THE LAW OF REFLUX
The mind, after traversing its course of progress, after rising from sensation successively to the imaginative and the rational universal and from violence to equity, is bound in conformity with its eternal nature to re-traverse the course, to relapse into violence and sensation, and thence to renew its upward movement, to commence a reflux.
This is the philosophical meaning of Vico's "reflux," but not the exact manner in which we find it expressed in his writings, where the eternal circle is considered almost exclusively as exemplified in the history of nations, as a reflux in the civil affairs of man. Civilisation comes to an end in the "barbarism of reflection," which is worse than the primitive barbarism of sensation; for while the latter was not without a wild nobility, the former is contemptible, untrustworthy and treacherous; and thus it is necessary that this evil subtlety of malicious intellect should rust away through the long centuries of a new barbarism of sensation. We must however withdraw and purge the conception of "reflux" from historical facts and the sociological scheme, not only to explain the absolute and eternal character which Vico attributes to it, but also to justify the historical representation and sociological law founded upon it, and drawing their cogency primarily from it.
The laws of flux and reflux, laid down by the philosophers and politicians of Greece and of the Italian Renaissance, were founded no less than Vico's upon a philosophy, but upon a very superficial one; they assumed their object to possess external and empty political forms, and endeavoured to fix the succession of these forms upon data of experience or by vague reasonings. But Vico's object is the forms of culture, including in themselves all the activities of life, economy and law, religion and art, science and language, and referring them back to their inmost source, the human mind, he establishes their succession "according to the rhythm of the elementary forms of the mind." Thus all the learning which has been expended in comparing the Vician reflux with the theories of Plato or Polybius, Machiavelli or Campanella, is practically wasted: the more so that Vico (who, as we know, though often misunderstanding his predecessors cannot be accused of wishing to pass them over: in fact, where he thought he found parallel or identical ideas in them, he was apt to boast of the fact) felt no need of mentioning this point, or thought it unimportant. The "circular movement" (ἀνακύκλωσις) of Polybius, the economy of nature by which states alter, change and return to the same point, has been thought almost an anticipation of the eternal ideal history; but Vico sets Polybius with the others, when he asks the reader to consider "how (little) philosophers have thought with knowledge upon their principles of civil government, and with what (little) truth Polybius has reasoned upon its changes." Campanella connected his historical cycles with astrological laws; and Machiavelli conceives the catastrophe which opens the reflux thus: "When human craft and malignity have gone as far as they can go, it happens of necessity that the world purifies itself by one of the three methods (pestilence, famine and deluge, beside the human methods of new religions and languages) in order that men, having become few and chastened, may live more conveniently and become better." The one precedent to which Vico refers, but only to interpret it in a way altogether his own and in fact to give it a totally new content, is the ancient Egyptian tradition of the three successive ages of gods, heroes and men.
If the philosophy lying at its root gives strength to Vico's sociological theory of reflux, the historical element with which it is leavened to some degree weakens it. Vico was especially versed in and attached to Roman history, which had been the first of his historical studies and the object of many years' devotion. The history of Rome accordingly, whether because of his deeper study of it or because of its complexity, impressiveness and long duration, came to stand in Vico's mind as the typical or normal history, to serve as a standard for all others, and be confused with the law of flux and reflux itself. Rome showed him the asylum of Romulus, that is, the transition from the state of nature to the political organism: aristocracies, monarchical at first in appearance only, later not even in appearance: democracy, issuing from its struggle with aristocracy and ending in real monarchy, the perfect form of civil life; thence by a process of degeneration, the barbarism of reflection or civilisation, incomparably worse than the primitive noble barbarism, and following in its train a second condition of wandering in a state of nature and a new barbarism, a new youth, the Middle Ages. It is the history of Rome hardly generalised at all and supplemented here and there by that of Greece, that appears in the Vician aphorisms formulating the laws of social dynamics. Men first feel the prick of necessity, then the attraction of utility: next they become aware of convenience, and after that take delight in pleasure; then dissipate themselves in luxury and finally fall victims to the madness of abusing their resources. There must at first be men of brute strength like Polyphemus, that man may obey man in the state of family life, and to induce him to obey the law in the future state of civil life. There must be noble and proud men like Achilles, not inclined by nature to yield to their equals, in order to establish over the family the aristocratic type of republic. Then valiant and just men like Aristides and Scipio Africanus are necessary, to open the path to popular liberty. After this arise men of great apparent virtues accompanied by faults no less great, like Alexander or Caesar, acquiring immense popular reputations and introducing monarchy. Later still there must be serious reflective natures like Tiberius to consolidate the monarchy; and lastly wild, dissolute and shameless characters like Caligula, Nero and Domitian to overthrow it.
