Apsinês of Gadara, a sophist of the time of Diocletian, pretended to be a son of Pan (see Suidas, v. Ἀψίνης). The anecdote respecting the rivers Skamander and Mæander, in the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator Æschines (p. 737), is curious, but we do not know the date of that epistle.
[844] The mental analogy between the early stages of human civilization and the childhood of the individual is forcibly and frequently set forth in the works of Vico. That eminently original thinker dwells upon the poetical and religious susceptibilities as the first to develop themselves in the human mind, and as furnishing not merely connecting threads for the explanation of sensible phænomena, but also aliment for the hopes and fears, and means of socializing influence to men of genius, at a time when reason was yet asleep. He points out the personifying instinct (“istinto d’ animazione”) as the spontaneous philosophy of man, “to make himself the rule of the universe,” and to suppose everywhere a quasi-human agency as the determining cause. He remarks that in an age of fancy and feeling, the conceptions and language of poetry coincide with those of reality and common life, instead of standing apart as a separate vein. These views are repeated frequently (and with some variations of opinion as he grew older) in his Latin work De Uno Universi Juris Principio, as well as in the two successive rédactions of his great Italian work, Scienza Nuova (it must be added that Vico as an expositor is prolix, and does not do justice to his own powers of original thought): I select the following from the second edition of the latter treatise, published by himself in 1744, Della Metafisica Poetica (see vol. v. p. 189 of Ferrari’s edition of his Works, Milan, 1836): “Adunque la sapienza poetica, che fu la prima sapienza della Gentilità, dovette incominciare da una Metafisica, non ragionata ed astratta, qual è questa or degli addottrinati, ma sentita ed immaginata, quale dovett’ essere di tai primi uomini, siccome quelli ch’ erano di niun raziocinio, e tutti robusti sensi e vigorosissime fantasie, come è stato nelle degnità (the Axioms) stabilito. Questa fu la loro propria poesia, la qual in essi fu una facultà loro connaturale, perchè erano di tali sensi e di si fatte fantasie naturalmente forniti, nata da ignoranza di cagioni—la qual fu loro madre di maraviglia di tutte le cose, che quelli ignoranti di tutte le cose fortemente ammiravano. Tal poesia incominciò in essi divina: perchè nello stesso tempo ch’essi immaginavano le cagioni delle cose, che sentivano ed ammiravano, essere Dei, come ora il confermiamo con gli Americani, i quali tutte le cose che superano la loro picciol capacità, dicono esser Dei ... nello stesso tempo, diciamo, alle cose ammirate davano l’essere di sostanze dalla propria lor idea: ch’è appunto la natura dei fanciulli, che osserviamo prendere tra mani cose inanimate, e transtullarsi e favellarvi, come fussero quelle persone vive. In cotal guisa i primi uomini delle nazioni gentili, come fanciulli del nascente gener umano, dalla lor idea creavan essi le cose ... per la loro robusta ignoranza, il facevano in forza d’una corpolentissima fantasia, e perch’ era corpolentissima, il facevano con una maravigliosa sublimità, tal e tanta, che perturbava all’eccesso essi medesimi, che fingendo le si creavano.... Di questa natura di cose umane restò eterna proprietà spiegata con nobil espressione da Tacito, che vanamente gli uomini spaventati fingunt simul creduntque.”
After describing the condition of rude men, terrified with thunder and other vast atmospheric phænomena, Vico proceeds (ib. p. 172)—“In tal caso la natura della mente umana porta ch’ella attribuisca all’effetto la sua natura: e la natura loro era in tale stato d’uomini tutti robuste forze di corpo, che urlando, brontolando, spiegavano le loro violentissime passioni, si finsero il cielo esser un gran corpo animato, che per tal aspetto chiamavano Giove, che col fischio dei fulmini e col fragore dei tuoni volesse lor dire qualche cosa.... E si fanno di tutta la natura un vasto corpo animato, che senta passioni ed affetti.”
