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.]