Owing to this rarefaction of Roman history into typical history, and the simultaneous consolidation of typical history into the history of Rome, Vico's law of reflux is riddled with exceptions, much more common and serious than those of the corresponding empirical laws; so that if as he believes his empirical science is identical with the ideal laws of the mind, its alleged permanency throughout all eternity and the whole universe seems the merest irony. He says that Carthage, Capua and Numantia, the three cities which threatened to dispute with Rome the empire of the world, failed to accomplish the ordained course of human affairs: since the Carthaginians were thwarted by the acuteness of the native African temperament, which by maritime commerce they increased still further: the Capuans by the soft climate and fertility of rich Campania: and the Numantines by their suppression in the first burst of heroism at the hands of Rome, led by Scipio Africanus the conqueror of Carthage, and aided by the forces of the world. And passing from ancient to modern times, America would now be traversing the path of human affairs but for its discovery by Europeans: Poland and England are still aristocratic, but would have arrived at perfect monarchy had not the natural course of civil affairs been hindered by extraordinary causes. As for the Middle Ages, they cannot be considered as in Vico's estimation a true return to the state of nature, if they open with the establishment of Christianity, the religion of the true God; nor in any case does the return to the state of nature and to barbarism seem the only path open to a nation that has attained its ἀκμή, its culmination. The alternative is that a decadent nation should lose its independence and fall under the rule of a better. Nor, lastly, is decadence inevitable if statesmen and philosophers working in harmony can preserve the perfection that has been reached and check the threatened destruction, and if in point of fact, as he observes, the aristocratic republics which survived his own day as remnants of the Middle Ages succeeded in preserving themselves by arts of "superfine wisdom." His own time Vico thought to be one of high civilisation. A complete humanity, he says, seems to be scattered to-day over all nations. A few great monarchs rule the world of nations, and those barbarian monarchs who still exist do so either owing to the persistence of the "common wisdom" of imaginative and cruel religions, or because of the natural temperaments of their respective peoples. The nations which form the empire of the Czar of Russia are of a sluggish disposition; those of the Khan of Tartary are an effeminate race; the subjects of the Negus of Ethiopia and the King of Fez and of Morocco are few and weak. In the temperate zone Japan maintains a heroic character not unlike that of Rome in the period of the Punic wars; her people are warlike, her language resembling Latin, her religion a fierce one of terrible gods all loaded with formidable weapons. The Chinese on the other hand, whose religion is mild, cultivate literature and are humane in the highest degree: the peoples of the Indies are also humane and practise the arts of peace; the Persians and Turks mingle the rude doctrine of their religion with an Asiatic softness, the Turks especially tempering their arrogance with pomp, magnificence, liberality and gratitude. Europe is above all humane, composed as it is of great monarchies and universally professing the Christian faith which inculcates an infinitely pure and perfect idea of God and commands charity to the whole human race. Vico fixed his attention upon the confederacy of the Swiss cantons and the united provinces of Holland, which reminded him of the Aetolian and Achaean leagues, and on the composition of the German Empire, a system of free states and sovereign princes, which seemed to him a kind of attempt in the direction of a great aristocratic state; the most perfect of all, and the ultimate form of civil life, since no other can be conceived superior to it, reproducing as it does the earliest form, the aristocracy of patricians each supreme in his own family and all united in the ruling class of the first state; but reproducing it in a form not of barbarism but of the highest civilisation. Such is the humanity by which Europe is on every hand distinguished, that it abounds with every element contributory to human happiness, mental pleasures no less than bodily comforts, and all this in virtue of the Christian religion, teaching as it does sublime truths, supported by the most learned philosophers of the Gentile races and of the three greatest languages of the world, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and