CHAPTER XIII

TRANSITION TO HISTORY: GENERAL CHARACTER OF VICO'S TREATMENT OF HISTORY

It is clear from the facts above discussed that the historical portion of the New Science could not take the shape of a history of the human race in which peoples and individuals were recognised as playing each its own unique part in the whole course of events. To enable it to fulfil such a function Vico would have had to close up his system of thought, which was still at one point incomplete and not impervious to the religious idea, and to elevate his provident deity into a progressive deity, determining flux and reflux as the eternal rhythm of the process. Or on the other hand in order to attain the vision of individuality, in the diametrically opposite sense, in history, he would have had to abandon his rudimentary idealistic philosophy, break down the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary providence, and trace the history of man on the plan which God had revealed or permitted him to discover. Vico's orthodoxy rebelled against the former alternative, while his philosophy kept him from the second: and the result of his dilemma was that the history he reconstructed was not and could not be a universal history.

In consequence, it was not what is called a philosophy of history, if that phrase is taken in its original sense of a "universal history "--one which concentrates its attention upon the broadest and least obvious connexions of facts--"philosophically narrated," more philosophically, that is, than is usual with annalists, anecdotists and compilers dealing with courts, politics and nations. The controversy as to whether Vico or Herder can claim to be the founder of the philosophy of history must be frankly decided in favour of Herder, whose work shows just that procedure of universal history which is lacking in the New Science. On the other hand it would be easy to find numerous predecessors for Herder, beginning with the Hebrew prophets and the scheme of the Four Monarchies, which remained not only in the Middle Ages but well into modern times the constructive scheme of universal history. Nor would it be out of place to add that the so-called philosophy of history, in so far as it is a universal history, constitutes neither a special philosophical science nor a form of history capable of sharp distinction from the rest, except when the passion for making it self-subsistent gives it the appearance of an abstract history or a historicised philosophy. Thus when Vico or Herder is credited with the foundation of a new science in the philosophy of history, the compliment is a doubtful one: a fact which especially in the case of Vico has gone far to obscure the value of their work. In fact, the "New Science of the common character of nations," understood as the equivocal science of the philosophy of history, has eclipsed the New Science as a new philosophy of mind and a rudimentary metaphysic of thought.

The conflict which for the general consciousness existed between science and faith reappears in Vico's treatment of history as a distinction and opposition between Jewish and Gentile history, sacred history and profane. Jewish history was not subjected, he believed, to the laws of history in general. Its course was unique, and its development proceeded on principles peculiar to itself, namely, the direct action of God. The New Science, which in its philosophical