THE LIFE OF GIAMBATTISTA VICO

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

[PART A, 1725]

GIAMBATISTA VICO was born in Naples in the year 1670129 of upright parents who left a good name after them. His father was of a cheerful disposition, his mother of a quite melancholy temper; both contributed to the character of their child. He was a boy of high spirits and impatient of rest; but at the age of seven he fell head first from the top of a ladder130 to the floor below, and remained a good five hours without motion or consciousness. The right side of the cranium was fractured, but the skin was not broken. The fracture gave rise to a large tumor, and the child suffered much loss of blood from the many deep lancings. The surgeon, indeed, observing the broken cranium and considering the long period of unconsciousness, predicted that he would either die of it or grow up an idiot. However by God’s grace neither part of his prediction came true, but as a result of this mischance he grew up with a melancholy and irritable temperament such as belongs to men of ingenuity and depth, who, thanks to the one, are quick as lightning in perception, and thanks to the other, take no pleasure in verbal cleverness or falsehood.

After a long convalescence of three years or more he returned to the grammar school.131 Because he performed so expeditiously at home the tasks his teacher assigned, his father, who thought his expedition was negligence, one day asked the teacher if his son was performing his duties as a good student. The answer being in the affirmative, he asked that the lessons be doubled. But the teacher protested that he was obliged to regulate his pace by that of the other students; he could not well be in a class by himself and the class ahead was far advanced. Whereupon the boy, who was present at the interview, with great boldness begged the master to permit him to pass to the class above; he would supply by himself the necessary preparation for this level. The teacher, more to find out what a child’s intelligence was capable of than with any expectation of his really succeeding, granted him permission and to his great surprise beheld in a few days a pupil acting as his own teacher.

When he had lost this teacher he was taken to another, with whom however he spent but a short time; for his father was advised to send him to the Jesuit fathers, and they entered him in their second grade. Here the teacher, observing how gifted he was, pitted him against his three ablest pupils, one after another. In the “diligences,” as these fathers call them, that is to say extraordinary scholastic exercises, he humbled the first of the three; the second fell ill in attempting to emulate him, and the third, because he was favored by the Company, was passed into the third grade by privilege of “proficiency” before the “list,” as they call it, was read. Offended by what seemed to him an insult, and learning that in the second semester he would have to repeat what he had done in the first, Giambattista left the school and, withdrawing to his home, learned by himself in Alvarez132 all that was left for the fathers to teach him in the third grade [of the grammar school] and in the humanity school; and the following October he passed to the study of logic. In this period, during the summer, he would sit down at his desk at nightfall: and his good mother, after rousing from her first slumber and telling him for pity’s sake to go to bed, would often find that he had studied until daybreak. This was a sign that as he grew older in the study of letters he would vigorously maintain his reputation as a scholar.

It was his lot to have for teacher the Jesuit father Antonio del Balzo, a nominalist philosopher; and having heard in the schools that a good summulist was an excellent philosopher and that Petrus Hispanus was the best writer of summulae, he began to study him with great zeal. Later, having learned from his teacher that Paulus Venetus was the most acute of all the summulists, he began also to study him, with a view to further advancement. But his mind, still too weak to stand that kind of Chrysippean logic, was almost lost on it, so that to his great sorrow he had to give it up. His despair made him desert his studies (so dangerous it is to put youths to the study of sciences that are beyond their age!) and he strayed from them for a year and a half. We shall not here feign what Rene Descartes craftily feigned as to the method of his studies simply in order to exalt his own philosophy and mathematics and degrade all the other studies included in divine and human erudition. Rather, with the candor proper to a historian, we shall narrate plainly and step by step the entire series of Vico’s studies, in order that the proper and natural causes of his particular development as a man of letters may be known.

Just as a high-spirited horse, long and well trained in war and long afterwards let out to pasture at will in the fields, if he happens to hear the sound of a trumpet feels again the martial appetite rise in him and is eager to be mounted by the cavalryman and led into battle; so Vico, though he had wandered from the straight course of a well disciplined early youth, was soon spurred by his genius to take up again the abandoned path, and set off again on his way. The occasion was provided by the restoration after many years of the Infuriati,133 a famous academy in San Lorenzo, where prominent men of letters mingled with the principal lawyers, senators and nobles of the city. Illustrious academies yield this most beautiful fruit to their cities: that by them young men, whose age by reason of good blood and little experience is full of trust and of lofty hopes, are fired to study for the sake of praise and glory. Then when the age of discretion arrives with its concern for utilities, they arc able to obtain them honestly through worth and merit. So Vico returned to philosophy under Father Giuseppe Ricci, another Jesuit, a man of penetrating insight, a Scotist by sect but at bottom a Zenonist. From him he was greatly pleased to learn that “abstract substances” had more reality than the “modes” of the nominalist Balzo. This was a presage that he in his time would take most pleasure in the Platonic philosophy, to which no scholastic philosophy comes nearer than the Scotist does; and that later he would be led to discuss the “points” of Zeno, as Aristotle had done in his Metaphysics but with sentiments far different from his perverse ones. But Ricci seemed to him to linger too long over explanations of being and substance in their distinctions as metaphysical degrees. He was impatient for new knowledge. He had heard that Father Suarez in his Metaphysics discussed everything that could be known in philosophy in a distinguished manner such as becomes a metaphysician, and in an extremely clear and easy style, as in fact he stands out by his incomparable eloquence. So again he left school, to better purpose than before, and retired to his home for a year to study Suarez.

Just once in this time he betook himself to the Royal University of Studies, and his good genius led him into the class of Don Felice Aquadia, the excellent head lecturer on law, just when he was giving his pupils this judgment of Hermann Vulteius: that he was the best who had ever written on the civil institutes. This opinion, stored away in Vico’s memory, was one of the principal causes of all the better ordering of his studies and his consequent advancement in them. For later it happened that, being set to the study of law by his father, he was sent to Don Francesco Verde, partly because of the nearness but principally because of the great fame of this lecturer. With him he spent but two months, attending lectures full of cases on the minutiae of the practice of both [civil and ecclesiastical] courts. The lad could not discern the principles of these cases as befitted one who had already begun to acquire the universal mind from metaphysics and to reason of particulars by axioms or maxims. So he told his father that he wished no longer to study with Verde, for he felt that he was learning nothing from him. And making use now of the dictum of Aquadia, he begged his father to borrow a copy of Hermann Vulteius134 from a certain doctor of laws named Nicola Maria Giannettasio,135 undistinguished in the court room but very learned in sound jurisprudence, who with time and great diligence had assembled a very precious library of learned legal books. With this book he told his father he would study the civil institutes by himself. His father was much surprised, for he had been greatly impressed by the wide popularity of the lecturer Verde; but, since he was a man of discretion, he was willing to satisfy his son in this matter. While his son was asking him for the Vulteius, which was very difficult to obtain in Naples, he had recalled, like the bookseller he was, that he had some time before given one to Nicola Maria, so he requested it of him. Nicola Maria desired to know from the son himself the reason for the request, and the latter told him that in Verde’s lessons only the memory was exercised and the intellect suffered from lying idle. His judgment or rather good sense beyond his years so pleased the good man, wise as he was in these matters, that, making to the father a firm prediction of his son’s success, he did not lend but gave outright to the youth not only the Vulteius but also the Canonical Institutes136 of Henricus Canisius, who was in Nicola Maria’s opinion the best of the canonists who had written on them. And thus the good word of Aquadia and the good deed of Nicola Maria set Vico on the good road to both the laws.

Now in checking particularly the citations from the civil law he found a great pleasure in two things. One was in seeing how, in their summaries of the laws, the scholastic interpreters had abstracted into general maxims of justice the particular considerations of equity which the jurisconsults and emperors had indicated for the just disposition of cases. This attracted him to these medieval interpreters, whom he later perceived and judged to be the philosophers of natural equity. The other was in observing with what great diligence the jurisconsults themselves examined the wording of the laws, senate decrees and praetors’ edicts which they interpreted. This won him to the humanist interpreters, whom he later perceived and considered to be pure historians of the Roman civil law. Each of these pleasures was a sign: the one of all the study that he was to give to investigating the principles of universal law, the other of the profit he was to derive from the Latin language, especially from the usages of Roman jurisprudence, the most difficult part of which is knowing how to define the legal terms.

When he had studied both institutes in the texts of civil and canon law alike, without taking any heed of the so-called “materials” to be learned within the five-year period of legal training, he decided to apply for admission to the courts. For his instruction in court practice, Don Carlo Antonio de Rosa, a senator of great probity and the protector of his house, presented him to Fabrizio del Vecchio, a most upright lawyer who afterwards as an old man died in extreme poverty. And for his better acquaintance with legal procedure, chance would have it that a little later a suit entrusted to Don Geronimo Acquaviva was brought against his father before the Sacred Council. Now sixteen, he prepared this case by himself and then defended it before the Rota with the assistance of the said Fabrizio del Vecchio, and carried off the victory. For his argument in this case he earned the praise of Pier Antonio Ciavarri, a most learned jurist and councilor of the Rota, and on leaving he received the congratulations of Francesco Antonio Aquilante, an old advocate before that court, who had been his adversary.

From the sequel, as from many similar cases, it readily appears how men can be well started in some branches of learning while in others they wander about in miserable errors for lack of the guidance afforded by comprehensive knowledge coherent in all its parts. For in Vico’s mind there now took shape the argument of his On the Method of the Studies of Our Time, later to be rounded out by his work On the One Principle of Universal Law, to which his other work On the Consistency of the Jurisprudent is an appendix. At the same time, though already possessed of the metaphysical mind whose whole labor is to know the truth throughout by genus and differentia, he abandoned himself to the most corrupt styles of modern poetry, which finds its only pleasure in vagaries and falsehood. In this he was encouraged by Father Giacomo Lubrano, a Jesuit of infinite erudition and famous, at that time, for sacred eloquence, which almost everywhere had fallen into decay. One day when Vico called upon him for an opinion of his progress in poetry and submitted for his correction a canzone on the rose, the father, a generous and kindly spirit, was so pleased that although he was advanced in years and had attained great fame as a sacred orator, he did not hesitate to recite to this youth he had never seen before an idyll of his own on the same subject. But Vico had taken up this sort of poetry as an exercise of the mind in feats of wit, which affords pleasure only through falsehood so extravagantly presented as to surprise the right expectation of its hearers; wherefore, as it would be displeasing to grave and serious minds, so it delights the still weak minds of youth. And indeed this sort of extravagance may well be considered an almost necessary diversion for the wits of young men, grown over-subtle and stiff in the study of metaphysics. For at this age the mind should be given free rein to keep the fiery spirit of youth from being numbed and dried up, lest from too great severity of judgment, proper to maturity but too early acquired, they should later scarcely dare attempt anything.

At this time his health, already delicate, was endangered by consumption, and the family fortunes had been severely reduced. Yet he had an ardent desire for leisure to continue his studies, and his spirit felt a deep abhorrence for the clamor of the law courts. It was therefore a happy occasion when in a bookstore he had a conversation on the right method of teaching jurisprudence with Monsignor Geronimo Rocca, Bishop of Ischia and a distinguished jurist, as may be seen from his works. For the Monsignor was so well satisfied with his views as to urge him to go as tutor to his nephews in a castle of the Cilento, beautifully situated and enjoying a perfect climate. It belonged to the Monsignor’s brother, Don Domenico Rocca, in whom he was to find a most kindly Maecenas, who shared his taste in poetry. He was assured that he would be treated in every way as a son of the family, and so it proved in fact. The good air would restore his health, and he would have all the leisure he needed for study.

So it happened that living in the castle for nine years137 he made the greatest progress in his studies, digging into laws and canons, as his duties obliged him to. Led on from canon law to the study of dogmatic theology, he found himself in the very middle of Catholic doctrine in the matter of grace. This came about particularly through the reading of Richardus,138 the theologian of the Sorbonne (for he had happily brought with him this book from his father’s shop). Richardus by a geometrical method shows that the doctrine of St. Augustine is midway between the two extremes of Calvin and Pelagius, and equidistant likewise from the other opinions that approach these two extremes. This disposition enabled him later to meditate a principle of the natural law of the nations, which should both be apt for the explanation of the origins of Roman law and every other gentile civil law in respect of history, and agree with the sound doctrine of grace in respect of moral philosophy. At the same time renzo Valla, by his reprehension of the Roman jurists in point of Latin elegance, led him to cultivate the study of the Latin language, beginning with the works of Cicero.

However, while he was still wedded to the corrupt style of poetry, it came about happily that in a library of the Minor Friars Observants of that castle there fell into his hands a book at the end of which there was a criticism or defense (he does not well remember) of an epigram by a gentleman of canon’s rank named Massa. It included a discussion of the marvelous poetic meters especially observed in Virgil. This so captivated Vico that he was seized with a desire to study the Latin poets, starting with their prince. Then, beginning to be displeased with his own modern style of versifying, he turned to cultivation of the Tuscan tongue by study of its princes, Boccaccio in prose and Dante and Petrarch in verse. On successive days he would study Cicero side by side with Boccaccio, Virgil with Dante, and Horace with Petrarch, being curious to see and to judge for himself the differences between them. And he learned how far in all three cases the Latin tongue surpasses the Italian, by reading their most cultivated writers always three times each on the following plan: the first time to grasp each composition as a whole, the second to note the transitions and the sequence of things, the third in greater detail to collect the fine turns of thought and expression, which he marked in the books themselves instead of copying them into commonplace or phrase books. This practice, he thought, would lead him to make good use of them as his needs recalled them to mind in their contexts: which is the sole measure of effective thought and expression.

Then, reading in Horace’s Art [of Poetry] that the richest source of poetical suggestion is to be found in the writings of the moral philosophers, he applied himself seriously to the ethics of the ancient Greeks, beginning with that of Aristotle, to which, as he had observed in his reading, the authorities on the various principles of the civil institutes frequently referred. And in this study he noticed that Roman jurisprudence was an art of equity conveyed by innumerable specific precepts of natural law which the jurists had extracted from the reasons of the laws and the intentions of the legislators. But the science of justice taught by moral philosophers proceeded from a few eternal truths dictated in metaphysics by an ideal justice, which in the work of cities plays the role of architect and commands the two particular justices, the commutative and the distributive, as it were two divine artisans, to measure utilities by two eternal measures, namely the two proportions demonstrated in mathematics, the arithmetical and the geometrical. Thus he began to realize how the legal discipline is less than half learned by the method of study which is commonly observed. Hence he was again brought round to the study of metaphysics, but since in this connection that of Aristotle, which he had learned from Suarez, was of no help to him, nor could he see the reason why, he proceeded to study that of Plato, guided only by his fame as the prince of divine philosophers. Only after he had made considerable progress did he understand why the metaphysics of Aristotle had been of no avail to him in the study of moral philosophy, as indeed it had not availed Averroes, whose Commentary left the Arabs no more humane or civilized than they had been before. For the metaphysics of Aristotle leads to a physical principle, which is matter, from which the particular forms are drawn; and indeed makes God a potter who works at things outside himself. But the metaphysics of Plato leads to a metaphysical principle, which is the eternal idea, drawing out and creating matter from itself, like a seminal spirit that forms its own egg. In conformity with this metaphysic he founds a moral philosophy on an ideal or architectonic virtue or justice. Consequently he devoted himself to meditating an ideal commonwealth, to which he gave, in his laws, an equally ideal justice. So that from the time that Vico felt himself dissatisfied with the metaphysic of Aristotle as an aid to the understanding of moral philosophy, and found himself instructed by that of Plato, there began to dawn on him, without his being aware of it, the thought of meditating an ideal eternal law that should be observed in a universal city after the idea or design of providence, upon which idea have since been founded all the commonwealths of all times and all nations. This was the ideal republic that Plato should have contemplated as a consequence of his metaphysic; but he was shut off from it by ignorance of the fall of the first man.139

At the same time the philosophical writings of Cicero, Aristotle and Plato, all worked out with a view to the good ordering of mankind in civil society, caused him to take little or no pleasure in the moral philosophies of the Stoics and Epicureans. For they are each a moral philosophy of solitaries: the Epicurean, of idlers inclosed in their own little gardens; the Stoic, of contemplatives who endeavor to feel no emotion. And the leap which he had made at the start from logic to metaphysics caused Vico thereafter to esteem lightly the physics of Aristotle and Epicurus and finally of Rene Descartes; whence he found himself disposed to look with favor on the physics of Timaeus adopted by Plato, which holds the world to be made of numbers. Nor could he bring himself to despise the physics of the Stoics, which holds the world to consist of points,140 for between this and the Timaean there is no substantial difference; later indeed he tried to reestablish it in his book On the Most Ancient Wisdom of the Italians. And finally he could not accept either seriously or playfully the mechanical physics of Epicurus or Descartes, for both start from a false position.

When Vico saw how both Plato and Aristotle often employ mathematical proofs to demonstrate what they discuss in philosophy, he realized that he fell short of being able to understand them well, so he decided to apply himself to geometry and to penetrate as far as the fifth proposition of Euclid. And reflecting that its demonstration turned on a congruence of triangles, the sides and angles of one triangle being shown one by one to be equal to the corresponding sides and angles of the other, he found in himself that it was an easier matter to grasp all those minute truths together, as in a metaphysical genus, than to understand those particular geometrical quantities. And to his cost he learned that that study proper to minute wits is not easy for minds already made universal by metaphysics. So he gave up this study as one which chained and confined his mind, now accustomed through long study of metaphysics to move freely in the infinite of genera; and in the constant reading of orators, historians and poets his intellect took increasing delight in observing between the remotest matters ties that bound them together in some common relation. It is these ties that are the beautiful ornaments of eloquence which make subtleties delightful.

