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294. The doctrine of Vico on the criterion of truth is connected with the matter of the preceding chapters on immediate and mediate evidence. This philosopher thinks that the criterion consists in having made the truth which is known; that our cognitions then only are completely certain, and that they lose their certainty in proportion as the intellect loses its character of cause with respect to its objects. God, the cause of all, knows every thing perfectly: creatures, whose causality is very limited, are very limited in their cognitions; and if in any thing they may be likened to the infinite, it is in that ideal world which they construct for themselves, and extend at pleasure, stopped by no impassable limits.

Let the author speak for himself. "The terms verum and factum, the true and the made, are used one for the other, in the Latin language, or, as the schoolmen say, are convertible. Intelligere, to understand, is the same as to read with clearness and to know with evidence. They used cogitare in the sense of the Italian pensare e andar raccogliendo; ratio with them meant a collection of numerical elements, and also the gift by which man is distinguished from, and made superior to, the brute. They defined man to be an animal participating of reason; animal rationis particeps: and consequently not absolutely possessed of it. As words are the signs of ideas, so also are ideas the signs and representations of things. Thus, as to read, legere, is to unite the elements of writing, which form the words; so to understand, intelligere, is to unite all the elements which constitute the perfect idea of anything. Hence we infer that the doctrine of the ancient Italians concerning truth was as follows: Truth is the same as fact; and consequently God is the first truth, because he is the first maker, factor; the infinite truth, because he made all things; the absolute truth, because he represents all the elements of things, both internal and external, for he contains them. To know is to unite the elements of things: hence it follows that thought, cogitatio, is a property of the human mind; and intelligence a property of the divine mind, because God contains all the internal and all the external elements of things, and therefore he unites them, and he it is that disposes them; whereas the human mind limited as it is, and separated from all that is not itself, may bring together extreme points, but cannot unite them; it may think of things, but cannot understand them; and this is why it is said to participate of reason, but not to possess it. Let us explain these ideas by a comparison. Divine truth is a solid image of things, a sort of plastic figure; human truth is an image on a plane, it has no depth, but is a sort of painting. Divine truth is true, because God knows in the same act by which he disposes and produces; human truth is in relation to things which man in like manner disposes and creates. Science is the cognition of the mode in which the thing is made; a cognition in which the mind makes its object, since it recomposes its elements. For God, who understands every thing, the object is a solid; but it is a surface for man who understands only the exterior. These points being settled, in order that we may more easily make them harmonize with our religion, let us observe that the ancient philosophers of Italy identified truth and fact, for they believed the world to be eternal. Thus the pagan philosophers adored a God who always operated ad extra, a point rejected by our theology. Wherefore in our religion, in which we profess that the world was created in time, and out of nothing, it is necessary to distinguish, and identify created truth with what is made, and uncreated truth with what is begotten, genito. Thus the Sacred Scriptures, with an elegance truly divine, give the name of the Word to the wisdom of God, which contains in itself the ideas of all things and the elements of these ideas. In the Word, truth is the comprehension of all the elements of this universe, and it might produce infinite worlds. From these elements, known and contained in the divine omnipotence, is formed the Word real and absolute, known by the Father from all eternity and begotten by him also from all eternity."[26]

295. From these principles Vico deduces some very transcendental consequences, among others, the explanation of the reason why our sciences are divided into many branches, and that of the different grades of certainty by which they are distinguished. Mathematics is the most certain, because a kind of creation of the intellect, which, starting with the unity of a point, constructs a world of forms and numbers by prolonging lines, and multiplying unity even to infinity. Thus it knows what it produces itself, and hence it is that the theorems commonly held to be objects of pure contemplation depend upon action just as the problems do. Mechanics is a less certain science than either geometry or arithemetic, because it considers motions as realized by machines; and physics is even less certain yet, because it does not, like mechanics, consider the external motion of circumferences, but the internal motion of their centres. There is still less certainty in sciences of the moral order, because these do not consider the motions of bodies arising from one certain and common origin, which is nature, but the motions of the soul, often most profound, often also capricious.

