocratic and democratic, romantic and
classical, positive and speculative can be observed; and that these
distinctions are to a great extent quantitative and made for the sake
of convenience. These facts should lead us to avoid alike maintaining
the law at all costs and so falling into artificiality, and rejecting
it entirely and so refusing the help which may be derived from general
and approximative views.

Thus understood and amended, not only is the theory free from the
great and striking exceptions which are necessary when it is modelled
upon the history and final catastrophe of Rome, but the accusations of
undue uniformity lodged against Vico disappear. Vincenzo Cuoco, one
of the first, if not the first intelligent student of Vico's works,
remarks concerning and in criticism of the law of reflux, that "nature
never resembles itself; it is man who by compounding his observations
forms classes and names." This is perfectly true; but if applied to
this case it would be an argument not against the Vician reflux but
against every sort of empirical human science. Others accused Vico
of overlooking groups of causes of great historical weight, such as
climate, racial and national character, and exceptional occurrences.
But, omitting the fact that he often mentions these things, for he
connects national character and climate with the forms and changes
of states, and mentions events and circumstances which upset the
natural and ordinary course of national history, for example in his
discussion of Greek history, the truth is that he was bound to ignore
them and could not waste time over such things, since his concern was
with uniformities and not with divergences, or rather with certain
uniformities and not with certain others which compared with the
former were negligible divergences. Similarly--the parallel is an
obvious one, and indeed is more than a parallel--any one who attempts
to trace the general characteristics of the different periods of
life, infancy, childhood, adolescence and so forth, will ignore the
comparative rapidity and slowness of development due to differences
of climate, race or accidental circumstances. Another of these
true but irrelevant charges is that Vico denied the communication
and interpenetration of civilisations, and insisted that they arise
separately in different nations without any mutual knowledge and
therefore without reciprocal imitation. This charge has been met by the
observation that Vico does not fail to record cases of the influence
of one people upon another and of the transmission of civilisations
and their products; the transmission for example of alphabetic writing
from the Chaldaeans to the Phoenicians and from them to the Egyptians;
and that in any case his law is not empirical but philosophical and
refers to the spontaneous creative activity of the human mind. The
point at issue is however precisely the empirical aspect of this law,
not the philosophical: and the true reply seems to us to be, as we have
already suggested, that Vico could not take and ought not to have taken
other circumstances into account, just as--to recall one instance--any
one who in studying the various phases of life describes the first
manifestations of the sexual craving in the vague imaginations and
similar phenomena of puberty, does not take into account the ways in
which the less experienced may be initiated into love by the more
experienced, since he is setting out to deal not with the social laws
of imitation but with the physiological laws of organic development.
If it is said that even without imitation or sophistication the sexual
craving arises no less and demands satisfaction, such a statement
doubtless merely asserts the incontrovertible truth of a certain very
ancient Eastern tale included by Boccaccio in the _Decameron_: but at
the same time it supplies the most complete parallel to the famous and
much controverted aphorism of Vico.

Nor is the Vician law of reflux necessarily opposed, as has often been
thought, to the conception of social progress. It would be so opposed
if instead of being a law of mere uniformity it were one of identity,
in agreement with the idea of an unending cyclical repetition of single
individual facts which has been adopted by certain extravagant minds
of both ancient and modern times. The reflux of history, the eternal
cycle of the mind, can and must be conceived, even if Vico does not
so express it, as not merely diverse in its uniform movements, but
as perpetually increasing in richness and outgrowing itself, so that
the new period of sense is in reality enriched by all the intellect
and all the development that preceded it, and the same is true of the
new period of the imagination or of the developed mind. The return of
barbarism in the Middle Ages was in some respects uniform with ancient
barbarism; but it must not for that reason be considered as identical
with it, since it contains in itself Christianity, which summarises and
transcends ancient thought.

Whether the conception of progress is formulated and thrown into relief
by Vico is quite another question. Vico does not deny progress; he
even refers to it in speaking of the conditions of his own time as an
actual fact: but he has no conception of it and still less does he
throw such a conception into relief. His philosophy, while it attains
the lofty vision of the process of mind in obedience to its own laws,
nevertheless retains by reason of this failure to apprehend the
progressive enrichment of reality an element of sadness and desolation.
The individual character of men and events is obliterated in Vico;
individuals and events are represented merely as particular cases of
one aspect of the mind or of one phase of civilisation. Hence we always
find Aristides alongside of Scipio and Alexander alongside of Caesar:
never Aristides simply as Aristides, Scipio as Scipio, and Alexander
and Caesar as Alexander and as Caesar. Progress implies that each fact
and each individual has its own unique function; each makes its own
contribution, for which no other can be substituted, to the poem of
history; and each responds with a deeper voice to the one that went
before.

But the reason why Vico was bound to miss the idea of progress and
why his studies in history were inevitably one-sided can be clearly
perceived only after a review of his metaphysics.




CHAPTER XII



METAPHYSICS



By "metaphysics" we understand Vico's conception of reality as a
whole, not of the world of man by itself; and we also include in the
meaning of the word his ultimate negative conclusion asserting the
unknowability or the imperfect knowability of one or more spheres of
reality, or of that highest sphere in which the others reunite.

In point of fact, as we observed in considering the second and latest
form of his theory of knowledge, Vico drew a sharp line between the
world of man and the world of nature: the former transparent to man
because created by him, the latter opaque, because only God its
Creator has knowledge of it. And his conception of the total and
ultimate reality, the metaphysic which he expounds together with his
earlier theory of knowledge, retains the value granted to it by that
theory and no other: it is a probable conjecture, but one incapable
of verification, and reaches completion in the certitude of revealed
theology. Hence this metaphysic remains out of all possible connexion
with the New Science, which proceeds by the certain method of truth and
cuts itself off from revelation. Vico never rejected it. He discusses
it in his autobiography of 1725, the year of the first _Scienza Nuova;_
he refers to it with satisfaction in 1737, seven years after the
second _Scienza Nuova,_ when his scientific life was, as he himself
considered, at an end. But though he never rejected it he always kept
it aside, so to speak, in a corner of his mind.

This point established, it might seem that there can be nothing more to
be said of any philosophical importance about Vico's metaphysics. But
this is not the case. Since every department of philosophy implies in
itself every other, and since we can therefore always deduce from the
treatment of one of the so-called particular philosophical sciences the
character of the whole, it is legitimate to examine the New Science
and to consider what metaphysic is implicit therein; to determine what
philosophical complement is logically supported and demanded by this
science.

The New Science, which asserted the full knowability of human affairs,
not merely on the surface, like a psychological treatment, but in
the depths of their nature: the New Science, which transcended the
individual to attain the conception of the mind which informs all
things and is Providence: the Science which with divine pleasure
contemplated the eternal cycle of the mind, elevated as it was to such
a height, necessarily tended to interpret the whole of reality, both
Nature and God, as Mind. That this tendency was objective to the New
Science, and not subjective to Vico, in whose mind the science so to
speak thought itself out, need hardly be repeated. Vico personally not
only did not encourage it but actually curtailed and repressed it so
energetically as to leave no trace of it in his works. There was no
philosophical doctrine of which he had such terror and against which
he so frequently waged war as that of pantheism; and perhaps this
polemical preoccupation is the only trace, though quite an involuntary
trace, visible in his writings of the tendency which he must have
observed in himself. He was, and wished to remain, a Christian and a
Catholic; transcendence, the personality of God, the substantiality
of the soul, though his science did not lead him towards them, were
uncontrollable necessities to his consciousness. But just as this fact
allowed Vico to repress but not to eradicate the essential logical
tendency of his thought, so it enables us to recognise that tendency
in the facts themselves. An Italian critic, Spaventa, is right when he
says that in Vico the necessity of a new metaphysic makes itself felt;
another, a German Catholic, is equally right in denning his system
as "semi-pantheistic." It would perhaps be more dangerous to go on
to say, with the Italian above mentioned, that Vico makes an advance
on the Cartesian idea of two substances and the Spinozistic of two
attributes, and even on the Leibnitian doctrine of the monad, and that
he transcends parallelism and pre-established harmony by distinguishing
the two providences, the two attributes, nature and mind, in such a way
that the one is a step to the other, and by conceiving the point of
union and the origin of the opposition as an unfolding or development,
so that nature is regarded as the phenomenon and proper basis of
mind, the pre-supposition which mind creates to itself in order to be
really mind, to be a true unity. For while we may doubt whether the
distinction of the two attributes or two providences, the natural and
the human, is a well-grounded and inevitable consequence of conceiving
substance as mind and thought, it is impossible to deduce the
evolutionary transition from one to the other as a tendency implicit in
Vico's conception of thought. There is certainly particular documentary
evidence for this latter particular tendency: but it is scanty and
unconvincing, and occurs not in the system of the New Science but
rather in the chronologically earlier system.

For the metaphysic laid down by Vico in the earlier phase of his
thought is not, as it has seemed to some, and as it may at first sight
appear, entirely devoid of significance and value. It shows the same
aversion to materialism and the same love of idealism which inspire
the meditations of the New Science. The philosophy of Epicurus, which
takes as its starting-point matter already formed and divided into
ultimate particles of various shapes, composed of other parts which
are supposed to be indivisible owing to the absence of void between
them, seemed to him a philosophy such as to satisfy the naïve mind of
a child or the uncritical mind of a woman; and the delight with which
he followed the explanation of the forms of material nature according
to this philosopher, in the poem of Lucretius, was equalled by the
amusement and pity with which he watched him forced by stern necessity
to lose himself in countless ineptitudes and follies in trying to
explain the phenomena of thought. Vico accused the Cartesian physics
no less than the Epicurean of a "false position," since it also takes
ready-formed matter as its starting-point, differing from the Epicurean
matter in that, while the latter limits the divisibility of matter at
the atoms, the former makes its elements infinitely divisible; that
the one places motion in the void, the other in the solid; the one
initiates the shaping of its infinite worlds by a casual declination
of atoms from the downward path of their own weight and gravitation,
the other generates its indefinite vortices from an impetus imparted
to a section of inert and therefore not yet divided matter, which on
receiving this motion divides into fragments, and, hampered by its
mass, necessarily makes an effort to move in a straight line, and
being unable to do so through its solidity begins, divided as it is
into fragments, to move about the centre of each fragment. In this way
while Epicurus entrusted the world to chance, Descartes subjected it
to fate; and it was in vain that to save himself from materialism he
superimposed upon his physics a quasi-Platonic metaphysic, by which he
attempted to establish two substances, the one extended and the other
intelligent, and to make room for an immaterial agent; for these two
parts were not reconciled in his system, since his mechanical physics
included in itself a metaphysic like the Epicurean, establishing
one kind and one only of active material substance. For similar
or analogous reasons Vico rejected the philosophies of Gassendi,
Spinoza and Locke; and the physical science of other authors such as
Robert Boyle seemed to him valuable for purposes of medicine and the
"spargiric art," but useless for philosophy. Galileo he considered to
have looked at physical science with the eye of a great geometrician,
but without the aid of the full light of metaphysics. He had sympathy
with philosophers who were also geometricians, and therefore with the
Pythagorean or Timaean physics, according to which the world consists
of numbers; with the Platonic metaphysics, which from the form of our
minds without any other hypothesis establishes, upon our knowledge
and consciousness of certain eternal truths which are in our mind and
cannot be ignored or denied, the eternal idea as the principle of all
things; with the doctrine of metaphysical points, attributed by him
to Zeno the Stoic; and finally with the philosophy of the Italian
Renaissance, the period adorned by Ficino, Pico della Mirandola,
Steuco, Nifo, Mazzoni, Piccolomini, Acquaviva and Patrizio.

The fundamental concept of his cosmology was supplied by the
metaphysical point, in which the employment of mathematics in
metaphysics, a process admitted by Vico as analogous to that of
construction, found expression. Just as from the geometrical point
proceed the line and the surface, and the point which is defined as
having no parts supplies the proof that lines otherwise incommensurable
can be divided equally into their component points, so it is legitimate
to postulate points not geometrical but metaphysical, which though not
extended generate extension. Between God, who is rest, and matter,
which is motion, the intermediate place is taken by the metaphysical
point, whose attribute is conation, the indefinite energy and attempt
on the part of the universe to bring into being and sustain each
particular thing. The existence of matter is nothing but an indefinite
power of keeping the universe extended, which underlies all extended
objects equally however unequal they may be, and also an indefinite
power of motion underlying all particular motions, however unequal.
Behind a grain of sand lies something which when this particle is
divided gives to it and preserves in it an infinite extension and
magnitude; so that the whole mass of the universe is included in the
grain of sand, if not actually, yet potentially and in capacity. This
effort of the universe, underlying each smallest particle of matter,
is neither the extension of the particle nor the extension of the
universe: it is the thought of God, which, free from all materiality,
gives motion and impulse to the whole. Every particular determination
of reality agrees with this fundamental truth. Time is divisible,
eternity indivisible; disturbances of the mind wax and wane, its
quiescence has no degrees; extended things are corruptible, unextended
things permanent in their indivisibility; body can be divided, mind
cannot; possibilities are at a single point, accidents are everywhere;
science is one, while opinion produces differences; virtue is neither
in one place nor another, vice walks up and down in every direction;
the good is one, the bad is innumerable; in every kind of thing in a
word the best occurs in the category of the indivisible.

Substance in general, which underlies and sustains things, is divided
into two species, extended substance or that which equally supports
unequal extensions, and thinking substance which equally supports
unequal thoughts. And just as one part of extension is divided from
another but indivisible in the substance of the body, so one part of
thought, that is to say a determinate thought, is divided from another
but indivisible in the substance of the soul. Activity or freedom is
peculiar to the soul, and entirely denied to body: and Descartes, in
making a conation of body the beginning of his physics, was strictly
adopting the methods of a poet and falling into the anthropomorphic
conceptions of primitive races. The phenomena which students of
mechanics call activities, forms, or powers, are insensible movements
by which bodies move either, as the ancients said, towards their
centres of gravity, or, as the modern theory of mechanics asserts, away
from their centre of motion. The communication of motion, moreover,
is just as inconceivable in body as is activity. To grant it would be
equivalent to granting the interpenetration of bodies, since motion
is nothing but matter in motion; the blow given to a ball is only the
occasion for the energy of the universe, which was so weak in the ball
as to make it seem at rest, to expand and thus to give it an appearance
of more sensible motion. On the other hand, Vico agreed with the
Cartesians, especially Malebranche, as to the origin of ideas, which
he inclined to believe that God creates in us from time to time. He
also held with the Cartesians that the lower animals are automata;
and he agreed with all contemporary thought as to the subjectivity of
secondary qualities.

Setting aside these last doctrines, which are not Vico's own, indeed
he scarcely refers to them, the fundamental doctrine of metaphysical
points is all his own. His attribution of it to an imaginary Zeno,
in whose person were combined and confused the Eleatic and the Stoic
(a mistake common in the philosophical literature of the time), can
deceive nobody, and did not even deceive Vico himself, who when pressed
explained how he had been led to that interpretation of Aristotle's
statements about Zeno, and finally says that if the doctrine cannot
be accepted as that of Zeno, he will adopt it as his own, without
the patronage of any great names. Nor on the other hand can it be
traced to the Leibnitian monadology. We cannot be sure that Vico
was acquainted with this doctrine. In any case he does not mention
it, while Leibniz he does mention in terms of deep respect: and the
resemblance is very vague, for the metaphysical points are not monads.
The discovery by Leibniz and Newton of the differential calculus may
however be said to have influenced him. It was then for the first time
becoming known in Italy; and its terminology of maximum infinities,
greater and less infinities, and so on would, says Vico, completely
baffle the human understanding, since the infinite admits neither of
degrees nor of multiplication, but for the help of a metaphysic which
shows that all actual extension and actual movement is a power or
capacity for extension and motion always equal to itself and infinite.
The contributions of Platonic lines of thought (the Platonism of the
Renaissance) and those of Galileo, especially the latter, to Vico's
conception have been worked out with even more justice: his originality
however is in no degree impaired by these facts.

The idea in which his originality found expression was, no doubt,
fantastic and arbitrary, and in consequence bound to remain undeveloped
and without influence on Vico's other conceptions. To the reviewer
in the _Giornale dei letterati,_ who called this metaphysic a mere
sketch, the author replied that it was quite complete: an abortion in
fact, rather than a sketch, and, as such, complete. And in the _Scienza
Nuova,_ beside a few references to the refusal to attribute activity to
matter, there is one fugitive but interesting attempt at a connexion
with a geometrical or arithmetical metaphysic on the model of that
described above. In this passage it is stated that upon the order of
material and complex civil affairs the order of numbers, which are
abstract and absolutely simple, is imposed: and the fact is noted that
governments begin with the one, in domestic monarchy, pass to the few
in aristocracy, advance to the many and the all in popular republics,
and finally return to the one in civil monarchies, so that humanity
moves perpetually from the one to the one, from domestic monarchy to
civil monarchy.

But if we can and must deny all value to Vico's cosmology, if the
contradictions and obscurities in which he involves himself are
manifest, and were observed by critics of his own time, still we cannot
deny its dynamic nature as opposed to the mechanicism of contemporary
philosophy. The theory of metaphysical points, in which God appears as
the great geometrician who creates by knowing and knows by creating the
realities of the universe, is as it were a symbol of the necessity of
interpreting nature in idealistic language. We find here and there a
theologian Vico, an agnostic Vico, or even a fanciful Vico composing
cosmological and physical romances: but look where we will among his
works, we shall never find a materialistic Vico.

Even this by no means overbold metaphysic aroused suspicions of
pantheism, though the author insisted upon the theological doctrine
that God's activity is convertible _ab intra_ with the thing created
and _ab extra_ with the fact, and that therefore the world was created
in time; that the human soul, which as a mirror of the divine thinks
infinity and eternity, is not bounded by the body and therefore not
by time, and is therefore immortal; and that man, even if God were to
reveal it to him, cannot understand how the infinite enters into finite
objects. However, he thought it necessary to conclude his replies to
his critics by collecting statements demonstrating his orthodoxy, and
clinching the matter with the remark that "since God is in one sense
substance and in another His creatures, and since the _ratio essendi_
or essence is proper to substance, the created substances even as
regards their essence are diverse and distinct from the substance of
God."

Vico's thought was limited by the idea of transcendence, which
prevented him from attaining not only the unity of reality, but also
a truly complete knowledge of that world of man which he had so
powerfully explained by means of the opposite principle. We now see why
Vico, though he did not deny the fact of progress, could have no real
conception of it. It has been observed that the conception of progress
is foreign to Catholicism and dates from the Protestant Reformation,
and that therefore the Catholic Vico was bound to deny himself the
use of it. But the conception of an immanent providence is no less
irreconcilable with Catholicism, and yet Vico is saturated with this
idea. This means that he did not lack the impulse: rather he was unable
to pass a certain point beyond which his faith would have been too
obviously defeated. Progress, deduced from the immanent providence and
introduced into the New Science, would have accentuated the difference
within the uniformity, the origin at every moment of something new,
the perpetual enrichment of the flux at every reflux: it would have
changed history from an orderly traversing and retraversing of the line
drawn by God under the eye of God to a drama whose _ratio essendi_ is
contained within itself: it would have enmeshed and drawn with it the
whole universe and realised the thought of infinite worlds. In face
of this vision Vico paused in apprehension and stubbornly refused to
proceed: the philosopher in him had yielded to the Catholic.




CHAPTER XIII


TRANSITION TO HISTORY: GENERAL CHARACTER OF VICO'S TREATMENT OF HISTORY

It is clear from the facts above discussed that the historical portion
of the New Science could not take the shape of a history of the human
race in which peoples and individuals were recognised as playing each
its own unique part in the whole course of events. To enable it to
fulfil such a function Vico would have had to close up his system of
thought, which was still at one point incomplete and not impervious
to the religious idea, and to elevate his provident deity into a
progressive deity, determining flux and reflux as the eternal rhythm
of the process. Or on the other hand in order to attain the vision of
individuality, in the diametrically opposite sense, in history, he
would have had to abandon his rudimentary idealistic philosophy, break
down the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary providence,
and trace the history of man on the plan which God had revealed or
permitted him to discover. Vico's orthodoxy rebelled against the former
alternative, while his philosophy kept him from the second: and the
result of his dilemma was that the history he reconstructed was not and
could not be a universal history.

In consequence, it was not what is called a philosophy of history, if
that phrase is taken in its original sense of a "universal history
"--one which concentrates its attention upon the broadest and
least obvious connexions of facts--"philosophically narrated," more
philosophically, that is, than is usual with annalists, anecdotists and
compilers dealing with courts, politics and nations. The controversy
as to whether Vico or Herder can claim to be the founder of the
philosophy of history must be frankly decided in favour of Herder,
whose work shows just that procedure of universal history which is
lacking in the New Science. On the other hand it would be easy to
find numerous predecessors for Herder, beginning with the Hebrew
prophets and the scheme of the Four Monarchies, which remained not
only in the Middle Ages but well into modern times the constructive
scheme of universal history. Nor would it be out of place to add that
the so-called philosophy of history, in so far as it is a universal
history, constitutes neither a special philosophical science nor a form
of history capable of sharp distinction from the rest, except when the
passion for making it self-subsistent gives it the appearance of an
abstract history or a historicised philosophy. Thus when Vico or Herder
is credited with the foundation of a new science in the philosophy of
history, the compliment is a doubtful one: a fact which especially in
the case of Vico has gone far to obscure the value of their work. In
fact, the "New Science of the common character of nations," understood
as the equivocal science of the philosophy of history, has eclipsed the
New Science as a new philosophy of mind and a rudimentary metaphysic of
thought.

The conflict which for the general consciousness existed between
science and faith reappears in Vico's treatment of history as a
distinction and opposition between Jewish and Gentile history, sacred
history and profane. Jewish history was not subjected, he believed,
to the laws of history in general. Its course was unique, and its
development proceeded on principles peculiar to itself, namely, the
direct action of God. The New Science, which in its philosophical
part did not give the explanatory principles of this process, was in
consequence not compelled to deal with it in its historical part.
This is perhaps what Vico would have wished. But the wish was met,
setting aside the necessity of guarding against the charge of impiety,
which was certainly a danger, by his scruples as a believer, and a
conscientious believer; which urged him to look for some kind of
harmony between the two histories, since however sharply distinguished
(he recalled how even a Gentile writer, Tacitus, had described the Jews
as "unsociable"), both alike developed under terrestrial conditions
and had points of mutual contact, at least in the origin of mankind
and its regeneration by means of Christianity. Following the inherent
tendencies of his thought, Vico ought to and would willingly have
avoided the narration of universal history and confined himself
exclusively to questions of philosophy and philology. But as it
happened, he was compelled now and then to depart from his programme
and to attempt at once a unification of the two histories and a defence
of sacred history based on arguments supplied by science and profane
history.

This is the least successful, but a profoundly significant part of
his work. He was forced to admit, though the admission was opposed by
all his discoveries and outraged his whole system of thought, that
the Hebrews had enjoyed the privilege of always keeping intact their
memories of the beginning of the world, a memory which other nations
claimed in vain; and hence sacred history must supply the true origin
and succession of universal history. The necessity of connecting his
views on primitive civilisation with Biblical chronology, with the date
usually assigned to the creation of the world, with the traditions of
a universal deluge and of a race of giants--the necessity of finding,
as he says, the "continuity of sacred with profane history"--led him
to the most extravagant flights of fancy. After the flood, in the year
1656 from the creation, at the separation of the sons of Noah, while
the Hebrews began or continued their sacred history with Abraham and
the other patriarchs and then with the laws given to Moses by God, all
the other descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, the first race more
slowly and for a shorter period, the second and third with greater
rapidity and for a longer time, lapsed into the state of nature and
wandered over the earth as insensible and savage brutes. And while the
Hebrews, subjected to their theocratic government, strictly educated
and practising ablution, remained of normal stature, the members of
the other races, living without either physical or moral discipline,
wallowing in dirt and excrement and absorbing nitrogenous salts (just
as the earth is enriched and made fertile by excrement), grew to
monstrous and gigantic size. The state of nature lasted a hundred years
for the Semites and two hundred for the other two races; at the end of
which the earth which had long been sodden with the moisture of the
universal deluge began to dry up and emit dry exhalations or fiery
matter into the air so as to generate lightning. With lightning, as
we already know, and with the mythology of the thundering sky, which
is Jupiter, arose in these brutes the consciousness of God and of
themselves, by which they became human. Thus begins the "age of the
gods," which, socially, is that of domestic monarchy where the father
is king and priest. In the course of this age the system of greater
deities was gradually established, and the giants, by means of their
religions of terror and their domestic education taming the flesh
and developing the spiritual element in them, and by the practice of
washing, shrank by degrees to the normal size of the men whom we find
at the beginning of the next or heroic age.

Such are the chief points in Vico's quaint reconstruction of the
earliest history of man upon the earth, harmonised with the account
in sacred history. We shall be less inclined to amusement or ridicule
if we reflect upon the tragedy underlying the comedy: the tormented
conscience of the believer which in its struggle with the philosopher
seeks refuge in these extravagant ideas. At any rate, they gave Vico
a series of insecure stepping-stones--the flood, the giants, the dry
exhalations--which enabled him to cross the torrent of religious
tradition and reach the dry land of critical history, where he found
the primary starting-point of his philosophy of mind, the state of
nature. It may further be suggested that the contact with Hebrew
history--the only one which presented itself to him as a history in the
strict sense, a _unicum,_ something absolutely individualised even if
in a miraculous manner--suggested to him the few attempts met with in
his works to assign to various peoples a special function or mission;
thus it sometimes appeared to him that the Hebrews represented _mens,_
the Chaldeans _ratio,_ and the Japhetic races _phantasia._

Parallel to this imaginary history of the origin of the human race
on the earth is Vico's attempt at Biblical apologetics. He lost no
opportunity of adducing proofs from profane sources to confirm the
statements of sacred history. For instance, a confirmation of the flood
and the giants is supplied by the similar traditions of Greek and other
nations. The theocratic government, which is not definitely mentioned
by any profane history but merely alluded to obscurely by poets in
their tales, is met with in the government of the Hebrews before and
after the flood. The Hebrews again knew nothing of divination because
they lived in direct contact with the true God, while the Chaldees
had a system of magic or divination according to the movements of the
stars, and the European peoples a system of augury. One certainly
feels in all this something of an effort, a will to see or not to
see: a kind of self-interruption and stimulation to belief. It is not
infrequent among cultured and scientifically educated believers. Again,
in his exposition of the historical genesis of grammatical forms, where
he says that verbs began with the imperative, the monosyllabic command
given by the father to wife, child or slave (_es, sta, i, da, fac,_
etc.), Vico draws from this an indirect demonstration of the truth of
Christianity, because the roots of Hebrew verbs are always found in
the third person singular of the past tense; a clear proof that the
patriarchs must have given their commands to their families in the
name of a single God (_Deus dixit_). This, in Vico's opinion, is "a
lightning to confound all those writers who have believed the Hebrews
to be a colony proceeding from Egypt; since from the beginning of its
foundation the Hebrew tongue had its origin in a single God." But in
truth these lightnings instead of descending upon the head of the
unbeliever serve only to illuminate the poverty of the arguments upon
which apologetics rest, even with a man like Vico; and, objectively
considered, the division introduced by religious scruple between sacred
and profane history, and the consequent dogmatic treatment of the one,
with its strange hypotheses and defences, and critical treatment of the
other, produced and still produces an irresistible impression that the
seclusion of sacred history from human science is due to the impotence
not of the human science but of the sacred history; its impotence, that
is, to preserve itself intact within the limits of science. Seldom has
a religious scruple so endangered the cause of religion.

But Vico had far too genuine and exacting a scientific sense added
to his natural antipathies to permit him ever to become a Selden
or a Bossuet; and hence this apologetic for and harmonisation of
sacred history remains in him a mere episode, which it is possible to
ignore. And since on the other hand he was not permitted to treat
philosophy and history as entirely profane and to represent the
complex movement of history according to the fundamental criterion of
progress, his only course was to look at the facts from the point of
view which his philosophy left open to him, that of flux and reflux,
the eternal process and the eternal phases of the mind. Here lay his
strength. Here he could recognise the specific, if not strictly the
individual, character of laws, customs, poetry and myth, of whole
social and cultural formations which history down to his own time
had entirely misunderstood. For this reason, in narrating history he
was bound to confine himself to emphasising the common aspects of
certain groups of facts belonging to various nations and periods. In
the New Science, he says, "the whole history of the laws and deeds of
Rome and Greece is set forth, not in its particularity and in time,
but following the substantial identity of intention and diversity of
the modes of expression." Elsewhere he says, "the facts are adduced
after the fashion of examples, because they are understood by means of
principles," for "to see the principles confirmed by the innumerable
host of their consequences is a thing which must await certain other
works of ours, which are either as yet unpublished or now in process
of publication." In other words, as we know, this science contains on
the one hand a philosophical side, and on the other a descriptive or
empirical, exemplified in history, in which the Romans figure not as
Romans but in virtue of the common nature which they share with Greeks
and possibly with Japanese; the history of Rome under the kings or in
the early Republican period demonstrates its affinity with that of the
earlier centuries of the Middle Ages; and Homer stands not as Homer but
as an example of primitive poetry, and across the centuries finds and
greets his brother in Dante. It is at once a strength and a limitation,
because history emphatically does not fundamentally consist of these
resemblances; but without the perception of the resemblances how could
we ever determine the differences? Dante is not Homer, the barons
are not the "patres," the Athenian Solon is not the Roman Publilius
Philo; but certainly Dante is in some respects more closely related to
Homer than to Petrarch, the early barons are nearer to the "patres"
than to the later courtier-nobles, and Solon is more akin to a Roman
tribune or dictator than to any other of the seven sages among whom
he is usually placed. To observe these resemblances means denying
or rejecting other more superficial ones, and preparing the way for
knowledge of individuality by indicating the approximate place where
the truth is to be found. Vico classifies, rather than narrates and
represents; but there is classification and classification; it may be
pressed into the service of a superficial thought or of a profound one.
And the historical side of the New Science is one great substitution of
profound for superficial classifications.

In this process, which constitutes the strength of Vico's treatment
of history, the deficiencies and errors come not from outside the
limits of the process but from causes at work within these limits
themselves. It has been alleged in defence of Vico that a great part
of his errors is due to the scantiness and inadequacy of the materials
at his disposal. But the materials for any study are always scanty
and inadequate compared to our thirst for knowledge; and in judging
a historian the question is not this, but the method, cautious or
incautious, on which he employs the materials that are at his disposal.
Again, it has been said that Vico has the faults of his age; but this
is to forget that he was born in the century which saw the development
of the highly critical philology of Joseph Scaliger and the whole Dutch
school, and that Zeno, Maffei and Muratori were his contemporaries
in Italy. The truth is that just as the attitude of thought already
described in Vico confused pure philosophical method with the
determinations of empirical science and historical data, so it confused
historical research with the mixture of philosophy and empirical
science. Vico was in a state similar to that of drunkenness; confusing
categories with facts, he felt absolutely certain _a priori_ of what
the facts would say: instead of letting them speak for themselves he
put his own words into their mouth. A common illusion with him was to
seem to see connexions between things where there was really none. This
made him turn every hypothetical conjunction into a certainty, and read
in other writers instead of their actual words things that they had
never written, but which were internally spoken by himself unawares
and projected into the writings of others. Exactitude was for him an
impossibility, and in his mental excitement and exaltation he almost
despised it: what harm can ten, twenty, a hundred errors do to what is
substantially true? Exactitude, "diligence," as he says, "must lose
itself in arguments of any size, because it is a minute, and because
minute also a slow-footed virtue." Fanciful etymologies, daring and
groundless mythological interpretations, changes of name and date,
exaggerations of fact, false quotations are met with throughout his
pages, and many may be found noted in the fine edition of the second
_Scienza Nuova_ by Nicolini. Thus, as we observed in speaking of his
philosophy that Vico's was not an acute mind, so now in speaking of his
historical work we must say that it was not critical. But as while we
denied him acuteness on a small scale we acknowledged his profundity
or acuteness on a large scale, so here also we ought to add that if
Vico lacked the critical sense in small matters, in great matters he
had abundance of it. Careless, headstrong and confused in detail;
cautious, logical and penetrative in essentials; he exposes his flank
or rather his whole body to the attacks of the most miserable and
mechanical pedant, and over-awes and inspires respect in every critic
and historian however great. And, _totus mens_ though he is and all
absorbed by his own discoveries, often he does not give his power of
investigation and observation time and room to develop, and instead of
history he invents myths and investigates romances; but when he allows
the power free play, it does wonders in the field of history too, as we
shall try to show in the following chapters.

But to judge the historical views of Vico by confronting them, as many
have done, with those of modern historical research and praising or
depreciating them accordingly would hardly be conclusive. Where the
two terms of the comparison agreed the agreement might be fortuitous:
where they diverged, the later doctrine might be but a development or
consequence of the earlier attempt, and in any case the modern state
of historical knowledge by no means provides an absolute standard. On
the other hand it would be out of place, as well as beyond our power,
to rehandle all the problems dealt with by Vico to see what there is of
truth and falsehood in his conclusions. That would mean no less than
writing a third _Scienza Nuova_ more adapted to our own times. Our task
is merely to indicate the principal historical problems which Vico set
before himself, to state the solutions he gave, and always to keep in
mind the state of knowledge not in our own day but in Vico's, so as
to determine what progress in historical study may be set down to his
influence.




CHAPTER XIV


NEW PRINCIPLES FOR THE HISTORY OF OBSCURE AND LEGENDARY PERIODS


The period of historical research which preceded the life of Vico
was, as we have said, by no means credulous or uncritical. The day
was past when "chronicles of the world" were compiled, when any fable
and any falsification however gross was accepted as history: and the
seed sown by a few humanists had borne fruit in the Italian men of
learning, the French juridical school, the school of Scaliger mentioned
above, and all the great chronologists, epigraphists, archaeologists,
topographers and geographers who in the seventeenth century formed
the first immense critical collections of sources for ancient
history. While the philologists were thus improving and perfecting
their methods, detecting impostures and bridging lacunae, Bayle,
Fontenelle, Saint-Évremond and many others were engaged in spreading a
scepticism or historical Pyrrhonism as it was also called, due to the
intellectualistic philosophy; and thus anticipating the polemic against
the truth and utility of history which was to arise with immense vigour
in the following century.

This latter tendency was hypercritical rather than critical, its end
being the destruction of history in general: and since historical
scepticism was very apt to assume the character of a paradox adapted
to the needs of elegant society and the wits, its influence on the
progress of research was very small, or at most it succeeded in
producing strong reactions, one of which is represented by Vico, in
favour of tradition and authority. It is on the other hand only proper
to observe the failings of the first seriously scientific efforts
of philologists and antiquaries. They rehabilitated witnesses, laid
bare falsifications, reconstructed lists of rulers and magistrates,
connected chronology and contradicted certain legends: but, whether
owing to the tendencies of thought usual among pure scholars and
philologists or because of the general atmosphere of their century's
culture, they neither had nor conveyed a feeling for the antique and
the primitive. Strong in detail, they were weak in essentials. When
one of the most brilliant grasped, for instance, the importance of
ballad-literature as a means of transmitting history at a period when
the use of writing was unknown or uncommon, he did not receive from
this observation and others like it such a shock as might stimulate him
to recast from top to bottom his intuition and conception of primitive
life, as was the case with Vico, who almost in a flash grasped the
philosophical form of certitude and the two periods of mental and
social life corresponding to it in actual history: the periods of
obscurity and of legend.

Vico himself started from a kind of scepticism, a scepticism as
regards the prejudices of scholars and nations generally about the
character and facts of antiquity: and in combating these prejudices
he drew up a series of principles or "aphorisms," inspired apparently
by Bacon's "idola," to which they present an analogy in the field
of historical research. Vico puts the student on his guard first
against the "magnificent opinions" which have been held up to his own
day "concerning the most remote and least known antiquity": a naïve
illusion whose origin he traces to the fact that man when in a state of
entire ignorance erects himself into a rule for the universe. Here is
the closest analogy with Bacon: for this statement is precisely like
the class of "_idola tribus,_" in which thought makes itself the rule
of things "on the analogy of man, not of the universe" (_ex analogia
hominis, non ex analogia universi_). On the same observation is founded
the remark that "rumour grows in its course," _fama crescit eundo,_ and
Tacitus's _omne ignotum pro magnifico est,_ everything unknown is taken
for something great. Hence arises the habit of interpreting ancient
customs in the expectation of finding them similar or superior to those
of modern civilised life. Thus Cicero admired the humanity of the early
Romans in calling enemies in war "guests": not realising that the fact
was precisely the opposite of this, and that guests were _hostes,_
strangers and enemies. In the same way Seneca, by way of proving the
duty of kindness to slaves, recalled that masters were anciently called
"fathers of the family"; as if _"patres familias"_ might not have been
the very reverse of kind not only to slaves and servants but to their
own children, regarded as on the level of slaves. The same prejudice
led Grotius, in his desire to show the gentleness of the ancient
Germans, to collect a great number of barbaric laws in which homicide
was punished by a fine of a few pence: which is on the contrary really
a proof of the cheapness of the blood of poor rustic vassals, who are
precisely the "_homines_" mentioned by these laws.

In the second place, he warns us not to trust to the "conceit of
nations," all of which, Greek or barbarian, Chaldean, Scythian,
Egyptian, or Chinese, claimed, as Diodorus Siculus observes, to have
founded humanity, discovered the amenities of life, and preserved their
memory intact from the beginning of the world. Each of them, having
for several thousand years had no communication with the others which
might have led to the sharing of ideas, resembled in the obscurity of
its chronology a man who sleeping in a very small chamber is misled by
the darkness into believing it much too large ever to touch it with
his hand. He who accepts these dreamer's boasts for certain knowledge
finds himself in the difficulty of having to choose between the various
memories of various nations, all of which with equal justification
claim to be original.

By the side of national conceit Vico placed the "conceit of the
learned," who desire their own knowledge to be as old as the world,
and consequently delight in fancying an inaccessible esoteric wisdom
among the ancients, coinciding miraculously with the opinions professed
by each one of themselves, which they dress in the garb of antiquity
in order to enforce their acceptance. Such was the mistake not only
of Plato, especially in the researches of the _Cratylus,_ but of all
historians, ancient and modern: Vico himself had fallen into it, and
was therefore able to study it closely in his own case, when in the _De
antiquissima_ he believed himself to have found in the etymologies of
Latin words the proof of an Italian metaphysic exactly agreeing with
his own doctrines of the conversion of the _veruni_ with the _factum_
and of metaphysical points.