thus uniting the wisdom of authority with that of reason, the choicest philosophical doctrine with the most highly developed philological learning. Can this lofty civilisation, safeguarded as it is by Christianity, be moving, or ever likely to move towards a new state of nature? It is difficult to discover Vico's real opinion on this point. Among his verses there is a poem of a profoundly pessimistic tone, but this is a youthful effusion, and in any case refers to the end of the world as imminent, rather than to a future social decadence. In his letters there is a melancholy picture of the condition of learning in his time: but it applies to this restricted field only, not to the sphere of social and political life. On the other hand, in his last philosophical work, the De mente heroica, referring to those who declared that all things were now perfect and that no new tasks could arise, he says that the tide of progress is flowing at its strongest. "The world is still young: for only in the last seven hundred years, four hundred of which were spent in barbarism, how many new discoveries have been made! How many new arts have arisen! How many new sciences have been developed!" (Mundus iuvenescit adhuc; nam septingentis non ultra abhinc annis, quorum tamen quadringentos barbaries percurrit, quot nova inventa! quot novae artes! quot novae scientiae excogitatae!) But we may observe that the De mente heroica is an official oration, and that Vico may on that account have suppressed for the occasion his doubts or his deepest convictions. In any case, how can we reconcile the prophecy of an imminent collapse with the rise of that creation of providence, the New Science, shedding upon the life of nations a light which rendered possible the diagnosis and cure of their ailments? On the whole it is probable that the difficulty of determining Vico's opinion as to the fate of contemporary society is due to the fact that he had really no settled conviction on the subject, and was led hither and thither in various and contrary directions by the influence of hopes and fears.
If it had not been disturbed by the scheme of Roman history, the empirical theory of the reflux would never have been forced to admit so many and serious exceptions; nor would it have fallen into such painful confusions. It would have accommodated its author's historical observations with greater ease, and its general characteristics would have been much simpler and more general. It would have consisted primarily in the determination and illustration of the connexion between predominantly imaginative and predominantly intellectual, spontaneous and reflective, periods, the latter periods issuing out of the former by an increase of energy, and returning to them by degeneration and decomposition. Political history shows over and over again the spectacle of aristocracies declining from their first strength to a debased and contemptible state and yielding before the onset of classes less refined or even absolutely uncultured, but of stouter moral fibre; while these again, after becoming civilised in their turn and attaining the highest development of the historical idea whose germ they bear within themselves, enter upon a new period of decay and fermentation, from which issues a new ruling class in the vigour of a youthful barbarism. The history of philosophy again shows positive and speculative periods; philosophical solutions congeal into scholastic theory and dogma, the mind reverts to the mere unthinking observation of particular fact, and the speculative process arises once more. Literary history, too, speaks of periods of realism and idealism, romantic and classical periods: of a corrupt classicism, Alexandrian or decadent art, and of a romantic barbarism which arises from it. These are true cases of Vico's reflux. But since the nature of the mind which underlies these cycles is outside time and therefore exists in every moment of time, we must not exaggerate the difference of the periods: and if on the one hand the outline of the law must be distinct, it must on the other hand not lose a certain elasticity. We must never forget that at every period, aristocratic or democratic, romantic or classical, positive or speculative, and even in every individual and every fact, moments both aristocratic and democratic, romantic and classical, positive and speculative can be observed; and that these distinctions are to a great extent quantitative and made for the sake of convenience. These facts should lead us to avoid alike maintaining the law at all costs and so falling into artificiality, and rejecting it entirely and so refusing the help which may be derived from general and approximative views.