"Human science," he says, "owes its origin to a defect of the human mind; it is beyond all things in its extreme limitation, contains nothing of what it seeks to know, and is consequently unable to make the truth to which it aspires. The most perfect sciences are those which have expiated the vice of their origin, and are assimilated, as a creation, to divine science, that is, those in which the truth and the fact are mutually convertible.

"From what proceeds, we may infer that the criterion of truth, and the rule to recognize it, is to have made it: consequently, the clear and distinct idea of our mind which we have, is not a criterion of the truth, nor is it even a criterion of our mind; because the soul does not, by knowing itself, make itself; and not making itself, it knows not in what way it knows itself. Since human science takes abstraction for its basis, sciences are so much the more uncertain, as they more nearly approach corporal matter. …

"In a word, the true and the good are convertible, if what is known as true derives its being from the mind which knows it; as human science imitates divine science, wherein God, by knowing the true, begets it internally in eternity, and makes it externally in time. The communication of goodness to the objects of his thought is to God the criterion of the true: vidit Deus quod essent bona; to men it is to have made the truth which they know."[27]

296. Vico's system undeniably shows him to have been a profound thinker, and to have carefully meditated the problems of intelligence. His line dividing the certainty of sciences is exceedingly interesting. At first sight, nothing is more specious than the difference marked between mathematical, natural, and moral sciences. Mathematics is absolutely certain, because the work of the understanding, it is as the understanding, which constructed them, sees them to be. On the other hand, the natural and moral sciences regard objects independent of reason, having by themselves an existence of their own; wherefore, the understanding knows little of them, and even in this little it is the more liable to err as it penetrates deeper into a sphere where it cannot construct. We call this system specious, because when examined, it is found to be destitute of all solid foundation. We recognize, however, a profound thought in its author; for one he must have had to consider science under such a point of view.

297. The understanding knows only what it makes. This proposition sums up Vico's whole system; and it must have some foundation, or he cannot advance one step without begging his question. Why does the understanding know only what it makes? Why can the problem of representation have no possible solution out of causality? We think we have shown another origin besides this in identity, also in ideality duly connected with causality.

298. To understand is not to cause. There may be, and there really is, a productive intelligence; but the act of understanding and that of causing, in general, offer distinct ideas. Intelligence supposes an activity; otherwise that intimate life which distinguishes the intelligent being is inconceivable: but this activity does not produce the objects known; it operates in an immanent manner on these objects, presupposed to be either mediately or immediately in union with the intellect.

299. If the intellect be condemned to know nothing not made by itself, it is difficult to conceive how the act of understanding can commence. If we place ourselves in the initial moment, we shall not know how to explain the development of this activity; for, if it can only know what it has made, what is it to understand in the first moment before it has made any thing? In the system before us, the intellect has no object but what it has itself produced; but to understand, without an object understood, is a contradiction, so that not having in its initial moment yet produced any thing, there can be nothing understood; and, consequently, intelligence is inexplicable. We cannot suppose its activity to be blindly exercised: nothing is done blindly when there is question of representation, and the productive activity essentially relates to things represented as represented. So far as the problem of intelligence is concerned, it makes no difference that these are produced externally, with an existence distinct from the intellectual representation. As Vico himself explains, human reason knows what it constructs in a purely ideal world; and God knows the Word which he begets, although the Word is not without the divine essence, but is identified with it.

300. The Neapolitan philosopher, not satisfied with applying his system to human reason, makes it applicable to all intelligences, not excepting the divine; although with a praiseworthy regard for religion, he endeavors to reconcile his ideological doctrine with the dogmas of Christianity. Truly, the problems of intelligence cannot be completely solved without greatly cumulating them. To trace the footsteps of human reason does not suffice to make us know the human understanding; we must, moreover, propose the general problem of intelligence itself, now limited, like our own, to faint glimmerings, now dilating itself in a sea of light over the regions of infinity. The sublime words, with which St. John commences his Gospel, besides the august truth taught by divine inspiration, involve transcendental doctrines of an importance higher than can be found in the words of any man, even if considered under a merely philosophical point of view.