From these three prejudices, especially from the conceit of the
learned, follows the fourth, here called that of the "sources" or
"channels of culture," ironically called by Vico the theory of
"scholastic succession among nations." Upon this theory Zoroaster for
instance instructed Berosus for Chaldaea, Berosus in his turn Mercurius
Trimegistus for Egypt, Mercurius taught Atlas the Ethiopian lawgiver,
Atlas Orpheus the Thracian missionary, and finally Orpheus established
his school in Greece. Long journeys these, and easy forsooth to those
primitive nations which, scarcely out of the state of savagery, lived
perched on mountains in almost inaccessible situations, unknown even
to their neighbours! And these long journeys were undertaken with
the object of spreading discoveries, which any nation could make
for itself. If, when nations came to know each other through wars
and treaties, they were found to agree, that was because they all
contained some motive of truth and sprang from the same needs of man.
Was it necessary to suppose the Athenian or Mosaic law to have affected
that of the Romans, as did these "comparers" or delivers of laws, in
order to explain the origin of the right recognised in Palestine,
Athens and Rome to kill the thief by night? Was it necessary for
Pythagoras to travel spreading the doctrine of the transmigration of
souls, which we find as far afield as India?

There remained the prejudice of considering the ancient historians
as best informed about primitive times: whereas in the history of
origins they knew as little as, or less than, ourselves. As for Greek
history, Vico found, or rather imagined that he found, in Thucydides,
a confession that the Greeks up to the generation preceding that
historian knew nothing of their own antiquity: and he also observed
that it was only in the time of Xenophon that Greek historians began
to have any precise information upon Persian affairs. Roman historians
commonly began with the foundation of Rome: but the beginning of Rome
was certainly not the beginning of the world. Rome was a new city
founded in the midst of a large number of small and more ancient
peoples in Latium: and even in the case of Rome Livy refuses to
guarantee the truth of the facts of the earlier centuries of its
history up to the Punic wars, which he is in a position to describe
more accurately. He even confesses frankly that he does not know at
what point Hannibal made his great and memorable entry into Italy,
whether by the Cottian Alps or the Apennines. So well informed were the
ancient historians!

Owing to these and similar sceptical principles, the whole of Greek
history to the time of Herodotus and of Roman down to the second Punic
war seemed to Vico quite uncertain, an unclaimed territory, so to
speak, where one might enter and take possession by squatter's right.
He entered armed with positive principles directly issuing from the
negative ones we have enumerated. For if Vico denied the credibility
of historians distant in time from the facts they described, if
he discounted national pride, if he laid bare the illusions and
charlatanism of the learned, he nevertheless did not rest content with
this work of destruction. In place of the old untrustworthy method
he had banished, he endeavoured to supply a new, of better qualities
and greater tenacity; a system of methods by which it was possible to
acquire new historical documents and also to improve the study of those
already known. No advance in historical knowledge is in fact ever made
except by thus turning from the received narrative to the document
underlying it, which alone has the power of confirming, correcting and
enriching the narrative.

The first of Vico's contributions to historical method, the first
source for the knowledge of the earliest civilisations which he
exposed, is the etymology of language. The usual methods of this study
in his time were purely arbitrary: it proceeded by considering the
sound of each syllable or letter and looking for other superficial
resemblances, and inferring from these facts the derivation of a word
from this or that language, Latin, Greek or Hebrew. But etymology
becomes a fruitful study only when it is remembered that language is
the best evidence for the ancient life of a people, the life lived
by them while the language was in the making: and when the student
accordingly never ceases to explain language by customs and customs
by language. Thus the etymology of abstract words leads us into the
heart of a purely rustic society; for _intellegere,_ to understand,
for example, recalls _legere,_ to collect the produce of the fields
(hence _legumina,_ vegetables); _disserere,_ to discuss, refers to
scattering seed; and the majority of words for inanimate things reveal
relations with the human body and its members, and the sensations
and passions of man; thus "mouth" means any aperture, "lip" the edge
of a pot, "forehead" and "back" are used for before and behind; and
so on. Vico aimed at one science of etymology common to all native
languages, composed of monosyllabic, and largely onomatopoeic roots:
another of foreign loan-words, introduced after nations became mutually
acquainted: a third, of universal application, for the science of
international law, from which it should appear how the same men, facts
or objects, looked at from the different points of view of different
nations, received different names; and finally a dictionary of mental
words, common to all nations, which should explain the uniform ideas of
substances and the different modifications of them in national thought
concerning the human needs and utilities common to all, according to
the differences of their situation, climate, character and customs, and
should thus narrate the origins of the various vocal languages, all
converging in an ideal common language.

The second source revealed by Vico is the interpretation of myths or
fables, which agreeably to his doctrine were not allegories, fictions
or impostures, but the science of primitive man. In the _Diritto
universale_ Vico distinguished four different and successive characters
of the gods. At first they represented natural facts, Jupiter the sky,
Diana the flowing water, Dis or Pluto the lower earth, Neptune the sea,
and so on; secondly, natural human affairs, for instance, Vulcan fire,
Ceres corn, Saturn the seed; thirdly, social facts; and finally they
rose to heaven and were translated to the stars, and terrestrial and
human things were distinguished from divine. But in the two _Scienze
Nuove_ he emphasised almost exclusively the third or social meaning,
which became in his eyes the original; since, he appears to have
thought, the earliest nations were too much intent upon themselves,
too much immersed in their hard and difficult life, to speculate in
abstraction from social matters. Hence he found reflected in mythology
the institutions, inventions, social cleavages, class-struggles,
travels and warfare of primitive nations. Even in considerably advanced
periods Vico was hostile to naturalistic or philosophical explanations.
The saying "know thyself" attributed to the ancient sage seemed to him
merely a piece of advice to the Athenian democracy, to know its own
strength, later transferred to a metaphysical and moral sense. Beside
this principle of social interpretation he established another of great
importance: namely, that indecent meanings were inserted in myths at a
late and corrupt period when men interpreted early customs in the light
of their own, or tried to justify their own lusts by fancying that the
gods had set them the example. Hence arose the adulterous Jupiter,
Juno as the implacable enemy of Hercules' virtue, the chaste Diana
soliciting the embraces of the sleeping Endymion, Apollo persecuting
modest maidens even to their death, Mars, not content with committing
adultery with Venus by land, but pursuing her even into the sea, and,
worst of all, the love of Jupiter for Ganymede and of Jupiter again,
transformed into a swan, for Leda. Such representations can only result
in unrestrained vice, as happened in the case of the young Chaereas in
Terence's comedy. But in their original shape and meaning all myths
were serious and austere, worthy of the founders of nations. The
pursuit of Daphne by Apollo for instance referred to the magicians or
diviners who arranged weddings and followed women through the woods
where they were still liable to promiscuous ravishing; Venus, covering
her nakedness with the cestus, was a modest symbol of solemn matrimony;
the heroes, sons of Jupiter, were not the offspring of adultery, but
born of permanent and solemn marriages celebrated according to the will
of Jupiter as revealed by the diviners. To the pure all things are
pure, and impure to the impure: the forests and mountain-tops could
never beget the fancies of the closet and the brothel.

Beside these two rich sources, language and mythology, Vico names and
employs a third, which he calls the "great fragments of the ancient
world," that is to say, the memories preserved by historians and poets,
such as the Egyptian tradition of the three ages of gods, heroes
and men; the language of the gods mentioned in Homer; the thirty
thousand names of the gods collected by Varro and referring to a like
number of needs in the natural, moral, economic and civil life of the
earliest times; the grove of Romulus, which Livy calls "the ancient
plan of founding cities," and a few other golden sayings of ancient
historians. Till now these fragments had been useless for the purposes
of science, lying as they did in dirt, confusion and incompleteness:
but when cleaned, restored and fitted together they conveyed valuable
information. Nor did he overlook the monuments of architecture and
sculpture, though the use he made of them was slight, and he saw that
they were in the long run of little practical value. He declared that
as for the historic period the most certain documents are the public
coins, so for the legendary and obscure period their place is taken by
"certain traces remaining in marble," as proofs of ancient customs,
like the Egyptian pyramids with their hieroglyphic inscriptions and
other fragments of the ancient world found in every region and bearing
similar pictographic characters. It is also worthy of remark that he
gives examples of arguments founded on technical observations and
leading to conclusions in the sphere of prehistoric archaeology: as
for instance when he says that one early period of human life is
distinguished by the eating of roasted flesh, the simplest and least
elaborate kind of food, because it requires nothing except the fire: a
later period by boiled flesh, which also requires water, caldron and
tripod.

One powerful method of investigation in Vico's hands is the
comparative method, consisting in the comparison of better-known
processes of development with those known imperfectly or in parts only,
and the consequent reconstruction of the latter on the basis of the
former. So for instance the principle of heroism, revealed by evidence
found in Roman history, helps to explain the legendary history of the
Greeks, to supply the deficiencies of that of Egypt and to shed light
on the unknown history of all other nations of antiquity. Without
denying the fact of transmission from one nation to another, Vico
poured scorn upon the abuse of this conception, and minimised its value
in the case of primitive societies: using in its place the idea of
spontaneous development and endeavouring to reconstruct the process by
the comparative method. But he took this method in a very broad sense,
and made use in it of materials drawn from the most widely varying
countries and periods. To explain for example how the thundering sky
suggested to primitive man the idea of a god, he mentions the fact that
the natives of America, when first they heard the noise and recognised
the deadly effects of firearms in the hands of the Spaniards, believed
them to be gods: the rhapsodists of the Homeric poems reminded him of
the singers on the quay at Naples with their ballads of Roland and the
paladins: the transformations or metamorphoses described by the ancient
poets resembled the tales of goblins and fairies still told by mothers
to amuse little children, or the widely-scattered mediaeval legends of
the magician Merlin: he traces the mythology of the hearth down to the
custom of the log which in Boccaccio's time at Florence the head of
the family used to light upon the hearth at the new year, sprinkling
incense and wine on it, and the Christmas-eve log among the lower
classes at Naples; not to mention the custom in the Neapolitan kingdom
of counting families by "hearths." He brought the serpent Python and
all other mythical serpents into relation with the viper of the
Visconti "che i milanesi accampa" ("which calls to arms the Milanese")
and the hieroglyphic script with the _"rébus de Picardie"_ used in the
north of France.

It would be useless to look in earlier or contemporary philology
for clear general precedents for these principles, negative and
positive, established by Vico for the history of obscure and legendary
periods. They are too closely bound up with and essential to his whole
philosophical thought ever to have originated apart from this thought
itself. The rude fragments of ancient Roman laws, customs and formulae,
the Homeric poems, the words of the Latin language, when examined with
unprejudiced eyes--the power which enables a man of genius to see
things without distortion--and worked over by a mind ready to accept
them in their true nature, were bound to excite in Vico, compared with
the learned but colourless or falsely-coloured historical research of
his day, a rebellion and upheaval like that which took place a century
later in the mind of Augustin Thierry when he saw, depicted in the
pages of Chateaubriand's poetical prose, Pharamond and his Franks,
with their unrestrained movements, their rude and savage arms, their
terrible war-cries and their barbaric songs.




CHAPTER XV



HEROIC SOCIETY



As the Franks, in the compilations of national history made by the
Jesuit colleges and other French schools, appear stripped of all
their characteristic features and reduced to wise monarchs, pious
queens and devoted warriors of the Church, so ancient and primitive
history, thanks to the rhetoric and the naïve ideas of scholars, has
been painted in brilliant and untrue colours of the same kind as
those with which Lebrun or Luca Giordano painted their pompous and
theatrical pictures. Kings who devoted themselves to sage counsel in
order to aid their subjects while at the same time not diminishing the
splendour of their courts and the brilliancy of their happy nobles,
philosopher kings such as made Plato sigh for the day when philosophers
should rule or kings philosophise; loyal and valiant knights, eager
to sacrifice themselves for the common welfare; statesmen who used to
accomplish pilgrimages at speed in order to bring back from afar to
their waiting citizens laws more wise than their own; good fathers of
families, admirable mothers, brave and obedient young men, loving and
modest maidens, every one a personification of some virtue or even of
all virtues at once, models of human perfection: such are the figures
which sanctified by their venerable antiquity fill alike volumes
and imaginations. These are the heroes of Greek and Roman history:
and all this splendid cloth-of-gold decoration must be torn off and
cleared away if we would attempt to discover in the deepest recesses
of the memory of mankind the true heroes, the heroes of reality, not
of literature, of life, not of the stage: ignorant, superstitious,
fierce, selfish, harsh to their families, cruel to their inferiors,
avaricious, grasping, and yet, in spite of or even because of these
same characteristics of barbarism, heroes: virtuous with the one kind
of virtue possible and necessary in primitive times, the virtue of
strength, discipline, and a deep and uncompromising sense of religion.

The misrepresentation of the primitive hero as a wise and virtuous
member of a civilised society reaches its height, so far as political
history is concerned, in the failure to understand the three chief
words which sum up the constitution of the state: king, people and
freedom. By a misunderstanding of the first, it is believed that the
original form of the state was monarchy, the absolute monarchy which
rests on the strength of the people and keeps in check the nobles:
which is really a late development in history, if not the latest.
Into this error had fallen Jean Bodin, whom Vico chose as the object
of his polemic. But Bodin, more acute than other political writers,
involved himself in a contradiction, because though he accepted the
common error he nevertheless, observing the effects of an aristocratic
republic in the supposed freedom of ancient Rome, propped up his system
by distinguishing between state and government, and asserting that
Rome in the earliest period was popular in state but aristocratically
governed; and since this prop was too weak to bear the whole weight
of the facts he at last confessed that this republic was aristocratic
both in government and in state, thus contradicting the whole of his
own doctrine as to the necessary succession of states. The truth is
that the kings of these earliest periods were at Rome, as at Sparta and
elsewhere, not monarchs at all. The fathers, patricians or heroes were
monarchical kings only in the period of domestic monarchy, when each
family lived separately; but they were kings of a special kind, subject
to no one but God, armed with religions of terror and consecrated with
the most cruel penalties. On emerging from this first state, when
the fathers united into a patrician order, their king was simply one
or more of themselves, the mere magistrate of the order. Hence Rome,
after expelling the Tarquins by a purely aristocratic revolution, did
not change her state at all. She preserved her kings in the shape of
two consuls, "annual kings," two aristocratic kings who were "deprived
of no single detail of the royal power." The two kings of Sparta had
the same character; they were liable like the consuls to be held
accountable for their actions and could be condemned to death by the
ephors.

As these states had been falsely considered monarchical, so, no less
falsely, they had been taken as popular in character. The people
referred to in this way does not coincide with, in fact it excludes,
the plebs: the _"populus"_ was simply the patrician order, and freedom
meant simply the freedom of the patricians, the liberty of the master:
and the "_patria_" was appropriately so called, because it really was
_res patrum,_ the property of a few fathers. It is absurd to think that
the plebs, a horde of the most worthless labourers treated as slaves,
could possess the right of electing the king, and that the fathers
confined themselves to merely approving this election in the senate.
The relations between fathers and plebeians were quite other than
neighbourly peace, mutual trust and hearty co-operation. The heroes,
according to a passage of Aristotle, took a solemn oath to be eternal
enemies of the plebs: that was the form their democratic spirit took.
And the "Roman virtue" which sets before us so many and such glorious
examples, gives no example of kindliness to the common people. Brutus,
who dedicated his house in the persons of his two sons to the cause of
freedom: Scaevola, who terrified Porsena by punishing his own right
hand in the fire: the stern Manlius, who executed his own son when he
returned victorious through a successful breach of military discipline:
Curtius, who leapt in full armour with his horse into the fatal chasm:
Decius, who devoted himself for the safety of his army: Fabricius
and Curius, who refused the Samnite gold and the kingdom of Pyrrhus:
Attilius Regulus, who went to certain death to preserve the sanctity
of a Roman's oath: what did these men ever do for the commons, except
increase their miseries by war, plunge them deeper into the waters of
usury, and immure them more closely in the private dungeons of the
nobles where they were flogged bare-backed like the vilest slaves?
And woe to any aristocrat who allowed himself the slightest desire
to alleviate these miseries! He was promptly accused of sedition and
treason and sent to his death; the fate that in Rome befel Manlius
Capitolinus, who saved the Capitol from the fires of the Gaul, and
yet for his democratic sympathies was thrown from the Tarpeian rock;
the fate that came in Sparta, the hero-city of Greece as Rome was the
hero-city of the world, to the great-souled king Agis, the Manlius
Capitolinus of Lacedaemon, who, for trying to lighten the burden of the
unhappy commons by a law abolishing debts and to aid them by another
giving them testamentary rights, was strangled by the ephors. The
famous "Roman virtue" amazes any one who is obsessed by the modern idea
of a virtue consisting in justice and benevolence to all mankind. What
virtue could live with such pride? What moderation with such avarice?
What mercy with such cruelty? What justice with such inequality?

The heroes treated their own families no less harshly than the plebs.
The education of children was stern, rough and cruel. The Spartans, in
order that their sons might not fear pain and death, beat them within
an inch of their lives in the temple of Diana, so that they often fell
dead in agonies of pain beneath their father's blows. In Greece as in
Rome it was lawful to kill innocent new-born children, a custom the
reverse of the modern, by which the delights which surround little
children shape the softer side of human nature. Wives were bought by
the dowries of the heroic period, a survival of which was the practice
solemnly observed in Rome of marriage _"coemptione et farre"_ (a
similar custom is ascribed by Tacitus to the ancient Germans and must
be considered universal among barbarous peoples), and were maintained
simply as a necessity of nature for the procreation of children and in
other respects treated like slaves; as can still be seen in many parts
of the old world and almost everywhere in the new. The acquisition of
children and the thrift of the wife were simply reckoned as so much
profit to the father and husband.

The counterpart of this political and domestic system is found in
the ordinary life of the period, which was innocent of all luxury,
refinement and ease. Pastimes were arduous, such as wrestling and
hunting, to harden body and mind, or else dangerous, like jousting or
hunting big game, to accustom men to think lightly of wounds and death.
Wars were carried on under a religious aspect and were always therefore
extremely bitter. From such wars resulted the system of heroic slavery,
by which the conquered were held to be men without God, so that they
lost civil and natural liberty at once. Foreigners were considered
enemies: the earliest nations were intensely inhospitable. Brigandage
and piracy were recognised; and Plutarch says that the heroes
considered it a great honour and prize of valour to be called "robbers."

It was, in fine, a society immediately proceeding out of that of the
gods, which as we know was the climax of the state of nature. In its
passage from the prehistoric age as we should say in modern language
into the dawn of history it still retained much of the earlier customs,
those customs which Vico thinking of the lonely Polyphemus in his
cave called "Cyclopean rules." The age of gold out of which it came,
innocent, kindly, humane, tolerant and dutiful, as scholars and poets
believed, was in reality one perpetual "superstitious fanaticism,"
tormented by a continual terror of the gods, to placate whom men used
to offer human sacrifice, traces of which remain among the historic
Phoenicians, Scyths and Germans, the tribes of America and even the
Romans themselves, who afterwards substituted for it the ceremony
of throwing straw puppets into the Tiber. Even the sacrifice of
children was not unknown; memories of it are preserved in Agamemnon's
sacrifice of Iphigenia and elsewhere. But in this age of the gods,
in spite of or by means of this cruel superstition, were founded
the great institutions of humanity; religious cults together with
augurial divination, marriage and burial. Weddings, judgment-seats
and altars, and the removal of the bodies of the dead from the reach
of the malignant air and the wild beasts "taught the human brutes to
be pious" as Foscolo says in his _Sepolcri,_ merely versifying Vico's
prose. These "Cyclopes" who conjoined and confused in themselves the
functions of king, wise man (that is divination) and priest, at first
placed their dwellings on the heights of mountains, in places airy and
therefore healthy, naturally fortified, and near the perennial springs,
where were the nests of eagles and vultures, the birds with which
augury dealt. Hence the importance of water and fire, which became
symbols of the family; the earliest marriages were solemnised _"aqua
et igni"_ between parties who shared a common spring and hearth, and
therefore belonged to the same household; so that they must have been
between brothers and sisters. The period of the cyclopes was a strongly
moral period. It was not true of it that "pleasure and law were one"
in the sense fancied by later effeminate poets; for these men, whose
minds like those which we may still find among the peasants of to-day
were insensible to the refinements of vice, found that alone pleasant
which was lawful and that alone lawful which was useful. They were
just with the justice of a savage towards his god; continent, for they
had made an end of promiscuous intercourse; brave, hard-working and
high-spirited, as they were bound to be, surrounded as they were by
hardships and perils. It was only later that these primeval groups of
humanity descended into the plains and began to till them, and then,
from living inland as they did at first, travelled gradually to the
sea, learnt the art of navigation and founded colonies.

In this way families or _gentes_ existed before states. States were in
fact formed of families grouped into an order of _gentes maiores_ or
"ancient noble houses" as they were afterwards called to distinguish
them from others added later to the order (for instance at the time
of Junius Brutus, to fill the vacancies in the Roman senate after
the expulsion of the kings) and called _"gentes minores."_ But these
_gentes_ had within themselves an element of differentiation and
strife. Families were not composed, as is generally believed owing
to the common mistake of giving modern meanings to ancient words, of
wives and children alone; but also of slaves, _famuli,_ those who,
being less strong and remaining longer in the nomadic state of nature,
finally "as sometimes wild animals, driven either by extreme cold or by
hunters, to save their life betake themselves to inhabited places" had
sought refuge with the stronger, in the fortresses of the fathers. In
return for the protection thus granted they tilled the father's land,
and were bound and as it were tied to them, and hence called _nexi_;
they followed them and served them, and therefore gained the name of
_clientes._ The relation of slaves to fathers was the second form
of human relation, the first being the natural one of matrimony; it
constituted the feudal status, which has wrongly been believed peculiar
to a certain definite period of barbarism, the Middle Ages, whereas it
existed in all heroic societies, and was the eternal feudal principle
whence sprang all the republics of the world. As Tacitus says, speaking
of the Germans, the chief oath of these slaves and clients was to
guard and defend each his own master and to assign to his master's
glory his own deeds of valour (_suum principem defendere et tueri,
sua quoque fortia facta gloriae eius adsignare, praecipuum iuramentum
erat_); which is one of the severest conditions of the feudal system.
Moreover the father's children are rather confused with the slaves
than distinguished from them. They are distinguished by their title of
_liberi,_ but are identified by their similar position of obedience and
lack of separate personality.

The need felt by the fathers of securing themselves against the
frequent mutinies of the slaves led to the mutual alliance of fathers,
the patrician order and the heroic state. Of this state the slaves
constituted the first plebs. They had no citizen's rights, since they
were not citizens; no solemnities of marriage, since the auspices
were a monopoly of the fathers; nor the right of making wills, since
that right had and always kept the political character of a command.
They were therefore excluded from the _comitia curiata_ held by the
patricians under arms, which survived later for dealing with sacred
questions; profane matters being everywhere in the earliest times, at
Rome as in Greece and Egypt, considered as sacred. The king of the
patricians, whom we have called the magistrate of the order, was thus
especially their leader and general in their resistance to the slaves
or plebeians.

But the heroes did not provide for the stability of their order by
means of forcible resistance alone. Just as, when they abdicated
their position of sovereignty in their respective families for one of
subordination to the higher sovereignty of the order, they formed a
kind of noble or armed feudal system, so to keep their slaves more or
less reconciled to obedience they granted them, without admitting them
to citizenship, a kind of rustic feudalism. The origin of property is
thus explained in a way entirely different on the one hand from the
charmingly poetical theory according to which men adorned with all
the virtues of the golden age when justice dwelt on earth, foreseeing
the disorder that might result from communism, themselves with kindly
arbitration marked out the limits of fields, endeavouring not to assign
to one nothing but fertile, to another nothing but barren ground; to
one a waterless portion, to another one abounding in perennial streams:
and different on the other hand from the "philosophical" origin by
a voluntary submission to the wise, or that invented by "politician
kings" who derived property from violence. The granting of this rustic
feudalism, which might be called the first agrarian law, distinguished
three kinds of land-tenure: bonitary for the people, quiritary or
noble, supported by arms, for the fathers, and eminent, belonging
to the whole order. And since the strength of the order rested upon
its wealth, it did all in its power to prevent the enrichment of
the plebs; and in war--here we see the social motive of the "Roman
clemency"--deprived the conquered of their arms only, leaving them in
bonitary possession of their lands and imposing upon them a suitable
tribute. For the same reason the patricians were very reluctant to go
to war, for then the plebeian multitude gained experience of warfare
and became dangerous.

The detachment of law from force was slow, and traces of the latter
remained in every part of the former. In the heroic republic there
were at first no laws providing for the punishment of offences and
the restitution of private injuries; hence, failing judiciary laws,
arose the need of duels and reprisals, which perpetuated the customs
of the age of innocence or of the gods. Poetry and history describe
some of these duels, which were armed judgments: for instance, that of
Menelaus and Paris under the walls of Troy, and that of the Horatii and
Curiatii, between Rome and Alba. It was a plan of divine providence,
in order that between barbaric nations of scanty understanding and
incapable of listening to reason war should not always beget war: that
right and wrong might be to some degree determined by a belief in the
favour or disfavour of the gods as the cause of victory or defeat.

These ordeals by battle were accompanied and superseded by ordeals by
verbal formulae, used in their religious habit of mind with the most
minute and scrupulous exactitude and with care not to alter a single
letter (_religio verborum_). Horatius, who by killing his sister fell
under the law "_horrendi carminis,_" could never have been acquitted
by the decemvirs, however free from blame they thought him; and the
people acquitted him, says Livy, "more through admiration of his valour
than the justice of his cause" (_magis admiratione virtutis quant iure
causae_). In later days Roman law still retained this character of
verbal precision to such a degree that it forms the crux of several
of Plautus's comedies, in which panders are at the mercy of enamoured
young men who have led them to violate some legal formula.

The private law of this society corresponded closely with its economic
constitution. It was an entirely natural society, confined to the
necessaries of life, and did not use money; hence the law knew nothing
of contracts formed, according to the law of a later period, by mere
consent. All obligations were ratified by giving the hand; the first
buying and selling was barter; the rent of a house consisted in a
mortgage on the soil for building it, the rent of land in planting it;
companies and credit were unknown.

The material character of the first contracts and the forcible
character of early legal processes were gradually modified as time went
on, and became symbolic. As the fiction of force in marriage-rites
recalled the actual force with which the giants dragged the first women
into caves, so no less the ceremonies of _mancipatio, usucapio_ and
vengeance had formerly been acts really performed. _Mancipatio_ was
performed as we said with the actual hand, that is with real force;
for instance, in occupation, the original source of all rights of
possession; _usucapio_ by the permanent planting of the body upon the
thing possessed; vengeance was originally a duel or a _"conditio,"_
private retaliation. Then they became ceremonies or fictions:
_mancipatio_ became a civil transference with solemn acts and phrases
(_si quis nexum faciet mancipiumque uti lingua nuncupassit ita ius
esto_--"If any one makes a thing bond to him and his possession, let
the law be so that he publish it with his tongue"); _usucapio_ a tenure
which is supposed to last as long as life; retaliation a series of
personal actions accompanied by a solemn declaration of them to the
debtor. There were worn in the forum as many masks as there were legal
personalities, and under the "person" or mask of a paterfamilias were
hidden all the children and all the slaves of the house. Instead of
abstract forms, which were not yet thought of, living bodily forms were
used. Heredity for instance was invented as mistress of hereditary
property, and imagined to exist completely in every particular piece of
inherited goods; the idea of indivisible right again, was materialised
in the glebe or clod of earth presented to the judge with the formula
_"hunc fundum"_ This ancient jurisprudence was throughout poetical;
its fictions turned facts into falsehoods and falsehoods into facts,
made the unborn live, the living dead, and the dead to survive in their
posterity. It created numbers of empty legal personalities without
subjects (_iura imaginaria_), rights invented by the imagination; and
the formulae in which the laws were expressed were called because of
their strict rhythm of such and so many words "verses"_--carmina._
The fragments of the Twelve Tables, if carefully considered, end their
sentences for the most part in an Adonian verse, which is ultimately
a fragment of the hexameter metre; and Cicero, realising this, begins
his "Laws" with the sentence _Deos caste adeunto pietatem adhibento._
Cicero also tells us that the Roman boys used to sing the laws of the
twelve tables "like a regular song" (_tanquam necessarium carmen_), and
Aelian says the same of the Cretan children and the laws of Minos. The
Egyptian laws according to one tradition were "poems of the goddess
Isis," and those given by Lycurgus to the Spartans and by Draco to the
Athenians were formulated in verse. The whole of the ancient Roman
law was a "serious poem," or as Vico says elsewhere a "kind of Roman
drama," _poema quoddam dramaticum Romanum,_ performed by the Romans in
the forum; and ancient jurisprudence was a "severe poetry."

This poetic atmosphere in heroic society and this metrical tendency
in its language are facts borne out by many witnesses and proofs, by
the observations and conjectures of scholars and by the narrations of
travellers and missionaries. Hebraists are divided upon the question
whether Hebrew poetry is metrical or rhythmical; but Josephus, Origen
and Eusebius are in favour of metre, and St. Jerome asserts that a
great part of the book of Job is in hexameter verse. The Arabs, who had
no knowledge of writing, preserved their language down to the time when
they overran the eastern provinces of the Greek empire by handing on
the memory of their national poems. The Egyptians wrote the lives of
the dead in verse; the Persians and Chinese committed to verse their
earliest history, as also, according to Tacitus, the Germans and,
according to Justus Lipsius, the Americans. And since of these two last
nations the former was only known to the Romans late in their history
and the latter to Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, there
is good reason to suppose that the same is true of all other barbaric
nations ancient and modern.

The earliest metre, found not only in Greece but in Assyria, Phoenicia
and Egypt, was the heroic or hexameter. Owing to the slowness of
thought and the difficulties of pronunciation it was bound at first
to have a spondaic character (hence the final foot in the line was
always a spondee) and only later when mind and tongue became more
active did it admit the dactyl. Then, when this activity still further
increased, arose the iambic (_pede praesto_ as Horace calls it) which
approximates most nearly to prose; so much so, indeed, that the early
prose writers before Gorgias practically used the iambic metre of
poetry, and prose frequently passed over into iambic verse. Tragedy was
composed in iambics, a metre which is naturally adapted to it, produced
as it was to give expression to wrath, according to the story which
makes Archilochus invent it to express his anger against Lycambus;
and if comedy afterwards adopted the same metre, it was only by the
"meaningless following of example," not because the iambic metre was
naturally suited to it as it was to tragedy.

The primitive language of these societies was poetical not only
through its use of metre but also by being composed through and
through of lively metaphors, vivid fancies, striking resemblances,
apt comparisons, expressions by means of cause or effect, whole or
part, elliptic or pleonastic figures of speech, onomatopoeisms or
imitations of sounds by words, abbreviations, compound words, minute
circumlocutions, characteristic epithets, contortions in syntax and
episodes. All these are ways of making oneself understood devised
by men ignorant of the precise words required, or of a word, if in
conversation, understood by both parties. The episode is characteristic
of women and peasants, who are unable to select what they need and
omit what is alien to their subject; contorted language is the result
of inability to express oneself directly, or of being prevented from
doing so, as may be seen in the case of irascible or contemptuous
persons, who make use of the nominative and oblique cases but do not
utter verbs. The very words of these languages taken one by one reveal
in the frequency of their diphthongs a trace of the song out of which
speech arose; and this abundance of diphthongs still remains in the
Greek and French languages, which passed rapidly and prematurely from
the age of spontaneity to that of reflection. The German language
would certainly offer a rich store of heroic forms, with its abundance
of compound words which so happily translate those of Greek, and its
syntax which exceeds Latin in complexity as Latin does Greek. If German
scholars, says Vico several times with a wistful glance at a field of
study closed to himself, would use the principles of the New Science in
research upon the origins of their language, they would certainly make
wonderful discoveries.

The conception of the universe prevalent among the men of this period,
and the histories of themselves which they related, of their origins,
warfare and fortunes, were also poetical, or rather mythical. It was
even the case as we have seen that their conceptions in the sphere
of social history preceded those of a cosmological, physical or
psychological character. By a rigid application of this principle Vico
developed his doctrine of "natural theogony," arising naturally in the
imagination on the occasion of certain human needs and utilities: the
genesis of the twelve greater Gods, _Di maiores,_ that is to say,
the gods invented by the _gentes maiores_ and, to a great extent,
brought by them to the foundation of the state. Jupiter or the sky,
with his language of lightning, was the author of the first laws of the
family; Juno symbolised marriage, Diana matrimonial chastity, Apollo
the light of civilisation; Vulcan, Saturn and Cybele were respectively
the fire with which the forests were burnt to make clearings, the
sowing of seed and the tilling of land; Mars symbolised the warfare
of the heroes _"pro aris et focis,"_ and Venus civilised beauty. In
addition to this celestial Venus arose a plebeian Venus to whom was
given the attribute of doves; not as typifying the passion of love, but
because they were _"degeneres"_ common birds in comparison with the
eagle. A double signification, patrician and plebeian, was given in
the same way to Vulcan and Mars. The stormy relations of the fathers
with the slaves, the struggles and penalties referred to in the myths
of Tantalus and Sisyphus, begin to be reflected in the twelve greater
gods. Hercules, struggling with Antaeus, signifies the nobles of the
heroic cities, and Antaeus the mutinied slaves led back into the
primitive cities on the mountain-tops (Antaeus lifted up into the air)
and overcome and bound down to the earth, that is to say forced back
to their servile labour. The birth of the tenth divinity, Minerva,
expresses the weakening and diminution of the heroic power, since the
plebeian Vulcan (the mutinied slaves) strikes the head of Jupiter with
an axe, the tool of a servile art. Mercury represents the granting of
bonitary rights to the plebs and the maintenance of quiritary rights
by the fathers. The last of the twelve deities, Neptune, arose when
the peoples descended to the sea-coast; and the legends of Minos, the
Argonauts, the Trojan war, the return of Ulysses, Europa and the bull,
the Minotaur, Perseus and Theseus refer to colonisation and piracy.
The mythological interpretation of history does not cease with the
foundation of states. The founders of civilisation, Zoroaster and
Mercurius Trimegistus, Orpheus and Confucius, even if they are not
strictly gods, are at least poetical characters. Aesop is typical of
the _"socii"_ or slaves of the heroes and hence is represented as ugly,
that is, devoid of civilised beauty (_honestas_); and his fable of the
lions' society shows to perfection the real relation of the heroes to
their slaves, in which the latter share the toils, but not the spoils.
Draco, of whom Greek historians tell us nothing but that he imposed
a stern code of laws, symbolises the cruelty of the heroes to their
slaves. Solon was either a party-leader of the Athenian plebs, or else
a simple personification of the plebs itself, considered from the point
of view of its vengeance. In the history of Rome we find poetical
figures in Romulus, to whom were ascribed all the laws of the orders;
in Numa, author of the laws dealing with sacred matters and religious
ceremonies; in Tullus Hostilius, who organised and legislated for the
military system; in Servius Tullius the author of the census (which
has been imagined, contrary to all historical truth, the foundation
of a popular republic, whereas it was really the foundation of an
aristocratic); and in Tarquinius Priscus, who invented insignia of rank
and military uniforms; lastly, the Decemvirs and the Twelve Tables are
turned into poetical figures, since to these events and persons were
ascribed a great number of laws favourable to liberty and really dating
from a later period.

Thus, before philosophers began to elaborate the system of myths by
creating new ones when they believed they were interpreting the old
(Plato for instance introduced into the myth of Jupiter the idea of
the omnipresent and all-pervading ether, his own invention, and other
philosophers saw in the birth of Minerva from the head of Jupiter a
description of the divine wisdom, or in Chaos and Orcus the confused
mass of the universal seeds of nature and the primitive matter of
the world), poet-theologians had expressed their ideas in mythology,
ideas in which the metaphysical and physical elements were very small,
but containing a large nucleus of human and political fact. The Chaos
of these theologian-poets was the confusion of human seed during the
period of brutal community of women; it was confused because devoid of
human regulation, obscure because devoid of the light of civilisation.
The misshapen monster Orcus devoured everything because men in this
community had no human shape, and were absolved by the void, because
through the impossibility of knowing their offspring they left no trace
of themselves behind. The four elements of the world corresponded to
the four elements of social life: the air where Jupiter lightened,
the water of the perennial springs, the fire that burnt the forests,
and the earth, the scene of man's labours. Being and subsisting were
conceived the former as the act of eating (peasants still say of a
sick man, meaning that he is not dead yet, that he is "still eating")
and the latter as "standing upon one's feet." The composition of the
body was analysed into solids and liquids, that of the soul into
air: generation into the act of _"concipere"_ or _"concapere,"_ that
is, taking hold of neighbouring material bodies, overcoming their
resistance and adapting and assimilating them to one's own nature: and
all the internal functions of the soul were ascribed to the head, the
breast or the heart.

Cosmographical ideas were narrow, confined as they were to the life
of these societies. The first heaven was placed no farther off than
the tops of the mountains, where the giants saw the lightning play:
the lower world was no deeper than a ditch, and was only by degrees
enlarged and sunk into the valleys as opposed to the sky, that is to
say to the mountain-tops; the earth was identified with the limits
of the cultivated fields. In the course of time the sky, the object
of contemplation from which auguries were drawn, was lifted to a
greater height, and with it the gods and heroes who were attached to
the planets and constellations; and thus arose poetical astronomy.
Geographical knowledge extended no farther than the country inhabited
by each nation; and this is the reason why peoples travelling into
foreign and distant lands gave to the new cities and to the mountains,
hills, passes, islands and promontories the same names which were
borne by those of their native land. Asia or India was at first for
the Greeks the eastern part of Greece itself, Europe or Hesperia its
western, and Thrace or Scythia its northern district.

But we will not enter into further details; indeed we have omitted much
already. It is not the detail that gives its value to Vico's picture
of the heroic age. His etymologies, his mythical interpretations, the
genesis and chronological succession of his gods, the genesis and
succession of his phonetic, metrical and stylistic forms--each, taken
by itself, may be contested; but taken as a whole they are rich with
a truth which transcends the single propositions. This truth is the
mighty effort to recall a form of humanity and society still doubtless
living in surviving records and monuments, still recognisable here and
there in a fragmentary form in various parts of the modern world; but
for centuries, even in Vico's days, buried beneath a mass of irrelevant
fancies, conventional types, and prejudices of every kind, which
prevented its true characteristics from appearing.




CHAPTER XVI


HOMER AND PRIMITIVE POETRY


The poet of primitive society was Homer: and if such was his character,
he could not have enjoyed the profound wisdom, the delicate and lofty
sense of morality, and the supreme knowledge of all the sublimest
arts and sciences which ancient philosophers and writers fancied him
to possess, and the common opinion of literary men and critics still
attributed to him in the seventeenth century.

