Читать книгу The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico - Benedetto Croce - Страница 5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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