CHAPTER XV. PHILOSOPHY OUT OF GERMANY. z. Italy. The Cartesian philosophy, which had been widely ac- cepted in Italy, and had still been advocated, in the sense of Malebranche, by Sigismond Gerdil (1718-1802), was opposed as an unhistorical view of the world by Giam- battista Vico,* the bold and profound creator of the phi- losophy of history (1668-1744; from 1697 professor of rhetoric in the University of Naples). Vico's leading ideas are as follows: Man makes himself the criterion of the universe, judges that which is unknown and remote by the known and present. The free will of the individ- ual rests on the judgments, manners, and habits of the people, which have arisen without reflection from a uni- versal human instinct. Uniform ideas among nations unacquainted with one another are motived in a common truth. History is the development of human nature ; in it neither chance nor fate rules, but the legislative power of providence, in virtue of which men through their own freedom progressively realize the idea of human nature. The universal course of civilization is that culture transfers its abode from the forests and huts into villages, cities, and, finally, into academies ; the nature of the nations is at first rude, then stern, gradually it becomes mild, nay, effemi- nate, and finally wanton ; at first men feel only that which is necessary, later they regard the useful, the convenient, the agreeable and attractive, until the luxury sprung from the sense for the beautiful degenerates into a foolish mis- use of things. Vico divides antiquity into three periods:
- Vico : Principles of a New Science of the Common Nature of Nations,
1725 ; Works, in six volumes, edited by G. Ferrari, 1835-37, new ed.. 1853 seq. On Vico cf. K. Werner, 1877 and 1879. [Also Flint's Vice, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1884.— Tr.] 548
