The true cause of human society then is not utility, which only assists the action of the cause as its occasion, and brings it about that men, with all the weakness and poverty of their nature, and the divisions among them due to original sin, are led to extol their social nature "under compulsion of facts" (rebus ipsis dictantibus), in the phrase of the jurist Pomponius, quoted with approval by Vico. Objects, facts and circumstances in morality change, though morality itself does not change: and hence arises the illusion of the utilitarians, who cling to the external, confine themselves to the appearance and see the change but not the permanence. Murder is forbidden: but the approval, bestowed upon the man who when his life is threatened and he cannot otherwise save himself kills his unjust aggressor, does not imply that the moral judgment upon homicide varies; since in these particular circumstances the case is really one not of homicide but of capital punishment inflicted by the unjustly attacked person finding himself alone: a power tacitly delegated to him so to speak by society. Theft is forbidden: but the man who in order to preserve his life steals a loaf from another does not violate morality because he is exercising a right founded upon equity.
The only philosophy which carries with it a true ethic seems to Vico to be the Platonic, resting as it does upon a metaphysical principle, the eternal idea which draws out of itself and creates matter: while the Aristotelian ethic is founded upon a metaphysic leading to a physical principle, that of the matter from which particular forms are drawn, a principle which makes God a potter shaping objects external to himself. The ethic of the Roman lawyers was doubtless rich in fine aphorisms: but it was nothing but a mere art of equity, conveyed by means of endless minute maxims of natural justice, sought for by the writers in the reason of the laws and the will of the lawgiver. Hence it cannot be regarded as a moral philosophy, in which the best method is to proceed from a very small number of eternal truths, established by ideal justice in the fabric of metaphysic. For analogous reasons Vico could not rest satisfied with Grotius and the school of natural rights: of which in general he makes the perfectly just remark that their ponderous tomes, in spite of the impressive titles they bear, contain nothing that is not universally known. If Grotius's principles be weighed in the accurate balance of criticism, they are all found to be probable or plausible rather than necessary and incontestable. In dealing with the question of utility, Grotius missed the exact point by failing to distinguish the occasion from the cause: nor did he "nail down"—that is, he did not end—the ancient dispute as to whether right is a question of nature or of human opinion only, the same controversy as that carried on by philosophers and theologians with Carneades the sceptic and Epicurus: he advances the hypothesis of primitive men who were "simpletons," but quite omits to give reasons for it. And since these "simpletons" of his, after suffering injuries from their beast-like isolation, initiated a sociable life, a step to which they were determined by utility, Grotius himself slipped unawares into utilitarianism and Epicureanism.
Vico on the other hand answered the question, whether right is natural or conventional, by the grave aphorism "except in their natural condition, things neither progress nor endure." To the question, whence society arises, he replies by mentioning the common feeling of humanity, the conscience, the need which man feels of escaping from the internal enemy, which tortures his heart. The origin of society certainly lies in fear, but it is fear of oneself, not of another's violence: it lies in the agonies of remorse, the shame whose tinge suffusing the cheeks of the earliest men lit the first beacon of morality upon earth. Shame is the mother of all virtues, honour, frugality, honesty, loyalty to the pledged word, truthfulness in speech, abstention from others' property, and chastity. In extolling society, man is extolling human nature.
Shame or the moral consciousness, translated into terms of the corresponding empirical science, becomes that common consciousness of man upon matters of human necessity or utility which is the source of the natural right of nations. This common consciousness, says Vico, is an unreflective judgment, felt in common by a whole class, a whole people, a whole nation and the whole of mankind. An unreflective judgment is not strictly a judgment at all, since reflection is inseparable from judgment: it is not judgment, because it is felt and not thought. But on the other hand it is not what is called a "feeling,"—a vague term unknown to Vico, as it is to traditional philosophy. It is rather a practical attitude of mind, similar on the whole in persons living in similar conditions and producing similar customs in the various social groups, from the customs of a particular class to those of all mankind. The attitude is quite spontaneous, and for this very reason unreflective; so that customs arise from within, not from without, and their similarity does not depend upon imitation ("without one nation taking example from another"). Through this sensus communis the moral consciousness embodies itself in compact and unyielding institutions: and thus the sensus communis reduces to certitude the free will of man, which is in itself quite uncertain.
[CHAPTER VII]
MORALITY AND RELIGION
But this internal fear, shame or moral consciousness is aroused in man by religion. The fear is the fear of God, the shame is abasement before his face. Primitive man wanders over the earth alone, wild, fierce, without articulate speech, without a permanent mate, at the mercy of his unbridled and violent passions, a "brute" rather than a man. What can restrain him? what can rescue him from at last destroying himself? Wise men cannot direct him, for we cannot say whence or how they can reach him. The intervention of God cannot save him: God has withdrawn himself to his chosen people, and has no dealings with the rest of mankind, the Gentiles. But this "brute" is still a man: God, while abandoning him, has left a spark of his own essence at the bottom of his heart. See! the sky lightens: the wild creature stands awestruck and afraid: in his mind arises the shadowy idea of something greater than he, something divine. So he conceives or rather imagines a first God, a Sky-god, a thundering Jupiter: and to this deity he turns to appease his wrath or invoke his aid. But in order to conciliate him and secure his help, he must shape his own life conformably to his purpose: he must humble himself before his God, overcome his own pride and arrogance, abstain from certain actions and perform others. Thus the conception of a deity lends power to that peculiar possession of the human will, the attempt, that is, the liberty, to control the movements communicated to the mind by the body and to annul or to redirect them simultaneously. With these acts of self-control, with freedom, morality comes into existence: the fear of God has laid the foundations of human life. Altars arise all over the earth: the caves of her mountains, whither the man now bears the woman, ashamed as he is of gratifying his desires before the face of the sky, which is the face of God, preside at the first marriage-rites and shelter the first families: her bosom opens to receive the sacred trust of the bodies of the dead. The first and fundamental ethical institutions—worship, wedlock and burial—have arisen.
This social and ethical power of the idea of God appears again in the course of subsequent history: since when nations have relapsed into savagery through warfare, and human laws have no more power over them, religion is the only means of subduing them. It reappears again in the individual development of human life: children indeed cannot learn piety except through the fear of some deity; and when all natural help fails him man requires a superior being to save him, and this being is God. All nations believe in a divine providence: tribes living in a society without any consciousness of God, for instance in some parts of Brazil, among the Kafirs, and in the Antilles, are travellers' tales, an attempt to increase the sale of their books by the narration of portents.