What an extravagant philosopher Homer would have been, if he had
indeed been a philosopher: how miserably, had he set out to do so,
would he have organised Greek civilisation! His Jupiter indicates
force, brute force, as the standard of the respect due to him; his
Minerva despoils Venus, knocks Mars down with a stone, strikes Diana
and is in turn insulted by Mars; and both Venus and Mars are wounded
by Diomed, a mere mortal. The heroes Achilles and Agamemnon exchange
insults such as would hardly be used by servants in a comedy to-day:
they call each other "dogs" and quarrel in the most uncivil manner for
the possession of Briseis and Chryseis. Ferocious in their customs,
they leave the bodies of their enemies to dogs and crows: intemperate
in their pleasures, they drink to excess. Lofty intelligence, kindness
of heart, balance of mind may be sought in vain in all their actions
and sentiments. The fact is, these heroes show themselves men of the
scantiest understanding, the wildest imagination, the most violent
passions; boorish, barbarous, intractable, fierce, arrogant, defiant
and obstinate in their resolves and at the same time flighty in the
extreme, at the mercy of any new object that presents itself to
their eyes. Here again, the most striking parallel may be found in
the psychology of the peasant, who as may be seen every day embraces
any reasonable motive proposed to him but owing to the weakness of
his intellect soon abandons the idea he has been persuaded to adopt
and slips naturally back to his first intention. In the same way the
Homeric heroes sometimes acquiesce in the first word of opposition
offered to them; sometimes at a sudden mournful recollection they burst
into bitter lamentation in the midst of their anger: or else, if while
in the greatest misery they meet with something pleasant, like Ulysses
at the feast of Alcinous, they lose all memory of their sorrows and
become completely cheerful; or else, when in a calm and peaceful state
of mind, they take offence at a harmless word and flying into a blind
passion threaten the speaker with a cruel death. Even the virtues which
they possess in an eminent degree, their frankness, vigour, magnanimity
and generosity, are tinged with this same character of unreflective
passion.

The hero of heroes, Achilles, who bears on his shoulders the destinies
of Troy, owing to a private wrong he had received from Agamemnon--a
grave wrong, but an insufficient motive for the ruin of his country and
his whole nation--condemned all the Greeks to defeat and destruction
at the hands of Hector; and he only determined to aid them in order
to assuage the personal grief caused by Hector's slaying his friend
Patroclus. If only this extreme aloofness had been due to passion and
jealousy! But though when Agamemnon deprived him of Briseis he made
enough noise to fill heaven and earth and supply the plot of the entire
_Iliad,_ yet he never in the whole course of the poem shows a spark
of real love: just as Menelaus mustered the whole of Greece against
Troy to avenge the rape of Helen but never suffers the least pang of
jealousy against Paris who is enjoying her. So devoid is Achilles of
common humanity, that when Hector wishes to arrange that the victor in
the fight shall bury the vanquished, he forgets that they are equals in
rank and that death levels all, and savagely answers: "When have men
ever made a truce with lions, and when have wolves and lambs had the
same wish?" and he adds, "If I slay thee, I will drag thee bound naked
to my chariot round the walls of Troy three days" (as he actually did
in the sequel) and finally, "I will give thee to my hounds to devour."
And he would have carried out his threat, had not the unhappy father
Priam come to him to ransom the corpse. But even in this deeply-moving
interview, when he has received Priam in his tent after the latter has,
escorted by Mercury, passed alone through the midst of the Greek camp,
when he has welcomed him to his table, at a single involuntary word
that falls from the lips of the unhappy old man as he bewails the loss
of so valiant a son Achilles forgets the sacred law of hospitality;
and, ignoring the full and complete trust which Priam had placed in
him, untouched by the terrible misfortunes of such a king, by the
respect due to a father and the veneration due to so old a man, without
reflecting on the reversal of his fortunes, of all things the most apt
to excite pity, flies into a bestial rage and shouts a threat that he
"will cut off his head"! Death itself does not end his anger at the
loss of Briseis, were it not that the beautiful and unhappy princess
Polyxena, daughter of the once rich and powerful Priam and now a
wretched slave, is sacrificed on his tomb, that the shade glutted with
revenge may drink the last drop of her innocent blood; and in the lower
world, when Ulysses asks him what state he prefers, Achilles answers
that he "would rather be the commonest slave, but alive"! Such is the
hero whom Homer adorns with the permanent epithet of "without reproach"
(ἀμύμων) and celebrates in the hearing of Greece as a pattern of
heroic virtue. Such a hero, whose reasoning powers are concentrated in
his spear-point, can only be classed with those self-satisfied persons
of whom we say nowadays that they are too fine to breathe the common
air.

If Homer's greatest characters are so discordant with our civilised
nature, the similes which he uses are drawn from savage beasts and wild
nature generally. If the life which he represents--a life of children
in its intellectual futility, of women in its imaginative vigour, and
of headstrong youths in the violence of its passion--and the tales
of which the _Odyssey_ is full, tales worthy of an old woman engaged
in amusing children, prevent our attributing any esoteric wisdom to
Homer, the striking success of these wild similes is certainly not
characteristic of a mind tamed and civilised by philosophy of any sort.
Nor could that truculent and savage style in which he describes the
various sanguinary battles, the diverse and extravagantly bloodthirsty
species of butchery which especially go to make the sublimity of the
_Iliad,_ have originated in a mind humanised and softened by philosophy.

But who was Homer? What opinions as to him can we find in ancient
writers, and what facts can we draw from his poems? An unprejudiced
reader of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ is at every step aware of and
baffled by extravagant and inconsistent statements. The life portrayed
is inconsistent: it takes us now here, now there, over a long period
of time; on the one hand we find Achilles the hero of force, on the
other Ulysses the hero of wisdom: on the one hand, cruelty, barbarism,
ferocity and brutality, on the other the luxury of Alcinous, the
delights of Calypso, the pleasures of Circe, the songs of the Sirens
and the pastimes of suitors who tempt and even win over the chaste
Penelope. On the one hand we are shown boorish and uncivilised
manners, on the other jewels, magnificent clothing, exquisite foods
and the arts of sculpture in bas-relief and metal-founding; on the one
hand a strictly heroic society, on the other some signs of popular
liberty. This delicate life fits ill with the savage and cruel life
which especially in the _Iliad_ is ascribed to the same heroes at the
same time. To regard them thus as contemporaneous is an impossibility.
From the customs of the Trojan period we have leapt abruptly into
those of the time of Numa, to such an extent that "_ne placidis coeant
inmitia_" we are compelled to suppose that the two poems were the work
of many hands extending over many ages. The geographical allusions are
equally inconsistent. These, no less, bring us into varied and distant
physical surroundings. The scene of the _Iliad_ lies to the east of
Greece, inclining to the northward: that of the _Odyssey_ in the west,
inclining to the southward. The language, again, is inconsistent. The
confusion of dialects persists in spite of the revision of Aristarchus,
and has been explained by the most extraordinary hypotheses, such as
the theory that Homer drew the elements of his vocabulary from all the
various Greek nationalities.

Passing from the poems to the traditions of their author, the lives
of Homer by Herodotus (if Herodotus really wrote it) and Plutarch
are valueless. The most elementary facts about Homer are unknown: it
is precisely concerning the man whom they considered the greatest
luminary of Greece that the ancients leave us most completely in the
dark. We know neither Homer's date nor his birthplace: each one of
the Greek peoples claimed him as their citizen. It is said indeed
that he was poor and blind, but it is just these details which excite
our suspicion, as our laughter is aroused by the argument of Longinus
which makes the _Iliad_ the work of his youth and the _Odyssey_ that
of his old age. It would be indeed remarkable if such knowledge were
current concerning a man in whose case the two trifling details of
time and place were unknown! Above all, criticism must ask how a single
man could ever have composed two poems of such a length at a time when
writing was not in existence: since the three inscriptions of heroic
age, one of Amphitryon, another of Hippocoön and a third of Laomedon
mentioned with an excess of good faith by Vossius are mere forgeries
like those made by the strikers of false coins.

All these considerations led Vico to suspect that Homer himself was not
a real person but one of those poetic characters to whom the ancient
world ascribed long series of actions, works and events. If we try to
conceive the Homeric poems not as the work of an individual but as
two great storehouses of the manners and customs of earliest Greece,
containing the history of its natural law and heroic period; if instead
of a single poet we imagine a whole nation of poets, and instead of a
single act of creation, a national poetry developing in the course of
centuries, everything falls into its place and finds an explanation.
The extravagance of the legends is explained by the fact that the
composition of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ falls in the third period of
their existence. In the hands of the theological poets they were true
and severe, by the heroic poets they were altered and corrupted, and
in this corrupt state they were incorporated in the two poems. The
variety of customs is explained if we consider the various periods of
composition, and so also the "young Homer" and "old Homer," which are
symbolic of the earlier and later periods of primitive Greece. The
diversity of sites assigned to his birth and death and the variety
of his dialects are accounted for by the fact that different peoples
produced the lays. Finally, it is explained why every Greek people
claimed him as a citizen, just because these peoples were themselves
Homer; and why he was called blind and a beggar, because such were
as a rule the singers who went about from fair to fair reciting their
tales. Thus in order to be rightly understood Homer must lose himself
in the crowd of Greek peoples and be considered an idea or heroic
character; a type of the Greeks in so far as they narrated tales in
ballad form. Thus facts which had only caused confusion and lacked
plausibility in Homer as then understood became natural and necessary
elements of the Homer now rediscovered. Above all, this latter Homer
deserves the high praise of being the first of all historians of
Greece known to us. In Homer we have a proof of the original identity
of history and poetry, and a confirmation of Strabo's assertion that
before Herodotus, before even Hecataeus of Miletus, the history of the
Greek peoples was written by their poets. In two golden passages of the
_Odyssey_ a man is praised for having told a story well and said to
have "told it as a musician and a singer."

Vico did not undertake a detailed investigation into the way in which
the Homeric poems were elaborated. He seems however to incline towards
two chief poet-authors, one, a native of the east of Greece, towards
the north, for the _Iliad,_ the other for the _Odyssey,_ a native of
the west towards the south: and by the title "Homer" he understands a
composer and compiler of legends. But on the other hand, owing to the
purely ideal meaning which this name has for him, we must not rule out
the interpretation that the two Homers in their turn may be two streams
of poetry and two groups of peoples or of popular singers. The historic
figures whom Vico finds before him are the rhapsodes, men of the people
who wandered independently about the fairs and festivals of the Greek
cities reciting the songs of Homer. From the time of their primitive
composition long ages elapsed before the Pisistratidae had them
divided and arranged into two groups, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey,_ a
fact which shows clearly that in their time only a confused mass of
material was to be found, and decreed that they should henceforth be
sung by the rhapsodes at the Panathenaea.

It is however certainly not in the resolution, materially understood,
of the individual Homer into a myth or poetic character that the
importance of Vico's theory lies: and the same is perhaps the case
with its truth. From the inconsistencies observed by him, and not
always accurately observed (which are moreover unimportant, since
the inaccuracies he notes might easily be balanced by the correct
statements he omits), there was no strictly logical passage to the
denial of the existence of an individual Homer, the principal author
of one or both poems. These inconsistencies might serve to demonstrate
that the poet or poets were working upon a rich fund of traditional
material, of origin very various both as to time and place, and not
regularly stratified according to origin, but having its strata
confused and contorted. One or more poets, or even many poets and an
able compiler of their lays, or a society of able compilers: these and
similar hypotheses might equally well have been suggested, as happened
later, and supported, as was later the case, by arguments neither more
nor less cogent, because incapable of documentary proof. But underlying
this resolution of Homer into a poetic character, as it underlay other
resolutions made or attempted by Vico, lay the discovery of the long
and laborious historical genesis through which the matter of these
poems had passed, so that in this sense they might really be called a
product of collaboration on the part of the whole Greek people. The
substitution of a nation of Homers for a single Homer was only another
case of mythology constructed according to the principles discovered
by Vico himself: mythology which must be retranslated into scientific
prose. In the same way Vico's analysis of the customs described in the
Homeric poems may be, and is, not only here and there adulterated with
a few inaccuracies, but is on the whole exaggerated and one-sided.
Still, this analysis taken as a whole was a great advance and opened
new paths to Homeric criticism. How could the stubborn illusion of the
noble Homeric hero, a great lord and a good ruler, a shining example
of all civil, military and domestic virtues, be dispelled except by
setting against it the picture of a boorish Achilles, full of elemental
passions, violent, stubborn, unreasoning, quick to a generous impulse
but no less quick to outbursts of brutal wrath?

Vico's progress in artistic appreciation of the Homeric poetry was
no less marked. The recognition that a sound and rational philosophy
was not to be found in the poet Homer would, in the mouth of any
other critic of the time, have amounted to a slur on the poet: as
expressed by Vico and as the consequence of his new aesthetic ideas it
was a compliment. The errors which intellectualism and neo-classical
criticism discovered in Homer led the critics to repeat freely the
saying of Horace that "good Homer nods at times": whereas Vico on
the contrary exclaims "if he had not nodded so often he would never
have been good!" (_nisi ita saepe dormitasset, nunquam bonus fuisset
Homerus_). Homer was a great poet precisely because he was not a
philosopher. He had a retentive memory, a strong imagination and a
sublime mind; and neither the philosophies nor the arts of poetry
and criticism which came after him could ever produce a poet at all
like him. He was the only poet who could conceive heroic characters:
his comparisons are incomparable, his speeches sublime, expressive
of the individuality of the speaker, and created by the power of a
vivid imagination: his diction is clear and splendid, his language
composed entirely of similes, images and comparisons, and has none of
those ideas of genus and species by which things are intellectually
defined. He is not delicate but grand, for delicacy is a small virtue
and grandeur naturally despises small things: or even, just as a great
and rushing torrent cannot help the turbidness of its water, and must
perforce sweep rocks and trees with it in the violence of its course,
so too in Homer we may find things of no value. But the torrent with
all its impurities sweeps on its way superb and impetuous; and Homer in
spite of and partly because of his ruggedness is for ever the father
and prince of all sublime poets.

This new departure in Homeric criticism brought with it implicitly a
complete revolution in the history of ancient literature. But on this
subject Vico made only a few scattered remarks. He was no specialist:
he did not write from a specialist's point of view, and too often when
documentary evidence and thought were unable to solve a difficulty he
solved it by means of his fancy, a faculty which was however in his
case radiant with gleams of insight. Thus, the cyclic poets were not
so called because of the circle of listeners in the centre of which
they declaimed their poems, like the "Rinaldi" or ballad-singers whom
Vico saw on the quay at Naples, and this circle had no connexion with
the _vilem patulumque orbem_ of Horace: but the observation that they
differed little from these ballad-singers was sound. In the same way,
we need not linger on his guesses at the dates of Homer and Hesiod,
nor need we take literally his division of lyric poetry into three
periods, namely those respectively of religious hymns, funeral chants
for dead heroes and melic lyrics or "musical airs," the last including
Pindar, and admired, flourishing as it did at the epoch of the "pompous
virtue" of Greece, at the Olympic games where these poets sang. But
still Vico has here put his finger on the difference between primitive
and refined or cultured lyric poetry. The origin of tragedy he ascribes
to the dithyramb or dramatic satire, of which no example has come down
to us, and in rural customs compared by him to those which were still
in evidence during his own lifetime in Campania at vintage season; and
he notes the relation between tragedy and the epic. Tragedy had its
rude beginnings at a time when the heroic spirit was already dead:
it perfected itself by becoming subordinate to the Homeric poetry,
deriving its inspiration from Homeric characters and avoiding original
ones. The old comedy was closely related to tragedy. Like the latter
it was derived from a chorus, and it preserved its archaic character
in that it displayed living persons and real actions. The new comedy
on the other hand was marked off by a profound change of spirit. Here
the effects of philosophy were directly felt. Imaginative genera were
superseded by intelligible and rational universals: and Menander and
the other poets of the new comedy, living in the most humane period
of Greek history, took their intelligible genera from human life and
depicted them in their comedies, over which one feels that the breath
of Socratic philosophy has passed. The persons of the new comedy were
cast in a mould, and were not public but private characters: and as
the chorus represents the public and argues about public affairs only,
there is no room for it in the new comedy. About this time began the
practice of inserting idealised heroes of perfect morals into poetry.
Aristotle, remembering the strongly individualised characters of
Homer, still maintained as a principle of poetic composition that
the heroes of tragedy should be neither very good nor very bad, but
rather a mixture of great virtues and great faults. But the poets of
the late period, making use of the idea originated by philosophers,
formed a "heroism of virtue": a heroism which may be called "gallant."
Accordingly they either invented entirely new legends or else used old
legends which had originally presented themselves to the founders of
the nation in an appropriately stern and severe form, but softened them
by adapting them to the softening of manners. Equally gallant is the
"shepherd" of the Greek Bucolic poets, Bion and Moschus, "wasting away
with the most delicate love," He makes the general observation on Greek
and Latin literature, that the boundary between verse and prose was so
strictly guarded on both sides that no ancient writer ever composed
both orations and poems--a rule to which perhaps the only exception
is the wretched verses (_ridenda poemata_) of Cicero: and Vico tried
to explain this fact by the democratic habits which compelled orators
studiously to avoid the cultivation of lofty and fanciful modes of
expression, which would have puzzled the people and hindered their full
and clear comprehension of the point at issue.

Vico does not treat Roman literature so fully as Greek, which provided
him with much more primitive documents. But he detected certain
analogies between the origins of Latin and Greek literature. The first
poets and authors in the Latin language were the Salii, sacred poets;
and this was natural in the beginning of a nation's culture; for in the
primitive religious period the gods are the only object of praise. And
just as the earliest fragments of Latin known to us, the remains of
the hymns of the Salii, give an impression of hexameter verse, so the
same metre is felt in the records of Romans who celebrated triumphs,
such as the _"duello magno dirimendo, regibus subiugandis"_ of Lucius
Aemilius Regillus and the _"fudit fugat prosternit maximas legiones"_
of Acilius Glabrio. The first Roman poets, too, sang true stories: this
was the case with Livius Andronicus and his Romanid containing the
annals of early Rome, and with Naevius, and later Ennius, who described
the Punic wars. Satire also was levelled against real and for the most
part notorious persons. The Romans however differed from the Greeks
in advancing with a more measured step and not making the swift and
abrupt transition from barbarism to effeminacy: so that they entirely
lost the history of their gods (which Varro called the "obscure period"
of Rome) and preserved their heroic history, extending down to the
Publilian and Petelian laws, in common speech only. In its greatest
manifestations the literature of Rome is the work of cultivated poets
like Virgil, whom Vico admires for his profound knowledge of heroic
antiquity, but says of him that so far as poetical power is concerned
he is not to be compared with Homer; a verdict agreeing with that of
Plutarch and Longinus, but in opposition to the view of neo-classical
criticism. Another example of cultivated and reflective poetry is to
be found in Horace, who like Pindar in the pompous period of Greece
composed his odes at the most "ostentatious" epoch of Roman history,
the Augustan age.

The Biblical literature would have given Vico materials of great value
for the study of primitive poetry; and he actually did move a few steps
towards it when he observed that poetry was the primitive language of
all nations "including the Hebrews"; and that Moses made no use of the
esoteric wisdom of the Egyptian priests and wrote his history "in a
style which has much in common with that of Homer and often surpasses
him in sublimity of expression." But Vico drops the subject at once, as
if he instinctively guessed what might come of treating the Pentateuch
as he had done the _Iliad,_ and Moses like Homer. So he prefers to wax
enthusiastic over the phrase in which God describes himself to Moses
_"Ego sum qui sum,"_ to which he ascribes a metaphysical profundity
only attained by the Greeks when Plato conceived God as to_ on,_ and
unknown to the Latins down to the latest period, for the word _ens_ is
not pure Latin but belongs to debased Latin. Or he contents himself
with emphatically pointing out that at a time when Greece was under
the sway of a superstitious and natural law, God gave to his people a
code "so full of weight as regards the dogmas of divinity and so full
of humanity as regards the practice of justice, that not even in the
humanest period of Greek history could a Plato have conceived or an
Aristides executed it"; a code "whose ten chief enactments contain an
eternal and universal justice founded upon the excellent conception
of a purified human nature, and are capable of forming by habituation
a character such as the maxims of the greatest philosophers could
only with great difficulty form by ratiocination; whence Theophrastus
called the Hebrews philosophers by nature." The success that attended
the "will to believe" was all the more striking if as we suspect Vico
had read the abhorred Spinoza's _Tractatus Theologico-politicus,_
where the Hebrew prophets, while their "piety" is recognised, are
said to be entirely devoid of "sublime thoughts." Spinoza maintains
that they only taught "very simple things which any one could easily
discover, and adorned these with a style and supported them by reasons
most calculated to move the mind of the multitude to devotion towards
God"; and that the laws revealed by God to Moses were "nothing but
the laws of the particular government of the Jews": and he sets out
to examine the text of the Bible and the problem of the authenticity
of the Pentateuch and the respective authors of its various books. We
might almost venture to say that it was Spinoza's Biblical criticism
that suggested to Vico his criticism of the composition and spirit of
the Homeric poems; but that the latter, after passing in this way from
sacred to profane history, from Moses to Homer, set his face stubbornly
against the opposite transition from Homer to Moses, from profane
history to sacred.




CHAPTER XVII


THE HISTORY OF ROME AND THE RISE OF DEMOCRACY


Heroic society in the period of youthful vigour above described
contains within itself, rigorously repressed, and in fact made into a
support, the element of opposition; the slaves, clients or vassals,
that is to say the plebs. But this element little by little succeeds in
detaching itself from and opposing itself to the society, engaging it
in a continual and undisguised conflict, so as by degrees to overthrow
this old society and give life and form to a new society of which it
is itself the material: a democratic society, the popular republic.
Vico believes this process to be uniform in all peoples; but since
references to histories other than that of Rome are either absent or
very vague (he hardly mentions the origin of the Athenian democracy)
the description of this process appears in the pages of the New Science
as a fragment of Roman history, or as we should nowadays call it the
social history of Rome.

Vico's guesses about the population and primitive culture of Italy are
of no great importance. The subject belongs rather to archaeology and
ethnography than to history, and Vico did not make a special study
of it. In the _De antiquissima sapientia Italorum_ he had provided
the origins of Rome with a basis in an Italian civilisation of high
antiquity, earlier than the Greek and derived from Egypt, which
the Romans absorbed in a manner agreeing with their character; by
rejecting, that is to say, its theoretical hypotheses while taking over
their practical results, just as they adopted from the Etruscans their
tragic religion and their art of tactics, and as they later adopted
laws from Athens and Sparta. In this way their ignorance and savagery
remained unchanged, and hence they spoke the language of philosophers
without being philosophical. In his later writings Vico still for a
time maintained the priority and independence of the earliest Italian
civilisation as regards that of Greece, and considered Pythagoras less
as the founder than as the student of Italian wisdom. Finally, however,
he seems to have given up this view, just as he definitely abandoned
that which explained the origins of Roman religion, language, customs
and law by the imitation of foreign peoples and "frankly confessed that
he had been in error here" owing to the example of Plato's _Cratylus._
What conditions brought about the rise of Rome Vico does not precisely
say. He is certain that if Rome and the world did not begin together,
at least the foundation of Rome was a new beginning. The point of
departure which he assumes is the asylum of Romulus, consisting of
the "families" of fathers who gave their hospitality to wanderers
and made them into _famuli._ There was no Trojan colonisation; Vico
knows Bochart's treatise (1663) criticising the legend of Aeneas's
arrival in Italy and accepts its conclusions, which only confirm the
doubts already entertained by certain ancient historians. For Vico,
the Trojan origin of Rome is a legend sprung from the union of two
different examples of national arrogance: that of the Greeks, who made
such a noise about the Trojan war and forced their Aeneas into the
history of Rome, and that of the Romans, who accepted him in order to
boast of a distinguished foreign origin. The legend moreover could
not have arisen much before the time of the war with Pyrrhus, when
Rome began to acquire a taste for things Greek. In order to explain
the infusion of Greek names and myths into the story of primitive Rome
and the similarity of the Roman alphabet to the ancient Greek, Vico
would incline rather to the hypothesis that early in their history the
Romans conquered and destroyed some Greek colony on the Latin coast, of
which all trace has since been lost in the mists of antiquity; and that
through receiving its inhabitants in Rome as refugees and allies, they
came under the influence of several Hellenic traditions and customs.

Vico does not spend much time over the historical events of the royal
period. Here in fact lay one of the chief differences between his
criticism and that which had already been originated and was continued
after his time dealing with the first centuries of Roman history. Vico
aims not at substituting historical for legendary anecdotes but at
understanding the essence of institutions and the ways in which they
change. He uses two guiding principles, as we have seen in considering
the royal period: first, that it was a period not of monarchy but
of aristocracy and that therefore the type of heroic society or the
patriarchal republic is applicable to it: secondly, that the names
of the kings are symbols or "poetic characters" for the institutions
of this society. In Vico's judgment, as we have had occasion to
observe, the constitution of Servius Tullius should not be considered
the basis of popular liberty, as the later Romans considered it; it
was really the basis of the liberty of the feudal lords, since by it
the patricians granted to the plebeians the bonitary tenure of their
land together with the duty of paying rent to and serving at their
own expense in war themselves, the patricians. And Junius Brutus, in
driving out the Tarquins and replacing them by two consuls or annual
aristocratic kings, restored to the Roman republic its primitive form;
that is to say, he delivered the lords from the domination of their
tyrants but left the people under the domination of their lords.

The patricians' oppression of the plebeians after the restoration
of Junius Brutus and the struggles and resistance caused by it
constitute the soul of the new development and contain the secret of
the greatness of Rome, the "key to universal Roman history," _clavis
historiae Romanae universae._ Polybius's explanation of this greatness
is too vague. He describes it as due to the virtue or the religion
of the patricians and relates the facts of this virtue rather than
their cause. Vico also criticises Machiavelli, at one time because he
adduces certain civil and military institutions as the cause of Rome's
greatness without investigating the cause of those institutions, that
is to say the character of Roman society: at another time for adducing
what was only a partial cause, the high spirit of the plebeians. He
thinks Plutarch worst of all, since envy of the virtue and wisdom
of Rome leads him to ascribe her greatness to fortune. The fact was
that Rome subjugated the other cities of Latium and then Italy and
the world because her heroism was still young, while among the other
Latin peoples it had begun to decay. Thanks to this youthful vigour
the patricians were strong enough to preserve their order and the
religion which formed its foundation and safeguard (the nobles, Vico
observes at this point, were always and everywhere religious, so that
the first sign of contempt for religion among them is a symptom of
national decadence); the plebeians were spirited enough to demand a
share in religion, auspices and all civil rights; the lawyers, lastly,
were wise enough to interpret the old laws and apply them to any new
case that might arise, and strove with all their might to alter the
text of these laws as little and as slowly as possible. These were the
chief causes of the growth and permanence of the Roman empire; for
in all its political changes it contrived to remain faithful to its
principles. Prowess in war was another result of the rivalry of the
orders; since the nobles were naturally consecrated to the safety of
their country, as the only means of preserving the civil privileges of
their order, and the plebeians accomplished brilliant deeds in order
to prove themselves worthy of patrician honours. And when the Romans
extended their conquests and their victories over the whole world, they
made use of four rules which they had already applied to the plebeians
within Rome itself. They reduced barbarian provinces to the position of
clients by planting colonies in them: they granted civilised provinces
bonitary tenure of their land: to Italy they gave the quiritary tenure:
and to the municipia, the towns which had earned better treatment, they
accorded the same equality with themselves which the plebs had finally
won.

The result of the first struggles, in which the point at issue was
according to Vico the bonitary possession of land (a right already
recognised in the constitution of Servius, but cancelled by the
nobles in return for arrears of rent), is seen in the tribunate, and
later, when the plebeians claimed the right of quiritary tenure, in
the laws of the Twelve Tables, ratifying this plebeian victory. But
the law of the Twelve Tables represented at the same time the victory
of written law, the end of the secrecy with which the laws had been
fenced round by the patricians, who alone knew, understood, interpreted
and therefore applied them as they thought fit. This publication and
codification of a written law cannot have been benevolently granted by
the patricians out of that anxiety "not to despise the wishes of the
plebs" of which Livy speaks; rather they must have resisted it with
all the stubbornness which Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes and
expresses in the phrase "_mores patrios servandos, leges ferri non
oportere_" (our fathers' customs must be preserved, and laws must not
be passed).

Later historians decorated the origin of the Twelve Tables with
various legends. They told, among other things, of the mission sent
by the decemvirs to Athens to bring back new laws: a tale given by
Livy and Dionysius, but unknown to Polybius and discredited by Cicero.
How, in the savage aloofness of primitive nations, between whom oral
communication could only have been instituted by the necessities of
warfare, alliances and commerce, could the fame of Solon's wisdom have
crossed the seas from distant Attica to Rome? How could the Romans of
that time have possessed such accurate knowledge of the quality of
Athenian law as to believe it capable of setting at rest the strife
between their plebeians and their nobles? How could ambassadors have
travelled between Greece and those Romans whom seventy-two years later
the Greeks of Tarentum could still maltreat as strangers? And what
shall we say of ambassadors who returned carrying with them the Greek
laws from Athens but without knowing what they meant; so that but
for the coincidence by which Hermodorus the pupil of Heraclitus, an
exile from his country, happened to be in Rome, the Romans would have
been unable to make any use of this unintelligible and inaccessible
treasure? Again, how could Hermodorus have translated the laws into
Latin of such purity that Diodorus Siculus pronounced it devoid of the
slightest taint of Hellenism, and with a perfection unattained by any
subsequent writer of any period in a translation from the Greek? How
did he contrive to clothe Greek ideas in Latin words so appropriate
(for instance, _auctoritas_) that Greeks, Dio Cassius among them,
declare that their own language has no corresponding words by which
to explain them? Heraclitus's letter to Hermodorus must have been
conveyed by the same mail that served Pythagoras in his distant
voyages up and down the world: it is, in fact, an imposture of the
first quality, and the whole story of the Athenian origin of these laws
is due to the arrogance of scholars, who derived them first from the
other Latin peoples (such as the Aequi), then from the Greek cities
of Italy, then from Sparta and finally from Athens, with whose name,
thanks to the renown of the Athenian philosophers, they were at last
satisfied. No doubt, the laws of the Twelve Tables present resemblances
not only to Athenian or Spartan laws but to those of various nations,
the Mosaic code among others; but this is due to the uniformity of
national history. No doubt, the decemvirs were in antiquity supposed
to have originated laws bearing clear traces of Greek influence, such
as that prohibiting the Greek style of mourning at funerals: but this
is because as we have seen the decemviral legislation, like the names
of the various kings, became a "poetic character," and to it were
referred all laws later recorded in the public archives which tended
to the equalisation of liberty. But the original law of the Twelve
Tables, with its primitive rudeness, inhumanity, cruelty and ferocity,
which agrees so ill with the period of highly-developed civilisation at
Athens, is a document of the greatest value for the ancient natural law
of the Latin peoples, and the customs which had existed among them from
the age of Saturn.

Quiritary tenure of land and a written code of law once gained, the
struggle recommenced over the question of the right of marriage. The
true meaning of this contest has been lost among the absurdities
written on the subject by the ancient historians themselves, in the
belief that its basis was the desire on the part of the plebeians (who
were little more than wretched and common slaves) to be allowed to form
connexions with the nobles. This error has made Roman history even less
credible than the legendary history of Greece; for if we do not know
the meaning of the latter, the former is in opposition to the true
order of human desires. It shows us a plebs aspiring first to nobility,
secondly to offices and magistracies, and finally to wealth: whereas
men desire first of all wealth, then offices in the state, and lastly
nobility. What the Roman plebs really claimed was not _"connubio, cum
patribus"_ but _"connubio, patrum"_: not the right of connexion by
marriage with the nobles--a claim which they would not have wished
to make, and was at bottom unimportant--but the right of contracting
solemn marriages as the nobles did. For without such solemn marriages,
without privilege of the auspices, the plebeians were in fact unable
to enjoy the quiritary tenure of land and to transmit it to their
families, deprived as they were of descent, kindred and relatives. The
demand for _connubio_ was, in a word, simply equivalent to a demand for
the rights of citizens, and it was satisfied by the Canuleian law.

The next demand of the plebeians was for privileges depending on
public rights. Of these they gained first the _imperium_ together
with the consulship, and lastly the offices of priest and pontifex,
which carried with them knowledge of the law. In this way the system
of seigneurial liberty planned by Servius Tullius grew into a system
of popular liberty, and the census, which was originally paid to the
patricians, was paid hereafter into the public treasury, out of which
the expenses of the plebeians in war were paid. The tribunes now
proceeded to demand the power of legislation; for the previous laws,
the Horatian and Hortensian, had not made plebiscites binding on the
whole people, except upon the two special occasions which led to the
secession of the plebs to the Aventine and Janiculum respectively.
This new victory, which established the superiority of the plebs and
transformed the aristocratic into a popular republic, was the Publilian
law due to the Dictator Publilius Philo and decreeing that plebiscites
should "be binding on all the Quirites" (_omnes quirites tenerent_).
The authority of the senate came out of the struggle somewhat
impaired, for while formerly the fathers had acted as "_auctores_"
for the deliberations of the people, they were now the proposers of
law to the people, which the latter then approved according to the
formula submitted to them by the senate, or else "antiquated" the
proposal (_antiquo,_ to vote against a measure) and decided to make no
innovation. Besides this, the plebs won the last office to be conceded
to them, that of censor. The Petelian law, a few years later, abolished
the last remnant of feudalism, the bond (_nexus_) which made the
plebeians the bondmen of the nobles for debt and often compelled them
to spend their lives working in their private prisons.

Some time later, when the division between patriciate and plebs with
the corresponding _comitia curiata_ and _tributa_ was replaced by
Fabius Maximus's division according to the property of citizens, who
were now grouped into three classes of senators, knights and plebeians,
the order of the nobles disappeared entirely: "senator" and "knight"
were no longer synonymous with "patrician," nor "plebeian" with
"base-born." The Senate however preserved sovereign dominion over the
finances of the Roman Empire, though the Empire itself had passed to
the plebeians; and thanks to the so-called "_senatusconsultum ultimum_"
it maintained this dominion by force of arms as long as Rome remained
a popular republic. Whenever the people attempted to take it into
their own hands, the Senate armed the Consuls, who forthwith declared
traitors and put to death plebeian tribunes who had originated these
attempts. This may be explained as a right of feudal sovereignty
subject to a higher sovereign, a view confirmed by the language of
Scipio Nasica when he armed the people against Tiberius Gracchus:
"whoever wishes for the safety of the republic, let him follow the
consul" (_qui rempublicam salvam velit, consulem sequatur_). And
indeed, once the road to office was opened by law to the multitude
which rules in a popular republic, there was nothing left in time of
peace but to contest its rule not by laws but by force of arms, and
for those in power to pass laws for self-enrichment like the Gracchan
agrarian measures, resulting at once in civil wars at home and unjust
wars abroad.

With the triumph of the plebs and the change of constitution from
aristocratic to popular, the whole face of society changed. In the
first place, the aspect of the family changed. Here, during the rule
of the patriciate, testamentary succession was admitted only at a late
date and was easily cancelled, in order to keep wealth in patrician
hands: kindred even in the seventh degree excluded the emancipated son
from the paternal heritage: emancipation had the effect of a penalty:
legitimising was not allowed: and it is doubtful whether a woman could
inherit. But in the democratic society, since for the plebs wealth,
strength and power all depended on the number of their children, family
feeling began to grow up, and the praetors began to consider its claims
and to satisfy them by means of the _"honorum possessiones,"_ thus
remedying the faults or shortcomings of wills and facilitating the
diffusion of wealth, the only thing desired by the common people.

A change took place, again, in the meaning of the institutions of
property. The civil tenure was no longer a matter of public right,
but was dispersed among the various private tenures of the citizens
now forming the body of the popular state. "Eminent" tenure no longer
signifies the strongest kind of tenure, unencumbered by any actual
charge, even a public charge, but applies simply to an estate free
from any private charge. Quiritary tenure is no longer that of which
the noble was feudal lord and under the obligation to aid his client,
the plebeian, if ousted from it: it has become a private civil tenure,
capable of being defended by a civil suit as opposed to the bonitary
which could be maintained by possession only.

The forms of legal process were pruned of the luxurious growth
of fictions, solemn formulae and symbolic acts, simplified and
rationalised: the intellect, the thought of the legislator was
brought into play and the citizens conformed to an idea of a common
rational utility, understood as spiritual in value. Causes, which were
originally formulae safeguarded by accurate and precise language,
became affairs or negotiations solemnised by agreement and, in the
case of transference of tenure, by natural tradition; and it was only
in contracts said to be completed by word of mouth, that is to say
in stipulations, that the safeguards remained "causes" in the strict
ancient meaning of the word. Thus the certitude of the law, when the
human reason was fully developed, passed into the truth of ideas
determined by the circumstances of fact, a "formula devoid of any
particular form" (_formula naturae,_ as Varro calls it) which, like
a light, informs in all the minutest details of their surface the
details of fact over which it extends. In popular republics the ruling
principle is the _aequum bonum,_ natural equity.

The harsh punishments of the periods of domestic monarchy and heroic
society (the laws of the Twelve Tables condemned those who set fire
to another's crops to be burnt alive, perjurers to be thrown from the
Tarpeian rock, and insolvent debtors to be cut in pieces while living)
were replaced by milder penalties, since the multitude, whose members
are weak, is naturally disposed to clemency.

Laws, which under the aristocracy were few, inflexible and religiously
observed, multiplied under the democracy and became liable to change
and modification. The Spartans, who preserved their aristocracy,
said that at Athens they had many laws and wrote them; at Sparta few,
but they obeyed them. The Roman plebs, like the Athenian, passed new
laws every day, and the attempt by Sulla, the leader of the noble
party, to reduce them by the institution of "_quaestiones perpetuae_"
or permanent courts was in vain, for after his time laws were again
multiplied.

War itself, which was under the aristocratic republics very cruel
and resulted in the destruction of conquered towns and the reduction
of the vanquished to the condition of labourers scattered over the
country-side and cultivating it on behalf of the victors, was mitigated
by the popular republics, which while they deprived the conquered of
the rights of heroic society left them in possession of the natural
rights of the human race. Empires grew, since a popular republic is
much more adapted to conquest than an aristocratic, and a monarchy most
of all.

But with all this humanisation of customs, the power of wise rule,
political virtue, diminished. The ancient patricians enforced a rigid
respect for law; and each, possessing a large share of the public
utility, set his own minor personal interests below this greater
particular interest, guaranteed as it was by the state. Hence all
courageously defended and wisely consulted for the good of the state.
In a popular state on the other hand since the citizens controlled
the state property by dividing it among themselves into as many small
portions as there were citizens in the body of the people, and through
the causes which produced that form of state, ease, paternal affection,
conjugal love and desire of life, men were led to consider the smallest
details favourable to their own private interest; that is to regard
nothing but the _aequum bonum,_ the only interest of which a multitude
is capable.

