I
The transformation, half rhetorical, half mythical, which the heat of the national reawakening effected in poets, philosophers, and almost every character of any importance in Italian history, representing them as patriots, liberals, and in open rebellion or secret revolt against the throne and the altar, tried for a time to touch with its magic wand and to work its will upon Giambattista Vico. It was said, among other things, that Vico, conscious of the severe blow dealt by his thought to the traditional beliefs of religion, and warned by his friends, took pains to plunge the New Science into such obscurity that only the finest intellects could perceive its tendencies. But though this legend, energetically spread as it was by the patriots and republicans of 1799, was believed here and there, it could not long stand out against criticism or even against common sense; and Cataldo Iannelli was right to pass over it with a few words of contemptuous irony.[2] It is certain from an objective point of view that Vico's doctrines implicitly contained a criticism of Christian transcendence and theology as well as of the history of Christianity. From the subjective point of view it may be that Vico during his youth (of which we know very little) was the victim of religious doubts. Such doubts may have been suggested to him not only by his reading, but by the society of young men of his own age, among whom "libertines," or as contemporary literature still called them "epicureans" or "atheists," were not uncommon.[3] In a letter of 1720 to Father Giacchi, he says that at Naples the "weaknesses and errors dating from his early youth" are remembered against him, and that these, fixed in the memory, became as often happens "eternal criteria for the judgment of everything beautiful and complete which he subsequently succeeded in doing."[4] What can these errors and weaknesses have been?
Again when the De universi iuris uno principio et fine uno appeared, or rather the "Synopsis" which announced its programme, "the first voices" which Vico heard raised against him "were tinged with an assumed piety." He found protection and consolation in the face of such criticism in religion itself, that is to say in the approval of Giacchi, "the leading light of the strictest and most holy order of religious."[5] But just as we possess no detailed information as to the criticisms levelled against him on this head, so we have no certain knowledge even of the most general kind as to the religious doubts that may have troubled him. All Vico's writings show the Catholic religion established in his heart, grave, solid and immovable as a pillar of adamant; so solid and so strong that it remained absolutely untouched by the criticism of mythology inaugurated by himself. Nor was Vico an irreproachable Catholic in external demonstration only. He not only submitted every word he ever printed to the double censorship, public and private, of ecclesiastical friends, and led his life as a philosopher and writer among priestly vestments and monastic cowls no less than among legal gowns; he was even scrupulous enough to desist from his commentary on Grotius, thinking it unseemly that a Catholic should annotate a Protestant writer;[6] and so delicate was his sense of Catholic honour that he refused to admit polemic upon matters of religious feeling. "As to this difficulty," he says to his critics of the Giornale dei letterati, "like that which you propound to me concerning the immortality of the soul, where it appears that you have in hand seven distinct arguments, if they had not been prepared for me by you, I should judge that they go deeper and penetrate to a region which is not only protected and secured by my life and conduct, but which to defend is to outrage. But let us return to our subject."[7] His Catholicism was untainted by the superstition so general and so deeply rooted at the time, especially at Naples, where St. Januarius intervened as an actor and director in every event of public and private life. It was the Catholicism of a lofty soul and mind, not the faith of a charcoal-burner. But Vico never assumed the part of censor of superstitions. He was content with not speaking of them, as one keeps silence concerning the failings of persons or institutions which command one's respect.
[1] Since the preceding portions of this work are strictly confined to the analysis of Vico's philosophy and give no information as to his life and personal character, the reader will not be displeased to find in this appendix a lecture delivered by myself upon the latter subject before the Neapolitan Società di storia patria on April 14, 1909, and later written down and published in the Florence Voce(1st year, No. 43, October 7, 1909). I add for convenience of memory that Vico was born at Naples on June 23, 1668 (not 1670 as he says in his autobiography), and died on January 23 (not 20 as all his biographers say), 1744: the new edition of the Autobiografia, carteggio e poesie varie (Bari, Laterza, 1911), pp. 101, 123, 124.
[2] See for the whole question Croce, Bibliografia vichiana, pp. 91-5.
[3] In the Giornali of Confuorto (MSS. in the library of the Neapolitan Historical Soc. xx. c. 22, vol. iii. f. 111) under August 1692, we find "certain civil persons were imprisoned in the prisons of St. Dominic by the tribunal of the Holy Office; among them the doctor Giacinto de Cristofaro, son of the doctor Bernardo; many others escaped, members of the Epicurean or Atheist sect, who believe the soul to perish with the body." This De Cristofaro is the famous Neapolitan mathematician and jurisconsult, for whom see F. Amodeo, Vita matematica napoletana, part iii. (Naples, Giannini, 1905), pp. 31-44; he was Vico's friend. For other notices of the "Epicureans" at Naples at this time see Carducci, Opere, vol. ii. pp. 235-6.
[4] Letter of October 12, 1720.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Autobiografia, in Opere, ed. Ferrari, 2nd ed. iv. p. 367.