[51] Ibid. p. 44.
[52] Autob. in Opp. iv. p. 416: cf. the evidence of a pupil in Bibl. vich. p. 89.
[53] Opp. vi. p. 254.
[54] Autob. in Opp. iv. p. 416.
[55] Bibl. vich. p. 88.
[56] Sonnet published by G. Gentile, Il Figlio di G. B. Vico (Naples, Pierro, 1905), p. 173.
VII
But among all these troubles, obstacles and disappointments, in the midst of this sadness which often draped his life in black, Vico enjoyed one of the loftiest joys accessible to man; the "life of meditation" freed and purified from passion, lived by man in solitude without the turbulent and grievous company of the body: the life of security, because it is "made one with the soul always ready and present which shows man his being rooted in the Eternal that measures all times and walking in the Infinite that comprehends all finite things; it crowns him with an eternal and immeasurable joy not restricted invidiously to certain places nor grudgingly to certain times; but it can grow up within himself only if without envy of rivalry or fear of diminution it spreads and communicates itself unceasingly to more and more human minds."[57] That he has attained truth he never doubts, though he never ceases to elaborate it further; with the system presented in the work on Universal Law, his mind, he says, "rested content."[58] The weariness and even the pain he had suffered were dear to him, because through them he arrived at his discoveries: "I bless the twenty-five full years I have spent in meditation upon this subject, in the midst of the adversities of fortune and the checks I have often received from the unhappy example of great thinkers who have attempted new and weighty discoveries."[59] How could he have done anything but bless these fatigues, pains and adversities, if, whenever he rose above the passionate perturbations of the empirical man and the struggles of the practical man, his mind showed him the inevitable necessity of his toil and of his sufferings, two necessities fused into one another so as to become one and indivisible?
His own philosophical doctrine then brought him the remedy for his ills, and worked in his spirit the catharsis of liberation; the doctrine of the immanent Providence, or as it was later called, historical necessity, which was his central thought. "Praise be to Providence for ever, which, when the weak sight of mortals sees in it nothing but stern justice, then most of all is at work on a crowning mercy! For by this task I see that I am clothed upon with a new man; I feel that everything that goaded me to bewail my hard lot and to denounce the corruption of literature that has caused that lot, has vanished; for this corruption and this lot have strengthened me and enabled me to perfect my task. And more, it may perhaps not be true, but it would please me, were it true, that this labour has filled me with a certain spirit of heroism, through which no fear of death any longer disturbs me and my mind feels no disquietude at the words of my rivals. Lastly, it has established me as upon a mighty rock of adamant before the judgment of God, who rewards the work of creation by the approval of the wise, who are always and everywhere few in numbers ... men of the loftiest intellect, of a learning all their own, generous and great-hearted, whose only labour is to enrich with deathless works the commonwealth of letters."[60] Thus Providence showed him the necessity of all that had befallen or should befall him in his life, taught him resignation and promised him glory.