At this point arises spontaneously a new form of government, which has
long been preparing and has now become inevitable, namely monarchy.
The ordinary political writers make monarchy originate, without any of
the numerous and complex causes which are necessary to produce it, at
the very outset of human history, "as a frog," says Vico, "is born of a
summer shower." Still less did it originate artificially by the royal
law which Tribonian believes to have deprived the Roman people of its
free and sovereign power and conferred it upon Octavius Augustus. The
law which brought monarchy into being was a natural law whose formula
of eternal validity is as follows: when in a popular republic every one
seeks his private interest only and presses the public forces into its
service at risk of destruction to the state, to preserve the latter
from ruin a man must arise, as Augustus did at Rome (who as Tacitus
says "received under his sovereign power the whole state, worn out with
civil wars, taking the title of Princeps": _qui cuncta bellis civilibus
fessa nomine principis sub imperium accepit):_ a single man, who by
force of arms takes in hand all the affairs of the state and leaves his
subjects to look after their own affairs or after any public business
he may entrust to them; surrounding himself with a small number of
statesmen as a cabinet to discuss public questions or principles of
civil equity. Such a monarch is welcomed by nobles and plebeians alike:
by the nobles, who after having been already humiliated by their
subjection to plebeian rule abandon their ancient aristocratic claim
to sovereignty and think only of securing a comfortable life; and by
the plebeians, who after an experiment in anarchy or unbridled demagogy
(than which no tyranny is worse, since it produces as many tyrants as
there are bold and dissolute men in the state) are led by their own
misfortunes to welcome peace and protection.

Monarchy is then a new form of popular government. In order that a
powerful man may become sovereign, it is necessary that the people
shall take his side, and that he should rule in a popular manner;
making all his subjects equal, humiliating the great to protect the
multitude against their oppression, keeping the people satisfied
and content as regards the necessaries of life and the enjoyment of
natural liberty, and employing a well-balanced system of concessions
and privileges granted sometimes to whole classes (in which case they
are called "privileges of liberty") sometimes to particular persons,
by promoting into a higher class men of unusual merit and exceptional
virtues.

In monarchy, a "humane" government no less than democracy, the
process of humanisation or softening of customs and laws, already
begun under popular republics, still continues. The rigid bonds of
the patriarchal family and kinship relax further. The Emperors, who
tended to be overshadowed by the splendours of the nobility, made
efforts to promote the rights of human nature common to nobles and
plebeians. Augustus strove to safeguard the trusteeships by which
formerly property had passed to persons incapable of inheritance thanks
only to the conscientiousness of the injured heir; he transformed
such understandings from a right into a necessity, by obliging heirs
to execute them. A number of senatusconsulta followed which placed
_cognati_ (relations generally) on a level with _agnati_ (relations
through the father). Finally, Justinian abolished the difference
between property inherited and property in the hands of trustees,
confused the Falcidian quarter with the Trebellian and put _cognati_
and _agnati_ on precisely the same footing as regards inheritance
_"ab intestato."_ The latest Roman law was so entirely on the side
of testaments that, while originally these could be broken for the
slightest cause, they now had to be interpreted in the way most
adapted to secure their validity. Once the "cyclopean" right of the
father over the persons of his children had disappeared, his economic
right over property acquired by them disappeared also; and hence
the emperors first introduced the _peculium castrense_ (property
obtained during military service) to attract young men to war, then the
_peculium quasicastrense,_ to attract them into the praetorian guard,
and finally to satisfy those who were neither soldiers nor scholars
the _peculium adventitium._ They deprived the _patria potestas_ of
its influence over adoptions, now no longer restricted to the small
circle of relations; they uniformly countenanced formal adoption
(_arrogatio_) which was somewhat difficult owing to the difficulty
of a father's becoming a subordinate member of another family; they
considered emancipation as a benefit and gave to legitimization "by a
subsequent marriage" all the efficacy of solemn wedlock. The _imperium
paternum,_ as an arrogant title seeming to detract from the imperial
majesty, was altered into _patria potestas._ The humane tendencies of
the monarchs extended moreover to that part of the ancient "family"
which consisted of slaves: for the emperors restrained the cruelty of
masters towards these, and benefited them by increasing the force and
decreasing the solemnity of manumission; and citizen rights, which were
given originally only to distinguished foreigners who had deserved well
of the Roman people, were granted to every one born in Rome, even of a
slave father provided his mother were free or enfranchised. Punishments
were also made milder, and the monarchs distinguished themselves by
the gracious title of "clement." The letter of the law always tended
to be more freely interpreted in the light of natural equity, and it
may be said that Constantine absolutely cancelled the letter when he
laid down the principle that any particular motive of equity should
override the law. Thus was attained the precise opposite of the
_"privilegia ne irroganto"_ of the Twelve Tables ("that no exceptions
be made"): all privileges were exceptions to the law dictated by some
particular merit in the facts which lifted them out of the sphere of
legal generalisations. The restriction of rights to particular peoples
was by degrees abolished: under Caracalla the whole Roman world was
converted into a single Rome, since great monarchs desire the whole
world to become one city, according to the thought of Alexander the
Great, when he said that for him all the world was a single city of
which his phalanx was the citadel. The praetor's edict gives place,
under Hadrian, to the "perpetual edict" of Salvius Julianus, almost
exclusively composed of provincial edicts.

With monarchy, the natural law of races gives place to the natural law
of nations; and hence this political, social and juridical form is the
most suitable to human nature at its fullest rational development. Here
too, as we have already had occasion to remark, we reach again after
a long process the unity which existed in the person of the primitive
father under domestic monarchy; and the course of national history must
be considered as absolutely complete. To go further is impossible: the
only possibility, at this stage of the highest human civilisation and
refinement, is corruption, the return of barbarism as a "barbarism of
reflection" and a relapse into a kind of new state of nature, to return
once more into a new and heroic barbarism.




CHAPTER XVIII


THE RETURN OF BARBARISM: THE MIDDLE AGES


Of this kind of "reflux" Vico mentions and examines only one instance:
the period of European history which had in his own days for the first
time been marked out definitely by historians and given the name
(though Vico does not use it) of the "Middle Ages."

That this was a period of decadence and barbarism was certainly not
a new thought for consciousness: for, especially in the humanistic
period, a general feeling of estrangement and repulsion had been felt
towards these centuries of "middle and low Latinity" in which the
treasures of the classical literatures were neglected and scattered,
and humane studies either lost their vigour or disappeared completely.
This consciousness, general on the part of cultivated Europe, was
especially full and vivid in Italy; for that country could never forget
that though for other peoples the Middle Ages had seen the rise of
their fortunes, power and civilisation, for her they had meant the end
of Rome's greatness, the humiliation of her name before the arrogant
Vandal, Visigoth and Lombard, the devastation of rich cities, and
the destruction of majestic monuments whose miserable wreckage could
be seen on every hand. Machiavelli had opened his _Histories_ with
a famous and striking picture of the general change which followed
the fall of the Western Empire. But to pass in review the ruins or
to collect the antiquities of the Middle Ages was not the way to
penetrate into the spirit of the period, any more than to note a
man's faults and the marks which distinguish him from another is the
same thing as understanding the soul of either. Vico was the first to
understand the soul of the Middle Ages, that is to say, the mental,
social and cultural constitution of the period.

Though living in a part of Italy rich not only in documents but in
survivals of the Middle Age, Vico confesses that this second period
of barbarism is much more obscure to him than the first, and that
it is only the first that has enabled him to throw light upon the
second. This he expressed by the mere fact that he named the period
"the second barbarism," or the "return" or "reflux" of barbarism,
and thus considered it as an instance of his ideal law of reflux.
The Middle Ages seemed to him both a representation of the primitive
conditions of life, and in consequence a reproduction of the social
process developing out of them. It was a view as original as it was
rich in truth: and it is no objection to it to say that Vico reveals
the generic characters rather than the particular traits of the Middle
Ages, because we know that the problem he set before himself was
precisely the investigation of generic characters or uniformities, and
that he avoided history properly so called in order to escape a dilemma
between science and faith, between the purely immanental conception of
history, excluding revelation and miracle, and the purely transcendent
conception, miraculous and therefore difficult to treat in a scientific
manner. Even in our own times, it is a fact worth noticing that we have
seen a recrudescence of this attempt to harmonise religion and history
by abstracting from the individual aspect of events and reducing
history to a history of institutions and uniformities.[1] In this
position assumed by the problem in Vico's mind we may see the reason
for the fact, which some have thought very strange in a Catholic, that
he lays no stress on Christianity, and when he encounters it at the
outset of the Middle Ages dismisses it in a few words; saying that God,
having by superhuman ways shown clearly the truth of the Christian
religion, when he opposed the virtue of the martyrs to the power of
Rome, and the doctrine of the Fathers, together with the miracles,
to the empty wisdom of Greece, and knowing that armed nations must
arise on every hand ready to fight for the divinity of that religion's
author, permitted the birth of a new order of civilisation among the
nations, in order that the true religion might be established according
to the natural course of human affairs.

We must be content then with the resemblances observed by Vico between
mediaeval society and that of the early centuries of Greece and Rome,
and not take offence if his exemplifications and proofs very often seem
fallacious and fanciful. His main historical thought as we know already
is robust enough to pass over the errors or to live in the midst of
them unimpaired.

We see (to reconstruct his story or picture, with some rearrangement)
in the Middle Ages groups of dwellings everywhere springing up on the
mountains, each dominated by its fortress as in the divine age of
the "Cyclopes"; for the unhappy people, ground down by the violence
of barbarian invasions and intestine strife, had no other means of
defence. The most ancient cities built in the Middle Ages and almost
all capitals of states are as a matter of fact placed upon heights;
all new seigneuries formed at the time were called "castella" by the
Italians; and this perhaps is also the reason why nobles were called
men "born in a high or conspicuous position" (_summo, illustri loco
nati_) while the plebeians living in the plains below were "born in a
low or obscure place" (_imo, obscuro loco nati_). We find asyla or
sanctuaries again open especially with the ecclesiastical lords, who
were in humanity in advance of their savage times; here took refuge the
oppressed and the terrified, to seek protection for person or property.
Hence in Germany, a country which must have been wilder than the other
parts of Europe, there remained almost more ecclesiastical than secular
lords. A famous example of these political formations was the Abbey
of St. Laurence at Aversa in the kingdom of Naples, with which was
incorporated that of St. Laurence at Capua. This monastery governed
either directly or by abbots or monks dependent upon it no less than a
hundred and ten churches in Campania, Samnium, Apulia and the ancient
Calabria, from the river Volturnus to the gulf of Tarentum; the abbots
of St. Laurence were lords or barons of almost the whole of this
country. The small chapels which they built in mountainous and remote
places for the celebration of the mass and other religious offices
became natural sanctuaries for the population, and they built their
houses round them: and this is the reason why in Europe so many cities,
lands and castles bear the names of saints, and why the churches are
the most ancient monuments of this period. Consequently we also find
feudalism, not establishing itself in Europe for the first time, but
appearing once more. It has been mistakenly believed to be a relic of
Roman law after its destruction by the barbarians (such is the theory
of Oldenorp and all other jurists) whereas really Roman law itself
arose out of the ruins of the feudalism of early Latin barbarism, and
mediaeval feudalism was not a new law of the European nations, but
a very ancient law renewed by the last barbarism. This feudalism is
far from being the "vile matter" which Cujas calls it: it is a heroic
matter, one worthy to be celebrated by the most erudite and profound
learning of Greece and Rome. And to what is it due, if not to this
essential unity of nature, that the choicest expressions of Roman law,
which Cujas himself allows to mitigate the barbarism of feudalistic
learning, are so precisely adequate to express the properties and
attributes of the system that no better terminology could be desired?

With the Middle Ages, then, we return to the fundamental division
between heroes and slaves, between _"viri"_ or "barons" ("_varones_" is
the word still used for men, _"viri"_ in Spanish) and mere "_homines_"
as the vassals were called: between _"patres"_ or "patrons" and
serfs. The learned students of feudalism who translate _"feudum"_
by _"clientela"_ are really giving something, much more than a good
linguistical equivalent; they are unawares giving a historical
definition of the feoff. The first feoffs of the Middle Ages were
necessarily personal, like the first _clientelae_ of Romulus: a form
of vassalage still extant in Vico's time in the north, especially in
Poland, where the _"kmet"_ were a kind of slaves who were often used
as stakes in their lord's games, and passed with their families into
the hands of the winner. Then came rustic feoffs, real in character
and consisting in uncultivated land assigned by the victors to the
conquered for their sustenance, while they themselves kept the
cultivated land: these feoffs were called by the feudalists, with
a new elegance of Latinity and an equally sound historical truth,
_"beneficia."_ The ancient "_next_" were the new "liege" or bound men,
who were compelled to join in all the friendships and quarrels of their
lord, and supplied what in Rome was called _"opera militaris,"_ and in
the Middle Ages _"militare servitium."_ The feudal bond extended itself
to larger political relations, and just as conquered kings became
allies or _socii_ of Rome and "upheld the majesty of the Roman people,"
so there were sovereign feoffs subordinated to higher sovereignties
whose representatives, the great kings and lords of large kingdoms and
numerous provinces, took the title of "majesty."

Republics became aristocratic once more in government if not in
constitution: this is admitted by political writers, among others
by Bodin, who even says that his own kingdom of France was purely
aristocratic in constitution under the Merovingian and Capetian
dynasties. Till the end of the sixteenth century living witnesses
to the past remained in the aristocratic kingdoms of Sweden and
Denmark; and Poland, mentioned above, preserved the same constitution
down to Vico's own time. The first state parliaments of Europe must
have consisted like Romulus's senate of the elders of the nobility
(_seniores,_ hence _seigneurs_); and were armed courts of barons
or peers like the _comitia curiata_ of old. In these parliaments
were decided feudal causes concerning rights or successions or the
devolution of feoffs through felony or default of heirs: which causes,
confirmed many times by these judgments, formed the customs of
feudalism. Vico saw a relic of these parliaments in the Sacred Royal
Council at Naples, the president of which assumed the title of "Sacred
Royal Majesty," as the councillors did the title of _"milites,"_ and
whose sentences admitted of no appeal to any other tribunal, but only a
request for revision by the Council itself.

The governments, beside being aristocratic, were enveloped in an
atmosphere of religion to such an extent that not only were bishops
and abbots very often, as we saw, feudatories, but feudatories and
sovereigns adorned themselves freely with religious insignia; Catholic
kings everywhere, in order to defend the Christian religion whose
protectors they were, wore the dalmatic of the diaconate, consecrated
their persons (whence the title "Sacred Royal Majesty"), and took
rank in the church, as Hugh Capet took the title of Count and Abbot
of Paris; thus as we see from the earliest documents the French lords
called themselves dukes and abbots or counts and abbots simultaneously.
These early Christian kings were the first to institute armed
religious orders, by the help of which they defended Catholicism
against Arians, Saracens and other infidels. _"Pura et pin bella"_
returned once more as in the heroic period; the globe surmounted by
the cross worn by the Christian potentates on their crowns recalls
the cross upon the standards in the holy wars or crusades. Heroic
slavery returns, and lasts a long time among Christian nations because,
considering war as the judgment of God, the victors believed the
vanquished to be abandoned by God and held them no better than beasts
(thus the Christians called the Turks "dogs" and were in turn called
"pigs" by them). The ancients deprived the conquered of all things
human and divine. The new barbarians on occupying a city endeavoured
above everything to search out and carry off the tombs or relics of
saints, which the peoples of that time buried and concealed with all
possible care; and thus almost all translations of relics took place
at this time. A trace of this custom survives in the rule by which a
conquered nation must buy back from the victorious generals all the
bells in the cities they have taken.

Analogous resemblances may be found in the juridical regulation of
property. The primary division of property in feudal law is that
into feudal goods and allodial goods. Allodial tenure was in origin
a highly secure right, unencumbered by any external charge, even a
public one; and applied to property directly acquired or conquered by
the patricians or barons. Feudal tenure required the approval of the
lord by whom it had been granted. Allodial tenure thus corresponded to
quiritary _ex optimo iure,_ and feudal to bonitary; and it was only
when later in modern Europe as previously in ancient Rome a new census
and treasury were formed, and when allodial property was made subject
to public charges, that it could be contemptuously described as "goods
of the spindle" as opposed to feudal, "goods of the lance." Thus, to
take an example, the provinces which were later incorporated into the
French kingdom had formerly been sovereign principalities feudally
dependent upon the ruler of the said kingdom; their sovereign princes
being free from all public charge in the tenure of their (allodial)
possessions. Later, when through succession, rebellion or failure of
heirs these provinces became part of the kingdom, the property was
made liable to taxation and tribute; the tenure _ex optimo iure_ was
confused with private non-feudal tenure subject to these charges, and
allodials in the noble sense of the word were identified with allodials
in the common sense. The later students of feudalism missed the point
of the primitive distinction just as the late Roman jurists forgot
the meaning of tenure _ex optimo iure._ To the feudal tenure belonged
emphyteosis (so that the allodial right ultimately signified both what
the vassal paid to the sovereign and the planter to his immediate
lord): "commendations," identical with the ancient _clientela_: the
"census" by which the vassals were bound to serve their lords in war
(the tributaries, _angarii_ or _perangarii,_ being equivalent to the
Roman _assidui_): the _"precaria,"_ which must originally have been
land granted by lords in response to the prayers of the poor: and
"_libelli_" or transferences of non-movable property which in this
agricultural economy took the place of commerce. The exclusion of women
from inheritance, which went back to the beginnings of Roman law, was
renewed in the form of the "salic law" in Germany and among all the
early barbarian nations of Europe, though it preserved its force only
in France and Savoy.

Punishments were cruel; death was called the "ordinary penalty." But
there was in the Middle Ages no real penal law and procedure dealing
with private offences. The murder of a plebeian was committed either
by his own lord, whom nobody could accuse, or by another lord, who
could indemnify the man's own lord for his loss as if he had been a
slave. This custom was still in force in Poland, Lithuania, Denmark,
Sweden and Norway. Under the name of "canonical purgations" (though
unrecognised by canon law) certain kinds of divine judgments or duels
were practised throughout Europe; and private vengeance flourished down
to the time of Bartolo. In judgments concerned with allodial rights,
the lords met in arms; and in the kingdom of Naples even in Vico's own
days barons avenged intrusions upon their own feoffs on the part of
other barons not by civil suits but by duels. In a society ruled by
force, what wonder that the robbers of the heroic age returned, and
that "pirate" became a title of nobility? Never has the fortune of
kingdoms been so various or so inconstant.

The Roman law of Justinian, penetrated as it was by the idea of equity,
was abandoned and fell into oblivion. In France and Spain any one who
dared to appeal to it in a cause was severely punished; in Italy it
is certain that the nobles considered it dishonourable to regulate
their affairs by Roman law, and professed to live according to that
of the Lombards; while the plebeians, slower in throwing off ancient
customs, continued to practise certain parts of the Roman law by force
of habit. In fact the law of the period consisted rather of habits than
of statutes: rigid formulae and solemn ceremonial once more acquired
importance, and a distinction was made between _pacta nuda,_ naked
agreements, and _pacta vestita,_ agreements clothed and reinforced
by these formulae and ceremonies. An example of the respect in which
formulae were held is afforded by the action of the Emperor Conrad
III. On taking Weinsberg, a town which had supported his rival for the
empire, he condemned it to extermination, making an exception only
in favour of the women and all they could bring out with them. The
women came out of the doomed city carrying on their backs their sons,
husbands and fathers: and the Emperor, standing before the gate at the
head of his army with swords drawn and lances in rest to satisfy their
leader's terrible wrath, watched them and allowed them to pass safe and
sound out of respect for the letter of his own decree.

It was an illiterate period, a fact expressed by Vico in the statement
that languages again became "mute" or hieroglyphic. The common tongues,
Italian, French, Spanish and German, were not written down: only a few
ecclesiastics wrote a barbarous Latin, and hence "cleric" and "scholar"
became synonymous terms; but among the very priests such ignorance
prevailed that we find documents signed by bishops with the sign of
the cross, as they were unable to write their own names. Owing to this
paucity of learning an English law laid down that a man condemned to
death should be reprieved if he could write, as a valuable craftsman;
and "man of letters" as well as "cleric" or "clerk" remained a name for
a learned man. Hence the value and general employment of family arms
to indicate the owners of a house, a tomb, land or livestock, and the
frequency with which coats-of-arms are found on buildings of the time.

With barbarism returned the predominance of verse over prose. The prose
of the Fathers of the Latin Church--and the same is true of those
of the Greek--is full of poetic rhythms, so as to resemble a chant.
The first modern lyric poetry was religious; and if there was not
strictly a Christian religious poetry, this was because the subjects
of our theology transcend all intelligence and imagination and crush
the poetic faculty. Poetry and history were once more confounded; the
romantic poets, the heroic poets of the return to barbarism, believed
their own stories to be true, and thus Boiardo and Ariosto took as
subject for their poems Turpin, Bishop of Paris. And just as the French
language, when owing to the famous Parisian school and the highly
subtle scholastic theology it passed at a stroke from spontaneity to
reflection, preserved pure diphthongs in great number while adopting
abstract terms, so the story of Turpin survived in France like a
Homeric poem. These authors of Latin poems confined themselves entirely
to history, for instance, William of Apulia's _De gestis Normannorum in
Italia_ and Gunther's _Carmen heroicum de rebus a Frederico Barbarossa
gestis._ The first writers in the vernacular were in Italy poets no
less than in Provence and France. A punctilious virtue like that of
Achilles again appeared, the complete morality of the duellist; hence
arose the proud laws, the lofty duties and the vindictive satisfactions
of the knight-errants sung by the romantic poets. Does not Cola di
Rienzo seem to be a real Homeric character in his swift outburst of
emotion when, as we read in his life, while speaking of the unhappy
state of Rome he excited both himself and his listeners to unrestrained
tears? Hyperbole was a common type of thought, as in children; for "I
often remember," writes Vico, "when walking abroad that the gentle
slopes which unfold themselves before my eyes appeared when I was a
child to be steep and lofty mountains." Thus in the Middle Ages Roland
and the other paladins were represented as gigantic in stature: and
images of divine beings, the eternal Father, Christ, or the Virgin,
painted or sculptured, were of colossal dimensions.

But the human mind is like land which, after lying waste for long
centuries, when first cultivated bears crops of wonderful quality,
size and abundance. Thus at the close of barbarism in Italy after four
savage and stormy centuries, arose Dante, the Homer of the second
barbarism, just as somewhat later flourished the delicate verse of
Petrarch and the gallant and graceful prose of Boccaccio; all three
incomparable in their way. And since barbarism is, as we have already
indicated, truthful, frank, faithful, generous and magnanimous by
nature, Dante puts on the stage real persons and real actions of the
dead; and his poem is called a "comedy" in allusion to the ancient
comedy which followed the same principle. It is a poem in which both
the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ find parallels; the former in the
_Inferno,_ where Dante employs his choleric genius and all his vast
imagination in describing the effects of implacable wrath and recalling
numbers of merciless punishments, a worthy companion-picture to the
horrid slaughters of Homer (whose descriptions of them inspire pity in
us, but gave nothing but pleasure to his own audience); the latter,
the _Odyssey,_ which celebrates the heroic endurance of Ulysses, is
paralleled by the _Purgatorio,_ a spectacle of severe punishments
borne with immovable patience, and the _Paradiso_ where infinite
joy is experienced with an infinite tranquillity of mind. Another
similarity between Dante and Homer lies in the physiognomy of the
former's language, which is so varied that some suppose him to have
collected it like Homer from all the dialects of his nation; an opinion
of sixteenth-century scholars which will not stand criticism, for it
is certain that when Dante used them these expressions must have been
current at Florence, and that a lifetime would have been insufficient
to collect them from this side and from that when there were no writers
in the various dialects. But the most important resemblance of Dante
to Homer is in poetic sublimity. Dante is a divine poet who to the
delicate imaginations of to-day seems rough and uncivilised, and often
shocks by unwonted harmonies an ear that has become morbidly sensitive
through effeminate music. But he is received very differently by men
of severe tastes who refuse to be satisfied with flowers, ornaments
and graces. Like Homer too he is great not in esoteric wisdom but in
the vigour of his imagination. Dante was undoubtedly a very learned
theologian, but that was his weakness rather than his strength. If he
had known neither Scholasticism nor Latin, he would have been a still
greater poet, and perhaps the Tuscan language would have had what Latin
never had, a poet who could in everything bear comparison with Homer.

The man who wrote this page of criticism on Dante and vindicated him
once more after centuries of anti-Dantesque taste (or mere Dantesque
grammar or Dantesque scholasticism) and vindicated him in the very
height of the prosperity of the Arcadianism so hostile to him, deserved
to have made the acquaintance of William Shakespeare genius, which he
was perhaps the only man alive capable of understanding. But in Italy,
as in most countries outside England, nothing was known of Shakespear
at this time, and Vico has only the vague and belated remark about him
that the English, untouched by the prevailing delicacy of the century,
took no pleasure in tragedies which had not an element of atrocity in
them, just as the earliest taste of Greek drama was for the abominable
feast of Thyestes and Medea's impious slaughter of her brother and
children. The tendency towards Teutonic poetry and literature remained
in Vico as we know an aspiration only; he was unable to get a clear
view of it however closely he tried to examine it; and when he does
mention it upon the strength of second-hand information, it is only to
say that in the German nation, especially in the purely agricultural
province of Silesia, "poets arose naturally"; in his search for
an unsophisticated popular poetry he had in fact stumbled without
realising his mistake upon the Silesian school of Hoffmanswaldau and
Löhenstein, the German imitators of the Neapolitan Marino. But the only
value of the anecdote is to illustrate anew the tricks played upon Vico
by his lively fancy.

How the world emerged from the second barbarismi and the feudal
constitution, Vico does not say. He does not seem to have fixed his
attention upon the communal movement which presents so many analogies
with the struggles of the Roman plebs and the formation of ancient
democracy. He makes game, here again, of those who traced the genesis
of modern monarchies such as the French to a simple law like that of
Tribonian by which, he explains ironically, the paladins of France
deprived themselves of their power and conferred it upon the kings of
the Capetian dynasty. He also observes that the baronial power, being
dispersed and dissipated by reason of civil wars in which they were
obliged to depend upon the people, was the more easily gathered up
by sovereign monarchs; and that thus the "_obsequium_" of vassals to
their baron passed into the "_obsequium principis._" But he gives quite
a special importance to the rediscovery of Roman law (that "natural
law of the European nations" as Grotius had called it) by the studies
undertaken in the Italian universities. Men thus learnt anew the
principles of natural equity; the nobles and plebeians became equal in
the eyes of civil law as they are already in human nature, the secrets
of the laws passed out of the hands of the feudatories, whose power
consequently diminished by degrees, and the humane government of free
republics and perfect monarchies came into being. The reflux of heroic
society had now undergone a contrary reflux; it was no longer possible,
under the conditions of modern civilisation, to recall it to life,
just as it was impossible for the attempts of the Pythagoreans and
Dion of Syracuse to restore the ancient aristocracies. The plebeians,
once recognised as naturally equals of the nobles, no longer submitted
to remaining inferior to them in civil life. And the few aristocratic
republics which here and there survived in Europe were compelled to
take infinite pains and all manner of wise measures in order to keep
quiet and contented the multitudes whom they governed.


[Footnote 1: See my preface to Sorel's _Reflections on Violence_
(Italian tr., Bari, 1909). pp. xxii-xxvii.]




CHAPTER XIX


VICO AND THE TENDENCIES OF CONTEMPORARY CULTURE


Having reached, in his review of the course of history, his own time,
a time of civilisation spread over all nations, Vico gives a rapid
description of the contemporary world and then says no more: perhaps
unsatisfied, at any rate uncertain or cautious. As he was not led to
embark upon the New Science by the direct call of political problems,1
at least in the ordinary meaning of the phrase, he never descends from
the contemplations of the New Science to: the practical life, even
in the form which it most usually takes with a philosopher, a work
or short treatise criticising laws and institutions or suggesting
improvements. Even when he does dimly conceive the idea of a "practical
aspect" of his science, he never supposes that so far as he is
concerned it could ever exist except "within the academies."

Practical philosophy "within the academies," that is to say, within the
sphere of culture, is however still practical and political; and it is
assuredly not the least important branch of politics. And a historian
or philosopher can never entirely avoid it, though he can emphasise it
more or less and develop it more or less fully.

Vico does emphasise and develop it freely. The first expression of
his scientific life was precisely an examination of modern methods
of study and education as compared with those of the ancients: an
examination which after various attempts and uncertainties in his first
discoveries, took form in his University inaugural lecture of 1708, _De
nostri temporis studiorum ratione._ In the following years, engaged as
he was upon the New Science, he gave no further public demonstration
of his discontent with the prevailing tendency of studies; but he
expressed his feelings on the subject all the more often and all the
more strongly in private letters, and did not wish to pass over the
question in his autobiography. We need not then infer his polemical
attitude from hints and chance phrases of his chief work; since he has
himself more than once converted these hints into explicit statements
and these chance phrases into leading propositions.

This polemic occupies two closely-related spheres corresponding to
the double aspect of the New Science as a Philosophy of Mind and a
Generalising Science. Under the first aspect Vico had vindicated
the claims of imagination, the imaginative universal, probability,
certitude, experience and authority, and therefore also of poetry,
religion, history, observation of nature, scholarship and tradition.
Under the second, he had traced a scheme of the natural development of
the mind both in the history of mankind and in that of the individual,
which he brings into constant relation with the phases of history.
Hence his examination was bound to extend on the one hand to the mental
condition of his own time and on the other to the way in which the
education of children and young people was conceived and undertaken.
In both spheres Vico saw the same defects; he was met by the same and
intellectualism which had made impossible the process of thought and
had mutilated and falsified the truth of human history.

On emerging from grammar-schools, boys were immediately plunged into
logic. The logic studied might be, according to the teacher's taste,
either the scholastic or more often that composed by Arnauld and
called the Port-Royal Logic, itself in substance Aristotelian and
Scholastic, but full of dry judgments concerning abstruse subjects in
advanced sciences and far removed from common knowledge; overloaded
in fact with examples drawn from such sciences. Such a discipline was
meant to make boys critical and to eradicate from their minds not
only false, but even probable and plausible opinions. As a matter of
fact it eradicated nothing, since their minds were still empty or
scantily furnished, and unable to make any use of criticism for lack
of matter to criticise. They were to be taught to judge before being
taught to apprehend, an order false to the natural course of ideas,
which are first apprehended, then judged, and finally reasoned. The
result was that minds educated in this way became arid and unfruitful
in development, and believed themselves capable of judging everything,
while able to create nothing. They remained all their lives intensely
acute in formal thinking, but incapable of any great labour; critical,
in fact, but sterile. This caused not only unsoundness and arrogance of
judgment but incapacity in practical life, dealings with men, and civil
eloquence, which is founded less upon criticism than upon plausibility,
and attains its end by making opportune remarks, understanding the
psychology of one's inter-locutor and acting in a manner adapted to it.
Vico himself had suffered from the logico-critical method of education.
One of his first teachers, the Jesuit Del Balzo, had put into his hands
the works of the epitomist Paulus Venetus: and his mind, being too weak
as yet to cope with this kind of Chrysippean logic, almost broke down
under the strain; so that having given up his studies in despair it was
eighteen months before he resumed them. He preserved a happier memory
of his youthful essays in poetry in the wildest style of the Neapolitan
school of Marino: a form of diversion, he says, almost necessary to
the mind of the young when metaphysic has rendered it too subtle and
too rigid in precisely those years when the ardour of youth ought to
lead the mind into errors, so as to save it from becoming chilly and
dry. This age, the "barbarism of intellect," vigorous in imagination
and also, through the close connexion that exists between the two,
in memory, requires to be nourished and exercised by the reading of
poetry, history and rhetoric as well as by the study of languages. The
art which it ought to learn is not criticism but "topic," the true
art of the "_ingenium_" or faculty of invention. By means of this art
children acquire materials which enable them to form sound judgments in
later life; for sound judgment depends upon a complete knowledge of its
subject-matter, and "topic" is the art of discovering the whole content
of any given thing. In this way young people simply by following the
course of nature become at once philosophers and good speakers.

Some antidote is doubtless necessary to the exuberance of the
imagination. But this must be sought in linear geometry rather than in
logic: for geometry is to some extent pictorial in character, while it
strengthens the memory by the great number of its elements, ennobles
the imagination by the delicacy of its figures and stimulates the
inventive faculty by forcing it to review all these figures in order to
choose those suitable to the demonstration of the quantity required.
But the whole value of geometry also was annulled by the method then
in favour with the schools, the algebraic method; which like the
scholastic logic numbs all the vigour of youthful faculties, obscures
the imagination, enfeebles the memory, and renders the inventive power
and the understanding sluggish; thus damaging the liberal arts in four
distinct ways, in the knowledge of languages and history, in invention
and in prudence. More particularly algebra is fatal to the inventive
faculty, because in using the algebraic method one is conscious only of
the immediate field of vision; it weakens the memory because once the
second sign is found the first need no longer be remembered; it blinds
the imagination, because that faculty is not used at all; it destroys
the understanding, because it lays claim to the power of divination.
Young men who have devoted their time to it on proceeding to deal with
the affairs of civil life find themselves, to their great grief and
remorse, unfitted for such a life. Hence, to make it useful in some
degree and to prevent these ill effects, it should be studied for a
short time only at the close of the mathematical course, and employed
only as a means of abbreviation. The habit of reasoning is formed much
better by metaphysical analysis, which in all questions begins by
taking truth in the infinity of being, and then descends by degrees;
through the genera of the substance, eliminating in every species that
which the thing is not, till it arrives at the ultimate differentia
constituting the essence of the thing we wish to know.

Education as a whole was suffering from an excess of mathematics and
a lack of concreteness. As if boys, on emerging from academic life,
were to enter a human world composed of lines, numbers and algebraic
symbols, their heads were crammed with the magnificent phrases
"demonstration," "demonstrative truth," and "evidence," and the rule
of probability was condemned; though this rule is the only guide of
statesmen in their counsels, generals in their campaigns, orators in
their treatment of a cause, judges in giving a decision, physicians in
treating bodily diseases, and moralistic theologians in treating those
of the conscience; the rule which the world accepts, and upon which
it rests in all disputes and controversies, in all measures, and in
all elections; which are universally determined by unanimity or the
majority of votes. Such an education bred up an empty and inflated
generation, pedantry without wisdom and argument without truth.

The educators themselves, that is to say, the general atmosphere of
culture, resembled this scheme of education. Poetry was dead. The
analytic methods had "numbed" (to repeat once more a word which Vico
uses with great frequency and force) "all the generosity of the better
poetry." And indeed Europe was never so entirely barren of all poetic
growth as it was in the first half of the eighteenth century. Italy
was reduced to the drama of Metastasio; France had produced no one to
succeed Corneille and Molière; in Spain the national drama, that great
outburst of the national spirit, was dead, and a rationalism imitating
that of France was taking its place; England seemed to have entirely
forgotten that she once gave birth to Shakespear, and even Germany was
wasting her time over neo-classical imitations. Not only did nobody
create new poetry, but nobody wanted it. The philosophers, following
Descartes and Malebranche, had declared a war of extermination against
all the faculties of the mind which depend upon sense, and especially
against the imagination, which they hated as the source of every
error. They condemned the poets on the false pretext that they told
"fables," as if the fables they told were not those eternal properties
of the human mind which to the political philosophers, economists and
moralists are the subject-matter of reasoning, and to the poets that of
representation.

The Cartesians also used their authority to belittle the study of
languages. Did not Descartes say that the knowledge of Latin was no
greater knowledge than was possessed by Cicero's servant-girl? Serious
scholarship in Latin and Greek had come to an end with the writers
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the study of oriental
languages was confined to the Protestants; and Holland was the only
country in which law was still a subject of research. The famous
library of Valletta at Naples, rich in the finest editions of Greek
and Latin works, was generously bought by the fathers of the Oratory,
but for less than half its original value owing to the depreciation
of books. In France the library of Cardinal Dubois found no purchaser
and was sold in small lots. Princes no longer loved good Latin, and
none of them thought of preserving to posterity by the pen of pure
Latin scholarship even an event so weighty as the War of the Spanish
Succession, comparable only to the second Punic war.

New methods were in great favour: but none of these could point to new
facts discovered by their help. New formulae, old facts; and instead of
facts, a futile hope of attaining universal knowledge in the shortest
time and with the smallest effort. Civil and political learning was
neglected for physical science, and physical science for mathematical;
experience was almost ignored; the inventive thought of the previous
century all but entirely exhausted. Scepticism, the result of the
Cartesian method, invaded the field of knowledge.

The whole of Europe was during this period still under the dominion
of the French language, a language which differs from the Italian in
its hostility to poetry and eloquence; rich, says Vico, in terms of
substance, and consequently, since substance is a brutal and immobile
thing and does not admit of comparisons, incapable of giving colour,
amplitude or weight to its statements; it resists inversion and is
barren of metaphor. The French have no periods but only members
of periods: their prosody has no verse better than the so-called
Alexandrine, a system of couplets more thin and lifeless than the
elegiac: and their words admit of no accent except those on the last
two syllables. French is a language incapable of the sublime, but well
adapted to the petty: owing to its abundance of terms of substance or
abstract terms it is adapted also to the didactic style, and instead of
eloquence it offers _esprit._ It was not unfitting that criticism and
analysis originated in France and made use of the French tongue.

The only possession of value which grew up day by day in all this
poverty was the abstracts, the encyclopaedias, the dictionaries of
science which bore the names of such men as Bayle, Hoffmann and Moreri:
the idlest and most casual method of learning that could possibly
be devised. The genius of the age was more drawn towards expounding
second-hand knowledge in an abbreviated form than towards attempting to
enlarge its bounds. That seemed impossible: so men went on compiling
dictionaries of mathematics. Every one felt a thirst for cheap science.
To be thought good, a book must be clear and simple, capable of being
discussed with ladies as a pastime; if it demanded wide and copious
erudition of the reader, and forced upon him the unpleasant exercise of
thought and synthesis, it was condemned as unintelligible.

These dictionaries and abstracts recalled to Vico's mind the similar
products of the Greek decadence, the anthologies, lexicons and
encyclopaedias of Suidas, Stobaeus and Photius. The whole culture
of his time seemed to him to be repeating the downfall of Greek
science, exhausting itself in a metaphysic either useless or harmful
to civilisation and a mathematics engaged in investigating quantities
intangible by rule and compass, and incapable of application. Like
others among the best minds of his country he was persuaded that
the republic of letters was approaching dissolution, if the divine
providence failed by one of its innumerable secret paths to infuse
new vigour into it. Where was now the wise man, the real "_sapiens_"
whom Vico had found in history, first in the barbaric figure of the
theologian-poet, then in the civilised and rational figure of Greek
philosopher and Roman jurist, the man whom for to-day he hoped to find
in the master of eloquence like himself, called to give unity, life and
power to all knowledge? Wisdom is indeed not this or that science, nor
yet the sum total of science; it is the faculty which rules over all
studies and by which all the sciences and arts that go to make humanity
are acquired. And since man is both thought and spirit, intellect and
will, it must satisfy both these sides of man, the second as a result
of the first: it must teach the knowledge of divine things, to bring
to perfection things human. The wise man is man in his totality and
entirety, the whole man.

