"In a word, the true and the good are convertible, if what is known as true derives its being from the mind which knows it; as human science imitates divine science, wherein God, by knowing the true, begets it internally in eternity, and makes it externally in time. The communication of goodness to the objects of his thought is to God the criterion of the true: vidit Deus quod essent bona; to men it is to have made the truth which they know."[27]
296. Vico's system undeniably shows him to have been a profound thinker, and to have carefully meditated the problems of intelligence. His line dividing the certainty of sciences is exceedingly interesting. At first sight, nothing is more specious than the difference marked between mathematical, natural, and moral sciences. Mathematics is absolutely certain, because the work of the understanding, it is as the understanding, which constructed them, sees them to be. On the other hand, the natural and moral sciences regard objects independent of reason, having by themselves an existence of their own; wherefore, the understanding knows little of them, and even in this little it is the more liable to err as it penetrates deeper into a sphere where it cannot construct. We call this system specious, because when examined, it is found to be destitute of all solid foundation. We recognize, however, a profound thought in its author; for one he must have had to consider science under such a point of view.
297. The understanding knows only what it makes. This proposition sums up Vico's whole system; and it must have some foundation, or he cannot advance one step without begging his question. Why does the understanding know only what it makes? Why can the problem of representation have no possible solution out of causality? We think we have shown another origin besides this in identity, also in ideality duly connected with causality.
298. To understand is not to cause. There may be, and there really is, a productive intelligence; but the act of understanding and that of causing, in general, offer distinct ideas. Intelligence supposes an activity; otherwise that intimate life which distinguishes the intelligent being is inconceivable: but this activity does not produce the objects known; it operates in an immanent manner on these objects, presupposed to be either mediately or immediately in union with the intellect.
299. If the intellect be condemned to know nothing not made by itself, it is difficult to conceive how the act of understanding can commence. If we place ourselves in the initial moment, we shall not know how to explain the development of this activity; for, if it can only know what it has made, what is it to understand in the first moment before it has made any thing? In the system before us, the intellect has no object but what it has itself produced; but to understand, without an object understood, is a contradiction, so that not having in its initial moment yet produced any thing, there can be nothing understood; and, consequently, intelligence is inexplicable. We cannot suppose its activity to be blindly exercised: nothing is done blindly when there is question of representation, and the productive activity essentially relates to things represented as represented. So far as the problem of intelligence is concerned, it makes no difference that these are produced externally, with an existence distinct from the intellectual representation. As Vico himself explains, human reason knows what it constructs in a purely ideal world; and God knows the Word which he begets, although the Word is not without the divine essence, but is identified with it.
300. The Neapolitan philosopher, not satisfied with applying his system to human reason, makes it applicable to all intelligences, not excepting the divine; although with a praiseworthy regard for religion, he endeavors to reconcile his ideological doctrine with the dogmas of Christianity. Truly, the problems of intelligence cannot be completely solved without greatly cumulating them. To trace the footsteps of human reason does not suffice to make us know the human understanding; we must, moreover, propose the general problem of intelligence itself, now limited, like our own, to faint glimmerings, now dilating itself in a sea of light over the regions of infinity. The sublime words, with which St. John commences his Gospel, besides the august truth taught by divine inspiration, involve transcendental doctrines of an importance higher than can be found in the words of any man, even if considered under a merely philosophical point of view.
When Vico identifies truth with the made, he is aware that he must, according to a dogma of our religion, distinguish between what is created and what is uncreated. What is created is made; what is uncreated, begotten. He admires the divine elegance of the Holy Scriptures in calling the wisdom of God, in which the ideas of all things are contained, and the elements of ideas themselves, his Word: but when he would explain the conception of the Word, his expressions are very inexact; he would have us understand, so it would seem, that the Word only results from the elements known and contained in the divine omnipotence. "In this Word," he says, "the true is the comprehension of all the elements of this universe; and it might form infinite worlds: from these elements, known and contained in the divine omnipotence, is formed the Word real and absolute, known by the Father from all eternity, and by him begotten also from all eternity."[28]
If the author means that the Word is conceived by the mere knowledge of what is contained in the divine omnipotence, his assertion is false; if he does not, his mode of speaking is inexact.
St. Thomas asks whether any relation to creature be contained in the name of the Word: "utrum in nomine Verbi importetur respectus ad creaturam;" and he resolves the question with admirable laconism and solidity. "I reply that in the Word relation to creature is contained. For God, by knowing himself, knows every creature. The Word, therefore, conceived in the mind, is representative of all actually understood by it. Wherefore there are in us different words according to the different things we understand. But because God by one act understands both himself and all things, his only Word is expressive not only of the Father, but also of creatures. And as the science of God is, with respect to himself, cognition, but with respect to creatures, cognition and cause; so the Word of God is expressive only of what is in God the Father, but both expressive and productive of creatures; and this is why it is said in the Thirty-second Psalm: "He said, and they were made;" because the productive reason of those things, which the Father makes, is contained in the Word."[29]
We see by this passage, that, according to St. Thomas, the Word also expresses creatures, and that it is conceived not only by the cognition of them, but, and this too, primarily, by the cognition of the divine essence. Elsewhere, the Holy Doctor says: "The Father, by understanding himself, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and all other things included in His science, conceives the Word, in such a manner that the whole Trinity is expressed in the Word, and also all creatures."[30]