When Vico identifies truth with the made, he is aware that he must, according to a dogma of our religion, distinguish between what is created and what is uncreated. What is created is made; what is uncreated, begotten. He admires the divine elegance of the Holy Scriptures in calling the wisdom of God, in which the ideas of all things are contained, and the elements of ideas themselves, his Word: but when he would explain the conception of the Word, his expressions are very inexact; he would have us understand, so it would seem, that the Word only results from the elements known and contained in the divine omnipotence. "In this Word," he says, "the true is the comprehension of all the elements of this universe; and it might form infinite worlds: from these elements, known and contained in the divine omnipotence, is formed the Word real and absolute, known by the Father from all eternity, and by him begotten also from all eternity."[28]

If the author means that the Word is conceived by the mere knowledge of what is contained in the divine omnipotence, his assertion is false; if he does not, his mode of speaking is inexact.

St. Thomas asks whether any relation to creature be contained in the name of the Word: "utrum in nomine Verbi importetur respectus ad creaturam;" and he resolves the question with admirable laconism and solidity. "I reply that in the Word relation to creature is contained. For God, by knowing himself, knows every creature. The Word, therefore, conceived in the mind, is representative of all actually understood by it. Wherefore there are in us different words according to the different things we understand. But because God by one act understands both himself and all things, his only Word is expressive not only of the Father, but also of creatures. And as the science of God is, with respect to himself, cognition, but with respect to creatures, cognition and cause; so the Word of God is expressive only of what is in God the Father, but both expressive and productive of creatures; and this is why it is said in the Thirty-second Psalm: "He said, and they were made;" because the productive reason of those things, which the Father makes, is contained in the Word."[29]

We see by this passage, that, according to St. Thomas, the Word also expresses creatures, and that it is conceived not only by the cognition of them, but, and this too, primarily, by the cognition of the divine essence. Elsewhere, the Holy Doctor says: "The Father, by understanding himself, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and all other things included in His science, conceives the Word, in such a manner that the whole Trinity is expressed in the Word, and also all creatures."[30]

301. Another doctrine of St. Thomas is also opposed to this system of Vico, according to whom, the intellect knows what it makes, and that only, and because it makes it; and the made being the sole criterion of the true, the true and the made are convertible. Vico applies this doctrine to the divine intelligence, only substituting begotten for made; but this inverts the order of ideas, since, according to our mode of conceiving, God does not understand because he begets, but begets because he understands: intelligence must be conceived before the Word can be conceived. "In whoever understands," says St. Thomas, "by the very fact of understanding, something proceeds within him, which is the conception of the thing understood coming from the intellective power, and proceeding from its knowledge."[31]

This doctrine of St. Thomas confirms the opinion, expressed above, concerning the impossibility of explaining the intellectual act solely by production. To produce in the intellectual order, it is evidently necessary to understand; and consequently in the initial moment of every intelligence, the productive act cannot be performed without intuition of the object. St. Thomas speaks in this same sense of divine things, as much as one can so speak; he does not found the divine intelligence on the generation of the Word, but rather the generation of the Word on the divine intelligence. God, according to St. Thomas, begets the Word because he understands, but does not understand because he begets. St. Thomas comprises in the Word the expression of every thing contained in God; for he presupposes the divine intelligence, by which he makes it possible to speak or utter the Word. This, then, is the order of conceptions; understanding, object understood, word proceeding from the act of understanding, whereby the intelligent being expresses, or says to itself, the thing understood. These ideas applied to God, are: God the Father understanding; divine essence and all that it contains understood; Word or Son generated by this intellectual act, expressive of all that is contained in the generative act.

