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.