The ideal is no doubt lofty, and the criticism upon the educational
method and tendencies of thought current in his age are, no doubt,
perfectly just. And yet among all these admirable truths, far in
advance of the eighteenth century as they are, we feel in Vico the
educationalist and critic something of the reactionary. We feel
that, in his exclusive care for the fate of the highest and most
austere science and his exclusive attention to the most complete
form of human life, he failed to grasp the revolutionary importance
of this scepticism or rationalism, this rebellion against the past,
the necessary weapon of a warfare against kings, nobles and priests;
of these abstracts and dictionaries which were to develop into the
Encyclopaedia; of this popular science, the forerunner of journalism,
and these booklets for the use of ladies in fashionable conversation
which were the nourishment of the eighteenth-century salons and
prepared men's minds for the radicalism of the Jacobins. We feel in
him here as in his philosophical system, the Catholic chained to the
philosopher, the Christian pessimist weighing down the dialectic
of immanence. Unable to realise his adversaries' progress, he does
not comprehend their real nature as lower than himself, but yet
constituting steps leading up to himself, steps which he ought to
have traversed in order to attain a truer understanding and grasp
of himself. His polemical attitude towards the culture of his time
completes and confirms the analysis already given of the merits and
defects of his philosophy.




CHAPTER XX


CONCLUSION: VICO AND THE LATER DEVELOPMENTS OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND
HISTORICAL THOUGHT


The reader need not expect that having brought our exposition to
a close we shall add a verdict upon Vico's work, or what is known
as an "appreciation" of it. If the verdict has not already emerged
as a result of the exposition itself, or as identical with it, if
description and criticism have been not one and same, the fault lies
either with ourselves or with the reader's lack of attention; and
in either case it cannot now be repaired by ornamental additions or
redundant repetitions.

We confess also that we feel no sympathy with the chapters commonly
placed at the conclusion of critical works upon philosophers and
narrating the later history of their ideas. For if these "ideas" are
understood in an extrinsic sense, in their influence upon society and
culture, such a review may indeed have a value of its own,[1] but is
foreign to the history of philosophy properly so called: if on the
other hand they are considered as real and living philosophical ideas,
their later history amounts to neither more nor less than the history
of subsequent philosophy, and there is no reason for appending it to a
study of one philosopher rather than another. Any other method implies
the uncritical theory that ideas are something solid and crystallised,
like precious stones handed on from one generation to another, whose
shape and glitter can always be recognised unaltered in the new diadems
they compose and the new brows they adorn. But in reality ideas are
nothing but the unremitting thought of man, and transmission for them
is nothing less than transformation.

It is nevertheless a fact that no one has written on Vico without
feeling a need of casting his eyes over later years and noting the
resemblances and analogies between the Neapolitan philosopher's
doctrines and those of fifty or a hundred years after. And further,
we ourselves, in spite of the antipathy we admittedly feel, and the
methodical criteria we professedly employ, yet recognise now the
same necessity. Why is this? Because Vico in his own day passed for
an eccentric and lived as a recluse; because the later development of
thought was almost entirely untouched by his direct influence; because
even to-day, though well enough known in certain restricted circles,
he has not taken the place he deserves in the general history of
thought. How then can we show the manner in which his doctrines, true
or false, respond to the deepest needs of the mind, more simply than by
recording the similarity of the ideas and attempts which later appeared
in such profusion and intensity as to stamp their individuality upon
the philosophical and historical labours of a whole century? And even
if after our intrinsic examination of his thought this comparison with
the facts of later history seems unnecessary, it will at least be
granted that if our discourse like any other must have its rhetorical
conclusion, no peroration occurs more naturally than one consisting in
a rapid review of subsequent philosophy and philology and emphasising
their points of contact with the thought of Vico.

We might even adopt the method by which he compares the second
barbarism with the first, and present the later history of thought
as a "reflux" of Vico's ideas. In the first place his criticism of
Descartes' immediate knowledge recurs, together with his conversion
of the true with the created, in the speculative movement beginning
with Kant and Hegel and culminating in the doctrine of the identity of
truth and reality, thought and existence. His unity of philosophy and
philology recurs in the vindication of history against the scepticism
and intellectualism of the eighteenth century due to Cartesianism;
in the à priori synthesis of Kant which reconciles the real and the
ideal, experience and the categories; and in the historical philosophy
of Hegel, the greatest exponent of nineteenth-century historical
tendencies. This unity of philosophy and philology, a unity with Vico
sometimes confused and impure in method, recurred in its faulty aspects
also in the Hegelian school; so that this mental tendency might with
justice be entitled "Vicianism." The limitation which Vico tried to
impose on the value of mathematics and exact science recurred, as
did his criticism of the mathematical and naturalistic conception of
philosophy, in Jacobi's critique of Spinozistic determinism and Hegel's
of the abstract intellect; and in the case of mathematics in particular
Dugald Stewart and others recognised that its validity lay not in the
postulates but in the definitions, and the "fictions" of which Vico
speaks reappear in the modern terminology of the philosophy of these
sciences. His poetical logic or science of the imagination passes
into Aesthetic, so ardently studied by the philosophers, literary men
and artists of Germany in the eighteenth century, brought by Kant
into great prominence by his criticism of the Leibnitian doctrine of
intuition as confused conception, and further advanced by Schelling and
Hegel, who place art among the pure forms of the mind and so approach
the position of Vico. Romanticism too, especially in Germany but also
more or less in other countries, was Vician, emphasising as it did
the original function of the imagination. His doctrines of language
recurred when Herder and Humboldt treated it not intellectualistically
as an artificial system of symbols, but as a free and poetic creation
of the mind. The theory of religion and mythology abandoned the
hypotheses of allegory and deception, and with David Hume recognised
that religion is a natural fact, corresponding to the beginnings of
human life in its passionate and imaginative state; with Heyne, that
mythology is "symbolic speech," a product not of arbitrary invention
but of necessity and poverty, of the "lack of words," which finds
expression "in comparisons with things already known" (_per rerum iam
tum notarum similitudines);_ and with Ottfried Müller, that it is
impossible to understand mythology without entering into the very heart
of the human soul, where we may see its necessity and spontaneity.
Religion was regarded no longer as something extraneous or hostile to
philosophy, as a piece of stupidity or of deception practised by the
unscrupulous upon the simple, but according to Vico's own doctrine
as a rudimentary philosophy; so that the whole content of reasoned
metaphysic was already to a certain extent implicit in poetical or
religious metaphysic. Similarly, poetry and history were no longer kept
distinct or set face to face to destroy each other; and as one of the
great inspirers of the new German literature, Hamann (who in many ways
resembles Vico in tendency, though unequal to him in mental power),
had already foreseen when he uttered the warning, "if our poetry
is worthless, our history will become leaner than Pharaoh's kine,"
a breath of poetry revived the historical study of the nineteenth
century; once colourless, it became picturesque: once frigid, it
regained warmth and life. The criticism of Hobbes' and Locke's
utilitarianism, and the affirmation of the moral consciousness as a
spontaneous sense of shame and a judgment entirely free from reflection
reappeared in full panoply with the Critique of the Practical Reason;
and that of their social atomism and consequent contractualism in
Hegel's Philosophy of Right. The liberty of conscience and religious
indifferentism professed and inculcated by the publicists of the
seventeenth century were negated as a philosophical doctrine; and a
nation without God seemed to Hegel, as it did to Vico, a phenomenon not
to be found in history and existing only in the gossip of travellers in
unknown or little-known lands. Carrying on the work of the Reformation,
which Vico could neither grasp nor truly appreciate, the idealistic
philosophy of Germany aimed not at exterminating religion, but at
refining it, and at giving philosophy itself the spiritual value of
religion. The certitude, the hard certitude which Vico distinguished
from truth in the sphere of law, formed the subject of thought from
Thomasius to Kant and Fichte and so on to the most recent writers, who
have sought even if they have never found the distinctive criterion
of the two forms; all or nearly all show a vivid consciousness of
what is called "constraint" or "compulsion," a fact which had been
almost forgotten in the old superficial and rhetorical moral theory.
The historical school of law, in its reaction against the abstract
revolutionary and reformatory tendencies of the eighteenth century,
was bound to recall Vico's polemic against the Platonic or Grotian
theory of an ideal republic or a natural law above and outside history
and serving as a standard for history, and to recognise with Vico that
law is correlative to the whole social life of a people at a given
moment of its history and capable of being judged only in relation to
it; a living and plastic reality, in a continual process of change
like that of language. Finally, Vico's providence, the rationality
and objectivity of history, which obeys a logic different from that
attributed to it by the fancies and illusions of the individual,
acquires a more prosaic name, but without changing its nature, in
the "cunning of the reason" formulated by Hegel: it appeared again,
ingeniously but perversely treated, in Schopenhauer's "cunning of
the species," and again, treated with little ingenuity on a purely
psychological method, in Wundt's so-called law of the "heterogenesis of
ends."

Almost all the leading doctrines of nineteenth-century idealism, we
have seen, may be regarded as refluxes of Vician doctrines. Almost
all; for there is one of which we find in Vico not the premonition but
the necessity, not a temporary filling but a gap to be filled. Here
the nineteenth century is no longer a reflux of, but an advance upon
Vico; and discordant voices of warning or reproach rise up against
him. His distinction of the two worlds of mind and nature, to both of
which the criterion of his theory of knowledge, the conversion of the
truth with the thing created, was applicable, but applicable to the
former by man himself because that world is a world created by man,
and therefore knowable by him, to the second by God the Creator, so
that this world is unknowable by man; this distinction was not accepted
by the new philosophy, which, more Vician than Vico, made the demigod
Man into a God, lifted human thought to the level of universal mind or
the idea, spiritualised or idealised nature, and tried to understand
it speculatively in the "Philosophy of Nature" as itself a product of
mind. As soon as the last remnant of transcendence was in this way
destroyed, the concept of progress overlooked by Vico and grasped and
affirmed to some extent by the Cartesians and their eighteenth-century
followers in their superficial and rationalistic manner shone out in
its full splendour.

But if in this point Vico cannot stand the comparison with later
philosophy, the failure is amply atoned by the full agreement
between his historical discoveries and the criticism and research
of the nineteenth century. Above all, he agrees with his successors
in his rules of method, his scepticism as regards the narrative of
ancient historians, his recognition of the superiority of documents
and monuments over narrative, his investigation of language as a
store-house of primitive beliefs and customs, his social interpretation
of mythology, his emphasis on spontaneous development rather than
external communication of civilisation, his care not to interpret
primitive psychology in the light of modern psychology; and so on.
In his actual solutions of historical problems he also agrees with
later historians. These restated the archaic and barbaric character
of primitive Greek and Roman civilisation, and the aristocratic and
feudal tendency of its political constitution: they took up the view
of ancient legal ceremonial as a dramatic poem containing allusions to
the actions of fighting: the transformation of the Roman heroes into
heroes of democracy came to an end with the Jacobins in France and
their imitators in Italy and elsewhere; Homer was considered great in
proportion to his ruggedness; the history of Rome was reconstructed
chiefly on the basis of Roman law, and the names of the seven kings
appeared as symbols of institutions and the traditional origin of
Rome as a late invention derived from Greece or from Greek models:
the substance of this history was seen to consist in the economic and
juridical struggle between patriciate and plebs, and the plebs was
derived from the _famuli_ or clients: the struggle of the classes,
which Vico was the first to illuminate clearly, was recognised as a
criterion of wide application to the history of all time and serving
as an explanation of the most sweeping social revolutions: the Middle
Ages, especially during the Restoration which followed the Napoleonic
period, exercised a powerful appeal to sentiment and influence
on thought, being admired and regretted as the antithesis of the
rationalistic bourgeois society, and understood in consequence as the
religious, aristocratic and poetical period discovered by Vico, the
youth of modern Europe. Thus Italy rediscovered the greatness of her
own Dante, and the criticism of that poet which Vico had initiated
was carried to completion by De Sanctis. In the same way, Niebuhr and
Mommsen brought to maturity his view of Roman history; Wolf, his theory
of Homer; Heyne, Müller and Bachhofen, his interpretation of mythology;
Grimm and other philologists his projected reconstruction of ancient
life by means of etymology; Savigny and the historical school, his
study of the spontaneous development of law, and his preference for
custom rather than statute and code: Thierry and Fustel de Coulanges in
France, Troya in Italy and a host of scholars in Germany his conception
of the Middle Ages and of feudalism: Marx and Sorel his idea of the
struggle of classes and the rejuvenation of society by a return to a
primitive state of mind and a new barbarism: and lastly the superman
of Nietzsche recalls in some degree Vico's hero. These are merely a
few names picked without care and almost at random; for to mention
all, and each in his right place, would mean writing the whole history
of the latest phase of European thought, a history which is not yet
finished, though it has undergone, under the name of "positivism," a
parenthetical recurrence of the abstract and materialistic thought of
the eighteenth century, a parenthesis which now however seems to be at
an end.

These innumerable reappearances of the work of an individual in the
work of several generations, this parallelism between a man and a
century, justify a fanciful phrase with which we might draw from the
later developments in order to describe Vico; namely that he is neither
more nor less than the nineteenth century in germ. The description may
serve to summarise our reconstruction and exposition of his doctrines,
and to contribute towards a right understanding of his place in the
history of modern philosophy. He may rightly be placed side by side
with Leibniz, with whom he has so often been compared; but not, as
has been believed, because of any resemblance (the comparisons made in
this belief have been shown to be false or superficial) but precisely
because he is unlike him and in fact his very opposite. Leibniz is
Cartesianism raised to its highest power; an intellectualist, in spite
of the _petites perceptions_ and the confused knowledge; a mechanicist,
in spite of his dynamism, which perhaps exists in his fancy rather than
in his actual thought; hostile to history, in spite of his immense
historical erudition; blind to any knowledge of the true nature of
language, though deeply interested in language all his life; devoid of
dialectic, in spite of his attempt to explain the evil in the universe.
In relation to later idealism, the Leibnitian philosophy stands as
the most complete expression of the old metaphysic which had to be
transcended: that of Vico is the sketch of the new metaphysic, only
needing further development and determination. The one spoke to his own
century, and his century crowded round him and echoed his words far and
wide. The other spoke to a century yet to come; and the place in which
he cried was a wilderness that gave no answer. But the crowd and the
wilderness add nothing to and take nothing from the intrinsic character
of a thought.


[Footnote 1: See Appendix II.]




APPENDICES




APPENDIX I


ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF G. B. VICO[1]


I

The transformation, half rhetorical, half mythical, which the heat of
the national reawakening effected in poets, philosophers, and almost
every character of any importance in Italian history, representing
them as patriots, liberals, and in open rebellion or secret revolt
against the throne and the altar, tried for a time to touch with its
magic wand and to work its will upon Giambattista Vico. It was said,
among other things, that Vico, conscious of the severe blow dealt by
his thought to the traditional beliefs of religion, and warned by his
friends, took pains to plunge the New Science into such obscurity
that only the finest intellects could perceive its tendencies. But
though this legend, energetically spread as it was by the patriots and
republicans of 1799, was believed here and there, it could not long
stand out against criticism or even against common sense; and Cataldo
Iannelli was right to pass over it with a few words of contemptuous
irony.[2] It is certain from an objective point of view that Vico's
doctrines implicitly contained a criticism of Christian transcendence
and theology as well as of the history of Christianity. From the
subjective point of view it may be that Vico during his youth (of which
we know very little) was the victim of religious doubts. Such doubts
may have been suggested to him not only by his reading, but by the
society of young men of his own age, among whom "libertines," or as
contemporary literature still called them "epicureans" or "atheists,"
were not uncommon.[3] In a letter of 1720 to Father Giacchi, he says
that at Naples the "weaknesses and errors dating from his early youth"
are remembered against him, and that these, fixed in the memory, became
as often happens "eternal criteria for the judgment of everything
beautiful and complete which he subsequently succeeded in doing."[4]
What can these errors and weaknesses have been?

Again when the _De universi iuris uno principio et fine uno_ appeared,
or rather the "Synopsis" which announced its programme, "the first
voices" which Vico heard raised against him "were tinged with an
assumed piety." He found protection and consolation in the face of
such criticism in religion itself, that is to say in the approval of
Giacchi, "the leading light of the strictest and most holy order of
religious."[5] But just as we possess no detailed information as to the
criticisms levelled against him on this head, so we have no certain
knowledge even of the most general kind as to the religious doubts that
may have troubled him. All Vico's writings show the Catholic religion
established in his heart, grave, solid and immovable as a pillar of
adamant; so solid and so strong that it remained absolutely untouched
by the criticism of mythology inaugurated by himself. Nor was Vico
an irreproachable Catholic in external demonstration only. He not
only submitted every word he ever printed to the double censorship,
public and private, of ecclesiastical friends, and led his life as a
philosopher and writer among priestly vestments and monastic cowls no
less than among legal gowns; he was even scrupulous enough to desist
from his commentary on Grotius, thinking it unseemly that a Catholic
should annotate a Protestant writer;[6] and so delicate was his sense
of Catholic honour that he refused to admit polemic upon matters of
religious feeling. "As to this difficulty," he says to his critics
of the _Giornale dei letterati_, "like that which you propound to me
concerning the immortality of the soul, where it appears that you have
in hand seven distinct arguments, if they had not been prepared for me
by you, I should judge that they go deeper and penetrate to a region
which is not only protected and secured by my life and conduct, but
which to defend is to outrage. But let us return to our subject."[7]
His Catholicism was untainted by the superstition so general and so
deeply rooted at the time, especially at Naples, where St. Januarius
intervened as an actor and director in every event of public and
private life. It was the Catholicism of a lofty soul and mind, not the
faith of a charcoal-burner. But Vico never assumed the part of censor
of superstitions. He was content with not speaking of them, as one
keeps silence concerning the failings of persons or institutions which
command one's respect.


[Footnote 1: Since the preceding portions of this work are strictly
confined to the analysis of Vico's philosophy and give no information
as to his life and personal character, the reader will not be
displeased to find in this appendix a lecture delivered by myself upon
the latter subject before the Neapolitan _Società di storia patria_ on
April 14, 1909, and later written down and published in the Florence
_Voce_(1st year, No. 43, October 7, 1909). I add for convenience of
memory that Vico was born at Naples on June 23, 1668 (not 1670 as he
says in his autobiography), and died on January 23 (not 20 as all
his biographers say), 1744: the new edition of the _Autobiografia,
carteggio e poesie varie_ (Bari, Laterza, 1911), pp. 101, 123, 124.]

[Footnote 2: See for the whole question Croce, _Bibliografia vichiana,_
pp. 91-5.]

[Footnote 3: In the _Giornali_ of Confuorto (MSS. in the library of
the Neapolitan Historical Soc. xx. c. 22, vol. iii. f. 111) under
August 1692, we find "certain civil persons were imprisoned in the
prisons of St. Dominic by the tribunal of the Holy Office; among them
the doctor Giacinto de Cristofaro, son of the doctor Bernardo; many
others escaped, members of the Epicurean or Atheist sect, who believe
the soul to perish with the body." This De Cristofaro is the famous
Neapolitan mathematician and jurisconsult, for whom see F. Amodeo,
_Vita matematica napoletana,_ part iii. (Naples, Giannini, 1905), pp.
31-44; he was Vico's friend. For other notices of the "Epicureans" at
Naples at this time see Carducci, _Opere,_ vol. ii. pp. 235-6.]

[Footnote 4: Letter of October 12, 1720.]

[Footnote 5: _Ibid._]

[Footnote 6: _Autobiografia,_ in _Opere,_ ed. Ferrari, 2nd ed. iv. p.
367.]

[Footnote 7: The "subject" is therefore not the religious objections,
which he regarded as a personal insult (_Riposta al Giornale dei
letterati,_ in _Opp._ ii. p. 160).]



II


Vico's attitude towards social and political life resembles in more
than one respect his attitude towards religion. There is in him
no trace of the missionary, the propagandist, the agitator or the
conspirator as there was in some of the Renaissance philosophers,
notably Giordano Bruno and Campanella, whom although--perhaps
because--a Neapolitan, Vico never mentions. Certainly, his age and his
country were not the time or place for heroes; there was none of that
rapid social change and revolution from which heroes spring. Political
parties however were active in favour of Austria and France, and men
were arising who devoted their labours and their lives to one or other
of these parties, or were persecuted and fled into exile: and above all
this was the period in which culminated the struggle between Church
and State, between Naples and Rome, in the person of Pietro Giannone,
a man of whom Vico never speaks, just as he never mentions and in fact
seems to ignore the entire movement. Political life rolled past over
his head, like the sky and its stars, and he never wasted his strength
in a vain attempt to reach it. Political and social controversy, like
religious, was outside the sphere of his activity. He was indeed a
non-political person. We cannot describe it as a fault or a weakness,
for every one has his limitations; one struggle excludes another, and
one labour makes others impossible.

Not that he avoided all contact with political life and its
representatives. Only too often he was compelled to pay his respects
to both, in the form of histories, speeches, verses and epigrams in
Latin and Italian; and these alone would be sufficient material for the
reconstruction of Neapolitan history in all its vicissitudes from the
end of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth: the
Spanish viceregency, the conspiracy and revolution attempted by the
partisans of Austria, the reaction and re-establishment of the Spanish
viceregency, the Austrian conquest, the Austrian viceregency, the
Spanish reconquest and the reign of Charles Bourbon. But Vico, "very
pliant because of his necessity"[8] and as professor of eloquence in
the royal university, was compelled to supply the literary compositions
required by the solemnities of the day, just as the draper supplied
hangings and the plasterer volutes and arabesques. And what hangings
and arabesques he produced! The Spanish style of the seventeenth
century was still predominant in literature; and this fact is alone
almost enough to explain the extravagance and ornateness, as it seems
to us, of Vico's flood of panegyrics. The indifference and innocence of
his own attitude may be illustrated by the passage in his autobiography
where after mentioning the _Panegyricus Philippo V inscriptus_ composed
by himself to the order of the Spanish viceroy, the Duke of Ascalona,
he goes on as if it was a mere nothing, with no connexion but a simple
"soon after": "soon after, this kingdom having passed under the rule of
Austria, the lord Count Wirrigo of Daun, at that time governor of the
imperial armies in this country, _ordered me_" to compose inscriptions
for the expiatory monuments to Guiseppe Capece and Carlo di Sangro,[9]
the two rebels against Philip V. executed by the previous government
some years before in the suppression of the conspiracy of Macchia
described by Vico from the Bourbon point of view in his _De Parthenopea
coniuratione._

But this implies no baseness of character on Vico's part. It must
be said that in these writings of his, orator and panegyrist though
he is, he can never be called a flatterer. The flatterer, the man
without a conscience, reviles and calumniates the enemies of the man
he is praising, or even strikes the conquered: and this is servility.
But Vico, who though he knew who the Italian or Neapolitan was that
sent to the _Acta Lipsiensia_ the note injurious to himself, and
might easily have ruined him, since the note was anti-Catholic in
tendency, generously refused to reveal his name,[10] gave no doubt his
services as professor of eloquence but refrained from trafficking in
the interests of the patrons whom he praised. Of the _Life of Antonio
Carafa_ which he composed for a commission and married one of his
daughters on the proceeds, he says that the work was "tempered by
honour towards the subject, reverence towards princes and the just
claims of truth."[11] And to return to the case of Capece and Sangro
mentioned above, when he spoke in the _De Parthenopea coniuratione_
of the death of these two enemies to the triumphant party, he shows
here too in various details the nobility of his spirit: of Capece, who
refused to surrender to the Spanish soldiers, he writes "exposing his
breast to death, and demanding death with his warlike arms, he fell
unrepentant, a most valiant manner of death, were it only honoured in
its cause" (_ostentans pectus neci eamque infensis armis efflagitans,
inexoratus occubuit, fortissimum mortis genus si causa cohonestasset_).
Of Sangro too, having reported the rumour that Louis XIV. sent him a
reprieve which arrived too late, he adds: "whence the condemned man,
who had already suffered the penalty, is the more to be pitied" (_unde
maior damnati qui iam poenas persolverat, miseratio_).[12]

He must have known, and doubtless did know, that most of the persons
whose praises he composed were of very little worth. To read his
panegyrics, one would suppose that Naples was adorned with a nobility
resplendent in its virtue, cultivation and learning: and yet, in
giving Father De Vitry the information he desired upon the condition
of studies in Naples, Vico did not conceal the facts: "the nobles
slumber amid the enjoyments of a life of pleasure."[13] His pupil
Antonio Genovesi has preserved to us one of his satirical expressions
upon this nobility, often in extreme poverty but always proud and
ready to go hungry at home in order to drive abroad in coaches
sumptuously dressed.[14] With reference to the literary duke of
Laurenzano, he formulated the theory that "noble" writers could not
fail of excellence:[15] and yet I have discovered among his papers
the manuscript of a book by this duke, rewritten from end to end by
the same Vico.[16] Such are the contradictions and the transactions
into which a poor man falls when the pressure of want has made him
timid and cautious; so that it is not easy to determine how far his
admiration was merely assumed at command or by complaisance, or how
far his feeling of social inferiority developed into a real admiration
for those above him in the scale, who possessed riches and dignity and
everything he lacked and were the "seigneurs."

[Footnote 8: _Opp._ vi. p. 20.]

[Footnote 9: _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 394.]

[Footnote 10: Letter of December 4, 1729: in _Opp._ vi. p. 32.]

[Footnote 11: _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 366.]

[Footnote 12: _Opp._ i. pp. 367, 368.]

[Footnote 13: _Opp._ vi. p. 9.]

[Footnote 14: He said that many of them "dragged their carriages with
their own guts" (_Suppl. alla Bibl. vich._ p. 10).]

[Footnote 15: _Opp._ vi. p. 95.]

[Footnote 16: _Bibl. vich._ pp. 27-8.]



III


For, as is well known, his financial state was always of the gloomiest.
The son of a small Neapolitan bookseller, he was at first compelled to
go as a private tutor to a wild town of the Cilento; later, returning
to Naples, he tried in vain to obtain the position of secretary of the
city, and having in 1699 been elected to the chair of rhetoric, he held
that position for thirty-six years at an annual stipend of a hundred
ducats (_£17_). His attempt to pass to a chair of greater importance in
1723 failed, whether owing to ill-luck or to inability--he recognised
that he was a "man of little spirit in matters of utility,"[17]--he was
compelled to give up hopes of academic advancement. He was therefore
obliged to eke out his resources by literary work such as we have
mentioned, and still more by private lessons; he not only kept school
at his own house as well as at the university, but he went up and down
other men's steps to teach grammar to youths or even to children. His
family fife was not a happy one. His wife was illiterate, and had not
the qualities with which her sex sometimes compensates the defect;
she was incapable of any domestic employment whatever, so that her
husband had to take her place. Of his children, one girl died after a
long illness and the heavy expenses which embitter the diseases of the
poor; one boy showed such strong vicious tendencies that the father was
compelled to seek the intervention of the police and place him in a
house of correction. So sublimely irrational was his fatherly affection
that upon this occasion when he saw from the window the police officers
he had called in, coming to take his miserable and beloved son away, he
ran to him crying, "my son, flee!"[18]

He was indeed of an extremely affectionate disposition; a fact which
may be gathered for instance from the noble and touching speech he
composed on the death of his friend Donna Angela Cimini, from the
tone of pity and indignation with which in the _Scienza Nuova_ he
spoke of the oppressed plebeians whose history he is investigating or
of the tragic figures of Priam and Polyxena, the romance of which he
feels keenly; and finally, from certain stylistic details scattered
here and there, such as the aphorism (no. xl.) where he says that
witches in order to solemnise their rites "slay without pity and
cut in pieces most lovely and innocent children," quite upset, in
the most inopportune but significant fashion, by the fate of these
little persons, whom his excited imagination adorns with a superlative
loveliness. His greatest domestic happiness came from his daughter
Luisa, a cultured and poetical soul, and his son Gennaro, who shared
with him and ultimately succeeded to his chair. When, in his panegyric
on the Countess of Althann, he calls ironically upon the philosophers
who dispute as they walk in pleasant gardens or beneath painted
porticoes, free from the agony and weariness of "wives in travail" and
"children wasting away with disease,"[19] we feel that he is speaking
from his own experience and smarting under the memory of domestic
troubles.

We often meet, especially in these days, with men of some talent who
consider themselves freed from this or that humble duty: and we ought
the more to admire this man of genius who on the contrary accepted
them every one, and (to use a phrase of Flaubert's) while thinking the
thought of a demigod lived the life of a townsman or even that of a man
of the people. He had acquired the habit of reading, writing, thinking
and composing his works "while discussing matters with his friends
amid the uproar of his children."[20]

His health was never very good: his friends called him "Mastro
Tisicuzzo":[21] very weak in youth, he was in his old age afflicted
with ulcers in the throat and pains in his thighs and legs. In a word,
the repose, the peace, the tranquillity which other philosophers enjoy
all their life or for long periods together was always lacking to Vico.
He was forced to play both Martha and Mary: working at every moment for
his own and his family's practical needs and working at the same time
to fulfil the mission to which he was devoted from his birth and to
give concrete form to the spiritual world that moved within him.


[Footnote 17: _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 349.]

[Footnote 18: Villarosa in the additions to the _Autobiography (Opp._
iv. p. 420).]

[Footnote 19: _Opp._ vi. p. 235.]

[Footnote 20: _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 366.]

[Footnote 21: "Mr. Skin-and-bones": cf. _Bibl. vich._ p. 87.]



IV


Thus we need not invent or demand a heroic Vico, looking for him
in the life of religion, society or politics. The true hero is the
Vico who stands before us, the hero of the philosophic life. Others
beside ourselves have noticed his love for the word "hero" and all
its derivatives, "heroism," "heroic," and so on: and the continual
use and varied application he makes of it. Heroism was for him the
mighty virgin force which appears in the beginning and reappears in the
reflux of history. This force he must surely have felt in himself as
he laboured for the truth and, overthrowing obstacles of every kind,
opened up new paths of science. It was this force that enabled him to
overcome the youthful uncertainties, fears and defeats which sometimes
plunged him in a profound individual and cosmic pessimism, visible
in the poem entitled "Feelings of One in Despair," to rise to the
certainty of scientific method enunciated in the _De nostri temporis
studiorum ratione_ and his first attempt at philosophico-historical
research represented by the _De antiquissima Italorum sapientia_;
and from this point, abandoning in part his own thought and weaving
a new tissue of what remained, led him to the _De uno universi iuris
principio et fine uno_ and to the _Scienza Nuova_ "after twenty-five
years," as he says of the discoveries contained in that work, "of
unremitting and toilsome thought."

The work completed by this poor teacher of grammar and rhetoric, by
this pedagogue whom a contemporary satirist saw "lean, with a rolling
eye, ferule in hand,"[22] by this unhappy _paterfamilias,_ is amazing
and almost terrifying; such is the mass of mental power compressed into
it. It is a work at once reactionary and revolutionary: reactionary in
relation to the present, by its attachment to the traditions of the
ancient world and the Renaissance; revolutionary as against the present
and the past in laying the foundations of that future later to be known
as the Nineteenth century.

Within the domain of science, this humble man of the people became an
aristocrat: and the "lordly style"[23] which he falsely ascribed to the
wretched writings of the proud nobles and pompous prelates of his day
was in reality his own. He loathed the polite and social literature
which was gradually spreading in France and Italy and other European
countries, the "ladies' books."[24] But he avoided no less that other
class of treatise which we nowadays call "handbooks," which explain in
detail elementary definitions and facts ascertained by others; books
useless except to the young.[25] Vico, who suffered quite enough from
the young within the circle of his school, saw no need to sacrifice to
them any part of his own inviolable life of science. The public towards
which he looked was not composed of boys, lords and ladies. When he
wrote, his first practical thought was, "what would a Plato, a Varro
or a Quintus Mucius Scaevola think of the fruits of his thought?" and
secondly, "what will posterity think?"[26] Among his contemporaries he
looked only at the republic of letters, the brotherhood of scholars,
the Academies of Europe: a public which did not require him to
repeat what had been already discovered and stated in the course of
the history of science, and was perfectly familiar to him, but only
demanded the exposition of such thoughts as constituted a real advance
of knowledge: not voluminous works, but "little books, all full of
original things."[27] His public was an ideal one, which sometimes
in his simplicity he confused with the actual professional scholars
and the critics of literary reviews: and the mistake often caused him
surprise. Short books on metaphysical subjects seemed to him to have
a peculiar power, as in fact they have; he compares them very justly
with religious meditations "which briefly set forth a small number of
points" and are more valuable for the development of the Christian
spirit than "the most eloquent and lucid sermons of the most gifted
preachers."[28] This love of brevity inspires his refusal to burden
with many books the republic of letters, which, he says, is already
sinking beneath the weight. He left his discourses unpublished, only
printed his _De ratione_ out of a sense of duty, and often expressed a
desire that the _Scienza Nuova_ alone should survive him, as the work
which summed up in itself the concentrated and perfected fruits of all
his earlier efforts.

His aristocratic ideal was accompanied by the loftiest dignity and the
profoundest loyalty in his conception of the life of science. From his
polemics we might compile a whole catechism on the right method of
conducting literary controversy. We must aim at victory, he says, not
in the controversy but in the truth; hence he desires that it should
be conducted "in the calmest manner of reasoning," because "he who is
strong does not threaten, and he who is right does not use insults";
the dispute must at any rate be interspersed with peaceful words
"showing that the minds of the disputants are placid and tranquil, not
excited and perturbed." To opponents whose objections are vague he
replies, "the judgment is in too general terms: and serious men never
deign to reply except to particular and determinate criticisms made
upon them." When these same opponents appeal to the "refined taste of
the age, which has banished," etc., etc., he replies contemptuously,
"a grave criticism this, in truth: it is no criticism at all. In thus
taking refuge from one's opponents before the tribunal of one's own
judgment, by saying that what they say is a thing of which one has no
idea, from an opponent one becomes the judge." He refused to rely upon
his authorities, but yet did not undervalue them; authority ought to
"make us attentive to seek the causes which could have induced authors,
especially the most weighty, to adopt such and such opinions." Again,
accused of attributing errors to philosophers so as to be able to
refute them with ease, like Aristotle, he protests with dignity: "I
would rather enjoy my own small and simple stock of knowledge than be
compared in bad faith with a great philosopher." His moderation may be
illustrated by his splendid eulogy of Descartes, though he spent the
best part of his mental powers in opposing him. His loyalty is shown
by his prompt recognition of his own errors: "I admit," he says at
one point to the critics of the _Giornale dei letterati_, "that my
distinction is faulty."[29] "The reader must not think it ostentatious
in us" (he writes in the second _Scienza Nuova_), "that not satisfied
with the favourable judgments of such men as these upon our works,
we yet disapprove and reject these works. On the contrary, it is a
proof of the high veneration and respect in which we hold these men.
For rude and haughty writers uphold their works even against the just
accusations and reasonable corrections of others: some, who by chance
are of a small spirit, sate themselves with the favourable judgments
they receive and because of these go no further towards perfection:
but in our case the praise of great minds has increased our courage to
amend, to complete, and even to recast in a better form this work of
ours."[30]

His scientific life was upright, worthy of a serious searcher after
truth; his emotional life disturbed and restless, worthy of one who
sees face to face the truth he has long sought and desired, and
rejoices in the power of laying it before mankind. Hence his lofty
poetry, expressed not in verse but in prose, and especially in the
_Scienza Nuova_. "Vico is a poet," writes Tommaseo: "he brings
fire from smoke, and lively images from metaphysical abstractions:
he reasons as he narrates and depicts while he reasons: over the
mountain-tops of thought he does not walk, he flies; and in one
sentence he often compresses more lyrical feeling than may be found in
many an ode."[31] De Sanctis saw in the _Scienza Nuova_ the progress
of a poem, almost a new _Divina commedia._ Sublime like Dante, he was
more severe than Dante himself; if the lips of the Ghibelline show at
times the flicker of "a passing smile," Vico looks at history with
a face "that never smiles." Moreover, the man whose style has been
so often criticised is not a commonplace writer; he was as careful a
student of pure Tuscan[32] as he was a fine connoisseur, according to
Capasso, of Latin phraseology.[33] But he was faulty in the arrangement
of his books, because his mind did not master all the philosophical and
historical material it had accumulated; he wrote carelessly because
wildly and as if possessed by a demon: and hence arise the lack of
proportion and the confusion in the various parts of his work, within
single pages and single paragraphs. He often gives the impression of
a bottle of water quickly inverted, in which the liquid trying to
issue forth so presses against the narrow opening "that it comes out
painfully, drop by drop." Painfully, by fragments, and disjointedly.
One idea while he is expressing it recalls another, that a fact, and
that another fact: he tries to say everything at once, and parenthesis
branches off into parenthesis in a manner to make one's brain reel. But
these chaotic periods, weighted as they are with original thoughts, are
no less woven of striking phrases, statuesque words, phrases full of
emotion, and picturesque images. A bad writer, if you will, but his is
the kind of bad writing of which only great writers possess the secret.


[Footnote 22: _Bill. vich._ p. 82.]

[Footnote 23: _Opp._ vi. p. 93.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid._ vi. p. 5.]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid._ v. p. 50 (note).]

[Footnote 26: _Ibid._ ii. p. 123.]

[Footnote 27: _Ibid._ ii. p. 148.]

[Footnote 28: For instance in his letter to Saliani, November 18,
1725, published in _Bibl. vich._ pp. 97-8, the autograph being in my
possession.]

[Footnote 29: See the _Riposte_ in _Opp._ ii. _passim._]

[Footnote 30: _Opp._ v. p. 10.]

[Footnote 31: _G. B. Vico e il suo secolo_ in the volume _La Storia
civile nella letteratura_ (Turin, Loescher, 1872), p. 104: cf. a
judgment on Vico as a writer, _ibid._ pp. 9-10.]

[Footnote 32: _Opp._ iv. pp. 333-4; vi. pp. 41, 140.]

[Footnote 33: _Bibl. vich._ p. 87.]



