vico. 549 the divine (theocracy), the heroic (aristocracy), and the human (democracy and monarchy). The same course of things repeats itself in the nations of later times : to the patriarchal dominion of the fanciful, myth-making Orient correspond the spiritual states of the migrations ; to the old Greek aristocracy, the chivalry and robbery of the period of the Crusades ; to the republicanism and the mon- archy of later antiquity, the modern period, which gives even the citizens and peasants a share in the universal equality. If European culture had not been transplanted to America, the same three-act drama of human develop- ment would there be playing. Vico carries this threefold division into his consideration of manners, laws, languages, character, etc. If Vico anticipates the Hegelian view of history, Anto- nio Genovesi (1712-69), who also taught at the University of Naples, and while the former was still living, shows him- self animated by a presentiment of the Kantian criticism.* Appreciating Leibnitz and Locke, and appropriating the idea of the monads from the one and the unknowableness of substance from the other, he reaches the conviction — according to statements in his letters — that sense-bodies are nothing but the appearances of intelligible unities; that each being for us is an activity, whose substratum and ground remains unknown to us ; that self-consciousness and the knowledge of external impressions yield phenomena alone, through the elaboration of which we produce the intellectual worlds of the sciences. For the rest, Genovesi thus advises his friends: Study the world, devote your- selves to languages and to mathematics, think more about men than about the things above us, and leave metaphys-
- In the following^ account we have made use of a translation of the conclud-
ing section of Francesco Fiorentino's Handbook of the History of Philosophy,. 1879-81, which was most kindly placed at our disposal by Dr. J. Mainzer. Cf. La Filosofia Contemporanea in Italia, 1S76, by the same author ; further, Bonatelli, Die Philosophie in Italien seit, 1815; Zeitschrift fiir Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, vol. liv. 1869, p. 134 sea. and especially, K. Werner, Die I talienisc he Philosophie des XIX. [ahrhunderts, 5 vols., 1884-86. [The English reader may be referred to the appendix on Italian philosophy in vol. ii. of the English translation of Ueberweg, by Vincenzo Botta ; and to Barzellotti's " Philosophy in Italy," Mind, vol. iii. 1878.— Tr.]
