Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/232

Rh 212 V I C exposition of the political history of the kingdom, based on a study of its laws and institutions and of the legal conflicts between the state and the court of Rome, Pietro Gianiione was the first initiator of what has been since known as civil history. Giovan Vincenzo Gravina, the patron and preceptor of Metastasio, and also noted as a literary critic, wrote a history of Roman law, specially distin guished for its accuracy and elegance. While Gravina studied the successive and varying forms of Roman law and sought to give them an historical explanation, Vico raised the problem to a higher plane, by tracing the origin of law in the human mind and ex plaining the historical changes of the one by those of the other. Thus lie made the original discovery of certain ideas which consti tute the modern historic method, or rather the psychologico-historic method. This problem he proceeded to develop in various works, until in his Scienza Nuova he arrived at a more complete solution, which may be formulated as follows. If the principle of justice and law be one, eternal, and immutable, why should there be so many different codes of legislation ? These differences are not caused by difference of nationality only, but are to be noted in the history of the same people. The clearest, most precise, and most constant conception of law was undoubtedly that of the Romans ; nevertheless Roman jurisprudence underwent so many transforma tions as apparently to constitute almost different codes. How was so strange a fact to be explained ? This question ie touched upon in his Orations or Inaugural Addresses (Orazioni o Prohisioni) and in his Minor Works (Scritti Minori). Finally he applied himself to its solution in his Universal Law (Diritto Universale], which is divided into two books. The first of these, De uno et universi juris principio ct fine uno, was subdivided into two parts ; so like wise was the second, with the respective titles of De constantia pliilologise and De constantia jurisprudentis. The following is the general idea derived from these researches. Vico held God to be the ruler of the world of nations, but ruling, not as the providence of the Middle Ages by means of continued miracles, but as He rules nature, by means of natural laws. If, therefore, the physicist seeks to discover the laws of nature by study of natural phenomena, so the philosopher must seek the laws of historical change by the investigation of human events and of the human mind. According to Vico, law emanates from the con science of mankind, in whom God has infused a sentiment of justice, and is therefore in close and continual relation with the human mind, and participates in its changes. This sentiment of justice is at first confused, uncertain, and almost instinctive, is, as it were, a divine and religious inspiration instilled by heaven into the primitive tribes of the earth. It is an unconscious, universal sen timent, not the personal, conscious, and rational sentiment of the superior few. Hence the law to which it gives birth is enwrapped in religious forms which are likewise visible and palpable, inas much as primitive man is incapable of abstract, philosophical ideas. This law is not the individual work of any philosophical legislator, for no man was, or could be, a philosopher at that time. It is first displayed in the shape of natural and necessary usages conse crated by religion. The names of leading legislators, which we so often find recorded in the history of primitive peoples, are symbols and myths, merely serving to mark an historic period or epoch by some definite and personal denomination. For nations, or rather tribes, were then distinguished by personal names only. The first obscure and confused conception of law gradually becomes clearer and better defined. Its visible and religious forms then give way to abstract formula, which in their turn are slowly replaced by the rational manifestation of the philosophic principles of law that gains the victory in the final stage of development, designated by Vico as that of civil and human law. This is the period of indi vidual and philosophic legislators. Thus Roman law has passed through three great periods, the divine, the heroic, and the human, which are likewise the three chief periods of the history of Home, with which it is intimately and intrinsically connected. Never theless, on careful examination of these three successive stages, it will easily be seen that, in spite of the apparent difference between them, all have a common foundation, source, and purpose. The human and civil philosophic law of the third period is assuredly very different in form from the primitive law ; but in substance it is merely the abstract, scientific, and philosophic manifestation of the same sentiment of justice and the same principles which were vaguely felt in primitive times. Hence one development of law may be easily translated into another. Thus in the varied mani festations of law Vico was able to discover a single and enduring principle (De universi juris uno principio et fine uno}. On these grounds it has been sought to establish a close relation between Vico and Grotius. The latter clearly distinguished between a posi tive law differing in different nations and a natural law based on a general and unchanging principle of human nature, and therefore obligatory upon all. But Vico was opposed to Grotius, especially as regards his conception of the origin of society, and therefore of law. Grotius holds that its origin was not divine, but human, and neither collective, spontaneous, nor unconscious, but personal, rational, and conscious. He believed