Thus understood and amended, not only is the theory free from the great and striking exceptions which are necessary when it is modelled upon the history and final catastrophe of Rome, but the accusations of undue uniformity lodged against Vico disappear. Vincenzo Cuoco, one of the first, if not the first intelligent student of Vico's works, remarks concerning and in criticism of the law of reflux, that "nature never resembles itself; it is man who by compounding his observations forms classes and names." This is perfectly true; but if applied to this case it would be an argument not against the Vician reflux but against every sort of empirical human science. Others accused Vico of overlooking groups of causes of great historical weight, such as climate, racial and national character, and exceptional occurrences. But, omitting the fact that he often mentions these things, for he connects national character and climate with the forms and changes of states, and mentions events and circumstances which upset the natural and ordinary course of national history, for example in his discussion of Greek history, the truth is that he was bound to ignore them and could not waste time over such things, since his concern was with uniformities and not with divergences, or rather with certain uniformities and not with certain others which compared with the former were negligible divergences. Similarly—the parallel is an obvious one, and indeed is more than a parallel—any one who attempts to trace the general characteristics of the different periods of life, infancy, childhood, adolescence and so forth, will ignore the comparative rapidity and slowness of development due to differences of climate, race or accidental circumstances. Another of these true but irrelevant charges is that Vico denied the communication and interpenetration of civilisations, and insisted that they arise separately in different nations without any mutual knowledge and therefore without reciprocal imitation. This charge has been met by the observation that Vico does not fail to record cases of the influence of one people upon another and of the transmission of civilisations and their products; the transmission for example of alphabetic writing from the Chaldaeans to the Phoenicians and from them to the Egyptians; and that in any case his law is not empirical but philosophical and refers to the spontaneous creative activity of the human mind. The point at issue is however precisely the empirical aspect of this law, not the philosophical: and the true reply seems to us to be, as we have already suggested, that Vico could not take and ought not to have taken other circumstances into account, just as—to recall one instance—any one who in studying the various phases of life describes the first manifestations of the sexual craving in the vague imaginations and similar phenomena of puberty, does not take into account the ways in which the less experienced may be initiated into love by the more experienced, since he is setting out to deal not with the social laws of imitation but with the physiological laws of organic development. If it is said that even without imitation or sophistication the sexual craving arises no less and demands satisfaction, such a statement doubtless merely asserts the incontrovertible truth of a certain very ancient Eastern tale included by Boccaccio in the Decameron: but at the same time it supplies the most complete parallel to the famous and much controverted aphorism of Vico.
Nor is the Vician law of reflux necessarily opposed, as has often been thought, to the conception of social progress. It would be so opposed if instead of being a law of mere uniformity it were one of identity, in agreement with the idea of an unending cyclical repetition of single individual facts which has been adopted by certain extravagant minds of both ancient and modern times. The reflux of history, the eternal cycle of the mind, can and must be conceived, even if Vico does not so express it, as not merely diverse in its uniform movements, but as perpetually increasing in richness and outgrowing itself, so that the new period of sense is in reality enriched by all the intellect and all the development that preceded it, and the same is true of the new period of the imagination or of the developed mind. The return of barbarism in the Middle Ages was in some respects uniform with ancient barbarism; but it must not for that reason be considered as identical with it, since it contains in itself Christianity, which summarises and transcends ancient thought.
Whether the conception of progress is formulated and thrown into relief by Vico is quite another question. Vico does not deny progress; he even refers to it in speaking of the conditions of his own time as an actual fact: but he has no conception of it and still less does he throw such a conception into relief. His philosophy, while it attains the lofty vision of the process of mind in obedience to its own laws, nevertheless retains by reason of this failure to apprehend the progressive enrichment of reality an element of sadness and desolation. The individual character of men and events is obliterated in Vico; individuals and events are represented merely as particular cases of one aspect of the mind or of one phase of civilisation. Hence we always find Aristides alongside of Scipio and Alexander alongside of Caesar: never Aristides simply as Aristides, Scipio as Scipio, and Alexander and Caesar as Alexander and as Caesar. Progress implies that each fact and each individual has its own unique function; each makes its own contribution, for which no other can be substituted, to the poem of history; and each responds with a deeper voice to the one that went before.
But the reason why Vico was bound to miss the idea of progress and why his studies in history were inevitably one-sided can be clearly perceived only after a review of his metaphysics.