V


The philosophical heroism of Vico asserts itself not only in the
internal struggle with himself for the elaboration of his science.
It was exposed to other and sterner trials. The position reached by
his thought, opposed as it was to the present, and while apparently
reactionary turned in reality towards the future, inevitably prevented
him from being understood. No doubt this is the fate of every man
of genius: his inmost thought is never understood, even when social
fortune seems to favour him, even when he arouses enthusiasm and finds
a host of disciples and imitators. The words which Hegel is said
to have uttered on his deathbed--"one only of my pupils understood
me, and he misunderstood me"--admirably express this historical
necessity: the man whom his age fully understands dies with his age.
And yet the disproportion between the value of a man's thought and
his contemporaries' failure to understand it has seldom if ever been
greater than in Vico's case. If he had been free from other causes of
discontent, this alone would have been sufficient. The "desire for
praise," which in other than commonplace minds is a desire to see what
they think true and good shared, approved and universalised among other
minds, was always with him a "vain desire."

He was the more afflicted by this misunderstanding and indifference
because, as we may well suppose, he was fully conscious of the
importance of his own discoveries. He knew that Providence had
entrusted to him a lofty mission: he knew himself to be "born for
the glory of his country, and therefore in Italy; since, being born
there and not in Morocco, he became a scholar."[34] When he published
the _Scienza Nuova,_ he believed that he had fired a mine whose
loud explosion he expected every minute. Nothing happened: nobody
mentioned it to him: so that he wrote some days later, to a friend:
"In publishing my work in this city I seem to have launched it upon a
desert. I avoid all public places, so as not to meet the persons to
whom I have sent it, and if by chance I do meet them, I greet them
without stopping; for when this happens, these people give me not
the faintest sign that they have received my book, and so confirm my
impression of having published it in a wilderness."[35] He had frankly
expected a swift and immediate effect: he had hoped to find, among his
contemporaries and acquaintances at Naples, minds ready and intellects
open to receive and bear fruit of his thoughts: and he hoped this
of monks engaged in composing and learning by rote wordy sermons,
poetasters rhyming in sonnets and advocates compiling second-hand
speeches!

Instead of this, he found many sceptical and indifferent, and several
inclined to laugh. His _Diritto universale_ had been as Metastasio
informs us[36] generally "blamed for obscurity" on its publication; it
was not widely read and was hastily criticised for the extravagances
which an inattentive and superficial reading revealed at every
point.[37] Father Paoli, to whom the author had given a copy, wrote in
it a couplet making a joke of its unintelligibility.[38] The _Scienza
Nuova_ was in an even worse case. We know that Nicola Capasso, a
scholar and well disposed towards Vico, on trying to read it fancied
he had lost his wits, and by way of a joke hurried off to his doctor
Cirillo, to have his pulse felt.[39] A Neapolitan nobleman when asked
by Finetti at Venice what opinion was held of Vico at Naples, said that
for a time he had passed for a really learned man, but that later his
strange opinions had won him the reputation of an eccentric. "And when
he published the _Scienza Nuova_?" insisted Finetti. "Oh, by then,"
replied the other, "he was quite mad!"[40] His detractors even attacked
him in the modest profession by which he earned his living; they said
he was "good at teaching youths who had completed their course, that
is to say when they already knew all they needed," or again, more
insidiously, that he was fitted less for teaching than for "giving good
advice to the teachers themselves;"[41] so that they recognised his
superiority only to use it in damaging his private interests.


[Footnote 34: _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 385.]

[Footnote 35: Letter to Giacchi, November 25, 1725, in _Opp._ vi. p.
28.]

[Footnote 36: _Bibl. vich._ p. 40.]

[Footnote 37: _Opp._ vi. p. 20.]

[Footnote 38: _Bibl. vich._ p. 26.]

[Footnote 39: _Ibid._ p. 87.]

[Footnote 40: _Bibl. vich._ p. 86: cf. _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 416.]

[Footnote 41: _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 416.]



VI


The indifference of the public and the insincerity or malignity
of critics could not for Vico be compensated by the friends and
appreciative readers of whom Vico had a certain number. How indeed
could it have been otherwise, when he cultivated them artificially
with such care and anxiety? Consider for instance the way in which
he cultivated the friendship of Giacchi the Capucin. He praised his
"admirable works," his "most divine talents," the "rare sublimity" of
his "marvellous and divine ideas." He tells him that he has given to
the scholars of the city the eulogistic letter sent to him by Giacchi
and that they all admire "the sublime workmanship of the conception";
and yet he himself used to rewrite in scholar's Latin the inscriptions
Giacchi composed in monk's Latin![42] On another occasion he wrote that
the praises of a Giacchi had excited envy and had in certain quarters
been described as flatteries. He took no less pains to propitiate
the Archbishop of Bari, Muzio di Gaeta, a conceited creature full
of his own merits and incapable of speaking except about himself.
Muzio wrote a panegyric on Pope Benedict XIII., a work of which,
though Vico praised it again and again, he had never heard enough,
and was always covertly or openly demanding new praises. So Vico used
to besprinkle him patiently with the desired fluid: "the marvellous
work of Your Excellency"; his "lordly diction"; his "demosthenic
digressions"; his eloquence, that philosophic speech employed in
Greece by the Academic school, in Rome by Cicero, and "among the
Italians by none but Your Excellency!" To the advocate Francesco
Solla, who had been his pupil and had subsequently retired into the
country, he hinted that the _Scienza Nuova_ looked towards him as one
of the few men in the world possessed of a mind penetrating enough
to receive it unhampered by any prejudices concerning the origin of
mankind.[43] Such were the guileless artifices and the pitiful little
schemes by which he contrived to give an illusory satisfaction to his
thirst for recognition and praise, and a narcotic to his overwrought
nerves. But the final results were miserable enough. Giacchi's
letters contain not a word to show that he had ever grasped one of
Vico's doctrines or even that he had examined them with any serious
interest. Monsignor di Gaeta, after a labyrinth of circumlocutions,
admits that he "admired more than he understood" of Vico's works;[44]
and possibly he was so much occupied in admiring his own prose that
he never read them at all. Solla, in whom Vico placed such hopes,
thought the discourse on the death of Angela Cimini superior to all
the author's other works, including the _Scienza Nuova_ itself. Vico
received a no less incautious compliment from another admirer; though
a warm and affectionate one,--Esteban.[45] Compliments of a vague and
unintelligent kind sometimes reached him in return for the copies of
his works which he sent not only to Neapolitan scholars but to those
of Rome, Pisa, Padua and even Germany, Holland and England: he sent a
copy to Isaac Newton.[46] Generally, however, these gifts were received
in contemptuous silence. At most, Vico acquired the reputation of a
scholar among hundreds of scholars, a man of letters among thousands of
similar men; a learned man, but nothing more.

Among the modest, the insignificant, and the young, Vico no doubt had
strong admirers. Among these were the poet, later a sacred orator,
Gherardo de Angelis, Solla and Esteban whom we have mentioned, the monk
Nicola Concina of Padua, and some more. But though their affection
was strong their intelligence was weak. Even Concina admitted while
rhapsodising his enthusiasm that he did not very clearly comprehend
his master: "Oh, what fruitful and sublime lights are here! If only
I had the talent to make use of them, to comprehend their depth and
the wonderful art of which I seem to catch a glimpse!"[47] The best
service that these friends could do him was to soothe with kindly words
Vico's embittered spirit, if they could not do so by following his
inmost thoughts. This is what Esteban does at the close of the letter
in which he excuses himself for his foolish remark on the funeral
speech of Angela Cimini in phrases he must have gathered from the
master's lips: "Be confident, Sir, that Providence, through channels
unimagined by yourself, will cause to spring up for you a perennial
fountain of immortal glory!"[48] The Jesuit Father Domenico Lodovico,
who wrote the couplet inscribed beneath Vico's portrait, on receiving
the _Scienza Nuova_ sent to the author with much sound sense a little
wine from the cellar and a little bread from the oven of the Jesuit
house of the Nunziatella, together with a graceful letter begging
the author to accept "these trifles, simple as they are, since the
infant Jesus himself did not refuse the rude offerings of pastoral
peasants." He suggested too that at the side of the alphabet in the
symbolic frontispiece to the work a little dwarf should be added in the
posture of one dumb with astonishment like Dante's mountaineer, and
that beneath him should be written, "with a significant diaeresis,"
the name Lodo-vico![49] Among the young men of his school there were
some who, nourished upon his doctrines, were ready to defend their
master with their swords;[50] but we all know the value of these
youthful enthusiasms. If these scholars had really assimilated Vico's
doctrines or any part of them, we should have found traces of it in
the literature or culture of the next generation after Vico; but such
traces are entirely absent. Hardly a single one of his formulae, his
historical statements, or conceptions even superficially understood
is to be found in Conti at Venice, Concina at Padua, Ignazio Luzan
in Spain--though the last named was living at Naples when the
_Scienza Nuova_ was published;[51] or even, within the author's own
neighbourhood, in Genovesi or Galiani.

Envy, insincerity, gossip, calumny and stupidity provoked violent
outbursts of anger on Vico's part. He confesses this fault in his
autobiography where he says that he inveighed in too severe a manner
against the errors of conception or doctrine or the incivility of his
literary rivals, when in Christian charity and as a true philosopher
he ought to have ignored or pardoned them.[52] But as a matter of fact
this fault did not greatly distress him: he thought it rather an
ornament. The funeral speech for Angela Cimini contained a kind of hymn
to anger, the "heroic wrath which in noble spirits disturbs and shakes
to the depths by its boiling all those evil thoughts of the mind,
which beget the vile swarm of fraud, deceit and falsehood, and renders
the hero frank, truthful and loyal; and thus making him a partisan of
truth, arms him as the valiant knight of reason to do battle with wrong
and offence."[53]

Although in his writings he guards "with all his power" against falling
into this passion[54] we feel a scarcely repressed torrent of wrath in
his private letters whenever he denounces the "miserable pedants" who
"love learning more than truth," or the common tendency of man to be
"all memory and imagination," and so forth. In conversation also, it
seems, he could be very violent. When in 1736 Damiano Romano published
a work controverting his theory of the Twelve Tables, Vico, although
according to Romano himself he had been spoken of as "most learned"
and "most famous," together with other titles of respect, "tore the
book to pieces with his teeth in a way that made every one present
tremble with horror," rinding a sign of the deepest malignity in the
fact that "a lad like myself should join issue with him."[55] But his
outbursts of wrath were succeeded by fits of the deepest dejection. In
a sonnet he speaks of himself as over-whelmed by that fate "which the
unjust hate of others often creates," and says that for this reason he
has separated himself from human society to live with himself alone.
Sometimes he shakes off this torpor for a moment: then, he says:

I draw within myself again, and pressed
By heavy cares, return to where I stood:[56]
My fate and not my fault I do lament.

[Footnote 42: Published by me in _Napoli nobilis,_ xiii. (1904), f. 1.,
and again in _Secondo suppl. alla Bibl. vich._ pp. 70-2.]

[Footnote 43: _Opp._ vi. p. 17.]

[Footnote 44: _Bibl. vich._ pp. 103-5.]

[Footnote 45: _Opp._ vi. p. 145.]

[Footnote 46: _Ibid._ p. 110.]

[Footnote 47: _Opusc.,_ ed. Villarosa, ii. p. 277.]

[Footnote 48: _Bibl. vich._ p. 105.]

[Footnote 49: "I praise Vico." Letter published by me in _Bibl. vich._
p. 107.]

[Footnote 50: _Bibl. vich._ pp. 87-8.]

[Footnote 51: _Ibid._ p. 44.]

[Footnote 52: _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 416: cf. the evidence of a
pupil in _Bibl. vich._ p. 89.]

[Footnote 53: _Opp._ vi. p. 254.]

[Footnote 54: _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 416.]

[Footnote 55: _Bibl. vich._ p. 88.]

[Footnote 56: Sonnet published by G. Gentile, _Il Figlio di G. B. Vico_
(Naples, Pierro, 1905), p. 173.]



VII


But among all these troubles, obstacles and disappointments, in
the midst of this sadness which often draped his life in black,
Vico enjoyed one of the loftiest joys accessible to man; the "life
of meditation" freed and purified from passion, lived by man in
solitude without the turbulent and grievous company of the body:
the life of security, because it is "made one with the soul always
ready and present which shows man his being rooted in the Eternal
that measures all times and walking in the Infinite that comprehends
all finite things; it crowns him with an eternal and immeasurable
joy not restricted invidiously to certain places nor grudgingly to
certain times; but it can grow up within himself only if without envy
of rivalry or fear of diminution it spreads and communicates itself
unceasingly to more and more human minds."[57] That he has attained
truth he never doubts, though he never ceases to elaborate it further;
with the system presented in the work on _Universal Law,_ his mind,
he says, "rested content."[58] The weariness and even the pain he
had suffered were dear to him, because through them he arrived at
his discoveries: "I bless the twenty-five full years I have spent
in meditation upon this subject, in the midst of the adversities of
fortune and the checks I have often received from the unhappy example
of great thinkers who have attempted new and weighty discoveries."[59]
How could he have done anything but bless these fatigues, pains and
adversities, if, whenever he rose above the passionate perturbations
of the empirical man and the struggles of the practical man, his mind
showed him the inevitable necessity of his toil and of his sufferings,
two necessities fused into one another so as to become one and
indivisible?

His own philosophical doctrine then brought him the remedy for his
ills, and worked in his spirit the _catharsis_ of liberation; the
doctrine of the immanent Providence, or as it was later called,
historical necessity, which was his central thought. "Praise be to
Providence for ever, which, when the weak sight of mortals sees in it
nothing but stern justice, then most of all is at work on a crowning
mercy! For by this task I see that I am clothed upon with a new man;
I feel that everything that goaded me to bewail my hard lot and to
denounce the corruption of literature that has caused that lot, has
vanished; for this corruption and this lot have strengthened me and
enabled me to perfect my task. And more, it may perhaps not be true,
but it would please me, were it true, that this labour has filled me
with a certain spirit of heroism, through which no fear of death any
longer disturbs me and my mind feels no disquietude at the words of my
rivals. Lastly, it has established me as upon a mighty rock of adamant
before the judgment of God, who rewards the work of creation by the
approval of the wise, who are always and everywhere few in numbers ...
men of the loftiest intellect, of a learning all their own, generous
and great-hearted, whose only labour is to enrich with deathless works
the commonwealth of letters."[60] Thus Providence showed him the
necessity of all that had befallen or should befall him in his life,
taught him resignation and promised him glory.


[Footnote 57: _Opp._ vi. p. 287.]

[Footnote 58: _Ibid._ p. 18.]

[Footnote 59: _Ibid._ pp. 153-4.]

[Footnote 60: _Opp._ vi. pp. 29-30.]



VIII


So the hot-tempered man became at last tolerant: tolerant with that
tolerance, that lofty indulgence which must not be confused with common
toleration. The University, in which he had hoped for advancement and
towards which he directed the thought of his earlier works, would
have none of him; he retired within himself to think out the _Scienza
Nuova._ Now, says he with a smile in which we may still see a trace of
bitterness, I owe this work to the University, which, by judging me
unworthy of the chair and not wishing me to be "occupied in treating
paragraphs," gave me leisure for meditation: "what greater obligation
could I have?"[61] A friend, Sostegni the Florentine, in a sonnet to
Vico, let slip some words in condemnation of the city of Naples for
making so little of her distinguished son. Vico in his reply justifies
his native place in noble words, as being stern towards him because she
expected and desired much of him:

Stern mother, she caresses not her son,
Lest so she fall into obscurity,
But gravely listens, watching as he speaks.[62]

This was the spirit that found expression in the Autobiography, a
work which has been misjudged and in fact entirely misunderstood by
Ferrari, who censures its prevailing teleological tendency and laments
the absence of a "psychological" explanation of Vico's life;[63]
as if Vico had not himself explained that he was writing it from a
"philosophical" point of view.[64] And what is the meaning of a
philosophical treatment of a philosopher's life but an understanding
of the objective necessity of his thought and a perception of the
scaffolding it involves even where the author at the moment of thinking
did not clearly perceive it? Vico "meditates upon the causes, natural
and moral, and upon the occasions of his fortunes; he meditates upon
the inclinations or aversions he felt from childhood towards this or
that branch of study; he meditates upon the opportunities or hindrances
which assisted or retarded his progress; he meditates, lastly, upon
certain efforts of his own in right directions which bore fruit in the
reflections upon which he built his final work, the _Scienza Nuova,_
which work was to demonstrate that his literary life was bound to have
been what it was and not different."[65] Vico's _Autobiography_ is,
in a word, the application of the _Scienza Nuova_ to the life of its
author, the course of his own individual history: and its method is as
just and true as it is original. Vico succeeded in part only of his
attempt, and could not form a criticism and history of himself to the
same extent to which a modern critic and historian is in a position
to do--whose efforts will again be improved upon by those of the
future--is too obvious to need emphasising. The _Autobiography_ itself
concludes with a blessing upon the author's hardships, a profession of
faith in Providence and a sure expectation of fame and glory.


[Footnote 61: _Ibid._ p. 29.]

[Footnote 62: _Ibid._ p. 446.]

[Footnote 63: In the Introduction to vol. iv. of the _Opere._]

[Footnote 64: _Autob._ in _Opp._ iv. p. 402.]

[Footnote 65: _Ibid._]



IX


In the last years of his life Vico, enfeebled by age, domestic trouble
and illness, "entirely gave up his studies":[66]

    My pen is slipping from my palsied grasp;
    The door of my thought's treasury is closed,[67]

he cries in two mournful lines of a sonnet in 1735. He prepared at
this time additions and corrections for a possible reprint of the
second _Scienza Nuova,_ and incorporated them in the final manuscript
of the work; he thought for a time of printing his small work "on the
Equilibrium of the Living Body" (_De aequilibrio corporis animantis_)
composed many years earlier and now lost;[68] he still discharged
some of the duties of his office, such as the speech on the marriage
of the king, Charles Bourbon, in 1738. But from 1736 or 1737 his son
began to assist him in his professional work, and in January 1741 he
was definitely appointed to the chair on his father's resignation.[69]
Vico henceforth lived among his family like an old soldier _exacta
militia,_ thinking over his past battles and conscious of having
done his life's work. His good son read to him for some hours every
day out of the Latin classics he had once loved and studied so well.
And in this evening of his life he was at least spared the crowning
agony suffered in his last years by a philosopher more fortunate than
himself, Immanuel Kant; the agony of continuing and completing his
system of philosophy, and wearing himself out in a fruitless struggle
with thoughts that eluded his grasp and words that no longer obeyed
him. Vico had said all he had to say; a great historian of his own
life, he knew the moment at which Providence had finished its work in
him, closed the door of thought it had so freely opened, and ordered
him to lay down his pen.[70]


[Footnote 66: _Ibid._ p. 415.]

[Footnote 67: _Opp._ vi. p. 425 (Sonnet on the marriage of Raimondo di
Sangro, 1735).]

[Footnote 68: _Bibl. vich._ pp. 38-9.]

[Footnote 69: Gentile, _Il Figlio di G. B. Vico,_ pp. 30-48.]

[Footnote 70: The documents and the scattered notes used in this
lecture and quoted from the contents of my _Bibliografia vichiana_ are
now all collected in my edition of the _Autobiografia, carteggio e
poesie varie:_ cf. the present vol. _infra,_ p. 308.]




APPENDIX II


THE LATER HISTORY OF VICO'S THOUGHT[1]


The history of the vicissitudes of Vico's reputation must not be
allowed to replace or be confused with the exposition and valuation of
his thought, by losing sight of the history of philosophy properly so
called or confusing it with the history of culture.[2] But even when
we pass to this second history, we must guard against another kind of
error, namely the pretence of determining by its means whether Vico's
work was or was not of use in the advancement of culture, and what
degree of utility we should grant it. The inquiry is meaningless, and
the degree cannot be measured: for rightly considered one disciple may
be worth tens or hundreds, one effect produced after centuries may
compensate its age-long delay, one point undeservedly forgotten may
become as notable and instructive as the best-deserved reputation,
and one single truth twice discovered independently may from this
re-discovery and seeming superfluity receive a confirmation of its
inevitable necessity. The work of Vico--such is the usual verdict--was
entirely useless, because it appeared out of its due time and
prematurely, and remained unknown or was known only because it could
convey nothing new. Such language is a blasphemy against history, which
allows nothing to be useless and is always and throughout the work of
Providence, whose vast utilities must not be measured by the pettiness
of the human span.

Was Vico appreciated in the course of the eighteenth century? Did any
one read him, understand him and follow his lead? The question has
been answered with equal decision in the affirmative and the negative.
The affirmative answer has been supported by a diligent collection of
scattered passages up and down the writers of the century mentioning
his name and doctrines and an accumulation of possible or apparent
traces of his thoughts visible though unacknowledged in Italian and
foreign literature. But a thinker like Vico can only be said to be
known when his fundamental thought has been grasped and the spirit
that animated him has been felt. Now the majority of the facts alleged
as proof of the efficacy of his work concerns particular doctrines
detached from the whole and accepted or contested just like those of
any other scholar and critic or any paradox-monger of his time. This
is true in the first place of his theory on the origin of the Twelve
Tables, discussed in the controversy between Bernardo Tanucci and Guido
Grandi from 1728 to 1731, contested in 1736 by Damiano Romano, accepted
in France by Bonamy in 1735 and recalled in 1750 by Terrasson; of the
views on the history and primitive government of Rome, mentioned by
Chastellux, adopted and expanded by Duni, and used by Du Bignon who
learnt them from Duni; of the hypotheses as to the prehistoric period
and the origins of humanity, employed and modified by Boulanger in
France and Mario Pagano in Italy; and lastly, of some conceptions upon
poetry and language which reappear in Pagano, Cesarotti and some others.

A more essential question was that of the method of studying and
judging political institutions and laws; a question upon which
Montesquieu has been compared with Vico and accused of freely using the
_Scienza Nuova_ without acknowledging his debt. It is now established
through Montesquieu's journal that in 1728 Antonio Conti at Venice
advised the future author of the _Esprit des Lois_ to buy Vico's book
at Naples; and Montesquieu must have followed this advice on reaching
Naples in the following year; for a copy of the 1725 edition of the
_Scienza Nuova_ is still preserved in the library at the château of La
Brède. But the mind of the French writer was too different from and
inferior to that of Vico to draw vital nourishment from a work such as
the _Scienza Nuova;_ and the traces of imitation alleged to have been
discovered in the _Esprit des Lois_ are very doubtful and in any case
of minor importance. It must be said on the other hand that the merit
generally attributed to Montesquieu of having introduced the historical
element into positive laws and thus considering legislation in a truly
philosophical manner (as Hegel said later), that is, as a moment
depending upon a totality relative to all the other determinations
which go to form the character of a people or a period; this merit, in
order both of time and of excellence, belongs in reality to Vico.

Like Montesquieu in the science of legislation, so Wolf in the Homeric
question has been suspected of tacitly deriving help from Vico's
speculations. But at the time when he published the _Prolegomena ad
Homerum_ in 1795 Wolf did not know the _Scienza Nuova_; which he
knew in name only in 1801 and in fact the year after, when Cesarotti
presented him with the book. We must observe that Vico's judgment as
to the barbaric nature of the Homeric epos and the absence in it of
esoteric wisdom had been published in 1765 by the _Gazette littéraire
de l'Europe_; and further, that the _Scienza Nuova_ was known and
used by the Danish philologist and archaeologist Zoega, who quotes it
in an essay on Homer composed in 1788 though not published till long
afterwards; and that Zoega corresponded with Heyne, who afterwards
accused Wolf of having derived from his own lectures the theory set
forth in the _Prolegomena._ Heyne had in fact expressed the idea of
a gradual genesis of the Homeric poems in 1790. In a word we may say
that Vico's views had to some extent penetrated into the atmosphere of
German philology: in which case Wolf may have originally had a certain
indirect knowledge of them. Even apart from this indirect communication
the fact remains, and is recognised by all students of the question,
that the Homeric theory conceived by Wolf must really be called
not Wolfian but Vician, since such it truly is in its fundamental
characteristics. Moreover, Wolf, as a philologist far superior to Vico
but much less great as a thinker, was not in a position to understand
the ideas which had led his predecessor to the doctrine he held
concerning Homer: a fact which is clear from the somewhat superficial
article he wrote on the subject in 1807.

There was certainly at Naples during the eighteenth century a vague
consciousness in many minds of the greatness of Vico's work; but in
what precisely this greatness consisted nobody could determine, owing
to the lack of adequate experience and preparation. Outside Italy,
especially in Germany, where this preparation existed or at least was
much greater, Vico's work remained generally unknown, partly through
the discredit into which Italian books had fallen since the end of the
seventeenth century, and partly through the dimculties which Vico's
style presented to a foreign reader. When the _Scienza Nuova_ did
fall into the hands of men competent to understand it, a series of
insignificant accidents interposed to prevent such an understanding.
Hamann procured the _Scienza Nuova_ from Florence in 1777, at which
time he was engaged upon economics and physiocracy, fancying that it
dealt with these subjects; and the delusion was not dispelled when in
glancing over it he found himself faced by a collection of philological
studies and studies carried out with considerable carelessness. Goethe
received it at Naples in 1787 from Filangieri, who warmly recommended
it, took it back to Germany and lent it in 1792 to Jacobi; but it was
a happy coincidence rather than a true knowledge or a clear intuition
that led him to couple Vico's name with that of Hamann. Herder, who may
also have known Vico's work less through his correspondence with Hamann
in 1777 than by his travels in Italy in 1789, speaks of it in 1797
in quite general terms, without noticing one of the many connexions
between Vico and himself, especially as regards the theory of language
and poetry.

The only men in the eighteenth century who really to some extent
penetrated into the fundamental thought of Vico and proclaimed though
unwillingly his genuine greatness were--and this is another proof of
the solid mental fibre of Catholicism--his Catholic opponents, of whom
there were plenty: Romano, Lami, Rogadei, and above all Finetti. They
saw that in spite of his stubborn protestations of religious orthodoxy
Vico held a conception of Providence very different from that of
Christian theology; and that though he continually used the name of God
he never allowed him to operate effectively in history as a personal
God; that he made so sharp a distinction between sacred and profane
history as to reach a purely natural and human theory of the origin of
civilisation, by means of the state of nature, and of the origin of
religion, by means of fear, shame and the imaginative universal; while
the traditional Catholic doctrine admitted a certain communication
between sacred and profane history, and recognised in pagan religion
and civilisation the leaven of some kind of vague recollection of the
primitive revealed truth; that though protesting that he accepted and
reinforced the authority of the Bible, he threatened and shook it on
many points; and that his criticism of profane historical tradition,
conducted in a haughty spirit of rebellion against the past, might
open the road to the most dangerous abuses, since it provoked the
application of the same spirit and method to sacred history, which
happened in the case of Boulanger.[3] In this accusation are faithfully
indicated all the points destined later to enter into the nineteenth
century's solemn eulogy of Vico. Thus churchmen began to be suspicious
of him; and this bore fruit later in the restoration period, in the
anti-Vician polemic of Bishop Colangelo, and somewhat earlier in a
verdict of the royal censor Lorenzo Giustiniani, who pronounced the
_Scienza Nuova_ "a work marking a most unfortunate crisis in European
history."

This tendency was opposed by the enthusiastic young students of
social and political matters at Naples at the end of the eighteenth
century, preparing themselves for an active part in the imminent
revolution. Among them Vico came to be considered as an anti-clerical
and anti-Catholic, and the legend arose, mentioned elsewhere in this
volume, that Vico purposely and deliberately made his work obscure
in order to escape ecclesiastical censure. These young men applied
themselves to the study and praise of the _Scienza Nuova;_ they
proposed to reprint it, since it had become rare, together with the
other works and unpublished manuscripts of the author; they prepared
expositions and criticisms of Vico's philosophical and historical
system; some like Pagano tried to work it up afresh by adding to it
the ideas of French sensationalism, others like Filangieri did not let
their admiration of it dispel their rosy dreams of reform. In 1797
the German Gerning on coming to Naples noted the zeal with which Vico
was studied, and projected a translation or at least a summary of the
_Scienza Nuova_ in German. When the fall of the Neapolitan Republic
in 1799 drove these young men, or rather those of them who escaped
the massacres and the gallows of the Bourbon reaction, into exile in
Northern Italy and especially in Lombardy, the cult of Vico was for the
first time ardently propagated. Vincenzo Cuoco, Francesco Lomonaco,
Francesco Salfi and other southern patriots passed the knowledge of the
_Scienza Nuova_ to Monti, who mentioned it in his inaugural lecture
at Pavia in 1803, to Ugo Foscolo, who absorbed many of its ideas into
his poem the _Sepolcri_ and his critical essays: to Alessandro Manzoni,
who was later to institute in his _Discorso sulla storia longobarda_
a famous comparison between Vico and Muratori: and to others of less
importance. Cuoco introduced Vico's work to Degérando, then at work on
his _Histoire comparée des systèmes philosophiques_; another exile,
De Angelis, put the _Scienza Nuova_ into the hands of Jules Michelet;
Salfi mentioned Vico in articles in the _Revue Encyclopédique_ and in
books and minor works in French. It was also through the suggestion
of these Neapolitans that the _Scienza Nuova_ was reprinted at Milan
in 1801; and other editions and collections of Vico's smaller works
were not long in appearing. Thus in the first decade of the nineteenth
century Vico's reputation, which had till then been merely local to
Naples, spread over the whole of Italy.

But, suitably to their personal disposition and to the spirit of the
times, the first and chief debt which the patriotic students of Vico
owed to his thought was political in character or rather belonging to
political philosophy; and consisted in a criticism of that Jacobinism
and philo-Gallicism of which they had had such unhappy experience
in the events of 1799.[4] Vico's thought led them to more concrete
concepts; and this is particularly visible in Vincenzo Cuoco's
admirable _Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione napoletana_ (1800).
Similarly Ballanche some decades later in his _Essais de palingénésie
sociale_ (1827) wrote that if Vico had been known in France in the
eighteenth century he would have exercised a beneficial influence on
the subsequent social revolutions. Another particular aspect of Vico's
work, the reform undertaken by him of historical methodology and social
science as an aid to history, was observed and emphasised by the
archaeologist Cataldo Iannelli in his work _Sulla natura e necessità
della scienza delle cose e delle storie umane_ (1818). Foscolo and
those who drew their inspiration from him chiefly introduced into
literary criticism and history something of Vico's conceptions on the
historical interpretation of poetry.

In Germany on the other hand Jacobi, who had read the _De
antiquissima,_ immediately placed himself in the centre of the Vician
philosophy by discovering and pointing out in 1811, in his work _Über
den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung,_ the close connexion
between the principle of the convertibility of the true and the
created and the Kantian theory that one can perfectly conceive and
understand only what one is able to construct: a single step from
which position leads, as he observes, to the system of identity. The
same fact was recognised by Baader, who found in this system the
confirmation and foundation of the principle enunciated by Vico. But
the translation of the _Scienza Nuova_ made by Weber in 1822 seems to
have been unsuccessful; and it does not appear that Vico was known to
Hegel, with whom he has so many substantial and formal affinities,
especially in the _Phenomenology_; and whose mania for triads might be
blamed just as the Catholic Finetti had blamed Vico for always standing
"upon rule of three." The resemblances again of Vico's theories to the
new German philological doctrines of Niebuhr, Müller, Böckh and many
others were not at all willingly admitted. The attitude of Niebuhr is
characteristic. Whether he knew Vico's work or not when he published
the first edition of his _Römische Geschichte,_ he certainly knew
it later through Savigny and through the article entitled _Vico und
Niebuhr_ published in 1816 by the Swiss Orelli; and yet he continued to
ignore him, through some kind of contempt or depreciation; an attitude
hardly praiseworthy but imitated by Mommsen.

In France, the spread of knowledge concerning Vico's thought was due
to Michelet, who translated his works and in his last years described
Italy as "the second mother and nurse who in my youth suckled me upon
Virgil, and in my maturity nourished me with Vico; potent cordials that
have many times renewed my heart." Michelet was the first or one of the
first to proclaim, in his introduction, that Vico was not understood
in the eighteenth century because he wrote for the nineteenth.
Michelet was joined by Ballanche, of whom we spoke above, and also by
Jouffroy, Lerminier, Chateaubriand, and Cousin, some of whom grasped
the connexion between Vico and the German philosophy that Cousin was
at this time propagating in France; and later by Laurent, Vacherot,
De Ferron, Franck, Cournot and many others. Vico was read and admired
by Comte, who mentioned him in a letter to John Stuart Mill in 1844,
and lastly Léon Gambetta conceived in his youth a general history of
commerce upon the scheme of the Vician "reflux." The popularity of
Vico's name in France at this period was so great that it is several
times mentioned in joke in passages of Balzac's novels and in
Flaubert's _Bouvard et Pécuchet._ But thought of the quality of Vico's
could never have a very deep or lasting influence in the persistently
intellectualistic and spiritualistic atmosphere of France. Perhaps the
most conspicuous results it produced were the theories of Fustel de
Coulanges on the ancient city and the origin of feudalism.

But, to return to Italy, if the aspirations towards a national
uprising, which tended to vindicate and glorify all the ornaments
Italy could boast, raised Vico's name almost to a level with that of
Dante, the simultaneous renaissance of philosophy, which was shaking
off the sensationalism and materialism of the eighteenth century, was
bound to attach itself to the last great idealistic philosopher, to
use his thoughts and to shelter itself behind his authority. Vico's
complete works were now collected and editions of the single treatises
multiplied. And since in the national uprising two currents could be
distinguished, partly successive and partly fused, the neo-Guelphian
and the radical, and since this distinction was represented in
the philosophical awakening by that between Catholic idealism and
rationalistic idealism, the schools of Rosmini and Gioberti on the one
hand and Bruno and Hegel on the other; Vico, at once a Catholic and a
free philosopher, lent himself admirably, as is easy to understand, to
the contrary sympathies and interpretations of the two schools. Thus
originated two different pictures of him, both historically justified,
though the one painted him as he would have wished to be, the other as
he was. The Vico of the liberal Catholics was above all the Vico of
the metaphysical points, the Platonist, the mystic of the unknowable
God, the traditionalist of the prologues to the _Diritto universale,_
and hence the strictly Italian philosopher as opposed to those of
the rest of Europe, sons of the Reformation: whereas the Vico of the
rationalists, the bold and heretical author of the _Scienza Nuova,_
is a European philosopher to be set side by side with Descartes and
Spinoza, Kant and Hegel. The former picture may be seen in the works
of Rosmini, Gioberti, Tommaseo and many others, among which we must
not forget those of a Neapolitan writer of lofty spirit, Enrico Cenni,
perhaps the best of all, who draws a loving picture of the Vico of
the Catholics. The latter portrait is found in the philosophers and
critics who from 1840 onwards acquired their education in the school
of German idealism; especially Bertrando Spaventa and Francesco de
Sanctis, who were the first to see clearly Vico's relations to earlier
and later European thought and to substitute for mere observations
and vague impressions on the subject a scientific interpretation and
a determinate judgment. That the second school of interpreters and
critics were in the right, and that the liberal or idealistic Catholics
had taken up an untenable position and reproduced in their irresolution
and incoherence the irresolution and incoherence of Vico himself, was
proved by the fact, among others, that less liberal but more consistent
Catholics like the Spaniard Jaime Balmes show an inflexible distrust
and hostility towards the author of the _Scienza Nuova._

The study of history in Italy during this period was less deeply
modified by Vico's influence; chiefly perhaps because the impulse of
the national uprising led to the neglect of primitive and Roman history
and the devotion of all its best energies to research into the origin
and vicissitudes of the Italian republics, a subject Vico had entirely
ignored. On the other hand, jurisprudence especially in the south was
dominated by his thought; and though it produced in this field no great
scientific results, it gave to the jurists a loftiness and breadth of
judgment and a concreteness of view which were long remembered and
regretted.

After 1870, with the decay of philosophy in Italy and elsewhere, the
study of Vico also decayed: and for more than forty years there was no
demand for a reprint of his works. The monograph by Cantoni in the year
1867, in spite of some valuable passages, already shows unmistakable
signs of the decadence, founded as it is upon the idea that Vico's
value is greater according as he is less of a metaphysician and more
of a psychologist and historian: a position due not so much to the
intrinsic weakness ascribed to him by Cantoni in philosophical matters
as to the implicit conviction on the critic's part that metaphysic
in general is a valueless thing, useful only for rousing enthusiasm
in the addled heads of southern Italians. The great idealist of the
New Science was subjected, as a final insult, to the praises of the
positivists, who in their astonishing ignorance almost amounting
to innocence did not--and still do not--hesitate to allege as a
confirmation of their formal profession of faith the words "verum ipsum
factum," which according to them means that the truth is the fact
which we see and touch. Writings making any serious contribution to
the knowledge of any particular point on Vico's doctrines were rare.
Interest in Vico only reawoke within the last decade with the general
reawakening of philosophical studies.

Of the two best comprehensive works on Vico published towards the end
of last century one is due to the German Catholic Karl Werner (1881)
who expounds his philosophical and historical doctrines with great
care, judging them from the point of view of speculative theism, a
theory evolved under the influence of Baader and the second philosophy
of Schelling, and tending much more to the comprehension of Vico than
the psychology of Cantoni. The other is the work of an Englishman,
Robert Flint (1884), who wrote for the collection of Philosophical
Classics a brief monograph upon the subject, accurate in detail, and
if not profound at least guided by clear and sound sense. Recently
Sorel in France has shown the fruitfulness of certain views of Vico's,
especially that of the reflux, by applying them to the history of
primitive Christianity and the theory of the modern proletarian
movement, while in Germany Biese and Mauthner have brought his
conceptions of metaphor and language once more into favour.

But in spite of all this Vico has never had justice done him in works
devoted to the history of modern philosophy. These, in the case both
of Höffding's book and of the greatly superior work of Windelband, and
in fact of all others, either pass over the Italian philosopher in
complete silence or else merely mention him as an experimenter, later
than Bossuet and earlier than Herder, in the dubious science of the
"philosophy of history." This lack of attention arises partly from an
insufficient knowledge of Vico's real nature; his fertile activities
in the theory of knowledge, in ethics, in aesthetic, in law and in
religion are all hidden behind that one label "philosopher of history."
Partly however it is due to the reaction of the history of politics
and culture on the history of philosophy; which produces the effect
that thinkers whose social influence came to an end with the fall of
the peoples or states to which they belonged, or who for some reason
or other had no considerable influence on European civilisation, are
sacrificed to others much less important from a philosophical point of
view but more influential or better known as exponents of social life
and representatives of cultural tendencies; so that where it would
be thought impossible to ignore, for example, Paley or d'Holbach or
Mendelssohn, it seems natural to pass over Giambattista Vico, though in
such company he is a giant among pigmies. The historical injustice of
this course has been already shown theoretically by the distinction we
have emphasised between the history of philosophy and the history of
culture; and in Vico's special case by our whole work, which clearly
shows the lacuna left by the omission of Vico in the general history of
European thought at the beginning of the eighteenth century.


[Footnote 1: This appendix briefly recapitulates the chief results of
my researches into the subject set forth in the _Bibliografia vichiana_
and its two supplements (cf. the present volume, _infra,_ p. 310,
to which work I refer for fuller details and for the evidence for the
facts here laid down.]