With reason the ancients considered the study of geometry suitable for children and judged it to be a logic appropriate to that tender age whose difficulty in comprehending the genera of things is proportional to its facility in apprehending the particulars and how to dispose them in sequence. Aristotle himself, though he had abstracted the syllogistic art from the method employed in geometry, agrees with this when he says that children should be taught anguages, histories and geometry as subjects suitable for exercising memory, imagination and perception.141 Hence we can easily understand how much undoing, what sort of culture, youth derives from two pernicious practices in use today.

The first is in introducing philosophy to children barely out of grammar school with the so-called logic ‘‘of Arnauld,” full of rigorous judgments concerning recondite matters of the higher sciences, remote from vulgar common sense. The result is a blasting of those youthful mental gifts which should be regulated and developed each by a separate art, as for example memory by the study of languages, imagination by the reading of poets, historians and orators, perception by plane geometry. This last indeed is in a certain sense a graphic art which at once invigorates memory by the great number of its elements, refines imagination with its delicate figures as with so many drawings described in the subtlest lines, and quickens perception which must survey all these figures and among them all collect those which are needed to demonstrate the magnitude which is required: all this to bear fruit, at the time of mature judgment, in an eloquent, lively and acute wisdom. But when by these logics lads are led prematurely into criticism (that is to say, are led to judge before properly apprehending, against the natural course of ideas—for they should first apprehend, then judge, and finally reason), they become arid and dry in expression and without ever doing anything set themselves up in judgment over all things. On the other hand, if in the age of perception, which is youth, they would devote themselves to Topics, the art of discovery that is the special privilege of the perceptive (as Vico, taking his cue from Cicero, did in his youth), they would then be furnished with matter in order later to form a sound opinion on it. For one can not form a sound judgment of a thing without having complete knowledge of it; and topics is the art of finding in anything all that is in it. Thus nature itself would aid the young to become philosophers and good speakers.

The other practice consists in teaching youth the elements of the science of magnitudes by the algebraic method. For this numbs all that is most exuberant in youthful natures: it obscures their imagination, enfeebles their memory, renders their perception sluggish, and slackens their understanding. And these four things are all most necessary for the culture of the best humanity: the first for painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry and eloquence; the second for learning languages and history; the third for inventions; and the fourth for prudence. But this algebra seems to be an Arabic device for reducing the natural signs of magnitudes to certain ciphers at will. Thus the signs for numbers, which among the Greeks and Latins had been the letters [of their alphabets], which in both (at least the capitals) are regular geometric lines,—were reduced by the Arabs to ten minute ciphers. So perception is stricken by algebra, for algebra sees only what is right under its eyes; memory is confounded, since when the second sign is found algebra pays no further attention to the first; imagination goes blind because algebra has no need of images; understanding is destroyed because algebra professes to divine. The result is that young men who have devoted much time to algebra find themselves later, to their great dismay and regret, less apt in the affairs of civil life. Wherefore, in order that it should afford some advantages and produce none of these evil effects, algebra should be studied for a short time at the end of the mathematics course, and it should be used as the Romans did with numbers. For in the case of immense sums they represented them by points. Similarly, where to find required magnitudes our human understanding would be obliged to undergo desperate labor by the synthetic method, we should take refuge in the oracle of the analytic. On the other hand, so far as the latter is essential to good reasoning, it is best to form the habit of it by metaphysical analysis. In every question one should look for truth in the infinity of being; then, descending by regular steps through the genera of substance, one should keep eliminating what the thing is not for all the species of each genus, until one arrives at the ultimate differentia which constitutes the essence of the thing one desires to know.

(This rather long digression is an annual lecture which Vico gave to the young men that they might know how to make choice and use of the sciences for eloquence.)

Returning now to the matter in hand: when he had discovered that the whole secret of the geometric method comes to this: first to define the terms one has to reason with; then to set up certain common maxims agreed to by one’s companion in argument; finally, at need, to ask discretely for such concessions as the nature of things permits, in order to supply a basis for arguments, which without some such assumption could not reach their conclusions; and with these principles to proceed step by step in one’s demonstrations from simpler to more complex truths, and never to affirm the complex truths without first examining singly their component parts,—he thought the only advantage of having learned how geometricians proceed in their reasoning was that if he ever had occasion to reason in that manner he would know how. And indeed later he followed it closely in the work On the One Principle of Universal Law, which in the opinion of Jean Le Clerc “is composed by a strict mathematical method,” as will be narrated later in its proper place.

Now to follow in order the steps of Vico’s progress in philosophy, we must here turn back a little. For at the time he left Naples the philosophy of Epicurus had begun to be: cultivated in Pierre Gassendi’s version; and two years later news that the young men had become its devotees made him wish to study it in Lucretius. By reading Lucretius he learned that Epicurus, because he denied any generic difference of substance between mind and body and so for want of a sound metaphysic remained of limited mind, had to take as the starting point for his philosophy matter already formed and divided into multiform ultimate parts composed of other parts which he imagined to be inseparable because there was no void between them. This is a philosophy to satisfy the circumscribed minds of children and the weak ones of silly women. And though Epicurus had no knowledge even of geometry, yet, by a well-ordered deduction, he built on his mechanical physics a metaphysics entirely sensualistic just like that of John Locke, and a hedonistic morality suitable for men who are to live in solitude, as indeed he enjoined upon all his disciples. And, to give him his due, Vico followed his explanation of the forms of corporeal nature with as much delight as he felt ridicule or pity on seeing him under the hard necessity of going off into a thousand inanities and absurdities to explain the operations of the human mind.142 This reading therefore served only to confirm him still further in the doctrines of Plato, who from the very form of our human mind, without any hypothesis, establishes the eternal idea as the principle of all things on the basis of the knowledge and consciousness [scienza e coscienza] that we have of ourselves. For in our mind there are certain eternal truths that we cannot mistake or deny, and which are therefore not of our making. But for the rest we feel a liberty by thinking them to make all the things that are dependent on the body, and therefore we make them in time, that is when we choose to turn our attention to them, and we make them all by thinking them and contain them all within ourselves. For example, we make images by imagination, recollections by memory, passions by appetite; smells, tastes, colors, sounds and touches by the senses; and all these things we contain within us. But for the eternal truths which are not of our making and have no dependence on our bodies, we must conceive as principle of all things an eternal idea altogether separate from body, which, in its consciousness, when it wills, creates all things in time and contains them within itself, and by containing them sustains them. By this principle of philosophy Plato establishes, in metaphysics, abstract substances as having more reality than corporeal ones. From it he derives a morality well adapted throughout for civil life, so that the school of Socrates, both in itself and through its successors, furnished the greatest lights of Greece in the arts both of peace and of war. And he approves the Timaean physics, which is that of Pythagoras and holds the world to consist of numbers, which in a certain respect are more abstract than the metaphysical points that Zeno hit upon for explaining the things of nature, as Vico has shown in his Metaphysics in a way to be pointed out later.

A short time after this he learned of the growing prestige of experimental physics, for which the name of Robert Boyle was on everyone’s lips; but, profitable as he thought it for medicine and spagyric, he desired to have nothing to do with this science. For it contributed nothing to the philosophy of man and had to be expounded in barbarous formulas, whereas his own principal concern was the study of Roman laws, the main foundations of which are the philosophy of human customs and the science of the Roman language and government, which can only be learned in the Latin writers.

Toward the end of his period of solitude, which lasted a good nine years, he heard that the physics of Rene Descartes had eclipsed all preceding systems, so that he became inflamed with a desire to have knowledge of it; whereas, by a pleasant deception, he was already acquainted with it. For among other books he had brought from his father’s bookstore the Natural Philosophy of Henri Du Roy, under whose mask Descartes had first published it in Utrecht.143 Turning from Lucretius to the study of Du Roy, a philosopher whose profession was medicine but who showed that he had no erudition save in mathematics, he thought him a man no less ignorant of metaphysics than Epicurus had been, who never wished to learn anything of mathematics at all. For he too sets up in nature a principle falsely postulated: namely, body already formed. The only differences are that Epicurus halts the divisibility of body at the atoms, while Du Roy makes its three dimensions infinitely divisible; Epicurus makes motion take place in a void, Du Roy in a plenum; Epicurus starts the formation of his infinite worlds with a casual swerve of atoms from the downward motion due to their own weight and gravity, Du Roy starts the formation of his limitless vortices with an impetus impressed on a piece of inert, and so as yet undivided, matter, which under the impressed motion is divided into particles and, though impeded by its weight, is compelled to attempt to move in a straight line. Since this is prevented by the plenum, it begins, divided as it is into particles, a rotation of each particle about its own center. As then by the casual swerve of his atoms Epicurus leaves the world to the discretion of chance, so from this necessity of René’s first corpuscles to attempt rectilinear motion it seemed to Vico that this system would be acceptable to those who subject the world to fate.

He had cause to congratulate himself on this opinion when, after he had returned to Naples and learned that Du Roy’s physics was that of Rene, the latter’s Metaphysical Meditations were being cultivated. For Rene, over-ambitious for glory, as on the one hand he tried to make himself famous among professors of medicine with a physics contrived on a pattern like that of Epicurus and presented for the first time from the chair of a European university so famous as that of Utrecht, by a physician, so on the other he sketched a few first outlines of metaphysics in the manner of Plato. In the latter he labors to establish two kinds of substances, one extended the other thinking, so as to subject matter to an immaterial agent like Plato’s God, in order one day to reign in the cloisters too, where the metaphysics of Aristotle was introduced as long ago as the eleventh century. For although, in virtue of what that philosopher had himself contributed, his metaphysics had previously served the purposes of the impious Averroists, yet since its ground plan was Plato’s the Christian religion easily bent it to the pious intents of its Master. So that as it had ruled with the metaphysics of Plato from its beginning to the eleventh century, it has ruled ever since with that of Aristotle. And indeed, returning to Naples at the time when the Cartesian physics was most in vogue, Vico heard this assertion [that Descartes’s metaphysics would drive Aristotle’s from the cloisters] often made by Gregorio Caloprese,144 a great Cartesian philosopher, who held Vico very dear.

But in respect of the unity of its parts the philosophy of Descartes is not at all a consistent system; for his physics calls for a metaphysics that should set up a single kind of substance, the corporeal, operating, as we have said, by necessity, just as that of Epicurus calls for a single kind of substance, corporeal, operating by chance. For Descartes and Epicurus agree in this, that all the infinitely various forms of bodies are modifications of corporeal substance, and have themselves no substantial being. Nor did his metaphysics yield any moral philosophy suited to the Christian religion. Certainly the few things he himself wrote on the subject do not constitute such a philosophy, and his treatise on the Passions is more useful to medicine than to ethics. Even Father Malebranche was unable to work out from them a system of Christian morality, and the Thoughts of Pascal are merely scattered lights. Nor does a distinctively Cartesian logic emerge from his metaphysics, for Arnauld erects his on the basis of Aristotle’s. Nor is it useful even to medicine itself, for the anatomists do not find the Cartesian man in nature. So that, compared to that of Descartes, the philosophy of Epicurus makes a more consistent system, although the latter knew nothing of mathematics. For all these reasons, of which Vico took note, he was soon much elated that, as the reading of Lucretius had made him a partisan of the Platonic metaphysics, so that of Du Roy had confirmed him in it.

These systems of physics were for Vico as so many diversions from his serious meditations on the Platonic metaphysicians and they served to give his fancy scope in his exercises in verse-making. For he was given to the practice of working out canzoni, still following his early habit of composing in Italian, but with an eye to drawing into them luminous Latin ideas, under the guidance of the best Tuscan poets. For example, prompted by the panegyric of Pompey the Great which Cicero wove into his oration on the Manilian Law (than which there is no more solemn oration of its kind in the Latin language), and in imitation of the “three sisters” of Petrarch, he composed the panegyric, divided into three canzoni, In Praise of the Elector Maximilian of Bavaria; these canzoni may be found in Lippi’s Selection from the Italian Poets, printed at Lucca in the year 1709. And in Acampora’s Selection from the Neapolitan Poets, printed at Naples in the year 1701, there is another canzone written on the occasion of the marriage of Donna Ippolita Cantelmo145 of the house of the dukes of Popoli to Don Vincenzo Carafa, Duke of Bruzzano and now Prince of Rocella. This was composed on the pattern of that most graceful song of Catullus: Vesper adest. Vico later read that this poem had been imitated before him by Torquato Tasso in a canzone with a similar subject, and he was glad not to have known of this before, partly because of the reverence he felt for such a great poet and partly because, had he known that he had been anticipated, he would hardly have dared to undertake the composition and would certainly have taken no pleasure in it. In addition to these canzoni Vico composed yet another, on Plato’s idea of the “Great Year,” on which Virgil had constructed his learned eclogue Sicelides musae. The occasion for this canzone was the marriage of the Duke of Bavaria to Princess Theresa of Poland, and it is included in the first volume of Albano’s Selection from the Neapolitan Poets, printed at Naples in the year 1723.

With this learning and erudition Vico returned to Naples a stranger in his own land, and found the physics of Descartes at the height of its renown among the established men of letters. That of Aristotle, on its own account but much more because of the excessive alterations made in it by the schoolmen, had now become a laughingstock. As for metaphysics, which in the sixteenth century had placed in the highest rank of literature such men as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Agostino Nifo and Agostino Steuchio, Giacopo Mazzoni, Alessandro Piccolomini, Matteo Acquaviva, and Francesco Patrizi,146 and contributed so much to poetry, history, and eloquence that all Greece in the time of its utmost learning and grace of speech seemed to have risen again in Italy,—it was now thought worthy only of being shut up in the cloisters; and as for Plato, an occasional passage was turned to poetic use, or quoted to parade an erudite memory, and that was all. Scholastic logic was condemned and Euclid’s Elements approved to replace it. Medicine, because of the frequent revolutions in systems of physics, had declined into scepticism, and doctors had begun to take their stand on acatalepsy or the impossibility of comprehending the truth about the nature of diseases, and to “suspend judgment” or withhold assent when it came to diagnosis or application of effective remedies. Galenic medicine, which when studied in the light of Greek philosophy and in the Greek language had produced so many incomparable doctors, had now, because of the great ignorance of its followers, fallen beneath contempt. The medieval interpreters of the civil law had fallen from their high repute in the academies, and the modern humanists had taken their place, to the great detriment of the courts; for just as the latter are needed for the criticism of Roman laws the former are equally necessary for legal “topics’’ in cases of doubtful equity. The most learned Don Carlo Buragna had reintroduced the praiseworthy style of composing verses, but he had too tightly confined it by his imitation of Giovanni della Casa, deriving nothing delicate or robust from Greek and Latin springs, or from the limpid streams of Petrarch’s rime, or from the great torrents of Dante’s canzoni. The most erudite Lionardo di Capua had restored good Tuscan prose, and clothed it with grace and beauty; but in spite of these virtues there was never to be heard an oration either animated by Greek wisdom in the treatment of manners, or invigorated by Roman grandeur in stirring the emotions. And finally a man incomparable for his Latinity, Tommaso Cornelio, by the extreme purity of his Progymnasmata had dismayed the minds of the young rather than giving them courage to go on in later years with the study of the Latin language.147

So for all these reasons Vico blessed his good fortune in having no teacher whose words he had sworn by, and he felt most grateful for those woods in which, guided by his good genius, he had followed the main course of his studies untroubled by sectarian prejudice; for in the city taste in letters changed every two or three years like styles in dress. The common neglect of good Latin prose made him all the more determined to cultivate it. Learning that Cornelio had not been strong in Greek, had paid scant attention to Tuscan, and had found little or no pleasure in criticism—perhaps because he had observed that polyglots for all the languages they know never use any one of them correctly, and critics never attain to the virtues of a language because they are always pausing to note the defects in its writers—Vico likewise decided to abandon Greek, in which he had progressed somewhat from Gretser’s Rudiments148 studied in the second grade of the Jesuits, and Tuscan as well (and for the same reason he never cared to learn any French), and to concentrate on Latin. And because he had also observed that by the publication of lexicons and commentaries Latin had fallen into decay, he resolved never again to take into his hands any such book, excepting only Junius’s Nomenclator149 for the understanding of technical terms; but to read the Latin authors completely free of notes, entering into their spirit by means of philosophical criticism, just as the Latin authors of the sixteenth century had done. Among these he particularly admired Giovio for his fluency and Navagero for his delicacy as far as we can judge from the little that he left, and also for his exceedingly elegant taste which makes us lament the great loss of his History.150

For these reasons Vico lived in his native city not only a stranger but quite unknown. His solitary tastes and habits did not prevent his venerating from afar as sages the older men who were recognized for their knowledge of letters, and envying with a genuine vexation other young men who had the good fortune to enjoy their conversation. With this attitude which is necessary to young men who wish to make further progress and not on the say of malicious or ignorant teachers to remain all their lives satisfied with a knowledge suited to another’s taste and capacity, he first came to the attention of two men of importance. One was Father Don Gaetano d’ Andrea, a Theatine, who later died a most reverend bishop; he was a brother of Francesco and Gennaio [d’ Andrea], both of immortal name.151 In a conversation which he had with Vico in a bookstore on the history of collections of canons, he asked him if he were married. And when Vico answered that he was not, he inquired if he wanted to become a Theatine. On Vico’s replying that he was not of noble birth, the father answered that that need be no obstacle, for he would obtain a dispensation from Rome. Then Vico, seeing himself obliged by the great honor the father paid him, came out with it that his parents were old and poor and he was their only hope. When the father pointed out that men of letters were rather a burden than a help to their families, Vico replied that perhaps it would not be so in his case. Then the father closed the conversation by saying: “That is not your vocation.”

