[CHAPTER XI]
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.