A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

(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.