moreover that natural law and positive law moved on almost constant and immutable parallel lines. But Vico maintained that the one was continually progressing towards the other, positive law showing an increasing tendency to draw nearer to natural and rational law. Hence the conception that law is of necessity a spontaneous birth, not the creation of any individual legislator ; and hence the idea that it necessarily proceeds by a natural and logical process of evolution constituting its history. Vico may have derived from Grotius the idea of natural law ; but his discovery of the historic evolution of law was first suggested to him by his study of Roman law. He saw that the his tory of Roman jurisprudence was a continuous progress of the narrow, rigorous, primitive, and almost iron law of the XII. Tables towards the wider, more general, and more humane jus gentium. Having once derived this conception from Roman history, he was easily and indeed necessarily carried on to the next, that the posi tive law of all nations, throughout history, is a continual advance, keeping pace with the progress of civilization, towards the philo sophic and natural law founded on the principles of human nature and human reason. As already stated, the Scienza Nuova appeared in three different editions. The divergences between the second and third are of too little moment to be recorded here. But the first and second edi tions are almost distinct works. In the former the author sets forth the analytical process by which the laws he discovered were deduced from facts. In the second he not only enlarges his matter and gives multiplied applications of his ideas, but also follows the synthetic method, first expounding the laws he had discovered and then proving them by the facts to which they are applied. In this edition the fragmentary and jerky arrangement, the intricate style, and a peculiar and often purely conventional terminology seri ously checked the diffusion of the work, which accordingly was little studied in Italy and remained almost unknown to the rest of Europe. Its fundamental idea consists in that which Vico, in his peculiar ter minology, styles &quot;poetical wisdom&quot; (sapicnza poetiea) and &quot;occult wisdom &quot; (sapicnza riposta}, and in the historical process by which the one is merged in the other. He frequently declares that this discovery was the result of the literary labours of his whole life. Vico was the first thinker who asked, Why have we a science of nature, but no science of history ? Because our glance can easily be turned outwards and survey the exterior world ; but it is far harder to turn the mind s eye inwards and contemplate the world of the spirit. All our errors in explaining the origin of human society arise from our obstinacy in believing that primitive man was entirely similar to ourselves, who are civilized, i.e., developed by the results of a lengthy process of anterior historic evolution. We must learn to issue from ourselves, transport ourselves back to other times, and become children again in order to comprehend the infancy of the human race. As in children, imagination and the senses prevailed in those men of the past. They had no abstract ideas ; in their minds all was concrete, visible, and tangible. All the phenomena, forces, and laws of nature, together with mental con ceptions, were alike personified. To suppose that all mythical stories are fables invented by the philosophers is to write history backwards and confound the instinctive, impersonal, poetic wisdom of the earliest times with the civilized, rational, and abstract occult wisdom of our own day. Exit how can we explain the formation of this poetic wisdom, which, albeit the work of ignorant men, has so deep and intrinsic a philosophic value ? The only possible reply is that already given when treating of the origin of law. Provi dence has instilled into the heart of man a sentiment of justice and goodness, of beauty, and of truth, that is manifested differently at different times. The ideal truth within us, constituting the inner life that is studied by philosophers, becomes transmuted by the facts of history into assured reality. For Vico psychology and history were the two poles of the new world he discovered. After having extolled the work of God and proclaimed Him the source of all knowledge, he adds that a great truth is continually flashed on us and proved to us by history, namely, &quot;that this world of nations is the work of man, and its explanation therefore only to be found in the mind of man.&quot; Thus poetical wisdom, appearing as a spontane ous emanation of the human conscience, is almost the product of divine inspiration. From this, by the aid of civilization, reason, and philosophy, there is gradually developed the civil, occult wisdom. The continual, slow, and laborious progress from the one to the other is that which really constitutes history, and man becomes civilized by rendering himself the conscious and independent possessor of all that in poetical wisdom remained impersonal, un conscious, came as it were from without by divine afflatus. Vico gives many applications of this fundamental idea. The religion of primitive peoples is no less mythical than their history, since they could only conceive of it by means of myths. On these lines he interprets the whole history of primitive Rome. One book of the second edition of the Scienza Nuova is devoted to &quot; The Dis covery of the True Homer.&quot; Why all the cities of Greece dispute the honour of being his birthplace is because the Iliad and the. Odyssey are not the work of one, but of many popular poets, and a true creation of the Greek people which is in every city of Gi eece.