ated by the habit of ignoring psychological
differences, by the failure to recapture the ancient point of view. Here
he was far in advance of his own times.

Concentrating his attention above all on Roman antiquity, he
adopted--not altogether advantageously for his system--the revolutions
of Roman history as the typical rule of social development. The
succession of aristocracy (for the early kingship of Rome and Homeric
royalty are merely forms of aristocracy in Vico's view), democracy, and
monarchy is the necessary sequence of political governments. Monarchy
(the Roman Empire) corresponds to the highest form of civilisation. What
happens when this is reached? Society declines into an anarchical state
of nature, from which it again passes into a higher barbarism or heroic
age, to be followed once more by civilisation. The dissolution of the
Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions are followed by the Middle
Ages, in which Dante plays the part of Homer; and the modern period with
its strong monarchies corresponds to the Roman Empire. This is Vico's
principle of reflux. If the theory were sound, it would mean that the
civilisation of his day must again relapse into barbarism and the
cycle begin again. He did not himself state this conclusion directly or
venture on any prediction. It is obvious how readily his doctrine could
be adapted to the conception of Progress as a spiral movement. Evidently
the corresponding periods in his cycles are not identical or really
homogeneous. Whatever points of likeness may be discovered between early
Greek or Roman and medieval societies, the points of unlikeness are
still more numerous and manifest. Modern civilisation differs in
fundamental and far-reaching ways from Greek and Roman. It is absurd to
pretend that the general movement brings man back again and again to
the point from which he started, and therefore, if there is any value
in Vico's reflux, it can only mean that the movement of society may be
regarded as a spiral ascent, so that each stage of an upward progress
corresponds, in certain general aspects, to a stage which has already
been traversed, this correspondence being due to the psychical nature of
man.

A conception of this kind could not be appreciated in Vico's day or by
the next generation. The "Scienza nuova" lay in Montesquieu's library,
and he made no use of it. But it was natural that it should arouse
interest in France at a time when the new idealistic philosop