The other was Don Giuseppe Lucina, a man of great erudition in Greek, Latin and Tuscan and in all branches of divine and human knowledge. He had made some trial of the young man’s ability, and in his kind way was regretting that it was not put to some good use in the city, when a good occasion offered itself to him for advancing the youth. For Don Nicola Caravita, leader of the bar in sharpness of intellect, severity of judgment and purity of Tuscan style, and a great patron of men of letters, had decided to make a collection of literary tributes to the Count of San Estevan, viceroy of Naples, on the occasion of his departure. This was the first collection of its kind that appeared in Naples within our memory, and it had to be printed in the narrow limits of a few days. Lucina, whose opinion was respected by all, suggested that Vico should write the oration to serve as preface to all the other compositions. And having secured this commission for the young man, he brought it to him, pointing out to him his opportunity to make himself favorably known to a patron of letters such as he had found to be his own greatest protector; and indeed the youth needed no prompting to be most eager for it. And so, because he had given up Tuscan studies, he worked out a Latin oration for that collection at the printing establishment itself of Giuseppe Roselli, in the year 1696. From then on he began to rise in fame as a man of letters; and among others Gregorio Caloprese, whom we have above mentioned with honor, was wont to call him (as Epicurus was called) the “autodidact” or “teacher of himself.” Later, for the Funeral Rites of Donna Caterina d’ Aragona, mother of the Duke of Medinaceli, viceroy of Naples, for which the most learned Carlo Rossi wrote the Greek, and the celebrated sacred orator Don Emmanuel Cicatelli the Italian, Vico wrote the Latin oration. Along with the other compositions it was published in a folio volume printed in the year 1697.

A short time later, by the death of the incumbent professor, the chair of rhetoric fell vacant. It yielded not more than a hundred ducats annually, with the addition of another smaller and varying sum derived from fees on the habilitation certificates which the professor gives his students for their admission to the law course. Caravita told him that he should forthwith enter the competition for this chair. At first he declined because he had failed in another candidacy a few months previously, in which he had sought the post of town clerk. But Don Nicola, gently reproaching him as a man of little spirit (as indeed he is as far as practical affairs are concerned), told him that he need only attend to preparing his lecture, for he (Don Nicola) would make the application for him. So Vico competed with an hour’s lecture on the opening lines of Fabius Quintilian’s long chapter De statibus causarum, limiting himself to the etymology of the term status and the distinction of its meanings. The lecture was full of Greek and Latin erudition and criticism, and won him the chair by an ample number of votes.

Meanwhile the viceroy, the Duke of Medinaceli, had restored literature in Naples to a glory not seen since the time of Alfonso of Aragon, by founding an academy152 for its cultivation, composed of the very flower of men of letters. This had been suggested to him by Don Federico Pappacoda, a Neapolitan gentleman of good taste in letters and a great esteemer of scholars, and by Don Nicola Caravita. Since the most cultured literature had begun to rise into great favor among the noble classes, Vice, urged thereto the more by the honor of having been numbered among the academicians, now applied himself wholly to the profession of humane letters.

The reason that fortune is said to be friendly to young men is that they choose their lot in life from among those arts and professions that flourish in their youth; but as the world by its nature changes in taste from year to year, they later find themselves in their old age strong in such wisdom as no longer pleases and therefore no longer profits. Thus there came about a great and sudden revolution in literary affairs in Naples. Just when it was thought that the best literature of the sixteenth century was to be reestablished there for a long time to come, the departure of the duke-viceroy gave rise to a new order of things which cast it down in a very short time and contrary to every expectation. For those valiant men of letters who had declared a few years before that metaphysics should remain immured in the cloisters, now began to cultivate it intensively. But they studied it not, as Marsilio and others had done, in the works of men like Plato and Plotinus (which had made fruitful so many great men of letters in the sixteenth century), but in the Meditations of Rene Descartes and its companion piece his book On Method, wherein he disapproves the study of languages, orators, historians and poets, and by setting up only his metaphysics, physics and mathematics, reduces literature to the wisdom of the Arabs, who in all these three fields produced men of great learning—men like Averroes in metaphysics, and so many famous astronomers and physicians that they bequeathed to both sciences the very terms necessary to expound them. Now the savants of the day, however great and learned, since they had all first and for a long time occupied themselves with corpuscular physics, experiments and machines, must have found the Meditations so abstruse that it was difficult for them to withdraw their minds from the senses enough to meditate on them; so that the highest praise of a philosopher was: He understands the Meditations of Descartes.

At this time both Vico and Don Paolo Doria153 were frequent visitors in the home of Caravita, which was a rendezvous for men of letters; and Doria, as fine a philosopher as he was a gentleman, was the first with whom Vico could begin to discuss metaphysics. What Doria admired as sublime, great and new in Descartes, Vico remarked to be old and common knowledge among the Platonists. But in Doria’s discourse he perceived a mind that often gave forth lightning-like flashes of Platonic divinity, so that thenceforth they remained linked in a noble and faithful friendship.

Up to this time Vico had admired two only above all other learned men: Plato and Tacitus; for with an incomparable metaphysical mind Tacitus contemplates man as he is, Plato as he should be. And as Plato with his universal knowledge explores the parts of nobility which constitute the man of intellectual wisdom, so Tacitus descends into all the counsels of utility whereby, among the infinite irregular chances of malice and fortune, the man of practical wisdom brings things to good issue. Now Vico’s admiration of these two great authors from this point of view was a foreshadowing of that plan on which he later worked out an ideal eternal history to be traversed by the universal history of all times, carrying out on it, by certain eternal properties of civil affairs, the development, acme and decay of all nations. From this it follows that the wise man should be formed both of esoteric wisdom such as Plato’s and of common wisdom such as that of Tacitus. And now at length Vico’s attention was drawn to Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, a man of incomparable wisdom both common and esoteric, at one and the same time a universal man in theory and in practice, a rare philosopher and a great English minister of state. Leaving aside his other works, on whose subjects there were perhaps writers as good or better, from his De augmentis scientiarum Vico concluded that, as Plato is the prince of Greek wisdom, and the Greeks have no Tacitus, so Romans and Greeks alike have no Bacon. He marveled that one sole man could see in the world of letters what studies remained to be discovered and developed, and how many and what kinds of defects must be corrected in those it already contained; and that without professional or sectarian bias, save for a few things which offend the Catholic religion, he did justice to all the sciences, and always with the design that each should make its special contribution to that summa which the universal republic of letters constitutes. Vico now proposed to have these three unique authors ever before him in meditation and writing, and so he went on elaborating his works of discovery, which culminated in The One Principle of Universal Law.

Accordingly he was wont, in his orations delivered in successive years at the annual opening of studies in the Royal University, to propose universal arguments brought down from metaphysics and given social application. From this point of view he treated of the ends of the various studies, as in the first six orations, or of the method of study, as in the latter part of the sixth and in the entire seventh. The first three treat principally of the ends suitable to human nature, the next two principally of the political ends, the sixth of the Christian end.154

The first, delivered the 18th of October 1699, proposes that we cultivate the force of our divine mind in all its faculties. Its thesis is: “That the knowledge of oneself is for each of us the greatest incentive to the compendious study of every branch of learning.” It proves that the human mind is by analogy the god of man, just as God is the mind of the whole [of things]. It shows severally how the marvelous faculties of the mind, whether senses or imagination or memory or invention or reason, perform with divine powers of quickness, facility and efficiency the most numerous and varied tasks at one and the same time. How children, free of evil affections and vices, at the end of three or four years of idle play are found to have learned the entire vocabulary of their native tongues. How Socrates did not so much bring down moral philosophy from heaven as elevate our spirit to it, and how those who for their inventions were raised to heaven among the gods are but the intelligence which each of us possesses. How it is a matter for astonishment that there should be so many ignorant persons when ignorance or being misled or falling into error is as repugnant to the mind as smoke is to the eyes, or a foul stench to the nose; wherefore negligence is especially to be condemned. How it is only because we do not wish to be that we are not instructed in everything, seeing that by our efficacious will alone, when transported by inspiration, we do things which when accomplished we wonder at as if they had been done not by ourselves but by a god. And therefore it concludes that if in a few years a youth has not run through the whole round of the sciences it is only because he did not want to, or if he had the desire he has failed for lack of teachers or of a good order of study, or because the end of his studies was something other than cultivating a kind of divinity in our mind.

The second oration, delivered in 1700, urges that we inform the spirit with the virtues by following the truths of the mind. Its argument is: “That there is no enmity more dire and dangerous than that of the fool against himself.” It represents this universe as a great city in which by an eternal law condemns the foolish to wage against themselves a war thus conceived: “Its law has as many chapters, written out by an omnipotent hand, as there are natures of all things. Let us recite the chapter on man. ‘Let man be of mortal body and eternal soul. Let him be born for two things, truth and goodness, that is to say for Me alone. Let his mind distinguish the true from the false. Let not his senses impose upon his mind. Let reason be the principle, guide and lord of his life. Let his desires submit to his reason…. Let him win praise for himself by the good arts of his spirit. By virtue and constancy let him attain to human felicity. If anyone foolishly breaks these laws, whether through malice or luxury or sloth or mere imprudence, he is guilty of treason: let him wage war against himself.’ ” And it proceeds to a tragic description of the war. From this passage it is quite clear that as far back as this time Vico was turning over in his mind the theme which he later developed in his Universal Law.

The third oration, delivered in the year 1701, is a kind of practical appendix to the two preceding ones. Its argument is: “That the society of letters must be rid of every deceit, if you would study to be adorned with true not feigned, solid not empty, erudition.” It points out that in the republic of letters one must live justly; it condemns the wilful critics who wrongfully exact tribute from this public treasury of letters, the stubborn sectarians who keep it from growing, and the impostors who counterfeit their contributions to it.

The fourth oration, delivered in the year 1704, has this for its argument: “He who would reap from the study of letters the greatest advantages, combined always with honor, let him be educated for the glory and good of the community.” It is directed against the false scholars who study for advantage alone and therefore take more pains to seem learned than to be so. When the advantage they seek has been attained, they grow lazy and stoop to the lowest arts to keep up their reputation as scholars. Vico had delivered half of this discourse when Don Feliz Lanzina Ulloa, president of the Sacred Council and the Cato of the Spanish ministers, joined the audience. In his honor Vico with great presence of mind gave a new and briefer turn to what had gone before and united it with what he had left to say. A similar quickness of wit had been exercised by Clement XI when he was an abbé speaking in Italian before the Academy of the Umoristi in honor of Cardinal d’Estrées, his protector. Thus he began his fortunate career under Innocent XII, which later carried him to the pontificate.155

In the fifth oration, delivered in the year 1705, it is proposed “That commonwealths have been most renowned for military glory and most powerful politically when letters have most flourished in them.” And the argument is vigorously proved by good reasons and then confirmed by this continuous series of examples. In Assyria there arose the Chaldeans, the first learned men in the world, and there the first monarchy was established. When Greece shone with wisdom more than in all preceding times, the monarchy of Persia was overthrown by Alexander. Rome established her world empire on the ruins of Carthage, whom she destroyed under Scipio, whose knowledge of philosophy, eloquence and poetry appears in the inimitable comedies of Terence, which Scipio wrote in collaboration with his friend Laelius. (Considering them unworthy to appear under his own great name, he had them published under that of Terence, who doubtless put into them something of his own.) And of course the Roman monarchy was established under Augustus, in whose time all the wisdom of Greece shone forth at Rome in the splendor of the Roman language. The most luminous kingdom of Italy threw out its beams under Theodoric, who enjoyed the counsel of men like Cassiodorus. With Charlemagne the Roman Empire rose again in Germany, because letters, long since dead in the royal courts of the West, began to arise in his in the persons of Alcuin and others. Homer fashioned an Alexander who burned to follow the example of Achilles in valor, and Alexander’s example in turn inspired Julius Caesar to great deeds; so that these two great commanders (and none dared say which was the greater) are pupils of a Homeric hero. Two cardinals, both great philosophers and theologians and one of them a great sacred orator as well—Jimenez and Richelieu—drew up the plans for the monarchies of Spain and France respectively. The Turk has founded a great empire on barbarism, but with the counsel of one Sergius, a learned and impious Christian monk who gave the stupid Mohammed the law on which to found it. And when the Greeks, first in Asia and then everywhere, had declined into barbarism, the Arabs cultivated metaphysics, mathematics, astronomy and medicine, and with this scholarly knowledge, although not with that of the most cultured humanity, they roused to a high glory of conquests the wild and barbarous Al Mansurs, and helped the Turk establish an empire in which all study of letters was abolished. But this vast empire, had it not been for the perfidious Christians, first Greek and later Latin, who supplied it from time to time with the arts and stratagems of warfare, would have fallen to ruin of its own accord.

In the sixth oration, delivered in the year 1707, he treats of this argument, which is partly on the ends of the various studies and partly on the order of studying them. “The knowledge of the corrupt nature of man invites us to study the complete cycle of the liberal arts and sciences, and propounds and expounds the true, easy and unvarying order in which they are to be acquired.” In it he leads his hearers to meditate on themselves, how man under pain of sin is divided from man by tongue, mind and heart. By the tongue, which often fails and often betrays the ideas through which man would but cannot unite himself to man. By the mind, through the variety of opinions springing from diversity of sensuous tastes, in which men do not agree. And finally by the heart, whose corruption prevents even the conciliation of man with man by uniformity of vice. Whence Vico proves that the pain of our corruption must be healed by virtue, knowledge and eloquence; for through these three things only does one man feel the same as another. This brings Vico to the end of the various studies, and fixes the point of view from which he considers the order of study. He shows that as languages were the most powerful means for setting up human society, so the studies should begin with them, since they depend altogether on memory which in childhood is marvelously strong. The age of childhood, weak in reason, is regulated only by examples, which to be effective must be grasped with vividness of imagination, for which childhood is marvelous. Hence children should be occupied with the reading of history, both fabulous and true. The age of childhood is reasonable but it has no material on which to reason; let children then be prepared for the art of good reasoning through a study of the quantitative sciences, which call for memory and imagination and at the same time check the tendency to corpulence of the imaginative faculty, which when swollen is the mother of all our errors and woes. In early youth the senses prevail and draw the pure mind in their train; let youths then apply themselves to physics, which leads to the contemplation of the corporeal universe and has need of mathematics for the science of the cosmic system. Thus by the vast and corpulent physical ideas and by the delicate ideas of lines and numbers let them be prepared to grasp the abstract metaphysical infinite by the science of being and the one. And when they have come to know their mind in this science let them be prepared to contemplate their spirit and in consequence of eternal truths to perceive that it is corrupt, so that they may be disposed to amend it naturally by morality at an age when they have had some experience of the evil guidance of the passions, which are most violent in childhood. And when they have learned that by its nature pagan morality is insufficient to tame and subdue philauty or self-love, and when by experience in metaphysics they understand that the infinite is more certain than the finite, mind than body, God than man (who cannot tell how he himself moves, feds or knows), then with humbled intellect let them make ready to receive revealed theology, from which let them descend to Christian ethics, and thus purged let them finally pass to Christian jurisprudence.

From the time of the first oration of which we have spoken, it is evident both in it and in all that followed but above all in this last, that Vico was agitating in his mind a theme both new and grand, to unite in one principle all knowledge human and divine. But all these arguments of which he had discoursed fell too far short of it. He was therefore glad that he had not published these orations, for he thought the republic of letters, stooped under so great a pile of books, should not be burdened with more, but should only be offered books of important discoveries and useful inventions. But in the year 1708 the Royal University resolved to have a solemn public inauguration of studies and to dedicate it to the king with an oration to be delivered in the presence of Cardinal Grimani, viceroy of Naples. The oration for this occasion was therefore to be published,156 and it gave Vico a happy opportunity to devise an argument that should bring some new and profitable discovery to the world of letters,—a desire worthy to be numbered among those of Bacon in his New Organ of the Sciences. It turns on the advantages and disadvantages of our manner of studying as compared with that of the ancients in all branches of knowledge: which disadvantages of our way could be avoided, and by what means; and as for the unavoidable ones, by what advantages of the ancients they might be compensated (so that by adding only a Plato, for example, to what we possess beyond the ancients, we should have a complete university of today); to the end that all divine and human wisdom should everywhere reign with one spirit and cohere in all its parts, so that the sciences lend each other a helping hand and none is a hindrance to any other. The dissertation appeared the same year in duodecimo from the press of Felice Mosca. Its argument is in fact a first draft of what he later worked out in his The One Principle of Universal Law, with its appendix The Consistency of the Jurisprudent.

And because Vico always had the aim of winning distinction for himself and the university in the field of jurisprudence by other means than lecturing on it to youngsters, he discussed at length in this dissertation156 the secrecy of the laws of the ancient Roman jurisprudents and essayed a system of jurisprudence for interpreting even the private laws from the point of view of the constitution of the Roman government. With reference to this part of the work Monsignor Vincenzo Vidania, prefect of the royal studies, a man most learned in Roman antiquities and especially in the matter of the laws, being at that time in Barcelona took exception in a most praiseworthy dissertation to this point which Vico had maintained: that the ancient Roman jurisconsults had all been patricians. Vico answered privately at the time and later publicly in the work on Universal Law, in a footnote to which may be found the illustrious Vidania’s dissertation with Vico’s replies. Rut Hendrik Brenkmann, a most learned Dutch jurist, was greatly pleased with Vico’s views on jurisprudence; and while he was staying in Florence to consult the Florentine Pandects he spoke favorably of them in conversations with Antonio Rinaldi, who had gone there from Naples to plead the case of a Neapolitan nobleman.157

When this dissertation was published,156 with the addition of what could not be said in the presence of the cardinal viceroy without misusing the time which is so precious to princes, it led Domenico d’ Aulisio,158 the head afternoon lecturer on law and a man of universal knowledge in languages and sciences, to call Vico to him at a public competition for professorships and invite him to sit beside him. D’ Aulisio then told him he had read “that little book” (he had not attended the inauguration of studies because of a quarrel with the head lecturer on canon law as to who should precede) and considered Vico “no grubbing compiler but a man whose every page would furnish matter for others to spin out into large volumes.” Now d’ Aulisio had hitherto looked askance at Vico in the university, not indeed for any fault of the latter but because he was a friend of those men of letters who had been partisans of di Capua against d’ Aulisio in a great literary contest which had raged in Naples a long time before and which there is no need to discuss here.159 This generous act and kindly judgment, on the part of a man otherwise so stern and sparing of praise, showed therefore a singular magnanimity toward Vico; and from that day they contracted a very close friendship which lasted as long as that great man of letters lived.