[Footnote 2: See above, pp. 236, 237.]

[Footnote 3: Labanca has devoted a highly instructive volume to the
Catholic criticisms of Vico: see the present volume, _infra,_ p. 309.]

[Footnote 4: See above, pp. 247-9.]




APPENDIX III


THE SOURCES OF VICO'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE[1]


My statement, that the criterion of knowledge contained in Vico's
formula of the conversion of the true with the created is an original
and modern principle, has been contradicted by certain Catholic
editors; who state that this doctrine, however true, is not original
to Vico, and is indeed far from modern, being a purely Scholastic
doctrine. If I thought otherwise, this was only due to my insufficient
knowledge of Scholasticism.

I might indeed ask at the outset how such complete ignorance of
scholasticism were possible: an ignorance not of its manifold
varieties and the tangled forest of its distinctions--that would be
comprehensible: but of no less a matter than the fundamental criterion
of its theory of knowledge, the starting-point of modern thought and
as such, it would seem, inevitably familiar to every student of the
elements of philosophy. But since it is always useful to suspect
oneself of ignorance, or even to believe oneself more ignorant than
one really is, I will make so far as concerns myself a voluntary
display of humility. I find it less easy, I confess, to extend the
accusation of ignorance to all who, like myself, have failed to run
Vico's criterion to earth in the scholastic lumber-room: Jacobi for
instance, who on reading it as expressed in the _De antiquissima,_ sees
in it the first manifestation of Kantianism and absolute idealism:[2]
or the Catholic theologian Baader, who finds its later development
in Schelling's philosophy of identity:[3] or the learned and subtle
Spanish Thomist, Jaime Balmes, who treats it as a unique idea and
attacks it from the scholastic point of view:[4] or the equally learned
Catholic Bertini, who accepts and develops Jacobi's observation:[5]
or the eminent historian of philosophy Wilhelm Windelband, who, while
unacquainted with Vico's doctrines, on coming across indications of a
similar thought in Sanchez's _Quod nihil scitur_ was greatly struck by
it and endorsed its value by the assertion that it was to bear fruit
at a later date and in the hands of a greater philosopher, Immanuel
Kant:[6] or again the specialist in the history of scholasticism, Karl
Werner, the author of a careful monograph on Vico,[7] who nowhere
notices the alleged scholastic character of Vico's theory of knowledge.
Scholasticism must indeed be a difficult and mysterious doctrine, if it
is inaccessible to all these students, qualified and bound though they
are to understand it.

But we cannot pause on the threshold to speculate: we must plunge
straight into the argument. In what part of scholasticism can we find
Vico's criterion converting knowledge with creation?

The Thomistic saying, "truth and reality are convertible," _ens et
verum convertuntur,_ has been quoted:[8] but quotations of this kind
are perhaps more calculated to confuse by words than to convince by
facts. The same value attaches to the statement that Vico himself
confessed the scholastic origin of his principle, since the very first
chapter of the _De antiquissima_ begins with the words "in Latin,
the truth and the fact reciprocate, or, as the scholastic mob says,
convert," _"Latinis verum et factum reciprocantur, seu, ut scholarum
vulgus loquitur, convertuntur."_ Here it is perfectly clear to any
one on a moment's thought that Vico, Latinist as he was, meant
simply to substitute the Ciceronian "_reciprocari_" for the barbarous
"_converti._"

St. Thomas explained the meaning of his formula quite clearly,
especially in the Summa Theologica, Part I. question xvi. art. 3.
Here he asks whether the truth and the reality are convertible,
_utrum verum et ens convertantur;_ to which he replies as follows:
"that as the good is of the nature of the desirable, so the truth
has the nature of knowledge. But in so far as a thing has existence
in itself, thus far it is knowable. And for this reason it is said
in _De anima,_ Bk. III. text. 37 (431 b 21) that 'the soul is in a
sense all things' according to sense and intellect. And hence as the
good is convertible with the existent, so is the true. But yet as the
good adds to existence the nature of the desirable, so also the truth
adds a reference to the intellect." (_Quod sicut bonum habet rationem
appetibilis, ita verum habet ordinem cognitionis. Unumquodque autem
in quantum habet de esse, in tantum est cognoscibile. Et propter hoc
dicitur in_ 3 _de Anima, text._ 37, _quod 'anima est quodammodo omnia'
secundum sensum et intellectum. Et ideo sicut bonum convertitur cum
ente, ita et verum. Sed tamen sicut bonum addit rationem appetibilis
supra ens, ita et verum comparationem ad intellectum._) Nothing then
can be known except what exists, and nothing can exist but what is
good: existence, truth and goodness are all convertible. Thus, too,
things are called good in so far as they correspond to the idea in
their Creator's mind. "Each single thing partakes of the truth of
its own nature in so far as it imitates the knowledge of God, like
an artefact in so far as it agrees with the art": "the knowledge of
God is the cause of things": "the knowledge of God is the measure of
things." (_Unumquodque in tantum habet de veritate suae natura, in
quantum imitatur Dei scientiam sicut artificiatum in quantum concordat
arti_ I. xiv. 12. _Scientia Dei est causa rerum_ I. xiv. 12. _Scientia
Dei est mensura rerum_ I. xiv. 12.) But truth and goodness, the
objects of intellect and will respectively, if on the one hand they
are "convertible in reality," _convertentur secundum rem,_ on the
other they are "distinguishable in thought," _diversificantur secundum
rationem_ (I. lix. 2). What have these thoughts in common with Vico's
idea that the condition of knowing a truth is to create it? In fact,
what is here stated is that the condition of making a thing is to
know it, or as St. Thomas says in the same place (I. xiv. 8) in St.
Augustine's words (_De Trinitate_ xv. 13) "_Universas creaturas et
spirituelles et corporales non quia sunt ideo novit Deus, sed ideo
sunt quia novit._" (God does not know all His creatures corporeal and
spiritual because they exist: but they exist because He knows them.)

Vico makes no kind of mention of the formula _ens et verum
convertuntur,_ though he knows and quotes--a fact which has escaped my
critics--the analogous phrase "the true and the good are convertible,"
_verum et bonum convertuntur:_[9] a formula which he diverts to his
own purposes, or rather unites it with his own. "In the first place,"
he writes, "I establish a truth which is convertible with the created,
and in this sense I understand the good of the schools, convertible
with existence: and hence I infer that the one and only truth is in
God, since in Him is contained all Creation."[10] This union is reached
quite openly by identifying _verum_ with _factum,_ then _factum_
with _ens,_ and finally the _verum-factum-ens_ with the _bonum_: by
substituting the doctrine of Vico for that of the schools. By such a
method of interpretation one could reduce all doctrines to a single
one, a _perennis philosophia._ I do not say that it would be a method
entirely devoid of truth; but it is certainly not a historical method.

That Vico's criterion is not only different from but inconsistent
with Thomism was shown, as I have already said, by Balmes; who
pronounced it "specious but devoid of solid foundation." He uses St.
Thomas's statements to controvert Vico's theological doctrine that God
understands because He creates, opposing to it the Scholastic view
that He creates because He understands. He denies, that the Word was
conceived by the mere knowledge of what is contained in the divine
omnipotence, for it is conceived not simply by creatures but also and
chiefly by the cognition of the divine essence ("for the Father by
understanding himself and the Son and the Holy Ghost and all other
things embraced by His knowledge conceives the Word, so that thus
the whole Trinity is implied in the Word, and also every creature":
_Pater enim intellegendo se et Filium et Spiritum sanctum et omnia
alia quae ejus scientia continentur concipit Verbum, ut sic tota
Trinitas Verbo dicatur, et etiam omnis creatura);_ he objects that,
granting this criterion, God could never know himself, because He
is not His own cause. He denies that intelligence is only possible
through causality, inasmuch as it is also possible through identity.
He accuses Vico's criterion of involving scepticism: in a word he
maintains that the facts of knowledge are known by reason, even if they
are not the products of reason.[11] I am not concerned to ask whether
Balmes is right, or whether Vico's criterion can be reconciled with
Christian theology. I am concerned merely with establishing, not only
by quotation from St. Thomas but also by the help of the judgment of
an authoritative interpreter of his system that this doctrine is not
Thomistic.

Even granting that the criterion in question is irreconcilable with
Thomism but not with an improved Christian theology, it is certainly
irreconcilable with both in the form it adopts in what I have called
"Vico's second theory of knowledge," in the _Scienza Nuova,_ which
Balmes either did not know or omitted to mention, and is passed over by
my critics with a light-heartedness that is not particularly enviable.
One of them asserts that "the alleged distinction" (the distinction
that is drawn by myself) "between Vico's first and second theories of
knowledge does not in point of fact exist, and produces no effects of
any kind." What? Has it no effects, when those historical studies and
sciences of mind, which in the _De antiquissima_ occupied the lowest
position among mere probabilities became in the _Scienza Nuova_ the
truest of all--true even in a higher degree than mathematics itself
as dealing with the human world which "is man's creation?" when their
form is found "in the modifications of the actual human mind itself?"
when they have "a reality as much greater, as the reality of the laws
of human affairs is greater than that of points, lines, areas and
figures?"[12] Is there no distinction, when we pass from the scepticism
of the _De antiquissima_ to the rationalism of the statement that these
"proofs are of a divine nature," and must produce "a divine pleasure,
since in God to know and to create are one and the same"?[13]

It is true that upon this point my attention has been recalled to a
well-known passage of Galileo (_Dialogo dei massimi sistemi_), an
especial favourite of our own Spaventa,[14] where we find the thought
that the human intellect differs from the divine _extensivè,_ but
not _intensivè,_ and that if the divine intellect knows infinitely
more about mathematical propositions because it knows them all, yet
"of these few facts known by the human intellect, its knowledge is
equal to that of the divine in objective certainty, since it attains
comprehension of the necessity than which no greater certainty, it
seems, can exist." But in any case Galileo was not a Schoolman, and
moreover this pronouncement of his seemed so dangerous to the Christian
theory of ideas, that he himself was obliged to alter it by admitting
that while "so far as the truth of which mathematical proof gives no
knowledge is concerned, this is identical with that which the divine
wisdom knows," yet "the manner, in which God knows the infinitely
numerous propositions of which we know a few, is immensely superior to
our own, which proceeds discursively from one conclusion to another,
while His is simple intuition." It is important too not to forget
that this very statement figures among the heads of the accusation in
Galileo's trial.[15]

If the formula of the conversion of the true with the created is not
found in Thomism, it may perhaps be found, at least in its original,
sceptical or mystical, intention, in other tendencies of scholasticism
or mediaeval philosophy generally. With Thomism Vico seems to have had
neither acquaintance nor sympathy: but from his autobiography it is
plain that he studied nominalism and the summaries of Petrus Hispanus
and Paulus Venetus, though with little profit,[16] and later also,
much more profitably, the Scotist philosophy; which he considered the
most Platonic of the Scholastic systems.[17] Traces of this appear in
several views expressed in the _De antiquissima,_ especially in those
dealing with universals and ideas. In this direction, the direction
that is to say of the Scotist system and the closely allied system of
Occamism, I have attempted various researches, without attaining any
remarkable results: further, I have applied for assistance to various
specialists in Scholasticism, but in vain; they would do nothing
but express their own superficial impressions or lose themselves
in idle disputation. In general it seems possible to say that Duns
Scotus's theory of knowledge presents points of affinity to that of
Vico: for example, in the polemic against the Thomistic doctrine of
the _adaequatio intellectus et rei,_ which he refutes by applying it
to the divine knowledge, since God knows objects as willed by Him,
and they exist because He wills their existence without His being
necessitated by them.[18] For Occam again the thought of objects has
no reality and objectivity (or subjectivity according to the usage of
Scholastic terminology, which is the reverse of modern) in God, and is
nothing else than the objects themselves, known by God according to the
possibility of creating them, in virtue of which they are thinkable
to the divine mind.[19] But the question for Vico is not merely the
priority of creation to knowledge or knowledge to creation, but the
convertibility or identity of knowledge and creation.

In certain recently published philosophical observations by Paolo
Sarpi,[20] a nominalist of Occam's school,[21] the following statements
are to be found. They are the more notable because standing as they
do without any results in Sarpi's thought and being undeveloped in
subsequent philosophy, they seem to be not his own invention but a
mere repetition of scholastic dicta. "We have certain knowledge both
of the existence and of the cause of those things which we understand
fully how to create: of those which we know by experience, we know the
existence, but not the cause. We can however guess at it, and look
simply for a possible cause: but out of many found to be possible
we cannot be certain which is the true one. This fact may be seen
in descriptions of astronomical theories, and would also be true in
the case of a man who saw a clock for the first time. Of the various
guesses, that of a man who knew how to make similar objects would
be nearest the truth, _e.g._ one who understood the construction of
machinery when he saw a different kind of machine: but none the less
he will never on that account[22] know for certain. There are then
three kinds of knowledge: first, knowledge how to make the object:
secondly, experience of it: and thirdly, guessing at possibilities."
This thought, then, namely that objects are known by their creator,
and that God knows objects because He creates them, seems to have been
current in the schools: and this explains the fact of its reappearing
in an incidental manner and as an obvious truth in Francesco Sanchez's
_Quod nihil scitur_ (1581) where it is declared impossible "_perfecte
cognoscere quis quae non creavit; nec Deus creare potuisset nec creata
regere quae non perfecte precognovisset_"[23] (that one should know
perfectly things which he has not created: nor could God have been able
to create nor after creating them to control things which He had not
perfectly foreknown).

But need we continue to look for it in the guise of a casual remark
or an isolated proposition, devoid of philosophical connexion, in the
works of philosophers or the lecture-rooms of the schools? Did it not
simply form a part of the common thought which daily declares that the
man who has made a thing knows it better than he who has not made it?
Probably a little attention would reveal it in many and dissimilar
treatises; and for my own part, while reading the _Chronicon_ of Otto
of Freising the other day, I came across it in the introduction to
the third book, where the chronicler, writing as is well known under
the influence of St. Augustine's _Civitas Dei,_ is arrested by the
objection that God's designs in history are inscrutable, and delivers
himself of the following reflections: "What then shall we do? If we
cannot understand, shall we hold our peace? Then who will reply to
those who flatter, repel those who attack, and by the reason and might
of his words confute those who would destroy the faith that is in us?
So we cannot understand the secret counsels of God, and yet we are
often compelled to give a reasonable account of these things. What?
Shall we reason about things which we do not understand? We can give
reasons, but human reasons, when yet we cannot understand the divine
reasons. And thus it happens that when we speak of theological matters,
lacking the right words for them, we being men use our own words; and
in speaking of so great a God in human language, we use our words the
more boldly _quo ipsum figmentum nostrum cognoscere non dubitamus,_
because we never doubt that we know the thing we have ourselves formed:
_quis enim melius cognoscit quam qui creavit?_ for who knows a thing
better than he who has created it?"[24] The logic of the Abbot of
Freising at this point may be thought a trifle sophistical: but the
fact remains that he refers to a common opinion that he knows things
who has made them.

But probably Vico was stimulated to the establishment of his criterion
less by certain tendencies of Scotism or by current opinions than by
the philosophers of the Renaissance, which he considered the golden
age of metaphysical study, when shone, as he says, "Marsilio Ficino,
Pico della Mirandola, Augustino Nifo and Augustino Steuco, Jacopo
Mazzoni, Alessandro Piccolomini, Matteo Acquaviva and Francesco
Patrizio."[25] In Ficino, whose name he couples with those of Plato
and Plotinus,[26] and especially in his _Theologia Platonica,_ Vico
could read a magnificent description of the productive character of
the divine wisdom and its parallelism with that of the geometrician.
Nature, says Ficino, which is divine art, differs from human art in
that it produces its creations from within, by living reasons: and "it
does not touch the surface of matter by means of a hand or any other
external instrument, as the soul of a geometer touches the dust when
he describes figures upon the earth, but _perinde ut geometrica mens
materiam intrinsecus phantasticam fabricat,_ it operates like the mind
of a geometer creating an imaginary matter from within itself. For
as the geometer's mind, while it considers within itself the nature
of figures, forms internally by pictures the image of figures, and
by means of this image forms an imaginary spirit without any toil or
design, so in the divine art of nature a wisdom of some kind by means
of intellectual processes endows with natural seeds the life-giving
and motive force itself which is its companion."[27] Vico must have
recalled this passage in Ficino when in his inaugural lecture of 1699
he compared God, "the artist of nature," to the human mind which
"we may without impiety call the God of art," just as he must have
remembered it in the _De antiquissima_ where he compares God to the
geometrician.[28] Vico might however have found thoughts of this
kind in various Renaissance philosophers, not only in Ficino: among
others, in Girolamo Cardano, who contrasts divine and human knowledge,
though with a different conclusion; and restricts the one to finite
objects ("for understanding is brought about by a kind of proportion,
_proportione quaderni fit,_ and there is no proportion between the
infinite and the finite"), denying that man can know God, for as Vico
said later in almost the same words, "if I knew God, I should be God,"
_si scirem Deus essem._ Thus he postulated "other sciences, and other
modes of understanding, entirely different from this of ours; more
true, more solid, more firm, as a body is than its shadow: and again
other principles which we can by no reason apprehend." And not only did
he postulate them, but among the human sciences he observed one which
as opposed to the natural sciences reached not merely the surfaces of
things but almost the things themselves, namely mathematics. "The human
soul, situated in the body, cannot attain to the substances of things,
but wanders about upon their surfaces by the help of the senses,
examining measurements, actions, resemblances and doctrines. But the
knowledge of the mind, which creates the fact, is in a sense itself the
fact, just as even among human sciences the knowledge of a triangle,
that it has three angles equal to two right angles, is practically
identical with the truth itself (_scientia vero mentis, quae res
facit, est quasi ipsa res, veluti etiam in humanis scientia trigoni,
quod habeat tres angulos duobus rectis aequales, eadem ferme est ipsi
veritati_), whence it is clear that there is in us a natural science
of a different kind from true science."[29] Here, in the definition of
divine knowledge and of the procedure of human knowledge in the case of
mathematics, as opposed to that of physical science, is implicit the
principle that true knowledge consists in the identity of thought with
its object.

The idea of the opposition of mathematics to physical science, in the
certainty of the one and the uncertainty of the other, persisted in the
Neapolitan philosophers and scientists of Vico's youth, even if they
lost sight of the reason of this opposition. Tommaso Cornelio in his
"progymnasma" _De ratione philosophandi_ (1661) after reviewing the
errors produced by the illusions of sense in physical science, says,
"the contemplations of mathematics are not subjected to errors of this
kind, dealing as they do with things whose images are not introduced
into the mind by the senses; for the mind can by itself adequately
conceive figures and numbers, whose properties and analogies are
examined by mathematicians, without aid from sense."[30] This ought to
be emphasised, since it seems highly probable that Vico was stimulated
to the establishment of his general theory of knowledge by reflection
upon mathematics and the contrast between it and physical science.
In fact the Latin speeches, our earliest documents for his studies,
though they show the influence of Ficino and a certain amount of
Cartesianism,[31] are never dominated by this general criterion. It is
only in the last of these speeches, that of 1707, that the distinction
between mathematics and natural science begins to appear; in the next
year it is clearly stated in the _De ratione studiorum,_ where it takes
the form of a general criterion. "We demonstrate geometry because we
make it: if we could demonstrate physical facts, we should be creating
them. For the true forms of things exist only in God the greatest
and best, and to these the nature of them conforms" (_geometrica
demonstramus quia facimus: si physica demonstrare possemus, faceremus.
In uno enim Deo Opt. Max. sunt verae rerum formae, quibus earundem est
conformata natura_). And this theory attained its full development in
1710 in the _De antiquissima._

Such are the probable precedents, or as the common but inaccurate
metaphor expresses it, "sources" of Vico's theory of knowledge. I do
not think that the formation of this theory can have been influenced by
the propositions of Geulinx and Malebranche which have been pointed out
to me,[32] namely that "no one can make that which he does not know,"
and that "God alone knows his works, because he foreknows his action."
In these propositions the old Thomistic doctrine is substantially
summarised. Much more tenable would be a connexion or at least a
comparison with Spinoza; we may recall the Spinozistic identification
of the _ordo et connexio idearum_ and the _ordo et connexio rerum._
Another ingenious, but I think, inaccurate view is that "the analytic
geometry of Descartes was the introduction of the genetic principle
into the study of geometrical objects," so that the principle _verum
ipsum factum_ "before being formulated by Vico had been practised by
Descartes"; and Vico in the _De antiquissima_ "adopted the scientific
method of Descartes, which he stated as the convertibility of the true
with the created," raising it "from a certitude to a criterion."[33]
We are dealing here not with practice, but simply with the theory of
method: for this method, conceived in its universality, just so far as
it is practical has always been practised; not by Descartes alone, and
not only by analytic geometry.

We should certainly be better informed as to the precedents of Vico's
criterion if we knew more of his studies preparatory to the _De
antiquissima,_ and if in general we had more literary evidence about
his youth. Perhaps even the precedents I have indicated, which I only
called probable, are not quite free from an element of chance; they
may be connexions only imagined by myself and non-existent for Vico's
mind, while others not accidental may perhaps be still unknown, or
await discovery by a student more fortunate than myself. But it may
not be out of place to remark that the search for "precedents" does
nothing to explain the new thought that followed them; much less does
it detract from the value of that thought. Such information, though on
the one hand it enriches our knowledge of the history of philosophy, on
the other hand has absolutely no effect upon the determinate thought
under examination. It is valuable in the biography of a philosopher,
but valueless for the comprehension of the proper meaning of the new
theory, which must be sought essentially in the new problem which it
faces and attempts to solve. In the history of philosophy the same
principles hold good as in that of literature. Take for example the
episode of Argante and Tancred in canto xix. of "Jerusalem Delivered";
Argante, while taking up his position for the fight with his adversary,
turns "as if in doubt" to the "afflicted city," towards Jerusalem
attacked by the crusaders; and when Tancred brutally mocks him, asking
whether he does this out of fear, he replies:--

    I was but thinking how this city,
    The immemorial green of Juda's realm,
    Is falling, vanquished; whose unhappy fate
    I have in vain endeavoured to repel.

Here the precedents are easily found; Hector parting from Andromache
and foreseeing the unhappy fate of Ilion, Priam and all his people
(ἒσσεται ἧμαρ, etc., _II._ vi. 448-9); or Aeneas as he gazes upon its
downfall (_ruit alto a culmine Troia: ... si Pergama dextra,_ etc.,
_Aen._ ii. 290-92). And yet the tragic melancholy of Argante is an
entirely new creation, and altogether original to Tasso.

Ficino, Cardano, Tommaso Cornelio, Scotus and Occam, and any others who
have been or shall be added to the list, have or may have anticipated
this or that element of Vico's formula: and yet when we turn from their
statements to the _De antiquissima_ and the polemics that follow it,
and read the definition of science, of true science, as the conversion
of the true with the created, it strikes us as an entirely original
theory. The fact is that Vico had not to face the same opponents and to
solve the same problems that were faced and solved by the schoolmen,
nominalists and mystics of the Middle Ages or by the Platonists and
naturalists of the Renaissance, nor yet those of Descartes in his
_Discours sur la méthode;_ and the saying that "he alone knows things
who creates them" acquires a new value, a new meaning (and this is its
proper meaning) from its being used to refute the Cartesian _cogito_
and the doctrine of immediate knowledge. Vico takes an old rusty
sword and makes of it at least a glittering and trenchant weapon. For
the same reason the phrase is no longer a mere accident or incident,
but the starting-point of a special study, the foundation of a new
philosophy, and Vico could quite well describe it as something not
learnt from another but thought out and established by himself. And
when he wants to find some original for it, he invents a history which
is really a fiction or a myth; namely the history of ancient Italian
wisdom which used this criterion as its supreme guide and left a trace
of it in the Latin language in the synonymity of the words _verum_ and
_factum._

The refutation of the Cartesian criterion (which De Sanctis thought
"complete," the "last word of criticism"[34]) is the negative aspect
of Vico's theory of knowledge. Its positive side, absent in the _De
antiquissima,_ is developed as we have said in the _Scienza Nuova,_
where the human knowledge of the mind and of history is raised to
the level of divine knowledge. And since some critics have not only
chosen to ignore the obvious difference between these two phases of
Vico's thought but have spoken of a too easy transition from the
one to the other, it will be well to observe that this transition
was for Vico if not entirely conscious at least very slow and very
difficult. He must at one time have shared Descartes' and Malebranche's
contempt for history; in the speech of 1701 he even echoed a saying
of Descartes against philologists:--"You, Philologist, boast of
knowing everything about the furniture and clothing of the Romans
and of being more intimate with the quarters, tribes and streets of
Rome than with those of your own city. Why this pride? You know no
more than did the potter, the cook, the cobbler, the summoner, the
auctioneer of Rome."[35] But eleven years later, in the second reply
to the _Giornale dei letterati,_ Vico refers to the same phrase with
the contrary conclusion, and deplores that "the study of languages is
to-day considered profitless, thanks to the authority of Descartes,
who says that to know Latin is to know no more than did Cicero's
servant-girl."[36] Vico had in the meantime become conscious of the
importance of the "probable" knowledge of history and politics. He
refers to his former anti-historical Cartesianism in a passage of
the _De constantia philologiae_ which has generally escaped notice.
Speaking of philology he says: "I, who have all my life delighted
in the use of reason more than in memory, seem to myself the more
ignorant the more facts I know in philology. Whence René Descartes and
Malebranche were not far wrong when they said that it was alien to the
philosopher to work much and for long at philology." But he adds that
later he perceived that "these two most notable philosophers ought,
it they had been zealous for the common glory of Christendom, not for
the private glory of philosophers, so to have pressed forward the
study of philology as to see whether philology could be attached to
the principles of philosophy (_ut viderent philosophi an philologiam
ad philosophiae principia revocare possent_)."[37] The elevation of
philology to the rank of philosophy, of the knowledge of the world of
man to the level of divine knowledge, is the positive aspect of Vico's
theory of knowledge. It is this that is developed in the _Scienza
Nuova,_ towards which the _De antiquissima,_ with the indication of the
historical sciences as against Cartesianism, only prepared the way.

Thus of the three points in which I placed the originality and value
of Vico's first theory of knowledge, two, namely the criterion of
knowledge opposed to that of Descartes and the defence of concrete as
opposed to abstract sciences, are not only left intact by the inquiries
into their sources which I have just described, but are actually
reinforced.

There remains the third of my points: the Vician theory of the
arbitrary nature of mathematics, the originality of which has also been
impugned by arguments which seem to me to have even less foundation
than those I have examined above.

Do we find the doctrine that the fundamental objects of mathematics,
the unit of arithmetic and the point of geometry, are unreal or
fictitious, propounded before Vico's time? Do we find it--this is the
chief point--propounded not as a casual remark or an intuition of a
truth, but as a consciously reasoned concept from which legitimate
consequences are drawn as to the limitations of mathematics and its
inability to furnish real knowledge of mind, nature and history?

All through the Middle Ages the Aristotelian theory of mathematics is
continually enunciated. According to this theory mathematics is the
most certain of the sciences because the simplest; it abstracts from
all sensible matter, but not from intelligible matter (ὖλη νοητή) which
exists in sensible objects but not qua sensible (ἐν τοῑς ἀἰσθητοῑς
ὑπάρχουσα μὴ ᾖ ἀἰσθητά)[38] According to Cassiodorus it constituted the
body of _doctrinalis_ as opposed to _naturalis_ (physical) science and
_divina._ Albertus Magnus followed Aristotle in defining mathematical
entities as separable "in imagination," "in thought" but not "in
reality" (_in phantasmate, secundum rationem, non secundum esse_)
from the sensible matter to which "they are conjoined by existence"
(_per esse sunt coniunctae_); and St. Thomas said that mathematics
"though the objects it considers are not separate, yet considers them
in so far as they are separate" (_etsi sunt non separata ea quae
considerat, tamen considerat ea in quantum sunt separata_).[39] The
arbitrary character of its foundations was never suspected. Dante, when
he wished to indicate "the things which not being subject to our power
we can only contemplate and not create," enumerated "the objects of
mathematics, physical science and divinity" (_mathematica, physica et
divina_).[40]

Just as mathematics was not always equally valued in antiquity, so,
and much more so, after the Renaissance of learning, it was variously
exalted or despised. Giordano Bruno satirised the abuse of it, and
said that without physical science "to be able to calculate and
measure, to understand geometry and perspective, is but a pastime of
ingenious fools," and warned his readers against confusing mathematical
"signs" and real "causes": "a reflected or direct ray, an acute or
obtuse angle, a perpendicular, incident or straight line, a greater
or smaller are of a circle, such and such an aspect, are mathematical
circumstances and not natural causes. To play with geometry is one
thing, to prove by means of nature is another. It is not lines
and angles that make the fire more or less hot, but near and far
situations, short and long spaces of time."[41] Campanella flatly
denied Aristotle's assertion of the superiority of mathematics to
physical science, declaring that its alleged purity was really weakness
(_debilitas_), its simplicity was inability to include more things
(_plura accipere_), its universality a contradiction against the nature
of true science which is always of particulars (_de singularibus_),
its demonstrative method by signs not by causes (_per signa, non per
causas_); and finally that it is not a science investigated for its
own sake and is valueless unless it is applied to physical matters
(_nisi applicentur physicis rebus_).[42] Bacon is of the same opinion,
that mathematics taken by itself is useless, and is useful only as an
"auxiliary science," a "great appendix" to the physical sciences.[43]
These definitions and restrictions, and others like them, might have
yielded as a conclusion the entirely instrumental and practical
character of mathematical science: but the conclusion was not drawn, so
far as I know; and Bacon himself considered mathematics as in itself
too exclusively and uselessly theoretical. "For since," he goes on in
the passage above quoted, "it is a fact of human nature, no doubt to
the great detriment of science, that it rejoices in the open plains
of generalities, so to speak, rather than in the forests and closes
of the particular, no discovery is more pleasant and gratifying than
mathematics wherewith to sate this love of wandering and of meditation."

The "creation" of mathematics spoken of by Ficino, Cardano and
others signified a mental production entirely free from material
presuppositions, and for that reason not less true but true in a
higher sense. It is almost the same sense as that found in Descartes
and his followers. Locke asserts the reality of mathematical truths,
though he admits that there are in nature no figures corresponding
to the archetypes existing in the mind of the geometrician;[44] and
Leibniz, commenting on this passage, says that "the ideas of justice
and temperance are no more our own invention than those of the circle
and the square."[45] Tommaso Cornelio, whom we have quoted on the
contrast between physical science and mathematics, also believed that
mathematics rested on "certain notions and understandings which nature
has put into the minds of men as foundations of science."[46]

Another kind of "creation," and one which seems to have more connexion
with Vico's _"fingere"_ is discussed in a passage of Aristotle's
_Metaphysics_ which has had a good deal of influence. "We find also,"
Aristotle says, "geometrical figures by actualising them (ἐνεργεία),
because they are found by being divided: if they _were_ divided, they
would be obvious, but in reality they exist potentially. Why has the
triangle two right angles? Because the angles round one point are equal
to two right angles. If then we construct the angle along one side, it
would become plain to any one looking at it. Why is the angle in the
semicircle equal to a right angle? Because if there are three equal
lines, two in the base and one drawn perpendicular to it, it is plain
to any one who sees it and knows that. Whence it is evident that we
discover things that exist potentially by reducing them to actuality.
This is because the actuality is understanding, and the potentiality
proceeds from the actuality; so we know by making (καὶ διὰ τοῡτο
ποιοῡντες γιγνώσκουσιν)."[47] But these observations belong to the
explanations given by Aristotle in this passage of the conceptions of
potentiality and actuality; they are not at all opposed to his theory
of mathematics as studying the intelligible matter which subsists
in sensible matter, and they only explain the difference between
potential and actual truth. In the same way we sometimes find in later
philosophers the assertion that mathematical truths are demonstrated
and problems resolved "by making them." Thus Sarpi writes in the
passage mentioned above: "in mathematics, he who constructs knows
because he makes, and he who analyses learns because he seeks how the
thing is made. The mode of composition then belongs to the inventive
faculty and that of analysis to the discursive: the former is that
of problems, the latter of theorems; the latter are demonstrated by
analysis, the former by composition."[48]

It has also been recently asserted that the Vician philosophy of
mathematics reappears bodily in Galileo and his school;[49] an
astounding fact when baldly stated, since even though Vico opposes
and prefers the great Pisan to Descartes for the moderate use he makes
of mathematics in physical science, it is certain that for Galileo as
for Leonardo da Vinci mathematics had an objective validity, and the
book of nature is written in mathematical characters and geometrical
figures. In any case, the passage of Galileo which has been quoted
in this reference, on the intensive identity of human with divine
knowledge, has nothing to do with the present question, and another
passage which asserts that the explanations of terms are free, and it
is in the power of every workman to circumscribe and define in his own
way the things he is dealing with, without ever being led by this into
error or falsehood, and that for instance one may call the bow the
stern and the stern the bow, says nothing but a platitude hardly worth
saying except by way of adorning a page of controversial rhetoric.[50]
In controversy one is often obliged to insist upon platitudes, and
the controversy upon which I am now engaged itself presents too many
examples.

A passage from the _Lezioni accademiche_ of Galileo's pupil Evangelista
Torricelli in which he speaks of the difference between physical and
mathematical definitions seems at first sight more convincing. But the
critic who has called attention to this passage[51] says too much when
he asserts that "it is beyond doubt that Vico had read it," since it is
unquestionable that Vico had _not_ read it. The _Lezioni accademiche_
were published first posthumously in 1715[52] and Vico's theory of
mathematics is expounded in the _De ratione_ in 1708 and the _De
antiquissima,_ 1710. This, it is true, is of secondary importance, for
Vico may have known Torricelli's doctrine through indirect channels,
through other books or even orally through some Neapolitan friend or
pupil of Torricelli; in any case, if the latter's theory though unknown
to Vico was really identical with his own, the similarity of ideas
between the two would be of the greatest interest. Unfortunately the
critic has been too hasty, as it seems to me, even in his study and
interpretation of the pages of Torricelli.

In the passage in question, a lecture _Della leggerezza,_ read to
the Accademia della Crusca, Torricelli controverts, as based on mere
appearances and not confirmed by facts and reasoning, Aristotle's
definition in the _De coelo_: "heavy is that which has a natural
property of going towards the centre." He remarks upon this: "The
definitions of Physics differ from those of Mathematics in that the
former are obliged to adapt and adjust themselves to the object
defined, while the latter mathematical definitions are free and can be
formed at the will of the geometrician who is defining. The reason is
perfectly plain: the things defined in Physics do not come into being
with the definition, they exist already by themselves and are found
in nature previously. But the things defined by geometry, that is by
the science of abstraction, have no existence in the universe of the
world other than that which definition gives to them in the universe
of intelligence. Thus whatever objects of Mathematics are defined,
the same objects will come into existence simultaneously with the
definition."[53]

The arbitrary character of mathematics seems here to be clearly stated.
But let us reserve our judgment and read on. "If I were to say, the
circle is a plane figure with four equal sides and four right angles,
this is not at all a false definition; but for the rest of my book I
should have to mean, whenever I spoke of a circle, a certain figure
which others have called a square. But if a man should say in Physics,
'the horse is a rational animal,' should we not be justified in calling
him the horse? We must first look very carefully to see whether the
horse is a rational animal or not and then define it as it is, in
order that the physical definition may conform to the object and not
be counted defective." Here we see that what appeared to be a profound
thought has turned out to be a platitude; it is indifferent whether we
call the bow the stern or the stern the bow, said Galileo, or, says
Torricelli in his turn, whether we call a square a circle or a circle a
square; while it does not seem to him an indifferent matter whether we
call a horse a rational animal. But even this does not prevent him from
admitting later some degree of arbitrariness in physical terminology,
when he says, "since then it is not demonstrated that the intrinsic
principle of downward motion exists upon the earth, I will accept this
definition, if the tests will allow me, as the simple imposition of a
name, and, replacing the verb 'to be' by the verb 'to be called,' I
will adapt the definition to my own requirements thus: That is called
heavy which descends to the centre. Whenever any one says, the earth is
heavy, I will agree, but always with the interpretation that the word
'heavy' only signifies descending in a lighter medium."[54]

It seems to me then that the difference which he begins by laying down
between mathematics and physical science is considerably obscured in
the sequel. And indeed how could Torricelli have seriously thought that
the foundation of mathematics was a "fiction," when among his lectures
one heard the title "in Praise of Mathematics"? In this lecture he
says, quite in the Galilean style: "That to read the great Book of the
Universe, the book on whose pages may be found the true philosophy
written by God, mathematics are indispensable, will be seen by any
one who with noble thoughts aspires to the science of the integral
parts and greatest members of this huge body we call the World. The
one alphabet, the only characters with which we can read the great
manuscript of the divine philosophy in the book of the Universe are
those poor figures you see in the text-books of geometry."[55] The most
we can see in these statements is a vague and hazy presentment of the
profound difference between physical truths and the so-called truths of
mathematics.

In conclusion, until for the third of my three points we can discover
much more obvious "sources" than those suggested up till now, I shall
see no cause to modify my verdict upon the originality of Vico's
conception of mathematics. This originality is further proved by the
important consequences drawn by Vico from his theory of mathematics for
his philosophical method; for every one knows that a thought taken over
bodily from another remains inert and sterile, while an original idea
is always active and fruitful.

_Note._--I have selected, of the various criticisms directed against
my book on Vico, that concerning his "originality," because this gave
me opportunities for researches and explanations of some value. But my
book has been subjected to two general criticisms which do not lend
themselves to the same treatment.

It has been said that in my exposition of Vico's philosophy I have
followed my personal philosophical convictions: and sermons and
epistles have been showered upon me preaching the duty of casting
off prejudices, etc., and narrating the history of philosophy in an
objective manner, etc. But I should like my critics to believe that my
"convictions" cannot have, to my mind, the character of prejudices,
but precisely that of liberation from prejudice, which is what they
demand: that detachment and purity of understanding which is necessary
for the comprehension of historical facts, and is not, as some fancy,
a primeval innocence, but the fruit of laborious cultivation. To
grasp Vico historically in his strict reality I have been compelled
to undergo a _catharsis_ of prejudices, consisting in my case of
the philosophy to which my own efforts had led me. My ideas may be
untrue, but that is another question; and that means that if their
falsity is proved I am bound to clear and purify my mind by means
of less false ideas; but these in their turn must always be ideas
and become convictions. In point of abstract method, no objection at
all can be made to any one who looks at Vico through the spectacles
of scholasticism if he thinks they make his sight more distinct and
penetrating; the most we can do is to try and persuade him that
there are better spectacles on the market. But we certainly have
the right to smile if this same scholastic goes on to warn us that
"in studying a philosopher, in investigating and reconstructing his
thought, it is absolutely necessary to bring to the task a mind free
from preconceptions and hostile to prejudices"; while all the time he
is trying to pass off his scholastic opinions and religious beliefs
under the banner of objectivity, sincerity and freedom from prejudice.
"Philosophers"--I have seen this assertion too--"are unfitted for
writing the history of philosophy, because they have ideas of their
own." And who is fitted for it? People who are not philosophers? Does
not Vico teach us precisely this, that where he who makes the facts (as
the philosopher makes philosophy) himself narrates them, there history
reaches its highest certainty?

