Pagina 19 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

TIIEIMAGINATIVE UNIVERSAL 19
But alongside this account Vico also attributes to early man a very dif­
ferent mode of thought and linguistic expression, one that would dis­
pense with thè distinction between subjects and properties which is es-
sential to thè intelligible universal. For when he comes to discuss thè ori-
gins of language, thè account of thè poetic characters involved is very
different from that outlined above. Here we are told that «thè first men,
utterly devoid of language, must have expressed themselves, like mutes,
either by mute actions or by using bodies that were naturally related to thè
ideas they wished to signify» 15. It is important to note that Vico is now
talking not of ideas of thè gods but of thè mode of expressing these ideas,
i.e. of thè form of language, thè poetic characters, appropriate to them.
One example that he gives of a mute action which is naturally related to
an idea is that of making a scything gesture to signify a year. Thus, be-
cause men use scythes to harvest their crops and because harvests take
place once a year, when men are unable to signify thè idea of a year by
using a word they signify a number of years by making a number of scyth­
ing gestures16. A little later, he makes thè point doubly clear when he as-
serts that «thè first kind of language consists of thè characters of thè false
divinities, including all thè fables of thè gods»17. Now it is clear that, if
these characters are aspects of thè language which is appropriate to this
form of mentality, a very different idea of a poetic character has nowbeen
introduced. For these characters are used to refer to non-conceptual
ideas of thè gods and they do so by having naturai relations to them. But
if this is so, it becomes impossible to explain thè formation of this kind
of poetic character by reference to antonomasia. For Vico is no longer
talking about a way in which names take thè place of abstract words in
a language which is appropriate to, and dependent upon, abstract con-
cepts, but of a wholly different kind of language in which objects, ges­
tures and hieroglyphics18 form thè mode of expression appropriate to
ideas of thè gods. Thus thè poetic characters involved here are entirely
different from thè first kind mentioned by Vico and thè possibility of
15 Ibid., § 305. My italics.
16This is not a particularly happy example, since while Vico explicitly says that «thè year
is abstract», he fails to remember what he notes elsewhere, that numbers are equally abstract
and, in fact, much nearer to reasoning. Moreover, he offers nothing that is naturally related
to thè idea of a particular number by which to express it. Thus when he asserts that men made
a number of gestures to signify thè number of years in which they had harvested, he simply
assumes that thè number can be recognised for what it is by an example of it in use, without
thè aid of something naturally related to it in thè way in which thè particular gesture is meant,
via thè connection with harvesting, to be related to thè idea of a year.