Now the contrast with modern habits of thought:—
“Ma siccome ora per la natura delle nostre umane menti troppo ritirata dai sensi nel medesimo volgo—con le tante astrazioni, di quante sono piene le lingue—con tanti vocaboli astratti—e di troppo assottigliata con l’arti dello scrivere, e quasi spiritualezzata con la practica dei numeri—ci e naturalmente niegato di poter formare la vasta imagine di cotal donna che dicono Natura simpatetica, che mentre con la bocca dicono, non hanno nulla in lor mente, perocchè la lor mente è dentro il falso, che è nulla; nè sono soccorsi dalla fantasia a poterne formare una falsa vastissima imagine. Così ora ci è naturalmente niegato di poter entrare nella vasta immaginativa di quei primi uomini, le menti dei quali di nulla erano assottigliate, di nulla astratte, di nulla spiritualezzate.... Onde dicemmo sopra ch’ora appena intender si può, affatto immaginar non sì può, come pensassero i primi uomini che fondarono la umanità gentilesca.”
In this citation (already almost too long for a note) I have omitted several sentences not essential to the general meaning. It places these early divine fables and theological poets (so Vico calls them) in their true point of view, and assigns to them their proper place in the ascending movement of human society: it refers the mythes to an early religious and poetical age, in which feeling and fancy composed the whole fund of the human mind, over and above the powers of sense: the great mental change which has since taken place has robbed us of the power, not merely of believing them as they were originally believed, but even of conceiving completely that which their first inventors intended to express.
The views here given from this distinguished Italian (the precursor of F. A. Wolf in regard to the Homeric poems, as well as of Niebuhr in regard to the Roman history) appear to me no less correct than profound; and the obvious inference from them is, that attempts to explain (as it is commonly called) the mythes (i. e. to translate them into some physical, moral or historical statements, suitable to our order of thought) are, even as guesses, essentially unpromising. Nevertheless Vico, inconsistently with his own general view, bestows great labor and ingenuity in attempting to discover internal meaning symbolized under many of the mythes; and even lays down the position, “che i primi uomini della Gentilità essendo stati semplicissimi, quanto i fanciulli, i quali per natura son veritieri: le prime favole non poterono finger nulla di falso: per lo che dovettero necessariamente essere vere narrazioni.” (See vol. v. p. 194; compare also p. 99, Axiom xvi.) If this position be meant simply to exclude the idea of designed imposture, it may for the most part be admitted; but Vico evidently intends something more. He thinks that there lies hid under the fables a basis of matter of fact—not literal but symbolized—which he draws out and exhibits under the form of a civil history of the divine and heroic times: a confusion of doctrine the more remarkable, since he distinctly tells us (in perfect conformity with the long passage above transcribed from him) that the special matter of these early mythes is “impossibility accredited as truth,”—“che la di lei propria materia è l’impossibile credibile” (p. 176, and still more fully in the first rédaction of the Scienza Nuova, b. iii. c. 4; vol. iv. p. 187 of his Works).
When we read the Canones Mythologici of Vico (De Constantia Philologiæ, Pars Posterior, c. xxx.; vol. iii. p. 363), and his explanation of the legends of the Olympic gods, Hercules, Thêseus, Kadmus, etc., we see clearly that the meaning which he professes to bring out is one previously put in by himself.
There are some just remarks to the same purpose in Karl Ritter’s Vorhalle Europäischer Volkergeschichten, Abschn. ii. p. 150 seq. (Berlin, 1820). He too points out how much the faith of the old world (der Glaube der Vorwelt) has become foreign to our minds, since the recent advances of “Politik und Kritik,” and how impossible it is for us to elicit history from their conceptions by our analysis, in cases where they have not distinctly laid it out for us. The great length of this note prevents me from citing the passage: and he seems to me also (like Vico) to pursue his own particular investigations in forgetfulness of the principle laid down by himself.
[845] O. Müller, in his Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie (cap. iv. p. 108), has pointed out the mistake of supposing that there existed originally some nucleus of pure reality as the starting-point of the mythes, and that upon this nucleus fiction was superinduced afterwards: he maintains that the real and the ideal were blended together in the primitive conception of the mythes. Respecting the general state of mind out of which the mythes grew, see especially pages 78 and 110 of that work, which is everywhere full of instruction on the subject of the Grecian mythes, and is eminently suggestive, even where the positions of the author are not completely made out.