[57] Opp. vi. p. 287.
[58] Ibid. p. 18.
[59] Ibid. pp. 153-4.
[60] Ibid. pp. 29-30.
VIII
So the hot-tempered man became at last tolerant: tolerant with that tolerance, that lofty indulgence which must not be confused with common toleration. The University, in which he had hoped for advancement and towards which he directed the thought of his earlier works, would have none of him; he retired within himself to think out the Scienza Nuova. Now, says he with a smile in which we may still see a trace of bitterness, I owe this work to the University, which, by judging me unworthy of the chair and not wishing me to be "occupied in treating paragraphs," gave me leisure for meditation: "what greater obligation could I have?"[61] A friend, Sostegni the Florentine, in a sonnet to Vico, let slip some words in condemnation of the city of Naples for making so little of her distinguished son. Vico in his reply justifies his native place in noble words, as being stern towards him because she expected and desired much of him:
Stern mother, she caresses not her son,
Lest so she fall into obscurity,
But gravely listens, watching as he speaks.[62]
This was the spirit that found expression in the Autobiography, a work which has been misjudged and in fact entirely misunderstood by Ferrari, who censures its prevailing teleological tendency and laments the absence of a "psychological" explanation of Vico's life;[63] as if Vico had not himself explained that he was writing it from a "philosophical" point of view.[64] And what is the meaning of a philosophical treatment of a philosopher's life but an understanding of the objective necessity of his thought and a perception of the scaffolding it involves even where the author at the moment of thinking did not clearly perceive it? Vico "meditates upon the causes, natural and moral, and upon the occasions of his fortunes; he meditates upon the inclinations or aversions he felt from childhood towards this or that branch of study; he meditates upon the opportunities or hindrances which assisted or retarded his progress; he meditates, lastly, upon certain efforts of his own in right directions which bore fruit in the reflections upon which he built his final work, the Scienza Nuova, which work was to demonstrate that his literary life was bound to have been what it was and not different."[65] Vico's Autobiography is, in a word, the application of the Scienza Nuova to the life of its author, the course of his own individual history: and its method is as just and true as it is original. Vico succeeded in part only of his attempt, and could not form a criticism and history of himself to the same extent to which a modern critic and historian is in a position to do—whose efforts will again be improved upon by those of the future—is too obvious to need emphasising. The Autobiography itself concludes with a blessing upon the author's hardships, a profession of faith in Providence and a sure expectation of fame and glory.