Meanwhile Vico, by the reading of Bacon of Verulam’s treatise On the Wisdom of the Ancients, more ingenious and learned than true, was incited to look for its principles farther back than in the fables of the poets. He was moved to do this by the example of Plato who in the Cratylus had sought to track them down within the origins of the Greek language. An added incentive was the feeling he had begun to entertain, that the etymologies of the grammarians were unsatisfactory. He applied himself therefore to search out these principles in the origins of Latin words; for certainly the wisdom of the Italic sect had in the school of Pythagoras a much earlier flowering and a greater depth than that which began later in Greece itself. From the word coelum, which means both “chisel” and the “great body of the air,” he conjectured that perhaps the Egyptians,160 by whom Pythagoras was instructed,161 had been of the opinion that the instrument with which nature makes everything was the wedge, and that this was what they meant their pyramids to signify. Now the Latins called nature ingenium,162 whose principal property is sharpness;163 thus intimating that nature forms and deforms every form with the chisel of air. It would form matter by shaving lightly, and deform it by gouging deeply, with the chisel by which the air ravages everything. The hand that moves this instrument would be the ether, whose mind by all accounts was Jove. And the Latins used the word anima for air as the principle which gives the universe motion and life, and on which the ether acts as male on female. The ether insinuated into living beings the Latins called animus; hence the common Latin distinction, “anima vivimus, animo sentimus”: by the soul we have life, by the spirit sensation. Accordingly the soul, that is the air insinuated into the blood, would be the principle of life in man, and the ether insinuated into the nerves would be the principle of sensation. In proportion as ether is more active than air, the animal spirits would be more mobile and quick than the vital. And just as soul is acted on by spirit, so spirit would be acted on by what the Latins called mens, meaning thought; hence the Latin phrase “mens animi,” the mind of the spirit. And this thought or mind would come to men from Jove, who is the mind of the ether. Finally, if all this were so, the operating principle of all things in nature would be corpuscles of pyramidal shape. And certainly ether united [separated off and condensed] is fire.

On the basis of these principles, in conversation with Doria one day in the home of Don Lucio di Sangro, Vico remarked that perhaps those effects which the physicists marvel at as strange in the magnet, are, if they would but reflect, common enough in fire. For the most marvelous magnetic phenomena are three: the attraction of iron, the communication of magnetic power to the iron, and the pointing to the pole. Yet nothing is more commonplace than that heat at distances proportional [to its intensity] begets fire; that fire in whirling begets flame, which communicates light to us; and that flame points to the vertex of its heaven. Thus if the magnet were as rarefied as the flame and the flame as dense as the magnet, the latter would not point to the pole but to its zenith, and the flame would point to the pole and not to its vertex. Might it not be then that the magnet points to the pole because that is the highest part of the heaven to which it can raise itself? For it is readily observable in fairly long needles whose points have been magnetized, that while they turn to the pole they can be clearly seen trying to rise toward the zenith. Perhaps therefore, if travelers would observe the magnet in this respect and determine wherever it rose higher than elsewhere, it might give us those accurate measurements of latitude which are now so much sought in order to bring geography to its perfection.164

Doria was highly pleased by this reasoning, so Vico sought to extend it to the advantage of medicine. For those same Egyptians who represented nature by the pyramid had a distinctive mechanical medicine, that of “slack and tight” which the most learned Prospero Alpino set forth with great learning and erudition. And when Vico saw that no physician had made use of heat and cold as defined by Descartes165 (cold being motion inward from without and heat the reverse motion outward from within), he was moved to build thereon a system of medicine. May not ardent fevers be caused by air in the veins [i.e., arteries] moving from the heart at the center to the periphery and distending, more than is compatible with good health, the diameters of blood vessels clogged at the opposite or outer end? On the other hand, may not malignant [“bad-air” or malarial] fevers be motion of air in the blood vessels [i.e., veins] inward from without, likewise distending more than is compatible with good health the diameters of vessels clogged at the opposite or [in this case] inner end? Thus the heart, center of the animate body, would lack the air it needs for such motion as health requires; and as the heart’s motion became weaker the blood would clot, which is the chief cause of acute fevers. Is not this the “divine something” that Hippocrates166 said gave rise to such fevers? This view is supported by reasonable conjectures from all nature. For instance, cold and heat contribute alike to the generation of things. Cold promotes the germination of grain seeds, the generation of worms in dead bodies, and that of other animals in dark and damp places. Excessive cold as well as heat causes gangrene, and in Sweden gangrene is treated with ice. It is supported also by the symptoms of malignant fevers, cold touch and colliquative sweats, which indicate great enlargement of the excretory vessels; and by those of ardent fevers, hot and rough touch, the roughness indicating that the vessels are too shriveled and shrunken toward the outer end. May it not then be that the Latin practice of reducing all diseases to the all-embracing genus ruptum derived from an ancient medical tradition in Italy that all illness starts from deterioration of solid parts and leads in the end to what these same Latins called corruptum?167

For the reasons set forth in the little book which he afterwards published,168 Vico now undertook to ground his physics on a suitable metaphysics. By similar treatment of the origins of Latin words, he purged Zeno’s points169 of Aristotle’s garbled reports, and showed that these points are the only hypothesis for descending from abstract to bodily things, just as geometry is the only way to proceed scientifically from bodily things to the abstract things by which the bodies are constituted. The definition of the point as that which has no parts amounts to the founding of an infinite principle of abstract extension. As the point, which is not extended, by an excursion makes the extension of the line, so there must be an infinite substance that as it were by its excursion, that is by generation, gives form to finite things. And as Pythagoras will have the world constituted by numbers, which in a certain way are more abstract than lines, for the reason that one is not number yet generates number and in every odd number is indivisibly present (whence Aristotle said essences are indivisible like numbers, for to divide them is to destroy them), so the point, which stands equally under [is equally the substance of] lines of unequal extension (so that the diagonal and side of a square, for example, though otherwise incommensurable are cut in the same [infinite number of] points [by lines parallel to the adjacent side]), is a hypothesis of an unextended substance that stands equally under unequal bodies and equally supports them.

This metaphysics would have as sequels the logic of the Stoics in which they were taught to reason in sorites, which was their way of arguing as it were by a geometric method, and also their physics which posits as principle of all corporeal forms the wedge, in the same way that the first composite figure generated in geometry is the triangle, just as the first simple figure is the circle, symbol of God’s perfection. Thus we might easily come out with the physics of the Egyptians, who conceived nature as a pyramid, which is a solid with four triangular faces. The Egyptian medicine of slack and tight would also fit in. Vico wrote on the latter a short book with the title On the Equilibrium of Living Bodies addressed to Domenico d’ Aulisio, as learned a man as ever was in medical matters. He also had frequent discussions on this subject with Lucantonio Porzio, which won him the latter’s high esteem and intimate friendship, maintained until the death of this last Italian philosopher of the school of Galileo. Porzio was wont to say among his friends that he was (to use his own expression) dismayed by Vico’s meditations. But the Metaphysics alone was printed at Naples in duodecimo in the year 1710 by Felice Mosca and dedicated to Don Paolo Doria, as the first book of the treatise On the Primitive Wisdom of the Italians to be recovered from the Origins of the Latin Language. This book gave rise to a controversy between the Venetian critics and the author, and the latter’s Reply and Rejoinder were published at Naples by Mosca in 1711 and 1712 respectively, both in duodecimo.170 This debate was carried on honorably by both parties and concluded with good grace. But the dissatisfaction with grammatical etymologies which Vico had begun to feel was an indication of the source whence later, in his most recent works, he was to recover the origins of languages, deriving them from a principle of nature common to all on which he establishes the principles of a universal etymology to determine the origins of all languages living or dead. And his slight satisfaction with Bacon’s book attempting to trace the wisdom of the ancients in the fables of the poets, was a sign of the source whence Vico, also in his latest works, was to recover principles of poetry different from those which the Greeks and Latins and the others since them have hitherto accepted. On these he establishes the only principles of mythology according to which the fables bore historical evidence as to the first Greek commonwealths, and by their aid he explains all the fabulous history of the heroic commonwealths.

A short time later he was honored by the request of Don Adriano Caraffa, Duke of Traetto, in whose education he had been employed for many years, to write the life of Marshal Antonio Caraffa his uncle. Vico, who cherished a truthful spirit, accepted the commission because the Duke was able to provide an enormous quantity of good and reliable documentary material that was in his keeping. Since his duties consumed all his time during the day, he had only the night to spend on this task, and it took him two years: one to prepare his commentaries from the confused and scattered source material, the other to weave his history out of these commentaries. During this whole period he was wracked by the cruelest hypochondriac cramps in the left arm. And as everyone could see of evenings while he was writing the book [in Latin], he had nothing before him on his desk save the commentaries, as if he were writing in his native language, in the midst of the turmoil and distraction of the household and often in conversation with his friends. Yet he carried out the work with proper honor to the subject, reverence for princes, and the justice we owe to the truth. The work was magnificently printed by the press of Felice Mosca in one volume quarto in the year 1716, and was the first book published by any press of Naples in the style of the Dutch printers. The Duke sent it to the supreme pontiff Clement XI, who in his letter of acknowledgment praised it as an “immortal history.” Moreover it earned for Vico the esteem and friendship of a most illustrious Italian man of letters, Gianvincenzo Gravina, with whom thenceforth he carried on an intimate correspondence as long as Gravina lived.171

While preparing to write this life Vico found himself obliged to read Hugo Grotius On the Law of War and Peace. And here he found a fourth author to add to the three he had set before himself. For Plato adorns rather than confirms his esoteric wisdom with the common wisdom of Homer. Tacitus intersperses his metaphysics, ethics and politics with the facts, as they have come down to him from the times, scattered and confused and without system. Bacon sees that the sum of human and divine knowledge of his time needs supplementing and emending, but as far as laws are concerned he does not succeed with his canons in compassing the universe of cities and the course of all times, or the extent of all nations. Grotius, however, embraces in a system of universal law the whole of philosophy and philology, including both parts of the latter, the history on the one hand of facts and events, both fabulous and real, and on the other of the three languages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin; that is to say, the three learned languages of antiquity that have been handed down to us by the Christian religion. And Vico had occasion to penetrate much more deeply into this work of Grotius when he was asked to write some notes for a new edition of it. He set out to write them less in correction of Grotius than of Gronovius’s notes on him, which had been added more to please free governments than to give justice its due. Vico had covered the first book and half of the second when he abandoned the task, reflecting that it was not fitting for a man of Catholic faith to adorn with notes the work of a heretical author.

Prepared by all these studies and the knowledge he had acquired, and by these four authors whom he admired above all others and desired to turn to the use of the Catholic religion, Vico finally came to perceive that there was not yet in the world of letters a system so devised as to bring the best philosophy, that of Plato made subordinate to the Christian faith, into harmony with a philology exhibiting scientific necessity in both its branches, that is in the two histories, that of languages and that of things; to give certainty to the history of languages by reference to the history of things; and to bring into accord the maxims of the academic sages and the practices of the political sages. By this insight Vico’s mind arrived at a clear conception of what it had been vaguely seeking in the first inaugural orations and had sketched somewhat clumsily in the dissertation On the Method of the Studies of Our Time, and a little more distinctly in the Metaphysics.

At the solemn public opening of studies in 1719 he therefore proposed this argument: “All divine and human learning has three elements: knowledge, will and power, whose single principle is the mind, with reason for its eye, to which God brings the light of eternal truth.”172 And he divided the argument thus: “Now as to these three elements, which we know to exist and to belong to us as certainly as we know that we ourselves live, let us explain them by that one thing of which we cannot by any means doubt, that is of course by thought. That we may the more easily do this, I divide this entire discourse into three parts. In the first of these let us demonstrate that all the principles of the sciences are from God. In the second, that the divine light or eternal truth, by the three elements above set forth, permeates all the sciences, disposes them all in an order in which they are linked by the closest ties one with another, and relates them all to God as their source. In the third, that whatever has been written or said concerning the foundations of divine and human learning, if it agrees with these principles, is true, if it disagrees is false. Three further matters concerning the knowledge of divine and human things I shall also treat: its origin, circularity, and consistency;173 and I shall show that the origins of all things proceed from God, that all return to God by a circle, that all have their consistency in God, and that apart from God they are all darkness and error.” And he discoursed on this argument for an hour and more.

Some considered the argument, particularly in the third part, more magnificent than effectual, saying that Pico della Mirandola had not assumed such a burden when he proposed to sustain “conclusions concerning all the knowable,” for he left aside the great and major part of it, namely philology [=historiography], which, treating of countless matters of religions, languages, laws, customs, property rights, conveyances, sovereign powers, governments, classes and the like, is in its beginnings incomplete, obscure, unreasonable, incredible, and without hope of reduction to scientific principles.174 Whereupon Vico, in order to give a preliminary idea of it that would show that such a science could indeed come into being, published a prospectus which circulated among the men of letters of Italy and beyond the Alps.175 Some gave unfavorable opinions of it, but since they did not maintain these opinions when the work later appeared adorned with very complimentary opinions of learned scholars, whose praises weighed in its favor, they are hardly worth mentioning here. Anton Salvini, a great glory of Italy, deigned to make some objections to the work on the score of philology. These were conveyed to Vico by means of a letter addressed to Francesco Valletta, a most learned man and worthy heir of the celebrated Valletta library left by his grandfather Giuseppe. Vico made courteous reply in his On the Consistency of Philology. Other objections on the score of philosophy were made by Ulrich Hüber and Christian Thomasius, men famous for their learning in Germany, and were conveyed to Vico by Baron Ludwig von Gemmingen;176 but he found he had answered them in the work itself, as can be seen at the end of the book On the Consistency of the Jurisprudent.

When the first book appeared with the title On the One Principle and the One End of Universal Law in the same year 1720, printed in quarto by the same Felice Mosca, in which Vico proves the first and second parts of the dissertation, there reached the author’s ears objections voiced by critics unknown to him, and others were made to him in person by certain people. None of these objections undermined the system itself; they had to do with small details, and for the most part they derived from old opinions against which the system had been designed. So that he might not seem to be feigning enemies merely to strike them down, Vico answered these critics without naming them in the book he next published, On the Consistency of the Jurisprudent, in order that these unknown adversaries, if ever the book fell into their hands, should understand in solitude and privacy that they had been answered. This second volume, with the title On the Consistency of the Jurisprudent, came out the following year, 1721, likewise published in quarto by Mosca. Here are given more detailed proofs of the third part of the dissertation, divided in this book into two parts, one On the Consistency of Philosophy, the other On the Consistency of Philology. In the latter part some were displeased by the chapter entitled “A New Science is Essayed,” wherein he begins to reduce philology to scientific principles. But it was found that the promise made by Vico in the third part of the dissertation was by no means vain, either on the side of philosophy or, what was more, on that of philology. Moreover by this system many important discoveries were made, all new and far removed from the opinion of the scholars of all times. So the work suffered no other reproof than that of being unintelligible. But scholars of the city attested to the world that it was eminently intelligible, by approving it publicly and giving it their grave and effectual praise. Their eulogies may be read in the work itself.

About this time a letter was written to Vico by Jean Le Clerc of the following tenor:

A few days ago, distinguished sir, the ephor of the illustrious Count Wildenstein delivered to me your work on the origin of law and on philology. Though I was then at Utrecht, I was scarcely able to skim through it. For I was compelled by certain business affairs to return to Amsterdam before I had time to immerse myself in its limpid fountain. At a glance, however, I saw many excellent things, both philosophical and philological, which will give me occasion to show our northern scholars that acumen and erudition are to be found among the Italians no less than among themselves; indeed, that more learned and acute things are being said by Italians than can be hoped for from dwellers in colder climes. Tomorrow I return to Utrecht, to stay there a few weeks and to enjoy your work to the full in that retreat, where I am less interrupted than at Amsterdam. When I have adequately grasped your thought, in the second part of volume eighteen of the Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne I shall show how highly it is to be prized. Farewell, distinguished sir, and number me among those who justly esteem your remarkable erudition. Written in haste at Amsterdam, September 8, 1722.177

This letter delighted the able men who had judged favorably the work of Vico, and by the same token displeased those who were of the contrary opinion. The latter persuaded themselves that Le Clerc was simply paying a private compliment, and would give the book such justice as they thought it deserved when he came to his public criticism of it in the Bibliotheque. They said it was impossible that as a result of this work of Vico’s Le Clerc should be willing to retract what he had been saying for nearly fifty years, namely that Italy produced no works that could stand comparison for wit or learning with those published in the rest of Europe. Vico, meanwhile, to prove to the world that while cherishing the esteem of distinguished men he did not make it the end and goal of his work, read both the poems of Homer in the light of his principles of philology; and by certain canons of mythology which he had conceived, he gives these poems an aspect different from that which they have hitherto borne, and shows how divinely the poet weaves into the treatment of his two subjects two groups of Greek stories, the one belonging to the obscure period and the other to the heroic, according to Varro’s division. These interpretations of Homer, along with the canons of mythology, he had printed in quarto by Mosca in the following year, 1722, with this title: Notes by Giambattista Vico on two books, one On the Principle of Universal Law, the other On the Consistency of the Jurisprudent.178

A short time later the chair of the head morning lecturer on law fell vacant.179 This was inferior to that of the afternoon lecturer, and carried a stipend of six hundred ducats a year. Vico’s hopes of winning it were quickened by the above related accomplishments, particularly in the field of jurisprudence, through which he had prepared himself for such advancement in his university. He is moreover its oldest member in point of professorial tenure, for he alone holds his chair by appointment of Charles II, and all the others hold theirs by later appointments. He relied too on the life he had led in his native city, where by the work of his intellect he had honored all, been of service to many, and harmed none. On the day preceding the competition, as the custom was, the Digestum vetus, from which on this occasion the laws were to be drawn by lot, was opened, and these three fell to Vico: one from the title Laying claim to a thing, one from The peculium, and lastly the first law under [Actions using] prescribed words. Since all three were texts full of matter, Vico, wishing to show Monsignor Vidania, prefect of studies, his readiness for the trial (although he had never taught jurisprudence), asked him to be so kind as to assign one of the three passages as the text for his lecture twenty-four hours hence. When the prefect declined to make the selection, Vico chose for himself the last of the three,180 because, he said, it was taken from Papinian who of all jurisconsults had the loftiest faculties, and had to do with the definitions of legal terms, which in jurisprudence is the hardest task to carry out well. He foresaw that only a rash and ignorant man would calumniate him for choosing that law, for it would amount to reproaching him for choosing so difficult a subject. Cujas indeed when he defines legal terms waxes proud (and rightly so), and bids all come and learn from him, as in his Paratitles to the Digest, the title On codicils. He considers Papinian the prince of Roman jurisconsults precisely because none defines better than he and none has furnished jurisprudence with more or better definitions.

