638 Vico. i. e. to those who in each of their successive conditions are best qualified to preserve it^^ It is not my intention to enter into an examination of its principles, or its historical proofs. Vico indeed gave himself little concern about his- torical proofs ; he rarely quotes an authority, and never spe- cifically, but certain luoghi dP oro^ as he calls them, passages in the ancient authors which he regards as favourable to his system, and which he derives indifferently from Homer or lamblichus, are reiterated to satiety. To do any justice to the profound and original thoughts which are scattered through his work, it is necessary to strip them of the paradoxical garb which he has given them, and place them on a more solid foundation ; truth itself often looks like falsehood, from the strange company in which it is found. The general idea, that government has its origin in force, and is gradually tem- pered by religion, sympathy, and the perception of utility, when detached from its connexion with the fanciful theory of an age of Polyphemi, is much more probable than the doctrine of original compacts and voluntary conventions. The resemblance between the institutions of Europe in the middle ages^ and those of the ancient world, especially of Rome, is a fact which in Vico'^s time had been scarcely noticed ; Niebuhr has since drawn from it many striking illustrations of the Roman history ; but this resemblance is greatly exaggerated, when modern history is made to be nothing but a renewal of tliG same circle of changes as mankind had already gone through. Yet the conception of such a law was original and grand, however faulty its demonstration may be ; had there been, as Seneca represents, and historians have very generally admitted, " perpetua in omnibus rebus lex, ut ad summum perducta, rursus ad infimum velocius quam ascen- derant relabantur,'"^ it would be a consolation to know, that this law was not enacted, as the Stoic declared, by the malignity of Fate, but as Vico teaches, by the wisdom of Providence ^^. The existence of such a law of decline and corruption may indeed be justly called in question ; there is 11 Sc. N. III. 143. 1'^ Questo che fece tutto cio fur pur Mente ; ^erche '1 fecero gli nomini con intelligenza : non fu Fato ; perche '1 fecero con elezionc : non Caso, perch e con perpetuita sempre cosi facendo escono nelle' medesime cose. Sc. N iii. p. 153.