The other criticism concerns the idealistic interpretation which I
have given to some of Vico's doctrines. It is contended that Vico
was a Catholic, and that fact is supposed to prove that he could not
have entertained the ideas which I find in his works. But that Vico
professed himself an entirely orthodox Catholic, and that he clung to
Catholicism with all the strength and zeal of his mind I have myself
said again and again: I have even defended him against the accusations
or praises dealt out to him by other critics for deceit or prudence in
his attitude to the Church. But is it really so amazing, so unheard-of
a thing, to find heterodox ideas in an orthodox writer? Are they not
found in the Early Fathers and the Schoolmen, in mediaeval and modern
theologians and mystics? To take an example of the many that occur,
an example for a double reason above suspicion: Nicholas of Cusa was
a Catholic and in fact a Cardinal of Holy Church, and in his lifetime
the intimate friend of three popes. And yet the Catholic historian of
Scholasticism, De Wulf, wrote of him "Le Cardinal catholique est-il
donc panthéiste?... Il s'en défend vivement dans son _Apologia doctae
ignorantiae,_ mais on peut dire de lui comme d'Eckehart: 'il fait
fléchir la logique au profit de son orthodoxie et retient de force les
conséquences de ses prémisses'" (_Hist. de la philos. médiévale,_ p.
389). If this happened to the Cardinal of Cusa or the Franciscan Master
Eckehart, could it not happen to the Catholic Vico? M. de Wulf the
Catholic historian is allowed to use this admirable method of criticism
and to distinguish intention and action, will and logic. Why should it
be denied to me? But enough.



[Footnote 1: A lecture delivered before the _Accademia pontaniana_ on
March 10, 1912, and here reprinted from the _Atti_ of that society,
vol. xlii.]

[Footnote 2: _Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung_ (1811),
W.W. iii. 351-354.]

[Footnote 3: _Vorlesungen über religiose Philosophie,_ W.W. i. 195, and
_Vorles. über spekul. Dogmatik, ib._ ix. 106 (passages quoted by K.
Werner, G. B. Vico, p. 324).]

[Footnote 4: _La Filosofia fondamentale,_ translated from the Spanish,
Naples, 1851, bk. i. ch. 30-31.]

[Footnote 5: _Storia critica delle prove metafisiche di una realità
sovrasensibile (Atti dell' Accademia di Torino,_ i. 1866), pp. 640-41.]

[Footnote 6: _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_ (1878), 5th edition,
i. 23.]

[Footnote 7: _G. B. Vico als Philosoph und gelehrter Forscher_ (Wien,
1881). It is well known that Werner has written upon St. Thomas, Duns
Scotus, late Scholasticism, Suarez, Augustinianism, nominalism, etc.]

[Footnote 8: Th. Neal (A. Cecconi), _Vico e l'immanenza,_ in the Roman
_Cultura contemporanea,_ iii. (1911) parts 7-8, pp. 1-24.]

[Footnote 9: Cf. _Summa Theol._ i. q. v. a. I: q. xxi. a. 1-2.]

[Footnote 10: _Prima risposta al Giornale dei letterati (Opere,_ ed.
Ferrari, ii. 117).]

[Footnote 11: Balmes, _loc. cit._]

[Footnote 12: _Scienza Nuova,_ ed. Nicolini, i. 187-8.]

[Footnote 13: _Ibid._ p. 188.]

[Footnote 14: _Scritti filosofici,_ ed. Gentile, pp. 383-7, and
_Esperienza e metafisica,_ p. 218 _sqq._]

[Footnote 15: See Gentile's note, _loc. cit._]

[Footnote 16: _L'Autobiografia, il carteggio e le poesie varie,_ ed.
Croce, pp. 4-5. Mauthner's assertion (_Beiträge zu einer Kritik der
Sprache,_ Berlin, 1901, ii. 497-8) that Vico was a nominalist and
that the great discoveries of the _Scienza Nuova_ were due to his
nominalism, is quite arbitrary and not founded correctly on his
autobiography.]

[Footnote 17: _Autobiography,_ ed. cit. pp. 5-6. Pietro Giannone was
also studying Scotism about 1690 (_Vita scritta da lui medesimo,_ ed.
Nicolini, pp. 6-7).]

[Footnote 18: Werner, _Johannes Duns Scotus_ (Wien, 1881), p. 76.]

[Footnote 19: Werner, _Die nachscotistische Scholastik_ (Wien, 1883),
p. 82.]

[Footnote 20: _Scritti filosofici inediti,_ ed. Papini (Lanciano,
Carabba, 1910).]

[Footnote 21: See Gentile's observations on Papini's edition, in the
_Critica,_ review viii. 62-5.]

[Footnote 22: Papini's edition has "po'" (little): but his source, the
Marcian MS., has an abbreviation to be read as "però" (therefore).]

[Footnote 23: Appendix to his _Opera medica_ (Tolosae Tectasogum,
1636), p. 10.]

[Footnote 24: _Ottonis Episcopi Frisigensis Opera,_ ex recens. R.
Wilmans, i. _Chronicon_ (Hannoveriae, 1867), pp. 118-19.]

[Footnote 25: _Autob._ ed. cit. p. 21.]

[Footnote 26: _Ibid._ p. 25.]

[Footnote 27: _Theologia Platonica_ (Bale, 1561), i. 123. This passage
of Ficino has been quoted and commented on by my friend Gentile, in a
highly important monograph on _La prima fase della filosofia di G. B.
Vico_ (viz. the "inaugural lectures"), published in the miscellany in
honour of Francesco Torraca (1912, see _infra,_ p. 310) and read in MS.
by myself, thanks to the courtesy of the author.]

[Footnote 28: See Gentile's monograph, mentioned above.]

[Footnote 29: These passages of the _Tractatus de arcanis
aeternitatis,_ ch. iv., and of the _De subtilitate,_ bks. xi. and
xxi. are quoted and commented on by Fiorentino, _Bernardino Telesio
ossia studi storici su l' idea della natura nel risorgimento italiano_
(Florence, Le Monnier, 1872), i. 212-13, who does not fail to observe
the relations with Vico's criterion.]

[Footnote 30: Thomae Cornelii consentini _Progymnasmata physica_
(Naples, MDCLXXXVIII.), p. 70: cf. also p. 64.]

[Footnote 31: See Gentile's monograph, mentioned above.]

[Footnote 32: By A. Pastore in a review of my monograph on Vico in the
_Giorn. stor. d. left. ital._ lviii., cf. pp. 400-402.]


[Footnote 33: A. A. Zottoli, _G. B. Vico,_ in _Cultura,_ Rome, xxx.
(1911) pp. 422-3.]

[Footnote 34: _Opp._ ed. Ferrari, ii. 166.]

[Footnote 35: _Orazioni latine,_ ed. Galasso, p. 28.]

[Footnote 36: _Opp._ ed. Ferrari, ii. 166.]

[Footnote 37: _Ibid._ 232.]

[Footnote 38: _Metaphys._ vi. 1036 a.]

[Footnote 39: The passages of Cassiodorus, Albertus and St. Thomas may
be found collected in Mariétan, _Problème de la classification des
sciences d'Aristote à saint Thomas_ (Paris, 1901), see pp. 80, 168-9,
182-3, 185-6.]

[Footnote 40: _De monarchia,_ i. c. 3.]

[Footnote 41: _La Cena delle ceneri_ (1584) in his _Opere italiane,_
ed. Gentile, i. 62, 107-8.]

[Footnote 42: _Logicorum libri très,_ bk. ii. art. 7-10 (in the
_Philosophiae rationalis pars secunda,_ Parisiis, 1637, pp. 433-7).]

[Footnote 43: _De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum,_ bk. iii. c. 6.]

[Footnote 44: _Essay,_ iv. ch. 4, § 6.]

[Footnote 45: _Nouveaux essais,_ iv. ch. 4.]

[Footnote 46: _Op. cit._ p. 64.]

[Footnote 47: _Metaphys._ viii. 1051 b. I append the passage:
εὑρἰσκεται δὲ καὶ τὰ διαγράμματα ἐνεργεἰᾳ · διαιροῡντες γὰρ
εὑρἰσκουσις. εὶ δ' ἧν διῃρημένα φανερὰ ἂν ἧν · νῦν δ' ἐνυπάρχει
δυνάμει. διὰ τί δύο ὀρθαὶ τò τρίγωνον ὃτι αἱ περἱ μἱαν στιγμὴν γωνίαι
ἲσαι δύο ὀρθαῑς. εὶ oὖν ἀνῆκτο ἡ παρὰ τἡν πλευρὰν ἰδόντι ἂν ἧν εὐθὺς
δῆλον. διὰ τί ἐν ἡμικυκλίῳ ὀρΘὴ καΘόλου; διὀτι ἐὰν τρεῑς, ἤ τε βάσις
δύο καὶ ἡ ἐκ μέσου ἐπισταΘεῑα ὀρΘὴ, ἰδόντι δῆλον τῷ ἐκεῑνο εἰδὀτι. ὤστε
φανερòv ὄτι τὰ δυνάμει ὄντα εἰς ἐνέργεἰαν ἀναγόμενα εὑρἰσκεται. αἴτιον
δ' ὄτι νὀησις ἡ ἐνεργεἰᾳ · ὤστ ἐξ ἐνεργεἰας ἡ δυνάμις. καὶ διὰ τοῡτο
ποιοῡντες γιγνώσκουσιν.]

[Footnote 48: _Scritti filosofici,_ ed. Papini, p. 7. In a passage of
the _Arte di ben pensare (Scritti,_ p. 72) Sarpi returns to mathematics
and, while agreeing that it is less uncertain than the other sciences
because in it "the mode and the proposition" are more clearly shown,
goes on to say "it is also made in the same manner (as the others): it
is not free from the suspicion of being not quite true." But clearly
he is here speaking of the application of mathematics, of the act of
counting and measuring physical objects: "this alone is certain: I
count and reason in this manner, just as in eating honey I feel the
effect which I call sweet; where I may be in error is the question
whether this effect comes from the object or from the disposition of my
taste: and there is no science where there are number and measurement,
for all we can know is that we measure or count like this, and that
the measure comes in or is used as many times as the thing seems to be
equal to one such part and that equality is a concept of ours by which
we express what then seems to happen."]

[Footnote 49: G. Papini, _La Novità di Vico_ in _L'Anima,_ Florence,
September 1911, pp. 264-6; cf. on this article, _Critica,_ x. 56-8.]

[Footnote 50: Papini probably owes this passage to a small anthology of
Galileo by Favaro (Florence, Barbèra, 1910), p, 303, which refers to
the national edition of his _Opere,_ iv. 631; here the passage occurs
in the _Considerazioni sopra il discorso di Colombo_ (1615).]

[Footnote 51: G. Papini, _loc. cit._ pp. 265-6.]

[Footnote 52: _Lezioni accademiche di Evangelista Torricelli,
mathematico e filosofo del serenissimo Ferdinando II Granduca di
Toscana, lettore delle matematiche nello studio di Firenze e accademico
della Crusca_ (Florence, MDCCXV.). The editor's preface shows that the
work had not been previously published.]

[Footnote 53: _Op. cit._ pp. 31-2.]

[Footnote 54: _Op. cit._ p. 33.]

[Footnote 55: _Op. cit._ p. 66.]




APPENDIX IV


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES


I. WORKS OF VICO


Vico's earliest extant work is the poem entitled _Feelings of one in
despair,_ composed certainly before the author's twenty-fifth year at
Vatolla in the Cilento, where he lived for nine years as a tutor at
the Casa Rocca, printed by Gonzatti at Venice and dated 1693. This was
followed by verses and speeches of a merely rhetorical character.

The philosophical characteristics are accentuated in the six speeches
read by Vico at Naples University, 1699-1707, not printed by him, and
rediscovered and published by Galasso (Naples, Morano, 1869). In these
speeches, though some tendencies of his thought show themselves, his
philosophy is still the traditional system, not without some traces of
Cartesianism. Vico's opposition to Cartesianism and formal adoption of
his own views are announced for the first time in the inaugural lecture
for the year 1708, entitled _De nostri temporis studiorum ratione,_
published next year by the author himself (Naples, Mosca, 1709). A
long digression (§§ 12-15) contains a sketch of the history of Roman
jurisprudence, his first essay in the historical studies which led
later on to the _Diritto universale_ and the two _Scienze Nuove._

The following year appeared Vico's first constructively philosophical
and historical work: the _De antiquissima Italorum sapientia ex
linguae Latinae originibus eruenda,_ or rather the first book of that
work (Naples, Mosca, 1710): the other two were never written, but
we can form an idea of their intended contents from what is said in
the Autobiography. Beside Vico's theory of knowledge in its first
form and the metaphysic which he always maintained in its entirety,
the _De antiquissima_ contained an attempt to reconstitute for the
first time primitive wisdom, or rather one particular instance of
primitive wisdom, that of Italy; but as we have already said in the
text of our exposition the attempt was founded on the idea that this
wisdom was philosophical, and conducted according to the criterion
of the transmission of culture which Vico subsequently rejected, as
he rejected the traditional opinion, accepted in this work, of the
Athenian origin of the laws of the Twelve Tables. We must accordingly
refuse to accept Cantoni's verdict (_G. B. Vico,_ p. 38) that the
_De antiquissima_ forms "a strange anomaly in the history of Vico's
thought, being contrary to his whole scientific life, his tendencies,
his principles, and the method which later he almost universally
applies in his historical researches." The reverse is in fact the case:
namely that this work is the starting-point of his future developments
and that without it we cannot understand his later thought.

The criticisms directed by the _Giornale dei letterati d' Italia_
(1711, vols. v. and viii.) against the historical and some of the
philosophical positions of the _De antiquissima_ evoked Vico's two
important _Replies_ (Naples, Mosca, 1711 and 1712) in which he defends
and elucidates his views on the theory of knowledge and metaphysics.
The part of the _De antiquissima_ that never went to the press included
his meditations on the philosophy of medicine, from which he extracted
an essay _De aequilibrio corporis animantis:_ this he thought of
publishing many years later, but it is now lost. Of these studies,
therefore, as of his speculations upon physics intended to constitute a
_Liber physicus,_ we know only what he tells us in his autobiography.

Setting aside his rhetorical and occasional compositions, the largest
of which is the _De rebus gestis Antonii Caraphaei_ (Naples, Mosca,
1716), the continuation of his thought, now concentrating upon moral
and historical problems, is sketched in a lecture of 1719 (of which
an abstract is included in the autobiography) and developed first in
1720 in a printed prospectus of four double-columned pages known as the
_Sinopsi del diritto universale,_ and secondly in the vast treatise,
_De universi iuris uno principio et fine uno liber unus_ (Naples,
Mosca, 1720) completed next year with the _Liber alter qui est de
constantia iurisprudentis,_ and supplemented in 1722 by the _Notae in
duos libros,_ etc. (same publisher); a work which is usually referred
to briefly following the author's example as the _Diritto universale._

This book, according to Cantoni (_op. cit._ p. 243) represents the
culminating point of Vico's scientific activity. The verdict is no
more acceptable than that quoted above. The author (_Opp._ v. 10-11)
rejected the _Diritto universale_ because he seemed to find persisting
there the prejudice and the pretence of "descending" from the thought
of Plato and other philosophers to that of primitive man, a tendency
which led him astray "in certain matters"; but he also calls it, and
rightly, a "sketch for the _Scienza Nuova,_" which it really is.
The ideas about poetry are here still confused, Homer is not yet a
myth, the mythological canons have less unity than they acquired
later, the theory of reflux is only faintly adumbrated, and in a
word both the ideal eternal history and the theory of knowledge upon
which it is founded are as yet immature. The book is all contained,
under a new form, in his later work, except the general ethical and
juridical philosophy, which is not highly original, and some historical
developments which are merely alluded to in the later writings.

The MS. of an Italian work in two books, in which Vico expounded his
doctrines "by a negative method," has been lost. But he expounds them
positively and at less length in the _Principi di una Scienza Nuova
intorno alla comune natura delle nazioni, per la quale si ritrovano i
principi di altro sistema del diritto naturale delle genti_ (Naples,
Mosca, 1725) which is known by the title (again authorised by himself)
of First _Scienza Nuova._

In 1725, the year of the publication of the first _Scienza Nuova,_ Vico
related the history of his studies: _Vita di G. B. Vico scritta da
se medesimo,_ which was inserted in Calogerà's _Raccolta di opuscoli
scientifici e filologici_ (Venice, Zani, 1728, vol. i. pp. 145-256).
Among the minor writings of this period may be noted the two speeches
on the death of the Countess of Althann (1724) and the Marchesana della
Petrella Angiola Cimini (1727); the little volume _Vici vindiciae_
(Naples, Mosca, 1729) containing a personal defence (together with an
important theoretical digression on "laughter") against a malevolent
notice inserted in the _Acta Lipsiensia_ of 1727, about the _Scienza
Nuova;_ and some fine letters to Giacchi, Degli Angioli, Esperti, De
Vitry and Solla on the contrast between his works and the state of
learning at this time.

To the first _Scienza Nuova_ Vico thought of adding a long series of
_Annotations_ in a reprint of it which he was preparing at Venice
between 1728 and 1730. But since this scheme was not carried out,
and on the other hand he was dissatisfied with the book not so much
on account of the matter, he says, as on account of the arrangement
(_Opp._ vi. 11), he resolved to publish an entirely new exposition
of his doctrines in the _Cinque libri de' principi di una Scienza
Nuova d'intorno alla comune natura delle nazioni, in questa seconda
impressione con più propia maniera condotti e di molto accresciuti_
(Naples, Mosca, 1730), which form the second _Scienza Nuova._ While
Cantoni (_op. cit._ pp. 238-9) considers this work the dotage of
Vico's thought, it is really the necessary result and perfect form in
which his previous attempts issued; it is the book which with the _De
antiquissima_ and the autobiography supplies all the necessary material
for a knowledge of his thought. In the _Diritto universale_ and the
first _Scienza Nuova_ we can find a few details omitted in the later
work; but those treatises display the same doctrines as the second
_Scienza Nuova_ in a manner much less profound and solid, and certainly
less characteristic of the author. The detailed comparison of these
three works has been made with great care in the short summaries added
by Ferrari to his editions of the first and second _Scienza Nuova._

Even the 1730 edition was increased by the author from 1731 to about
1740 by many variations and additions, though without changing the
arrangement or the substance of the work. These additions were taken
for the most part incorporated in a final MS. on which was based the
edition of the _Principi di una Scienza Nuova intorno alla comune
natura delle nazioni,_ published the very year of Vico's death (Naples,
Stamperia Muziana, 1744). In the National Library at Naples are
preserved the autographs both of this MS. and of two earlier MSS. of
additions and corrections, unpublished fragments of which have been
published by Giordano (Naples, 1818) and Del Giudice (Naples, 1862).
All the unpublished fragments and variants have been now collected by
Nicolini in the edition hereafter mentioned (p. 307).

After the second _Scienza Nuova_ Vico wrote hardly anything. We may
note among these few productions the speech _De mente heroica_ (Naples,
1732), the addition to the autobiography (1731), and a few sonnets
in which, composed though they were, like almost all his verses, by
request and as occasional pieces, a personal note may at times be felt.


II. REPRINTS, COLLECTIONS, AND TRANSLATIONS

Two collections of Vico's minor works have been made, one of the
_Latinae orationes_ alone by F. Daniele (Naples, 1766), and the other,
rich in unpublished matter, of the Italian and Latin _Opuscoli,_
in four volumes, by C. A. de Rosa, Marchese di Villarosa (Naples,
1818-23). Vico's son Gennaro furnished Villarosa with all his father's
extant papers; and these priceless autographs are still preserved at
Naples in the house of my intimate friends the engineers Tommaso and
Vincenzo de Rosa di Villarosa.

The first and only edition as it may be called, since all others
are merely reproductions of it, of Vico's complete works is that of
Giuseppe Ferrari, in six volumes (Milan, _Classici italiani,_ 1835-37)
reprinted with improvements in 1852-54. The _Opere_ edited by N. M.
Corcia (Naples, Tipografia della Sibilla, 1834, 2 vols.) are only a
selection; and the _Opere_ edited by F. Predari (Milan, Bravetta, 1835)
never went beyond one ill-arranged volume. The edition which followed
that of Ferrari (Naples, Iovane, 1840-41) is also incomplete and
ill-arranged, but contains some small unpublished works. The Neapolitan
edition of the _Opere_ in eight volumes (i.-ii. 1858, iii. 1861, iv.
1859, v.-vi. 1860, vii. 1865, viii. 1869, the earlier volumes at the
Tipografia dei Classici Italiani, the others by the publisher Morano)
is based mainly upon Ferrari, but somewhat incorrect; it is however the
most complete of all, as containing the _Sinopsi,_ the _Istituzioni
oratorie,_ and the _Orazioni latine_ published by Galasso subsequently
to Ferrari's edition, as well as the Italian translations by the
advocate F. S. Pomodoro of the _De ratione, De antiquissima,_ and
_Diritto universale._

Unpublished or scattered works of Vico not appearing in any of these
editions have been collected by Croce, _Bibliografia vichiana_ and
_Primo_ and _Secondo supplemento_: see below.

A critical edition of the second _Scienza Nuova_ is now being printed
in the _Collezione dei classici della filosofia modernadiretta da
B. Croce e G. Gentile_ (Bari, Laterza): the first volume is to be
published at the same time as the present monograph.[1] It is being
edited by Dr. Fausto Nicolini, who by using the autograph MSS. has
enriched Ferrari's edition, which contained the fragments suppressed in
the 1730 issue, by all the fragments of the intermediate redactions
down to the 1744 text; Vico's quotations have been checked and
references given in notes to the passages of classical and modern
authors to which he refers; and, finally, in deference to a wish
often expressed by men of letters as authoritative as Tommaseo, the
orthography and punctuation have been corrected. Ferrari's valuable
summaries are reproduced, with a few emendations, in Nicolini's edition.

Nicolini is also at work on a new edition of the complete works, to
form part of Laterza's collection of _Scrittori d' Italia,_ the scheme
and detailed index of which may be seen in Croce, _Secondo supplemento
alla Bibliografia vichiana_ (pp. 102-13). The fifth volume of this
collection, edited by Croce, is also to appear with the present
monograph.

Vico's Latin works have frequently been translated into Italian: the
_De antiquissima_ anonymously, perhaps by Vincenzo Monti (1816), and
later by Sarchi (1870): the first book of the _Diritto naturale_ by
Corcia (1839), Amante (1841), Giani (1855), and Sarchi (1866), and both
books, with the _De ratione_ and _De antiquissima,_ as we have said, by
Pomodoro.

The second _Scienza Nuova_ was translated into French, much
abbreviated, by Jules Michelet, under the title of _Principes de la
philosophie de l'histoire_ (Paris, Renouard, 1827) and frequently
reprinted; and again, in full, by an anonymous translator described as
"l'Auteur de l'Essai sur la formation du dogme catholique," in reality
Cristina Trivulzi, Princess of Belgioioso (Paris, Renouard, 1844).
Michelet also translated some of Vico's minor works, published with
the _Scienza Nuova_ in the edition of the _Oeuvres choisies de Vico_
(Paris, Hachette, 1835) and frequently reprinted.

In German there is a translation in full with good notes by W. E.
Weber (Leipzig, Brockhaus, 1844). There is also a summary of the first
book of the _Diritto universale_ by K. H. Müller, forming the first
volume of a series of Vico's _Kleine Schriften_ which was not continued
(Neubrandenburg, Brunslow, 1854).

The only English translation is a version of the book on Homer based
on Michelet's French translation and inserted in H. Nelson Coleridge's
_Introduction to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets_ (3rd ed.,
London, Murray, 1846).


[Footnote 1: By now (1913) the second volume has appeared: the third
will appear next year.]


III. BIOGRAPHY OF VICO

By way of supplement to the autobiography, Villarosa collected
information on Vico's last years and published it as a continuation of
that work in his edition of the _Opuscoli,_ vol. i. (1818).

This supplement, together with everything else that has been published
in the way of documents or contemporary records of Vico, may be found
collected in the fifth volume of the new edition of his works above
mentioned (p. 307) and entitled: _L'Autobiografia, il carteggio e le
poesie varie,_ ed. B. Croce (Bari, Laterza, 1911).


IV. LITERATURE ON VICO

There are only three monographs on Vico which may still be read with
profit (that of Ferrari, _La Mente del Vico,_ admirable editor though
he was, may best be consigned to merciful oblivion); they are as
follows:--

1. Carlo Cantoni, _G.B.V., studi critici e comparativi_ (Turin,
Civelli, 1867). Cf. for certain reservations A. Faggi, in _Rivista
filosofica italiana,_ vol. ix., 1906, pp. 593-606, and G. Gentile, in
_Critica,_ vol. v., 1907, pp. 197-201.

2. Karl Werner, _G.B.V. als Philosoph und gelehrter Forscher,_ (Wien,
Braumüller, 1881). Cf. _Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philos.
Kritik,_ vol. lxxii., 1883, pp. 139-52.

3. Robert Flint, _Vico_ (Edinburgh and London, 1884). (Italian
translation by F. Finocchietti, Florence, 1888).

See what has been said of these above, p. 277. Of short and general
studies the following are the best:--

1. B. Spaventa, _G.B.V.,_ in _Prolusione è introduzione alle lezioni
di filosofia_ (Naples, Vitale, 1862), pp. 83-102, reprinted under the
title _La Filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia
europea,_ ed. G. Gentile (Bari, Laterza, 1908); see pp. 111-35 of this
reprint.

2. F. de Sanctis, _Storia della letteratura italiana_ (Naples, Morano,
1870; new ed. Croce, Bari, Laterza, 1912), vol. ii. pp. 342-62.

3. F. Fiorentino, _Lettere sopra la "Scienza Nuova"_ (Florence, 1865),
reprinted in _Scritti vari_ (Naples, Morano, 1871), pp. 161-211.

4. E. Cauer, _G.B.V. und seine Stellung zur modernen Wissenschaft_
(in _Deutsches Museum,_ edited by R. Prutz and W. Woelfsohn, Leipzig,
Hinrichs, year I, 1851, vol. i. pp. 249-65).

For special points the following may be consulted:--

1. F. A. Wolf, _G.B.V. über den Homer_ (in _Museum der
Alterthumswissenschaft,_ Berlin, 1807, vol. ii. pp. 555-70).

2. J. K. von Orelli, _Vico und Niebuhr_ (in _Schweizerisches Museum,_
Aarau, vol. i. p. 184 _sqq._).

3. C. Iannelli, _Sulla natura e necessità della scienza delle cose e
delle storie umane_ (Naples, Porcelli, 1818, and Milan, Fontana, 1832).

4. Emerico Amari, _Critica di una scienza della legislazione
comparata_ (Genoa, Istituto dei Sordomuti, 1857). Cf. on this book K.
Werner, _E.A. in seinem Verhältnis zu G.B.V._ (Wien, 1880; from the
_Sitzungsberichte der phil.-histor. Klasse_ of the Imperial Academy of
Vienna, vol. xcvi.).

5. F. Acri, _Teoria del V. intorno alle idee O paradimmi_ (in _Abbozzo
di una teoria delle idee,_ Palermo, Lao, 1870; and with modifications
in the volume _Videbimus in aenigmate,_ Bologna, Mareggiane 1907, pp.
287-313).

6. E. Cenni, an exposition of Vico's metaphysic in the volume entitled
_Considerazioni sull' Italia ad occasione del traforo del Gottardo_
(Florence, Cellini, 1884), pp. 109-82.

7. E. Bouvy, _De V. Cartesii adversario_ (Paris, Hachette, 1889).

8. E. Bouvy, _La Critique dantesque au dix-huitième siècle: Dante et
V._ (Paris, Leroux, 1892).

9. G. Sorel, _Étude sur V._ (in _Devenir social,_ Paris, vol. ii.,
1896) and see esp. the same author's _Le Système historique de Renan_
(Paris, Jacques, 1905), _passim._

10. B. Labanca, _G.B.V. e i suoi critici cattolici_ (Naples, Pierro,
1898).

11. G. Rossi, _V. nei tempi di V._ (in _Rivista filosofica italiana,_
vol. ii., 1899, pp. 294-319, and part 2, _ibid._ vol. x., 1907, pp.
602-34).

12. A. Olivieri, _Gli studi omerici di G.B.V._ (in _Atti della r.
Accad. di archeologia, lettere e belle arti,_ Naples, vol. xxiv., 1905).

13. C. Trabalza, _Storia della grammatica italiana_ (Milan, Hoepli,
1908), ch. xii. pp. 364-76.

14. P. Garofalo, _Acrisia vichiana nella "Scienza Nuova,"_ critical
annotations (Naples, Detken, 1909): cf. F. Nicolini, in _Critica,_ vol.
viii., 1910, pp. 374-8.

15. G. Maugain, _Étude sur l'évolution intellectuelle de l'Italie de
1657 à 1750 environ_ (Paris, Hachette, 1909).

16. On my own previous work upon Vico, it should be observed that
the materials of the chapter on Vico's aesthetic doctrine in Croce,
_Estetica_ (4th ed., Bari, Laterza, 1912, ch. v. pp. 255-71), have been
worked up in a more mature form into ch. iv. of the present monograph:
the essay on Vico's Ethics (in _Critica,_ vi., 1908, pp. 71-7) has been
absorbed into chaps, vi.-viii.; and similarly that on the _Lineamenti
di storia letteraria in G.B.V._ (_ibid._ pp. 460-80) into chaps, xvi.
and xviii.; my other scattered writings have in general been only of
technical, philological, or polemical interest. In the miscellaneous
_Studi in onore di F. Torraca_ (Naples, Perrella, 1912) is a short
essay by me upon _La Dottrina del riso e dell' ironia in G.B.V._

The whole of the literature on Vico, together with extracts from rare
books, minor works, and articles, and with unpublished documents
together with fully detailed notes on the editions of Vico's writings,
is collected in the three works to which I have frequently referred,
namely: B. Croce, _Bibliografia vichiana contenente nella parte I
il catalogo delle edizioni, traduzioni e manoscritti delle opere di
G.B.V.; nella parte II, quello dei giudizi e lavori storico-critici
intorno al V. sino al-l' anno corrente; nella parte III lettere
inedite del V. e al V., documenti e altri scritti inediti o rari, e
varie appendici illustrative_ (Naples, 1904: reprinted from _Atti
dell' Accademia pontaniana,_ Naples, vol. xxxiv.; pp. xii. 127,
4to);--_Supplemento alla Bibliografia vichiana_ (Naples, 1907;
reprinted from _Atti,_ vol. xxxvii. pp. 34, 4to)--and _Secondo
Supplemento_ (Naples, 1911, reprinted from _Atti,_ vol. xl. pp. 116,
4to); the whole collected in one volume under the title: _Bibliografia
vichiana; raccolta di tre memorie presentate all' Accademia pontaniana
di Napoli nel 1903, 1907 e 1910,_ with an appendix by F. Nicolini
(Bari, Laterza, 1911).[1]

[Footnote 1: Since the publication of the Italian edition of this work
in 1911 several studies of Vico have appeared. The following may be
noted:--

G. Gentile, _La Prima Fase della filosofia di G.B.V.,_ Naples, 1912 (in
the _Studi in onore di F. Torraca_), quoted _supra,_ p. 287 n.

F. Pessico, _Ripensando la Scienza Nuova_ (in _Rassegna nazionale,_
November 1, 1912).

G. Folchieri, _Il Carattere dell' opera di G.B.V._ (Perugia, Bartelli,
1913). F. Nicolini, _Spigolature vichiane; sul testo delle Vindiciae_
(in _Scritti vari in onore di R. Renier,_ Turin, 1912).

B. Croce, _Il V. e la critica omerica_ (in the volume _Saggio sullo
Hegel e altri scritti di storia della filosofia,_ Bari, Laterza, 1913,
pp. 269-282).

Cf. also W. Windelband, _Die Geschichte der neueren Philosophie,_ 5th
ed. Leipzig, 1911, vol. i. pp. 597-8.]


NOTE

PASSAGES OF VICO'S WORKS TO WHICH ESPECIAL REFERENCE IS MADE IN THE
COURSE OF THE EXPOSITION

CHAPTER I.--For this chapter see the _De ratione,_ the _De
antiquissima,_ the two _Riposte al Giornale dei letterati,_ and the
first part of the Autobiography. For the note (p. 8) on the spirit of
the Reformation, see _Opere,_ ed. Ferrari, 2nd ed. vi. 5.

Chapter _II.--Opp._ v. 147, 239, 136-7, 51; iv. 33; v. 50-51, 147;
iv-33, 63-4; iii. 200; v. 17, 97, 103, 149-50, 174; iv. 20, 248; iii.
232; iv. 20; v. 562.

Chapter III.--_Opp._ v. 147, 162, 99, 42; iv. 73, 81, 174-5; v. 91, 145.

Chapter IV.--_Opp._ v. 141, 166, 42; iii. 232, 272-3; iv. 20; v. 175,
259, 107; iv. 22, 33; v. 180, 441, 209-10, 201; iv. 205, 206; iii. 274,
275; v. 230, 211, 169; iv. 201, 233, 365; v. 55, 82, 187, 196-7; iv.
224; v. 110, 112, 168, 212, 237, 217, 379, 440, 212, 238; iv. 24.

Chapter V.--_Opp._ v. 80-81; iv. 20, 21, 74; v. 169; v. 161-7; iv.
191-3, 168-9, v. 18; iv. 169, 50-51; iii. 26; ii. 96-7; v. 166, 43,
169, 420-21, 387, 192, 379, 108.

Chapter VI.--_Opp._ v. 437, 18; iv. 165; v. 109, 110, 534; vi. 15; v.
532; iii. 12; v. 106; v. 49; iv. 343; vi. 127; iii. 30; iv. 87; iii.
57; v. 490; iv. 40-41; iii. 30; iv. 334; iv. 35; iii. 12, 30; v. 97;
iii. 234-40; iv. 49; v. 98, 131; iv. 42-3.

Chapter VII.--_Opp._ v. 142, 168, 173, 248, 250; iv. 291; v. 106, 242,
142, 137-8, 290; iv. 175-7, 42-3; v. 153, 241; iv. 9; v. 96, 242, 574;
iv. 332; v. 97; iv. 176-7, 43; v. 176, 131.

Chapter _VIII.--Opp._ iv. 309-13; v. 185; iii. 55, 28, 43-4; v. 97;
iii. 47-52, 52-3; iv. 14, 45, 57; v. 148, 133; iii. 53, 85-7, 58; v.
240-41, 484; iv. 170-71, 180, 351.

Chapter _IX.--Opp._ v. 462-3, 544; iv. 43-4, 46; iii. 94, 192-3, 85,
87; iv. 18, 335, 15; v. 129-30, 563, 564; iii. 55; v. 571; iv. 245, 13,
159-60; _Scritti inediti,_ Del Giudice, pp. 11-14.

Chapter X.--_Opp._ v. 13-14, 128, 143-4, 172, 570; iii. 22; iv. 42; v.
97, 572, 45-6, 463.

Chapter _XI.--Opp._ iv. 62; v. 116, 183, 558, 559, 561, 570; vi. 127;
iii. 95; iv. 249.

Chapter XII.--Same sources as for Ch. I. and also vi. 105-6; v. 524-5.

Chapter XIII.--_Opp._ v. 60; iii. 249; v. 157, 167-70, 108; iii.
251-61; iv. 17, 253; v. 103, 217-18, 562; _Scritti inediti,_ p. 9.

Chapter XIV.--_Opp._ v. 94-6, 58, 79, 321, 63-4, 84-5, 96, 93, 100; iv.
27-8, 29-30, 97, 169, 200, 271; v. 182-3, 61-4; iii. 230; iv. 236-43,
184; iii. 450-59; v. 113, 115, 149, 211, 59, 74, 100, 183; iv. 75-6,
89; v. 206; iv. 99; iii. 273; v. 260; iii. 280; v. 430-31, 202-3, 98-9.

Chapter XV.--_Opp._ v. 356, 357, 255, 355, 121, 361-3, 363-365. 340,
341, 253, 251-3, 259, 132, 118, 278, 311, 309, 307, 118-19, 120, 121,
481, 484-6, 293-4, 246, 526, 528, 530-31, 223-5, 444, 43, 114-15,
222-3, 460, 220, 194, 191-3, 186, 249, 369, 371, 372, 375, 382, 403,
69; iv. 54, 83-4, 225-6.

Chapter XVI.--_Opp._ v. 380-81, 422-5, 452, 277, 360-61, 381, 426,
435-6, 465, 425, 427, 442, 427-32, 440-41, 445. 448-9, 451, 455, 428-9,
445, 449-56, 445-6, 448, 452, 378-81, 441-2, 453-4, 78, 446-7, 458-60,
433-4, 439; iv. 178; vi. 46; v. 100-101, 467-80, 381, 223-4, 457, 100.
102, 226, 438; iv. 163, 25, 63, 200, 128; iii. 295.

Chapter XVII.--_Opp._ iv. 249-50, 228; v. 183, 188; iii. 306-10; iv.
93, 34, 155; v. 86, 277, 322-3, 416, 129, 413-416, 81, 326, 86; iii.
473; v. 509-10, 102; iii. 469-75, 87, 122-3; iv. 67-71; v. 123-4, 191,
85, 100, 88, 290-91, 310, 496, 88-92, 123, 495-505. 502, 327. 525-30,
531, 534, 596, 474-476, 401, 551, 555, 514, 476, 515, 537-8, 122, 503,
521, 508, 523, 503, 514.

Chapter XVIII.--_Opp._ v. 550, 537, 259, 540-41. 546, 555-556; iv. 101,
545, 347-8, 552, 555, 544, 554, 537, 539, 538, 551, 328, 547, 552,
512, 553, 550, 508-9, 68, 488, 547, 538-9, 231, 233, 204, 222, 226,
361, 425, 428-39, 457; iii. 357. vi. 37, 45-6; iii. 270; vi. 35, 37-8,
42, 48; v. 429, 439; iv. 198-200; vi. 38; v. 43, 226, 555, 544, 508-9,
557-8; iv. 235-6, 71.

Chapter XIX.--For this chapter see the _De ratione,_ the first pages of
the Autobiography and the letters to Esperti, De Vitry, and Solla. On
wisdom see also _Opp._ v. 153.




INDEX OF NAMES
(Not retained for this text version.)


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