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.