The other competitors had placed their hopes in four things as rocks to shipwreck Vico. All were led by their inward respect for his services to the University to feel sure that he would begin with a long and grandiloquent account of them. A few, who knew that he could readily do so, prophesied that he would base his interpretation of the text on his own Principles of Universal Law, and by thus breaking the rules for competitions in jurisprudence would arouse the audience to protest. The majority, who think the only masters of a subject are those who teach it to the young, fondly expected him to base his argument on Hotman, since his text was one that Hotman had discussed with much erudition; or else, since Favre had attacked all the early interpretations of this law and had not been answered by any later interpreters, to fill his lecture with Favre or at least not to attack him. But Vico’s lecture turned out quite different from anything they had expected. He began with a brief, grave and moving introduction; then he recited the principium or beginning of the law, restricting his lecture to it and excluding the other paragraphs. After giving a summary and outline, he proceeded immediately to interpret the words of the law one by one, in a style as unusual in such competitions as it was common among the Roman jurisconsults. For they are always repeating “The law says,” “The senate decree says,” “The praetor says”; and he used the similar formula, “The jurisconsult says.” This he did to escape the charge, so often made in these competitions, of wandering (however slightly) from the text. Only an ignorant and malicious person would depreciate his lecture on the ground that he was allowed to base it on the principium of the title, for the laws of the Pandects are not at all organized according to any scholastic method employed by the institute writers. And though Papinian happened to be cited in that principium, it might have been some other jurisconsult defining in other words and in another sense the action under discussion. From the interpretation of the words he elicited the sense of Papinian’s definition, illustrated it by reference to Cujas, and showed how it agreed with the definition of the Greek interpreters. Then he dealt with Favre and showed how slight, carping and empty were his reasons for reprehending Accursius, Paolo di Castro, the old ultramontane interpreters, and finally Andrea Alciati. Though he had named Hotman before Cujas in the list of those attacked by Favre, in the sequel he forgot Hotman and after Alciati took up the defense of Cujas. When he realized what he had done, he interpolated these words: “I see that by a lapse of memory I have placed Cujas before Hotman; but now that Cujas is absolved, we shall proceed to vindicate Hotman from Favre’s charges.” So firmly had he relied on carrying the day with Hotman! Finally, just as he was coming to the defense of Hotman, the lecture hour ended.

He had prepared his lecture the evening before, working until five in the morning in the midst of the conversation of his friends and the cries of his children, as his custom was, whether reading, writing, or thinking. He had reduced the lecture to main heads which could be set down on a single page, and he delivered it with as much facility as if he had taught nothing else all his life, and with such a copiousness of expression as might have served another for a two hours’ harangue. He used the very finest legal expressions of the most erudite jurisprudence, including the Greek technical terms; indeed, when he required a scholastic expression, he chose the Greek term in preference to the barbarian. Once only, because of the difficulty of the word progegrammenōn, he hesitated for a moment, but then continued: “It is no wonder that I was brought to a halt, for the very antitupia [harshness] of the word put me off.” Many thought he had allowed himself to seem confused only in order to recompose himself with so apt and elegant a Hellenism. The next day he wrote out his lecture just as he had delivered it, and distributed copies. He gave one to Don Domenico Caravita, leading advocate of these tribunals and very worthy son of Don Nicola, for he had been unable to be present.

For taking this step Vico supposed his qualifications and trial lecture were sufficient warrant. The general applause of the lecture had made him feel almost certain of obtaining the chair. But now he was forewarned of the unhappy outcome (so it proved even for the students who were presently graduated in that faculty), and the said Domenico Caravita, a sagacious man who was very well disposed toward him, agreed that it behooved him to retire from the field. By his authoritative advice, therefore, he magnanimously went and announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy. This he did in order not to lay himself open to the charge of false delicacy and pride in abstaining from going about soliciting and doing all the other things that are expected of the candidates.

For this misfortune of Vico’s, which made him despair of ever holding a worthier position in his native city, there was some consolation in Jean Le Clerc’s review. In Article VIII of the second part of Volume XVIII of the Bibliothèque ancienne et moderne, as if he had heard the charges some had brought against Vico’s work, he expressed himself as follows (his words are here translated literally from the original French). As if addressing those who said the work was unintelligible, he gives it as his general opinion that it is “full of recondite matter considered from quite various points of view, and written in a very compact style”; that countless passages [are incapable of further condensation and] could only be represented by long quotations; that it is constructed by “mathematical method,” which “from few principles draws infinite consequences”; that one must read it with care and without interruption from beginning to end, accustoming oneself to the author’s ideas and style; that as its readers thus meditate upon it, “they will find besides, as they get farther into it, many discoveries and interesting observations beyond their expectations.” As touching the matters which had caused such a stir when first presented in the third part of Vico’s dissertation, Le Clerc says with reference to the philosophy: “Of all that has ever been said about the principles of divine and human erudition, so much is necessarily true as is found to agree with what has been written in the preceding book” [on universal law]. And with reference to the philology: “In brief compass he gives us the principal eras from the deluge to Hannibal’s invasion of Italy, for here and there throughout the book he discusses various things which took place in that space of time, and makes many philological observations on a great number of matters, correcting a quantity of common errors which the ablest critics have passed over.” And finally, addressing the public generally, he concludes: “There is a continuous mingling of philosophical, juridical and philological matters, for Signor Vico has devoted himself particularly to these three sciences and pondered them well, as all who read his works will agree. There is such a close relationship between these three sciences that one cannot boast of having penetrated and understood any one of them in all its ramifications without having also a very good knowledge of the others. We are not surprised therefore to read at the end of the volume the tributes that Italian scholars have bestowed on the work. From these we gather that the author is regarded as an expert in metaphysics, law and philology, and his work as original and full of important discoveries.”

[PART B, 1725, 1728]

THAT Vico was born for the glory of his native city and therefore of Italy (since, being born there and not in Morocco, he became a scholar) is evidenced by nothing so much as by this: that after this blow of adverse fortune, which would have made another henceforth renounce all learning if not repent of having ever cultivated it, he did not even suspend his labors on other works. Indeed he had already written one divided into two parts, which would have made two sizeable volumes in quarto.181 In the first part he set out to find the principles of the natural law of the peoples within those of the humanity of the nations, by way of [a critique of] the improbabilities, absurdities and impossibilities which his predecessors had rather imagined than thought out. As a sequel to this in the second part he set forth the generation of human customs by means of a certain rational chronology of the obscure and fabulous periods of the [history of the] Greeks, to whom we owe all we know of gentile antiquity. The work had indeed already been read through by Don Giulio Torno,182 a learned theologian of the Neapolitan church, when Vico decided that this negative form of exposition, though intriguing to the imagination, is repugnant to the understanding, since by it the human mind is not enlarged. On the other hand, by a stroke of bad luck183 he found himself in such straits that he could not afford to print the work and yet felt only too obliged to do so as a matter of honor, since he had promised its publication. So he bent all his faculties toward finding, by intense meditation, a positive method [of exposition] which would be more concise and thus more efficacious.

At the close of the year 1725 he published in Naples, from the press of Felice Mosca, a book in duodecimo consisting of only twelve sheets [288 pages] set up in brevier type and entitled: Principles of a New Science of the Nature of Nations, from which are derived New Principles of the Natural Law of Peoples;184 and in an inscription he addresses the book to the universities of Europe. In this work he finally discovers in its full extent that principle which in his previous works he had as yet understood only in a confused and indistinct way. For he now recognizes an indispensable and even human necessity to seek the first origins of this science in the beginnings of sacred history. And because philosophers and philologians alike acknowledge their despair of tracing the steps of its progress in the first founders of gentile nations, he made ample, nay vast, use of one of the remarks Jean Le Clerc had made about his previous work. Vico, he said, “has given us a summary of the principal eras from the flood to the Second Punic War, discussing various things that took place in that space of time, making many philological observations about a great number of matters, and correcting a quantity of common errors which the ablest critics have passed over.” For he discovers this new science by means of a new critical method for sifting the truth as to the founders of the [gentile] nations from the popular traditions of the nations they founded. Whereas the writers to whose works criticism is usually applied came thousands of years after these founders. By the light of this new critical method the origins of almost all the disciplines, whether sciences or arts, which are necessary if we are to discuss with clarity of ideas and propriety of language the natural law of nations, are discovered to be quite different from those that have previously been imagined.

Hence he divides these principles into two parts: one of ideas, the other of languages. In the part devoted to ideas he discovers new historical principles of geography and chronology, the two eyes of history, and thence the principles of universal history hitherto lacking. He discovers new historical principles of philosophy, and first of all a metaphysics of the human race. That is to say, a natural theology of all nations by which each people naturally created by itself its own gods through a certain natural instinct that man has for divinity. Fear of these gods led the first founders of nations to unite themselves with certain women in a lifelong companionship. This was the first human form of marriage. Thus he discovers the identity of the grand principle of gentile theology with that of the poetry of the theological poets, who were the world’s first poets as well as the first poets of all gentile humanity. From this metaphysics he derives a morality and thence a politics common to all the nations, and on this he bases a jurisprudence of the human race, varying with certain sects of the times,185 as the nations unfold the ideas of their nature, with consequent developmental changes in their governments. The final form of the latter he shows to be monarchy, in which the nations by nature come at last to rest. In this way he fills up the great void left in the principles of universal history, which begins with Ninus and the monarchy of the Assyrians.

In the part devoted to languages he discovers new principles of poetry, both of song and of verse, and shows that both it and they sprang up by the same natural necessity in all the first nations. By following up these principles, he discovers new origins of heroic insignia, which were the dumb language of all the first nations at a time when they were incapable of articulate speech. Thence he discovers new principles of the science of heraldry, which he shows to be the same as those of numismatics. Here he observes the heroic origins of the two houses of France and Austria with their four thousand years of continuous sovereignty. Among other results of the discovery of the origins of languages, he finds certain principles common to all, and by a specimen essay reveals the true causes of the Latin language. By this example he opens the way for scholars to do the same for all other tongues. He gives an idea of an etymologicon common to all original languages, and then an idea of another etymologicon for words of foreign origin, in order finally to develop an idea of a universal etymologicon for the science of language which is necessary if we are to be able to discuss with propriety the natural law of the peoples.

By means of these principles of ideas and tongues, that is by means of this philosophy and philology of the human race, he develops an ideal eternal history based on the idea of the providence by which, as he shows throughout the work, the natural law of the peoples was ordained. This eternal history is traversed in time by all the particular histories of the nations, each with its rise, development, acme, decline and fall. Thus from the Egyptians, who twitted the Greeks for being always children and knowing nothing of antiquity, he takes and puts to use two great fragments of antiquity. One of these is their division of all preceding times into three ages: the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of men. The other is their reduction of the languages spoken before their time to three types, coeval respectively with the three ages. First, the divine, a dumb language of hieroglyphics or sacred characters. Second, the symbolic, consisting of metaphors as the heroic language did. Third, the epistolographic [demotic], consisting of expressions agreed upon for the everyday uses of life.

He shows that the first age and the first language coincide with the time of the families, which certainly preceded the cities among all nations, and out of which it is agreed the cities arose. These families were ruled by the fathers as sovereign princes under the government of the gods, ordering all human affairs according to the divine auspices. Vico sets forth their history with the greatest naturalness and simplicity by reference to the divine fables of the Greeks. He observes in this connection that the Oriental gods, raised to the stars by the Chaldeans, brought into Greece by the Phoenicians (which he shows happened after the Homeric period), found the names of the Greek gods ready to receive them, just as when they were later brought to Latium they found ready the names of the Latin gods. Thus he shows that the same pattern was repeated among Latins, Greeks and Asians, though [not simultaneously but] one after another.

Then he shows that the second age and the second or symbolic language coincide with the period of the first civil governments. These he shows were those of certain heroic kingdoms or ruling orders of nobles, whom the ancient Greeks called “herculean races” and held to be of divine origin. The first plebeians, their subjects, on the other hand, were held to be of bestial origin. The history of these kingdoms he easily exhibits as delineated for us by the Greeks in the character of their Theban Hercules. He certainly was the greatest of the Greek heroes and the progenitor of the Heraclids, by whom, under its two kings, the Spartan kingdom, beyond question an aristocratic one, was governed. And since the Egyptians and the Greeks alike observed that every nation had a Hercules (and as for the Latins, Varro enumerated as many as forty), Vico concludes that after the gods the heroes reigned everywhere among the gentile nations. Now according to a great fragment of Greek antiquity the Curetes emigrated from Greece into Crete, Saturnia (i.e., Italy), and Asia. He shows that these were the Latin Quirites, one group of which were the Roman Quirites, who were bands of men armed with spears. Hence the Law of the Quirites was the law of all the heroic peoples. He shows the vanity of the tale that the Law of the Twelve Tables came from Athens, and in three indigenous laws of the heroic races of Latium, introduced and observed in Rome and later fixed in the Tables, he discovers the basic causes of Roman government, virtue and justice, enforced in peace by law and in war by conquest. For otherwise ancient Roman history, interpreted by ideas now current, is even more incredible than the fabulous history of the Greeks. In the light of all this he sets forth the true principles of Roman jurisprudence.

Finally he shows that the third age, that of common men and vernacular languages, coincides with the times of the ideas of a human nature completely developed and hence recognized as identical in all men. This developed human nature brought with it forms of human government, which he shows to be the popular and the monarchical. To this period belonged the Roman jurisconsults under the emperors. Thus he shows that monarchies are the final governments in which nations come to rest. On the fanciful hypothesis that the first kings were monarchs such as those of the present are, the commonwealths could not have begun. Nor could the nations have begun by fraud and force, as has been imagined hitherto.

Equipped with these and other less important discoveries, of which he makes a great number, he proceeds to discuss the natural law of the peoples, and shows at what certain times and in what determinate ways the customs were born that constitute the entire economy of this law. These are religions, languages, property rights, conveyances, classes, sovereign powers, laws, arms, trials, penalties, wars, peaces and alliances. And from the times and ways in which they were born he unfolds the eternal properties which show that the nature of each, that is the time and way of its origin, is such and not otherwise.

He always takes account of the essential differences between the Hebrews and the gentiles. The former from the beginning arose and stood steadfast on the practices of an eternal justice. The pagan nations, however, by the sole guidance of divine providence, underwent with constant uniformity the successive variations of three kinds of laws corresponding to the three ages and languages of the Egyptians. The first law was divine, under the government of the true God among the Hebrews and of various false gods among the gentiles. The second was heroic, or peculiar to the heroes who stood midway between gods and men. The third was human, or peculiar to human nature as fully developed and recognized as alike in all men. Not until this last law already holds sway is it possible for philosophers to arise among the nations and perfect it by reasoning from the maxims of an eternal justice.

On this last point Grotius, Selden and Pufendorf have erred together. For lack of a critical method applicable to the founders of the nations, they believed them to be wise in esoteric wisdom and did not see that for the gentiles providence was the divine teacher of a common wisdom, out of which among them after the lapse of centuries the esoteric wisdom [of the philosophers] emerged. Thus our three authorities have failed to distinguish the natural law of the nations, which was coeval with their customs, from the natural law of the philosophers, which the latter grasped by force of reasoning, without ascribing any privilege to a people chosen by God for [the preservation of] his true cult [when it was] lost by all the other nations. The lack of this critical method had likewise earlier misled the learned interpreters of the Roman law into accepting the fable of the introduction of the Twelve Tables from Athens and reading into Roman jurisprudence, against its very genius, the sects of the philosophers, especially those of the Stoics and Epicureans, whereas there is nothing more contrary to the principles not merely of Roman jurisprudence but of civilization itself than those of these two schools. This precluded their treating it in the light of its own sects, which were those of the times,185 as the Roman jurisconsults themselves expressly claim to have done.

By this work, to the glory of the Catholic religion, the principles of all gentile wisdom human and divine have been discovered in this our age and in the bosom of the true Church, and Vico has thereby procured for our Italy the advantage of not envying Protestant Holland, England or Germany their three princes of this science. For these reasons the book has had the good fortune to be graciously received by His Eminence Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini, to whom it is dedicated; and he has praised it in these (not the meanest) terms: “A work, certainly, that for antiquity of language and for soundness of doctrine will suffice to show that there still lives in Italian spirits today a native and peculiar gift for Tuscan eloquence as well as a robust and happy boldness for undertaking new productions in the most difficult disciplines. Therefore I congratulate upon it the fatherland that it so adorns.”

