arose in the Catholic and not in the Protestant world. We might say
that, genius apart, the reason was that the energy which elsewhere ran
to criticism of religion as such had in Catholic Italy to take other
channels. By attacking a Protestant position which was really less
deeply heterodox than his own, Vico secured Catholic currency for a
philosopheme which on its own merits Catholic theologians would have
scouted as atheism. As it was, Vico's sociology aroused on the one
hand new rationalistic speculation as to the origin of civilization,
and on the other orthodox protest on the score of its fundamentally
anti-Biblical character. It was thus attacked in 1749 by Damiano
Romano, and later by Finetti, a professor at Padua, Ã propos of the
propaganda raised by Vico's followers as to the animal origin of
the human race. This began with Vico's disciple, Emmanuele Duni, a
professor at Rome, who published a series of sociological essays in