(1725), whereof the originality and the depth--qualities in which,
despite its incoherences, it on the whole excels Montesquieu's Spirit
of Laws--place him among the great freethinkers in philosophy. It
was significant of much that Vico's book, while constantly using the
vocabulary of faith, grappled with the science of human development
in an essentially secular and scientific spirit. This is the note
of the whole eighteenth century in Italy. [1572] Vico posits Deity
and Providence, but proceeds nevertheless to study the laws of
civilization inductively from its phenomena. He permanently obscured
his case, indeed, by insisting on putting it theologically, and
condemning Grotius and others for separating the idea of law from
that of religion. Only in a pantheistic sense has Vico's formula any
validity; and he never avows a pantheistic view, refusing even to go
with Grotius in allowing that Hebrew law was akin to that of other
nations. But a rationalistic view, had he put it, would have been
barred. The wonder is, in the circumstances, not that he makes so
much parade of religion, but that he could venture to undermine so
vitally its pretensions, especially after he had found it prudent to
renounce the project of annotating the great work of Grotius, De Jure
Belli et Pacis, on the score that (as he puts it in his Autobiography)
a good Catholic must not endorse a heretic.
Signor Benedetto Croce, in his valuable work on Vico (The
Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, Eng. tr. 1913, pp. 89-94), admits
that Vico is fundamentally at one with the Naturalists: "Like
them, in constructing his science of human society, he excludes
with Grotius all idea of God, and with Pufendorf considers man as
without help or attention from God, excluding him, that is, from
revealed religion and its God." Of Vico's opposition to Grotius,
Signor Croce offers two unsatisfactory explanations. First:
"Vico's opposition, which he expresses with his accustomed
confusion and obscurity, turns ... upon the actual conception
of religion.... Religion ... means for Vico not necessarily
revelation, but conception of reality." This reduces the defence
to a quibble; but finally Signor Croce asks himself "Why--if Vico
agreed with the natural-right school in ignoring revelation,
and if he instead of it deepened their superficial immanental
doctrine--why he put himself forward as their implacable enemy
and persisted in boasting loudly before prelates and pontiffs
of having formulated a system of natural rights different from
that of the three Protestant authors and adapted to the Roman
Church." The natural suggestion of "politic caution" Signor
Croce rejects, declaring that "the spotless character of Vico
entirely precludes it; and we can only suppose that, lacking as
his ideas always were in clarity, on this occasion he indulged
his tendency to confusion and nourished his illusions, to the
extent of conferring upon himself the flattering style and title
of Defensor Ecclesiæ at the very moment when he was destroying
the religion of the Church by means of humanity."
It is very doubtful whether this equivocal vindication is more
serviceable to Vico's fame than the plain avowal that a writer
placed as he was, in the Catholic world of 1720, could not be
expected to be straightforward upon such an issue. Vico comported
himself towards the Catholic Church very much as Descartes did. His
own declaration as to his motives is surely valid as against
a formula which combines "spotless character" with a cherished
"tendency to confusion." The familiar "tendency to hedge" is a
simpler conception.