CONTINUATION BY THE AUTHOR [1731]

WHEN the New Science was published, the author was careful to send it to Jean Le Clerc among others, and chose the Leghorn route as being the safest. Along with a letter addressed to Le Clerc, he inclosed it in a package to Giuseppe Attias, with whom he had formed a friendship here in Naples. Among the Hebrews of this age, Attias is reputed to be the most learned in the study of the sacred tongue, as is shown by his edition of the Old Testament published in Amsterdam, a work which has won acclaim in the republic of letters.186 In the following reply he graciously accepted the commission.

I am unable to express the pleasure I felt in receiving your affectionate letter of November 3, which has renewed the memory of my happy sojourn in your most charming city. It will suffice to say that I was continually overwhelmed by the kindness and favors shown me by its celebrated men of letters, and especially by you, who have honored me with your excellent and sublime works. I have mentioned this with pride to the friends of my own circle and to the men of letters that I have met in my travels in France and Italy. I shall send the package and letter for M. Le Clerc to a friend of mine in Amsterdam who will give them to him personally. Thus I shall have fulfilled my duty and carried out your excellency’s esteemed commands. I am infinitely obliged for your courtesy in giving me a copy of your book. It has been read by my friends and has been much admired for the sublimity of its subject and the abundance of new thoughts which (as M. Le Clerc puts it)187 it suggests on many matters, great and wonderful for their rarity and sublimity, over and above the pleasure and profit yielded by all your works when attentively read. In closing, I beg you to remember me respectfully to Father Sostegni.

But Vico had no response from Le Clerc, perhaps because he was dead or because old age had compelled him to give up his scholarly pursuits and literary correspondence.188

In the midst of these severe studies Vico had no lack of lighter tasks as well. When King Philip V came to Naples, the Duke of Escalona, who was then governing the Kingdom of Naples, through Serafino Biscardi, who had been a preeminent advocate and was then Grand Chancellor, commissioned Vico, as Royal Professor of Eloquence, to write an oration on the King’s coming. He had barely eight days before the King’s departure, so that he had to compose it in great haste. It was printed in duodecimo with the title Panegyric addressed to Philip V, King of the Spaniards.

Later when this kingdom came under Austrian rule, Count Wierich von Daun, commander of the imperial armies in this kingdom, commanded him as follows in this flattering letter:

Most illustrious signor Giovan Battista di Vico, Professor in the Royal University of Naples.—His Catholic Majesty (whom God preserve) having ordered me to see that the funerals of Don Giuseppe Capece and Don Carlo di Sangro are solemnized with the dignity becoming his royal magnificence and the great valor of the deceased gentlemen, the composition of the funeral oration has been entrusted to Father Don Benedetto Laudati, Benedictine prior. Since other compositions must be made for the funeral inscriptions, I, admiring your lofty style, have thought this matter might well be entrusted to your recognized skill. I assure you that in addition to the honor you will achieve in such a worthy work, I shall keep a lively memory of your noble labors. Hoping that I may be of use to you on some occasion, I pray that Heaven may favor you. I am, illustrious sir, your excellency’s devoted servant, COUNT VON DAUN.

From this palace in Naples, October 11, 1707 (by my own hand).

So Vico composed for this occasion the inscriptions, emblems and mottoes and the account of the funeral ceremonies, and Father Laudati, the prior, a man of excellent life and very learned in theology and canon law, pronounced the oration. The contributions of both were published in an illustrated volume, magnificently printed in folio at the expense of the royal treasury, entitled Funeral Rites of Carlo di Sangro and Giuseppe Capece.189

Not long after, by the gracious command of Count Carlo Borromeo the viceroy, Vico composed the inscriptions for the funeral rites that were celebrated in the royal chapel on the death of the Emperor Joseph.

Adverse fortune later dealt a blow to his scholarly repute,190 but since the matter was beyond his control this very adversity gained him an honor which a subject is not even permitted to desire under a monarchy. For the funeral rites of the Empress Eleanor he was commanded by Cardinal Wolfgang von Schrottenbach, the viceroy, to compose the inscriptions which follow. He planned them in such a way that, read separately, each is sufficient to itself, and, taken together, they compose a funeral oration. The one that was to be inscribed over the door of the royal chapel, on the outside, contains the proemium, as follows:

TO HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS ELEANOR/OF THE HOUSE OF THE DUKES OF NEUBURG/BELOVED WIFE OF KAISER LEOPOLD/AND NOBLE MOTHER OF CHARLES VI OF AUSTRIA/EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS, KING OF THE SPANIARDS AND NEAPOLITANS/HE HAS RENDERED DUE FUNERAL HONORS/YOUR PRINCE, DELIGHT OF THE STATE/ IS IN MOURNING/HITHER DO YOU, O CITIZENS/BRING YOUR TRIBUTE/OF PUBLIC MOURNING

Of the four inscriptions meant to be set up inside over the four arches of the chapel, the first contains the eulogy:

YOU WHO BEHOLD THIS EMPTY TOMB/CONSIDER IT EMPTY INDEED/FOR AMID THE DELIGHTS OF ROYAL FORTUNE/SHE TURNED AWAY FROM TRANSITORY PLEASURES/AND AT THE HEIGHT OF WOMANLY DIGNITY/SHE HUMBLED HERSELF TO THOSE OF THE LOWLIEST STATION/AMONG MORTALS OF THE HUMAN RACE THE MARK OF CULTURE/IS CARE OF THOSE ETERNAL THINGS/WHICH/WHEREVER ON EARTH THEY BE NEGLECTED/HERE/HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS ELEANOR HAVING DIED/ARE HEAPED WITH THE HIGHEST HONORS

The second sets forth the magnitude of the loss:

IF THERE ARE WORTHY KINGS ON EARTH/WHO BY EXAMPLES RATHER THAN BY LAWS/AMEND THE CORRUPTED CUSTOMS OF PEOPLES AND RACES/AND PRESERVE THE CIVIL FELICITY OF STATES/ELEANOR/AS MUCH BY HER OWN VIRTUE AS BY THE FORTUNE OF A ROYAL HUSBAND/WAS A WOMAN TRULY ABOVE ALL OTHERS IN THE WORLD/WHO AS WIFE AND MOTHER OF KINGS/BY THE SANCTITY OF HER LIFE/ACCORDING TO HER WOMANLY ABILITY CONTRIBUTED SO MUCH/TO THE HAPPINESS OF A CHRISTIAN EMPIRE/ALAS! HOW DEEPLY MUST EVERY GOOD PERSON MOURN HER LOSS!

The third evokes grief:

YOU CITIZENS/WHOSE GREATEST JOY/IS IN CHARLES YOUR NOBLE PRINCE AND EMPEROR/LET YOUR SORROW BE AS GREAT/lN THE DEATH OF HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS HIS MOTHER ELEANOR/WHO BY HER BLESSED FRUITFULNESS/GAVE YOU YOUR GREAT DESIRE/A TRINCE OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA/AND BY THE RARE AND SPLENDID EXAMPLES OF HER QUEENLY VIRTUEs/GAVE YOU YOUR GREATEST DESIRE/A PRINCE OF NOBLE CHARACTER

The fourth and last promises solace:

WITH TEARS/O CITIZENS/LET YOUR MOST EARNEST VOWS BE OFFERED/THAT THE SPIRIT/OF ELEANOR/RECEIVED IN HEAVEN/MAY OBTAIN BY DIVINE FAVOR/AN OFFSRRING/FOR THE EMPEROR CHARLES FROM HER IMPERIAL HIGHNESS ELIZABETH/SUCH AS SHE HERSELF GAVE TO LEOPOLD/SO THAT SHE MAY NOT LEAVE/THE CHRISTIAN WORLD/LN GRIEF FOR HER/FOREVER UNASSUAGED

These inscriptions were not put up; but scarcely had the first day of the funeral ceremonies passed when Don Nicola d’Afflitto, a noble Neapolitan gentleman, formerly an eloquent advocate and at this time judicial assessor to the courts-martial, besought Vico to remain at home that evening so that he might call upon him. (This gentleman was in the cardinal’s service, and this responsibility, with the great labors attendant upon it, later brought on his death, mourned by all worthy men.) On the occasion of his visit to Vico he had the following to say to him: “I have broken off the discussion of a most important matter with my lord the viceroy in order to come here, and I must shortly return to the palace to resume it.” In the course of the brief conversation that followed he said to Vico: “My lord the cardinal has told me that he is much distressed by this mischance which you have suffered through no fault of your own.” To this Vico replied that he was infinitely grateful to the cardinal for such nobility of soul, befitting a grandee in relation to a subject, whose greatest glory is ever the homage he gives his prince.

Among these many occasions of mourning there came to him a festive one: the nuptial rites of Don Giambattista Filo-marino,191 a pious and liberal gentleman of praiseworthy habits and cultivated mind, and Donna Maria Vittoria Caracciolo of the family of the marquises of Sant’ Eramo. For the collection of compositions made on this occasion and printed in quarto, Vico wrote an epithalamium of an original nature. It is a dramatic monody entitled Juno in Dance, in which the goddess of marriage is the sole speaker. She invites the other major gods to dance, and improves the occasion to expound the principles of that historical mythology which is fully worked out in the New Science.

On these same principles he composed a Pindaric ode in free verse. Its subject was The History of Poetry from its origin to our day, and it was dedicated to the excellent and wise Donna Marina della Torre, of a noble Genoese family, duchess of Carignano.

And now his youthful study of good writers in the vulgar tongue, though since neglected for so many years, enabled him in his old age not only to compose these poems but also to put together two orations, as well as to make splendid use of that tongue in writing the New Science. The first of these orations was written on the occasion of the death of Anna d’Aspermont, Countess d’Althann, mother of Cardinal d’Althann, at that time viceroy. This he wrote to show his gratitude for a favor done him by Don Francesco Santoro, then secretary of the kingdom. Santoro was also one of the judges of the ci vii Vicaria [or viceroyal court] and a suit against a son-in-law of Vico had been assigned to him. It was tried at joint sessions [of the two divisions of the civil Vicaria] on two successive Wednesdays. On Wednesdays the criminal Vicaria sits with the Royal Collateral Council to hear cases, but Don Antonio Caracciolo, Marquis dell’ Amorosa, who was then regent of the Vicaria [and as such would ordinarily have sat with its criminal branch] attended both sessions [of the civil branch] expressly to be of service to Vico. (Caracciolo’s government of the city found favor with four viceroys because of his integrity and prudence.) Santoro stated the case so fully, clearly and precisely before him that Caracciolo was spared the sifting of the facts, which, had it been necessary, would have enabled the adversary to prolong and entangle the case. Vico pleaded it in masterly form with such thoroughness that against an instrument of a notary still living he found thirty-seven presumptions of falsehood. Indeed he had to group them under several heads to keep them in order and thus remember them. He made his plea with such passion that all the judges in their great kindness not only maintained silence during the course of the pleading but did not even so much as glance at each other. Finally the regent was so deeply moved that, tempering his feelings with the gravity befitting such a great magistrate, he made a gesture combining, in proper degree, compassion for the defendant and scorn for the plaintiff. Thereupon the Vicaria, which is somewhat strict in rendering judgment, acquitted the defendant without adjudging that the criminal falsity of the accusation had been proved.192

Remembering this occasion with gratitude, Vico wrote the oration mentioned above. Iris found in the collection of pieces that Santoro himself had made and printed in quarto. In this oration, speaking of the two sons of this saintly princess who were taking part in the war of the Spanish succession, he makes a digression in a style half way between that of poetry and that of prose. (Such indeed should be the historical style, in the opinion of Cicero, as indicated in the brief but pregnant remark he makes concerning the writing of history. For history should use, he says, “words for the most part taken from the poets”; perhaps because the historians were still clinging to their ancient possession, for, as is clearly demonstrated in the New Science, the first historians of the nations were the poets.) In this digression Vico takes in the entire war of the Spanish succession: its causes, strategy, occasions, episodes, and consequences. He compares it in all these respects to the Second Punic War, the greatest ever fought in the memory of the centuries, and shows how the Spanish war is greater. Speaking of this digression, Prince Giuseppe Caracciolo of the house of the marquises of Sant’ Eramo, a gentleman of grave manners, wisdom and fine literary taste, was graciously pleased to say that he would like to see it bound in a great volume on white paper with the binder’s title: History of the War of the Spanish Succession.

The other oration was written on the death of Donna Angiola Cimmino, marchioness della Petrella. This noble and wise lady, in the conversations in her house,193 lofty in thought and shared for the most part by men of learning, both by her actions and by her discourse unobtrusively expressed and inspired in others the most laudable moral and civil virtues; whence all who knew her were naturally and almost unconsciously led to regard her with loving reverence and reverent love. Vico was desirous of presenting with truth and dignity the intimate thesis “that she had, by her own life, taught the sweet austerity of virtue.” And he wished here to try how well the delicate sensibility of the Greeks could be united with the grandeur of Latin expression, and how much of both the Italian tongue could combine. This oration is included in an ingeniously and magnificently printed quarto volume, in which the first letter of each author’s contribution is engraved on copper, with an emblem supplied by Vico appropriate to its subject. The introduction was written by Father Don Roberto Sostegni, Florentine canon of the Lateran, a man whose fine scholarship and charming manners endeared him to his native city. Though suffering from an excess of the choleric humour (which often made him mortally ill and finally, abscessing in his right side, caused his death, to the universal grief of those who knew him), he nevertheless controlled his temperament so well by his wisdom that he seemed by nature the mildest of men. As a student of the illustrious Abbe Anton Maria Salvini, he had acquired a knowledge of oriental languages and Greek, and great skill in Latin, especially in verse composition. He wrote Tuscan in a very robust style like that of Casa. Of other languages, aside from French which has now become fairly common, he was familiar with English and German and knew something of Turkish. His prose was persuasive and eloquent. He came to Naples especially because (as he was kind enough to say publicly) he had read the Universal which Vico had sent to Salvini, and so had learned that in Naples a profound and severe study of letters was cultivated. Vico was the first whose acquaintance he was anxious to make; he established an intimate correspondence with him; and on this account Vico now honors him with this eulogy.

It was about this time that Vico heard from Count Gian Artico di Porcía, brother of Cardinal Leandro di Porcía and distinguished for learning and nobility. He had conceived the idea of guiding young men with greater security in their course of study by setting before them the intellectual autobiographies of men celebrated for erudition and scholarship. Among the Neapolitans whom he considered worthy for this purpose, he deigned to include Vico. (There were eight in all, but we omit their names in order not to give offense to other very illustrious scholars whom he passed over perhaps because he did not know them.) He wrote a very gracious letter from Venice (forwarded through Rome by the Abbe Giuseppe Luigi Esperti) to Lorenzo Ciccarelli, asking him to obtain the autobiography of Vico. The latter, partly from modesty and partly because of his ill fortune, refused several times to write it, but the repeated and courteous pleading of Ciccarelli finally won his consent. And, as may be seen, he wrote it as a philosopher, meditating the causes, natural and moral, and the occasions of fortune; why even from childhood he had felt an inclination for certain studies and an aversion from others; what opportunities and obstacles had advanced or retarded his progress; and lastly the effect of his own exertions in right directions, which were destined later to bear fruit in those reflections on which he built his final work, the New Science, which was to demonstrate that his intellectual life was bound to have been such as it was and not otherwise.

Meanwhile the New Science had already become famous in Italy and especially in Venice. The Venetian Resident in Naples had acquired all the copies left in the shop of Felice Mosca the printer, and had enjoined him, on account of the many requests there had been for it in that city, to deliver to him as many more as could be found. Thus in three years the work had become so rare that, though a little book of 288 pages in duodecimo, it frequently brought a price of two ducats and even more.

About that time Vico learned there were letters waiting for him at the post office, which he was not in the habit of visiting. One of these was from Father Carlo Lodoli of the Minor Observants, a theologian of the sovereign state of Venice. It bore the date of January 15, 1728, and seven couriers had left Naples since it had arrived at the post office. In this letter Father Lodoli invited Vico to have his work reprinted in Venice, using these words:

Here in Venice your profound book on the Principles of a New Science concerning the Nature of Nations is circulating among men of distinction and winning unmeasured applause. The further they read into it the greater becomes their admiration and esteem for your intellect which composed it. As the praises of the book and the discussions about it spread its fame abroad, it becomes increasingly sought after, and when there are no copies to be had in the city some are ordered from Naples. But since this is inconvenient because of the distance, some have considered having it reprinted in Venice. Since in this project I too concur, I have thought it fitting to take counsel in advance with your excellency, the author, first to see if this is agreeable to you, and then to learn if you have any additions or corrections to make, and, in that event, if you would have the kindness to communicate them to me.

The Father had reinforced his request by including a letter from the Abbe Antonio Conti, a Venetian nobleman, a great metaphysician and mathematician, rich in esoteric wisdom. In the course of travels in search of knowledge, he had won the high esteem of Leibniz and Newton and other leading scholars of our time; and his tragedy Caesar had made him famous in Italy, France and England. With a courtesy equal to such nobility and learning, he had written Vico under date of January 3, 1728, as follows:

You could not find, illustrious sir, a correspondent more at home in all kinds of studies nor one more influential with booksellers than the Reverend Father Lodoli, who is offering to have your Principles of a New Science reprinted. I myself was one of the first to read it and enjoy it and to have my friends enjoy it. They are unanimously agreed that we do not have in the Italian language a book containing more erudite and philosophical matters, all original in their kind. I have sent a short abstract of it to France to show the French that there is room for many additions and many corrections in the ideas of chronology and mythology, as well as of ethics and jurisprudence, to which they have given so much study. The English, when they see the book, will be obliged to confess the same; but it is necessary to give it wider circulation by reprinting it in better type. Your excellency has the opportunity to add whatever you think proper, either to extend the range of its erudition and scholarship, or to develop certain ideas touched upon only lightly. I should advise you to put at the beginning of the book a preface which would set forth the several principles of the various matters of which the book treats, and the harmonious system which results from them and which extends even to the future, which depends throughout on the laws of that eternal history of which the idea you have given is so sublime and so fruitful.