302. We have no disposition to blame Vico; we have only endeavored to mark the inexactness of his words, doing him, at the same time, the justice to believe that he understood things differently from what he explained them, which, indeed, he has not succeeded in doing with due clearness. Let us now consider his system under less subtle points of view.

If the made be admitted as the only criterion of the true, the understanding is obviously excluded from communication with all that it has not itself produced. And not having made itself, it cannot know itself. "The soul," says Vico, "knowing itself does not make itself, and therefore knows not in what manner it knows." Thus abstracting the problem of intelligibility proposed in our twelfth chapter, Vico denies to our soul a criterion of itself, for the sole reason that it is not its own cause. Identity, therefore, far from being an origin of representation, as was proved in our eleventh chapter, is incompatible with it; nothing can know itself, because nothing has made itself.

Hence results a very grave error; for it may be inferred that not even God can know himself, since he is not his own cause. It is not enough to say that he knows himself in the Word, since the Word is impossible if intelligence be not supposed.

303. The whole world of reality, distinct from that of intellectual being, will forever remain unknown in Vico's system, which, for this reason, leads to the most rigid skepticism. What does he admit? The cognition by the mind of the mind's own work; and in this are comprised the acts of consciousness and all the purely ideal objects which we create in it. This, also, is admitted by the skeptics, no one of whom would deny that we have consciousness, and that there is an ideal world the work of this consciousness, or at least attested by it.

If, then, we admit no criterion of truth but the made, we open the door to skepticism, and abandon the world of reality to fix ourselves in that of appearance. Nevertheless, so strange are human opinions, Vico thought directly the contrary; he believed that only with his system was it possible to refute skepticism. It is curious to hear him say with perfect seriousness: "The only means of destroying skepticism is to take this for the criterion of truth, that every one is certain of the truth which he makes."

But what is the foundation of so odd an opinion? Let us listen to the philosopher himself, who says, indeed, many good things, but does not show how they may tend to the overthrow of skepticism: "Skeptics are always repeating that things seem to them, but that they do not know what they really are. They confess effects, and consequently concede causes to them; but they assert that they do not know these causes, because they do not know the genus or form according to which things are made. Admit these propositions, and retort them thus: the comprehension of causes which contains all the genera and all the forms under which effects are produced, and the appearances of which the skeptic confessedly sees, although he denies that he knows their real essence, is found in the first truth which comprises all, and in which all, even to the last, are contained. And since this truth comprises all truths, it is infinite, it excludes none, and it has a superiority over every body, which is only an effect. This truth is consequently something spiritual; in other words, it is God, the God of the Christian. By this we must measure human truth; for human truth is that truth, the elements of which we have co-ordinated within us, and which, by means of certain postulates, we may extend and follow to infinity. By co-ordinating these truths we know and make them at one and the same time; and this is why, in this case, we have the genus and the form according to which we make."[32]

We discover nothing in this refutation of skepticism calculated to destroy it. Even supposing all to admit the principle of causality, which all do not admit, what aid can he draw from this principle, when he makes the work of that very understanding, which must make use of it, the only criterion? If causality be the only criterion of truth, the understanding is isolated, and cannot, in the order of effects, take one step beyond what it has itself produced; and, in the order of causes, it cannot ascend higher than itself; for, were it so to ascend, it would know things not made by itself, would know its own cause. With this supposition the skeptics must triumph; cognition is confined to the internal world, to simple appearances; and when one would go out of these, he stumbles against the only criterion which opposes the cognition of all not made by the understanding itself. We do then see reality, but are separated from it by an impassable abyss. The world in itself may be any thing we choose to suppose it; but with respect to us, it will be nothing. This law applies to every intelligence, so that vitality can only be known by the first cause.

These consequences, inadmissible as they are, if we would not throw ourselves unreservedly into the tide of skepticism, are nevertheless inevitable in Vico's system. An original way truly of combatting skepticism, thus to throw open its widest gates!