The other letter, which had also been lying in the post office, was from Count Giovan Artico di Porcía, whom we have praised above; he had written Vico on December 14, 1727, as follows:

I am assured by Father Lodoli (who with the Abbe Conti sends his respects to your excellency, both reaffirming the high esteem in which they hold your virtues) that he will find someone who will reprint your admirable work on the Principles of the New Science. If you would like to add something you are perfectly free to do so. You have now an opportunity to expand your thought in this work in which men of science declare they apprehend much more than is actually expressed, and which they all consider a masterpiece. I offer you my sincerest congratulations and I assure you that I take an infinite pleasure in seeing that productions of the spirit with the pith and depth that yours possesses, sooner or later come into recognition, and that they do not lack fortune so long as they do not lack intelligent and discerning readers.

In view of the courteous insistence and responsible encouragement of so many and such gifted men, Vico felt himself obliged to consent to this reprinting and to write the notes and additions suggested by them. By the time his answers to these first letters arrived in Venice (for, on account of the reason mentioned above, they were very late in being sent), the Abbe Conti, moved by a special affection for Vico and his works, had honored him with this second letter under date of March 10, 1728:

Two months ago I wrote your excellency a letter, which must have reached you, inclosed with one from the Reverend Father Lodoli. Having had no answer, I take the liberty of troubling you again, moved solely by the desire that you should know how much I admire you and how anxious I am to profit by the illumination so abundantly shed in your Principle of a New Science. Immediately after returning from France I read it with the greatest pleasure, and your discoveries along critical, historical and moral lines seemed to me no less new than instructive. There are some who would like to undertake the reprinting of this book, in better type and handsomer format. Father Lodoli had this design, and told me he had already written you about it, in order to beg you to add to it further dissertations on the same subject, or further illustrative material to the present chapters, if by chance you had prepared such material. Count Parcía sent Father Lodoli your Autobiography, containing numerous erudite comments on the development of the historical and critical system established in your other books. This edition is much in demand, and many Frenchmen, to whom I have given a rough outline of the book, are eagerly requesting it.

This gave Vico an even greater stimulus to write notes and comments on his work. And during the time he was working on them (a period of about two years) it came about that Count Porcía, on an occasion which need not here be recalled, wrote that he wanted to print a certain Proposal to the Scholars of Italy, addressed to those most distinguished either by their published works or by their reputation as savants. The proposal was the one we have mentioned above, that they should write their intellectual autobiographies in such fashion as to promote a new method in the studies of the young, which would make their progress more certain and efficacious. He wanted to append as a model, he said, the autobiography which Vico had already sent him, for of the many he had received this one seemed to him the perfect realization of his idea. Whereupon Vico, who had thought his was to be printed along with the others and had indeed told Porcía in sending it that he felt greatly honored to be even the last in so glorious a company, begged and adjured him not to carry out his plan, for he would not accomplish his purpose, and Vico, through no fault of his own, would have to suffer from the envy of others. The Count remained firm in his intention, however, so that Vico repeated his protests through the Abbe Giuseppe Luigi Esperti at Rome and through Father Lodoli at Venice. Lodoli had learned from the Count that he was arranging to print this Proposal along with Vico’s autobiography. And indeed Father Calogerà, who printed it in the first volume of his Collection of Scientific and Philological Monographs, has published to the world these protestations of Vico in a letter, by way of preface, to Signor Vallisnieri. The kindness of Father Calogerà to Vico in this connection was matched by the unkindness of the printer, who bungled the typesetting and made numerous errors, even in important passages. Furthermore, at the end of the catalog194 of Vico’s works, appended to the autobiography, this announcement was published: “Principles of a New Science concerning the Nature of Nations, in course of reprinting with the author’s Annotations at Venice.”

Still further, at about the same time it happened that a gross misrepresentation of Vico and his New Science appeared in the book notices of the Leipzig Acta [Eruditorum] for August, 1727. The notice there given of it does not give the name of the book, which is the first duty of a reviewer, but calls it merely New Science, omitting [that part of the title which explains] the subject with which it deals. It misdescribes the book as being in octavo whereas it is really in duodecimo. It lies about the author and says on the authority of “an Italian friend” that he is a certain “abbe” of the Vico family, whereas Vico is of course no abbe but a father and even a grandfather. It says that the author treats of a system or rather “fables” of narural law. It fails to distinguish between the natural law of the peoples, which the book discusses, and that of the philosophers, which our moral theologians have discussed; it implies that the latter is the subject of the New Science, whereas it is merely a corollary. It asserts that the work is based on principles quite different from those which philosophers have hitherto employed; and indeed in this it confesses the truth without meaning to, for a science deriving from old principles would not be a “new science.” It observes that the work is suited to the taste of the Roman Catholic Church, as if the conception of a Divine Providence were not basic to the Christian religion in all its forms, or indeed to all religions. Thus the reviewer confesses himself an Epicurean or Spinozist, and instead of the reproach he intended, he pays the author the highest compliment, that of being pious. Though he notes that the book labors to impugn the doctrines of Grotius and Pufendorf, he says nothing of Selden, who was the third prince of these doctrines, perhaps because Selden was an expert in the Hebrew language. He judges that the author has indulged his wit at the expense of truth. On this last point Vico digresses in his reply to treat the profounder origins of wit and laughter, of acute and argute sayings. He says that wit always has truth for its object and is the father of acute sayings, whereas feeble fancy is the mother of argute sayings; and he proves that derision is more bestial than human. The reviewer further states that the author staggers under the weight of his conjectures, thereby confessing that his conjectures are not lacking in weight. He states that the author exercises his new critical art on the founders of the nations; but surely, since writers sprang up in these nations only after a thousand years at least, the new art could hardly take them at face value. He concludes by saying that the work was received even by the Italians with more tedium than applause, whereas the book had become very rare in Italy within three years of its printing, and if a copy was found it brought a high price, as we have seen above. Yet an Italian with impious mendacity informed the learned Protestants of Leipzig that his entire nation was displeased by a work containing Catholic doctrine!

Vico was obliged to reply, and did so in a small volume in duodecimo entitled Notes on the Leipzig Reviewers.195At the time he heard of the review he was undergoing treatment for a gangrenous ulcer of the throat. He was persuaded by Domenico Vitolo, a most learned and experienced physician, to submit to the dangerous remedy of cinnabar, though he was then an old man of sixty and the remedy is likely to cause apoplexy even in the young if by mischance it affects the nerves. In his reply Vico finds many excellent reasons for applying the term “unknown vagabond” to the author of this tissue of falsehoods. He penetrates to the bottom of the ugly calumny and proves that it was fabricated for five reasons. Firstly, to do something displeasing to the author; secondly, to make the readers of Leipzig indifferent about obtaining a book described as false, vain, Catholic, and of unknown authorship; thirdly, if by chance any might still wish to acquire it, to make it difficult to find by either omitting or falsifying the title, the format, and the identity of the author; fourthly, if they should get hold of the book, to make them consider it the work of another author when they found it so different from what it was described to be; fifthly, in order to get himself regarded as a good friend by these excellent Germans. Vico treats the Leipzig critics with the courtesy that is due the scholars of a famous nation. He warns them in future to be on their guard against such a friend, who confounds those whose friend he professes to be, and has laid them open to two serious charges: one of putting into their Acta reviews and opinions of books they have not read, the other of passing contradictory judgments on one and the same book. Addressing the “unknown vagabond” himself, he exhorts him seriously, as the kind of man who treats his friends worse than his enemies, gives false information about his own nation and basely misleads foreigners, to take his departure from the world of men and to go and live with the wild beasts in the African desert. He had intended to send to Leipzig a copy of this reply, along with the following letter addressed to Burkhard Mencken, president of the academy there and prime minister of the present king of Poland:

Giambattista Vico to the distinguished Leipzig Academy of Sciences and to its honorable President, Burkhard Mencken, greeting. It is a matter of great regret to me that my own misfortune should have involved you also, distinguished sirs, in the adverse fortune of being deceived by your pretended Italian friend into all the vain, false and unjust things you say of me and my book entitled Principles of a New Science concerning the Humanity of the Nations in reviewing it in your Acta. But my sorrow has been softened by this consolation, that the whole affair has of itself arisen in such a way that your innocence, magnanimity and good faith put me in a position to castigate his malice, envy and bad faith. Thus it has been possible in the slender book which I send you herewith to embrace at the same time his offences and their correction, your own civil virtues and their praise. Since therefore I have published these Notes largely in your behalf to vindicate the honor of your scholarship, I hope they may give occasion for no offense but rather for my obtaining great favor with you, and above all with your excellency, Burkhard Mencken, who by virtue of your outstanding erudition have won the chief place in your Academy of distinguished scholars. I wish you all prosperity. Given at Naples, October 19, 1729.

This letter, as the reader can see, was written in terms of the utmost courtesy. However, considering that even so it would openly convict these learned men of a grave breach of duty, since, making it their business as they do to examine whatever comes off the presses of Europe, they should take special pains with those books that come within their province, Vico decided that it would be still more courteous not to send it.

To return now to the matter in hand. Feeling himself obliged to reply to the honorable critics of Leipzig, Vico thought that it would be necessary to mention the new printing of his book which was under way in Venice. He wrote Father Lodoli for his permission, which was given. Accordingly, in his reply it was again made public in print that the Principles of the New Science, with the annotations of the author, was being reprinted in Venice.

At this juncture certain Venetian printers, pretending to be scholars, and working through Gessari the bookseller and Mosca the printer in Naples, tried to obtain copies of all Vico’s works, published and unpublished, as described in the aforesaid catalog. They said they wished to adorn their libraries with these works, but in fact they wanted to reprint them in a collected edition, in the hope that the inclusion of the New Science would insure a ready sale for such an edition. To show them that he knew them for what they were, Vico gave them to understand that of all the poor works of his exhausted genius he wished only the New Science to remain to the world; and that work, they must know, was already being reprinted in Venice. Moreover, in order to protect the printer of the new edition even after his own death, Vico generously offered Father Lodoli a manuscript of nearly a thousand pages, in which he had set about proving his Principles by a negative method. By using this material the New Science might have been expanded into a much larger book. Indeed, Don Giulio Torno, a canon and a most learned theologian of our Neapolitan church, with a magnanimous concern for Vico’s interests, wanted, with some of his associates, to print such an edition here in Naples. But Vico dissuaded him by pointing out that the principles had already been established by the positive method.

Finally, in the month of October, 1729, Father Lodoli in Venice received all the material requested: the corrections of the first edition, the annotations, and the comments; altogether, a manuscript of nearly six hundred pages.

Now, since the public had twice been informed in print that the New Science was being reprinted with additions in Venice, and since the entire manuscript was already in hand, the person in charge of the printing began to treat Vico as if he were obliged to have it printed there. Vico, feeling affronted, thereupon recalled all the material he had sent; and the restitution was finally made, but only after six months, when the printing [in Naples] was more than half finished. In the meantime, since for the reasons set forth above he could not find either here in Naples or elsewhere a publisher who would reprint the work at his own expense, Vico hit upon a new plan which was perhaps the best of all, though save for this necessity he would not have thought of it. By comparing it with that of the first edition, one may see how completely different it is. For everything that he had split up and dispersed in the Annotations to preserve the plan of the first edition, and a great deal of new material besides, is now composed and ordered by a single spirit. By virtue of this consecutive order, which even more than propriety of style is a principal cause of brevity, the second edition exceeds by only six pages the first plus the manuscript [that was sent to Venice]. An example of this may be seen in the passage on the properties of the natural law of the peoples. On the first plan (Book II, Chapter VII) his discussion of this took up almost twelve pages, and on the second only a few lines.

But the first edition was left standing for the sake of three passages with which Vico found himself fully satisfied.196 It is principally for these three passages that the first edition of the New Science is [still] necessary. It is to this edition that he refers when he cites the “New Science” or “the work with the Annotations”; whereas when he cites his “other work,” the reference is to the three books of the Universal Law. Accordingly, when the Second New Science is reprinted, the First should be printed along with it, or at least, in order that they may not be missed, these three passages should be printed. On the other hand, in order that the Universal Law should not be missed, since Vico was much less satisfied with it than with the First New Science, of which it was but a sketch, and since he considered it necessary for two passages only—one on the fable that the Law of the Twelve Tables came from Athens, the other on Tribonian’s fable of the “Royal Law”—he reworked these into two Discourses,197 composed with more unity and greater vigor. These two fables are among those errors of which Jean Le Clerc, reviewing the Universal Law in his Bibliothèque ancienne et moderne, says that “in a great number of matters a quantity of popular errors are corrected, which the most expert have never noticed.”

It must not be laid to pride that Vico, not content with the favorable judgments passed by certain men on his works, afterwards disapproved and rejected them; for this is evidence of the great reverence and respect he has for these men, rather than otherwise. Crude and arrogant writers defend their works even against just criticisms and reasonable corrections; others, faint of heart perchance, fill themselves with the favorable judgments given to their works, and, by reason of these, take no steps to perfect them. But the praises of great men made Vico’s desire the greater to correct, supplement, and even to recast in better form this work of his. Thus he condemns the Annotations, which followed the negative method in seeking these Principles, because that method finds its proofs in inconsistencies, absurdities, impossibilities, which, with their ugly aspects, offend rather than feed the understanding, to which the positive method on the other hand commends itself by bringing forward the consistent, the harmonious, the uniform, which beautify the truth in which alone the human mind delights and finds nourishment. Vico is dissatisfied further with the Universal Law because he tried therein to descend from the mind of Plato and other enlightened philosophers into the dull and simple minds of the founders of the gentile peoples, whereas he should have taken the opposite course; whence he fell into error in certain matters. In the First New Science he erred, if not in the matter, then certainly in the arrangement, because he treated the origins of ideas apart from the origins of languages, whereas they were by nature united. Furthermore he discussed separately the methods of deriving the matters of this Science from these two sources, whereas he ought rather to have derived them from the two together; whence many errors of arrangement came about.

All this was corrected in the Second New Science. But he was constrained to meditate and write this work in a very short time, almost in the course of the printing itself. An almost fatal fury drove him to meditate and write it so rapidly, indeed, that he began it Christmas morning [1729] and finished it at nine o’clock Easter Sunday evening [April 9, 1730]. And then, after more than half of it had been printed [in Naples], a final communication from Venice198 constrained him to suppress eighty-six pages of what had been printed. These pages contained an advertisement in which all the letters of Father Lodoli and his own in connection with this affair were printed in full and in order, with the reflections suggested by them. For this advertisement he now substituted an engraved frontispiece and an explanation of it long enough to fill the void. Besides all this there was the long and serious illness which Vico contracted from the epidemic of catarrh [i.e., grippe] which was then abroad in Italy, and finally the very solitude in which he lives. All these causes prevented his exercising diligence, [that virtue] which must lose itself in laboring over arguments of any considerable size, because it is a minute and therefore a tardy virtue. For all these reasons he was unable to attend to certain expressions which were confused and ought to have been set in order, or were left in the rough and ought to have been polished, or were too short and ought to have been expanded; nor to a multitude of passages in verse rhythms, which ought to be avoided in prose; nor finally to several slips of memory, which however were verbal only and did no harm to the sense. Therefore at the end of the book in the First Annotations, along with the corrections of typographical errors (of which, for the aforesaid reasons, there were very many), he included certain Meliorations and Additions, designated by the letters M and A. He followed the same plan in his Second Annotations, which, a few days after the appearance of the book, he wrote when Don Francesco Spinelli,199 Prince of Scalea (a sublime philosopher adorned with cultivated erudition, especially in Greek), called his attention to three errors which he had observed in the course of going through the entire work in three days. Vico cordially thanked him for his kindness in the following letter (printed with these Second Annotations), by which he tacitly invited other learned men to do the same, because their corrections would be gratefully received.

I owe your excellency infinite thanks for having read through the latest edition of my New Science in scarcely three days after I had sent you a copy by my son, taking the precious time which you are wont to spend in sublime philosophic meditation or in the reading of the most profound writers, particularly the Greeks. Because of the marvelous acuteness of your intellect and the depth and breadth of your understanding, you have been able to read it straight through and yet to penetrate, as it were, to its marrow, and to grasp it in all its extent. Passing over in modest silence the flattering opinions that you were led to express by the loftiness of mind which befits your exalted rank, I profess myself highly indebted to your kindness in pointing out to me the following passages in which you have observed some errors. Your excellency was kind enough to say that these were merely slips of memory which did no harm to the sense of the matters under discussion.

The first is on page 313, line 19. Here in my version Briseis belongs to Agamemnon and Chryseis to Achilles; Agamemnon has commanded that Chryseis be restored to Chryses her father, priest of Apollo, who on her account has been wreaking havoc among the Greeks with his pestilence, and Achilles has not consented to obey him in this. Now this episode is told by Homer in quite a different fashion. But this error into which I fell was in fact an unconscious emendation of Homer in the most important matter of morality; for indeed Achilles would not have been willing to obey, and Agamemnon would have commanded him for the safety of the army. But in this matter Homer himself really preserved decorum, for, though he had made his chieftain wise, he imagined him no less strong; having yielded Chryseis as if under compulsion by Achilles, and so feeling his honor offended, to regain his prestige he took Briseis unjustly from Achilles, and by this deed many of the Greeks were brought to their downfall; so that in the Iliad Homer is giving us a very stupid chieftain. Thus our error was really a great disadvantage to us in that it prevented us from seeing this further great disproof of the esoteric wisdom hitherto ascribed to Homer, which offered confirmation of our discovery of the true Homer. And Achilles also, though celebrated by Homer with the recurrent epithet “blameless” and presented as a model of heroic virtue, does not meet the conception of hero as the term is defined by scholars. For, however justifiable the grief of Achilles may have been, none the less on leaving the camp with his men and taking his ships from the common fleet he expresses the most impious wish that Hector may destroy the Greeks that were spared by the plague, and he takes pleasure in seeing this wish on the way to fulfilment (as in the passage you suggested to me in the course of our discussion, Achilles tells Patroclus of his desire that all the Greeks and Trojans should die and only the two of them survive the war), which is the revenge of a traitor.

The second error is on page 314, line 38, and page 315, line 1. Here you have called my attention to the fact that the Manlius who defended the fortress of the Capitoline against the Gauls was called Capitolinus, and after him came the other Manlius with the cognomen Torquatus who had his son beheaded. It was the former and not the latter who, by his efforts to introduce a new reckoning in favor of the debt-ridden plebs, made the nobles suspect that he was trying to make himself tyrant of Rome by popular favor, and so was condemned and hurled from the Tarpeian rock. This lapse of memory was harmful to us in that it deprived us of this powerful proof of the uniformity of the aristocratic state of ancient Rome and Sparta: in the latter too the valorous and great-souled King Agis, a Spartan Capitolinus, because of a similar debt-canceling law (rather than for any agrarian law) and because of another testamentary law, was executed by the ephors.

The third error is at the end of Book V, page 445, line 37, where one should read “Numantines” (for it is they who are there referred to).

Because of your kind observations I proceeded to reread the work and have written a second set of corrections, meliorations and additions.

These first and second annotations, along with some other (few but important) notes200 written from time to time as the author discussed the book with his friends, can be incorporated in the places indicated when a third edition is printed.

While Vico was engaged in writing and seeing through the press the Second New Science, Cardinal Corsini, to whom the first edition had been dedicated, was elevated to the papacy. It was accordingly to His Holiness [Clement XII] that this second edition was dedicated. When it was presented to him, it was his wish, since it came inscribed to him, that his nephew Cardinal Neri Corsini, when he thanked the author for the copy which he had himself received without any covering letter, should make the following reply in his name:

MOST ILLUSTRIOUS SIR:

Your excellency’s work on the Principles of a New Science had already in its first edition called forth all the praise of our lord, at that time Cardinal; and now, in its new edition, further illumined and enriched in erudition by your genius, it has met with the greatest approval in the most clement mind of His Holiness. I have desired to give you the comfort of this assurance on the same occasion on which I am moved to express my thanks for the copy you have had presented to me, which I hold in the esteem it merits. Expressing my eagerness to be of service to you at any opportunity, I pray God that He may prosper your affairs.

Always your excellency’s affectionate  

Rome, January 6, 1731          N. CARD. CORSINI

Overwhelmed by this great honor, Vico had nothing further to hope for in this world; wherefor, on account of his advanced age, worn out as he was by so many labors, afflicted by so many domestic cares and suffering from spasmodic pains in the thighs and legs and from a strange disease devouring all the tissues between the palate and the lower bone of the head, he definitely abandoned his studies. To Father Domenico Lodovico,201 an incomparable Latin elegiac poet of the purest character, he gave the manuscript of the annotations he had written on the First New Science, with the following inscription:

TO THE CHRISTIAN TIBULLUS/FATHER DOMENICO LODOVICO/THESE MISERABLE REMAINS/OF THE UNHAPPY NEW SCIENCE/TOSSED TO AND FRO BY LAND AND SEA/GIAMBATTISTA VICO/AGITATED AND AFFLICTED/BY THE CEASELESS STORMS OF FORTUNE/AS TO SAFE PORT AT LAST/TORN AND TIRED/DELIVERS.

In the teaching of his subject Vico was always most interested in the progress of the young men, and to open their eyes and prevent them from being deceived by false doctors he was willing to incur the hostility of pedants. He never discussed matters pertaining to eloquence apart from wisdom, but would say that eloquence is nothing but wisdom speaking; that his chair was the one that should give direction to minds and make them universal; that others were concerned with the various parts of knowledge, but his should teach it as an integral whole in which each part accords with every other and gets its meaning from the whole. No matter what the subject, he showed in his lectures how by eloquence it was animated as it were by a single spirit drawing life from all the sciences that had any bearing upon it. This was the meaning of what he had written in his book On the Method of the Studies: that a Plato (to take a conspicuous example) among the ancients was the equivalent of an entire university of studies of our day, all harmonized in one system. Thus Vico lectured every day with as much elegance and profundity in various branches of scholarship as if famous men of letters had come from abroad to attend his classes and to hear him.202

Vico was choleric to a fault. Though he guarded himself from it as best he could in his writing, he publicly confessed this failing. He would inveigh too violently against the errors of thought or scholarship or against the misconduct of those men of letters who were his rivals, which as a charitable Christian or a true philosopher he should rather have overlooked or pitied. But if he was bitter toward those who belittled him and his works, he was correspondingly grateful to those who formed a just opinion of both; and the latter were always the best and the most learned men of the city. Among the caitiff semi-learned or pseudo-learned, the more shameless called him a fool, or in somewhat more courteous terms they said that he was obscure or eccentric and had odd ideas. The more malicious damned him with such compliments as these: some said he was a good teacher for young men when they had completed their course of study, that is when their studies had made them quite satisfied with their own knowledge (as if Quintilian had not wished that the children of the great might like Alexander be entrusted from boyhood to men like Aristotle); others went so far as to pay him the compliment, as dangerous as it was flattering, that he would make an excellent instructor of teachers themselves. He however blessed all these adversities as so many occasions for withdrawing to his desk, as to his high impregnable citadel, to meditate and to write further works which he was wont to call “so many noble acts of vengeance against his detractors.” These finally led him to the discovery of his New Science. And when he had written this work, enjoying life, liberty and honor, he held himself more fortunate than Socrates, on whom Phaedrus has these fine lines:

I would not shun his death to win his fame;

I’d yield to odium, if absolved when dust.203

VICO’S LAST YEARS

(CONTINUATION BY THE MARQUIS OF VILLAROSA, 1818)

Now that Vico had become, as he himself tells us, the father of a large family, and his children had grown up, he began to suffer those vexations and distresses that a fortunate father is not infrequently compelled to undergo. He beheld the indigence of his family daily increasing for the reason that, as he himself confesses, from his earliest days Providence had been unwilling to establish him in comfortable circumstances and had cut off all honorable means to which he had resorted to improve his condition. Indeed he writes as follows on the back of a reply he had received from Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini,204 his Maecenas, whose patronage he had vainly solicited for the printing of the first edition of the New Science:

Letter from his eminence Corsini, who has not the means to assume the expense of printing the work that preceded the New Science. Thus I was compelled by my poverty to think of this last [the New Science], for it reduced my spirit to printing only this small book, parting for the purpose with a ring I had which was set with a five-grain diamond of the purest water. With the price it brought I was able to pay for the printing and binding of the copies of the book, which, because I found myself committed to its publication, I dedicated to this same Cardinal.

He was entirely dependent for livelihood on the small stipend of his professorship, and since this by no means sufficed he found himself obliged to give private lessons at his home in Latin rhetoric and literature. The finest gentlemen of our capital city were glad to send their sons to him, being sure that from Vico better than from any other professor of these subjects they would get sound instruction along with the best moral training. To those who came to Vico’s house for lessons we must add the many sons of the principal gentlemen of this kingdom whom Vico visited in their own homes to give them lessons. Among these I will mention for brevity’s sake only the Carafas of Traetto, the Spinellis of the house of the princes of Scalea, and the Gaetanis of the house of the dukes of Laurenzano. For the magnates of our city at that time overlooked no means to have their sons and heirs grow wise and learned, rightly believing that nothing so ill becomes a man of noble blood and ample means as to be undistinguishable from the numberless troop of the foolish and ignorant.

But such aids were insufficient for the urgent needs by which he was continually oppressed and discouraged. He had taken to wife by the greatest ill-fortune a woman endowed indeed with a pure and innocent character but wanting in those talents which are required even in a mediocre wife and mother. Unable even to write, she took very little care of household matters, so that the learned professor was obliged to plan and provide not only for the clothes but for whatever else his children might need.205

He was very indulgent toward them, and showed a special predilection for the two girls. Perceiving that the elder, Luisa, was endowed with talents beyond those necessary in a woman, and that she displayed an inclination to the liberal arts and especially to poetry, he undertook to instruct her himself with the greatest care and attention. He had the satisfaction of seeing that his efforts were not in vain, for on reaching womanhood she distinguished herself in poetry, as is evidenced by some charming compositions of hers which appear in various printed anthologies. It was a happy sight to see our philosopher playing lightheartedly with his daughters in the few hours that he had free from constant and trying daily tasks. Father Don Benedetto Laudati, a monk of the order of Mount Cassino greatly esteemed for his venerable character and his knowledge, was eye-witness of such a scene. He was a frequent visitor, and finding Vico one day at play with his little girls he could not refrain from quoting to him these verses from Tasso:

Here can be seen, midst the Maeonian maidens,

Alcides with a distaff, gossiping.

At this quip the fond father laughed merrily.

The comfort which his daughters brought him was how ever alloyed with bitterness by the bad character which one of his sons (whose name I shall not here reveal)206 showed from childhood. When he had grown up, far from applying himself to studies and sober habits, he became addicted to a soft and lazy life, and as time went on to all sorts of vices, so that he became the dishonor of the entire family. No measure was overlooked by the good father to bring his son back from his erring ways and set him again on the right path. Repeated and affectionate admonishments, authoritative warnings from men of wisdom and reputation, all proved useless efforts to reform the errant youth. Things came to such a pass indeed that the sorrowing father found himself against his will in the hard necessity of calling in the police to have his son imprisoned. But at the last minute, when he heard the police coming up the stairs of his house and bethought himself of their errand, he was carried away by paternal love, ran to his unhappy son and said to him, trembling: “Save yourself, my son.” But this act of fatherly tenderness did not prevent justice from taking its inevitable course; for the boy was taken to prison and spent a long time there before he gave clear signs of having really mended his ways.

This domestic calamity—no light matter in itself—was accompanied by another no less grave: the failing health of his other daughter,207 who began to suffer grievously from painful infirmities. While his daughter’s illness caused the greatest affliction to the unhappy father, it also drove him to continual expenditures for doctors and medicine; expenditures made in sorrow but without stint, and perhaps vainly thrown away. Such grave preoccupations as these never diverted Vico from regular attendance at his classes, to which honor and duty called him. He endured everything with heroic patience, and only occasionally to some intimate friend allowed himself to say sadly that “misfortune would pursue him even after his death.” A presage of doom that unhappily came true, as we shall see later.

With the auspicious arrival in this kingdom of the immortal Charles of Bourbon, a ray of hope for the improvement of his condition began to gleam for him. This magnanimous and beneficent sovereign, to whose grand and swiftly enacted enterprises (brought to final fulfilment by his worthy son and successor now on the throne) this kingdom owes so much, made it not the least of his concerns to be, like his predecessor Alfonso, the highest patron of scholars and learned men. When therefore he was informed of the rare qualifications of our Vico, he issued this flattering diploma appointing him Royal Historiographer with an annual stipend of a hundred ducats.208

In consideration of the learning your excellency possesses and of the labors you have performed in instructing over a long period of years the youth of this Royal University, His Majesty has deigned to appoint you his historiographer, with the title and duties appertaining thereto, confident because of your well known ability that you will perform them with the credit that has marked the learned works you have already published, and assigning you also for the present a hundred ducats above your University stipend. I am pleased to announce to you his royal order, so that you may know the favor you have acquired in His Majesty’s eyes.

May God preserve your excellency for many years, as I fervently hope.  JOSEPH JOACHIM DE MONTEALEGRE.

 Naples, July 21, 1735.

Señor Don Juan Baptista Vico.

Our Vico would certainly have experienced further evidences of his sovereign’s beneficence, had not his increasing years been marked by an increase of those infirmities which had threatened him even in his prime. His nervous system began to be noticeably weakened, to the extent that he could walk only with difficulty; and a greater affliction to him was the realization that his memory was growing feebler day by day. On this account he was compelled to give up his private lessons and also his lectures in the University. He thereupon petitioned the king that he might be pleased to appoint his son Gennaro at least interim successor to his chair. Gennaro, he said, had given sufficient evidence of his competence by several times expounding the institutes of oratory in his father’s presence to the satisfaction of the public.209 The petition was deferred for a time to consult Monsignor Don Nicola de Rosa, Bishop of Pozzuoli and Grand Chaplain, since the latter office then carried with it that of University Prefect. The wise prelate, to whom the competence and probity of the young Gennaro Vico were well known, was not slow to advise his sovereign that, having regard to the long years of Giambattista Vico’s service in the Royal University and to the good qualities which were united in his son, he might properly deign to confer on the latter the chair of rhetoric. Since his most clement majesty concurred in this opinion, the chair of rhetoric was conferred on Gennaro Vico, to the inexpressible satisfaction of his aged and infirm father.

Meanwhile the exhausted body of the old scholar grew weaker from day to day. His memory was so far gone that he forgot the nearest objects and confused the names of the most familiar things. No longer did he take pleasure, as he had in the early days of his illness, in the Latin authors read to him by his devoted Gennaro. He would spend the entire day sitting in a corner of his house, not merely calm but silent as well; and his nourishment, taken with difficulty, was light and infrequent. He scarcely greeted the friends who came often to see him, and he no longer engaged them, as had been his wont, in open and jovial conversation. It was impossible to cure or even to check this pertinacious disease by any recourse to medicine. To no avail were the efficacious remedies suggested by his able medical colleagues in the University. On the contrary, his desperate infirmity kept getting worse, until the unhappy Vico was reduced to such a state that he did not recognize his own dearly beloved children. In this wretched state he continued for a year and two months.210 By that time his aversion from any sort of food had so far sapped his strength that he had to keep to his bed, drinking death in slow and painful draughts. Some days before breathing his last he recovered his senses, and as if awakened from a long sleep recognized his children and those who were about him. What joy this gave them need hardly be asked. But his only benefit from the improvement was the realization that his end was approaching. Perceiving for himself that all human remedies were now vain and fruitless, overcome as he was by a congestion of the lungs to which in his greatly weakened condition he could offer no resistance, he sent for Father Antonio Maria da Palazzuolo,211 a learned Capuchin and intimate friend, to administer the last friendly offices and assist him in the dread passage. With the most perfect submission to the divine will and a prayer for the pardon of his sins, comforted by the powerful aid that Holy Church affords her beloved children and which he himself had eagerly requested, continually reciting the psalms of David, he died peacefully on the 20th of January, 1744,212 having passed the seventy-sixth year of his age.

After his death it fell out as he had foretold many years before, as if by prophetic inspiration; that is, that misfortune would follow him even after death. The prediction was fulfilled by a mishap till then unheard of, but which to our shame we have seen repeated in our own day, in spite of the enlightenment on which we pride ourselves.

It was the custom for the professors of the Royal University to accompany to the sepulcher the remains of their departed colleagues; a praiseworthy custom which has survived the lapse of so many others. When the hour for Vico’s funeral rites had been set, almost all the professors were eager to pay this last tribute to their deceased colleague and came to his house to accompany the remains. The Confraternity of Santa Sophia, of which Vico had been a member, were to carry the coffin as they regularly did for their deceased members. When the Confraternity arrived at his house, they began to murmur that they would not allow the professors of the University to bear the pall. The professors on the other hand contended they had the right to that honor, and adduced many precedents. Meanwhile the corpse was carried down into the courtyard of the house and laid on the bier, which bore the arms of the Royal University. Hereupon there began a great uproar between the members of the Confraternity and the professors of the University, neither side being willing to yield to the other, and both showing in the presence of the dead how far human weakness and pride can go. As no amicable understanding could be reached, the Confraternity, with small regard for human decency, decided to take their leave, abandoning the corpse where it lay. The professors alone were unable to carry out the funeral rites, and the corpse had to be carried back into its old dwelling. How this incident must have shocked the grief-stricken son, who, after losing so dear a father, was obliged to see him brought back into the house in this fashion, may be easily imagined. On the following day, after giving vent to his grief, he decided to ask the cathedral chapter to conduct his father’s remains to the sepulcher, incurring the additional expense which is imperatively required in such mournful circumstances. The professors were not reluctant to accompany their deceased colleague to the tomb, and he was buried in the church of the Oratorians called Gerolamini, as being the church most frequented by the illustrious man in his lifetime, and the one he had chosen to receive his ashes.

His remains lay neglected and unknown, as is the usual fate of men of learning in our city, down to the year 1789. In that year Gennaro, the surviving son of his great father, had a brief inscription carved for him in a remote corner of the church. This might well have provided an occasion for recalling the ancient complaint of the poet on beholding a pretentious monument raised in honor of a petty man:

In a marble tomb Licinus lies; in a poor one, Cato;

Pompey in none at all….

The inscription he placed there reads as follows:

TO GIAMBATTISTA VICO

ROYAL PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC

AND ROYAL HISTORIOGRAPHER

WHAT MANNER OF MAN HE WAS IN LIFE

BY GENIUS LEARNING AND CHARACTER

IS MANIFEST IN THE WRITINGS

ON WHICH HIS FAME RESTS

WHERE HE LIES IN DEATH

BY THE SIDE OF CATERINA DESTITO

HIS BELOVED WIFE

THIS TABLET SHOWS

HE DIED JANUARY 19, 1744

AGED SEVENTY-FOUR YEARS

PLACED BY HIS GRIEVING SON

GENNARO

The Arcadia of Rome, of which Vico was a member under the name Laufilo Terio, erected the following memorial inscription in the Bosco Parrasio:

BY ORDER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF ARCADIA

TO LAUFILO TERIO SHEPHERD OF ARCADIA

PHILOLOGIAN

RENOWNED FOR LEARNING IN UNIVERSAL LAW

ERECTED IN HIS HONOR

UNDER THE CARE OF DORALBO TRIARIO SHEPHERD OF ARCADIA

IN THE FOURTH YEAR

OF THE SIX HUNDRED THIRTY-SECOND OLYMPIAD

BEING THE THIRD YEAR OF THE SIXTEENTH OLYMPIAD

FROM THE FOUNDING OF THE ARCADIA