Pagina 29 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

THE IMAGINATIVE UNIVERSAL 29
their women and progeny, activities which Vico definitely attributes to
thè giants before their ascent into thè first human world43. Thus they
would need to be able to recognise such things as food, water, fellow gi­
ants, dangerous behaviour, threats, and so on. Again, it would be idle to
spend too much time speculating precisely what, in Vico’s view, would
be required, since he says relatively little on these points. Nevertheless,
he makes it quite clear that thè ideas of thè beings in thè divine world
were false. There never were such beings as Jove, Juno, Apollo, Diana,
and so on. Clearly, if poetic man is to survive in his world, he cannot do
so simply by creating these wholly imaginary beings. What he needs is
to be in at least cognitive contact with thè world of food, water and so
on, as it really is. The problem is not that he cannot see this world in thè
way in which Vico says that he has imagined it: it is that he needs to be
in cognitive contact with thè reality underlying thè imagined world and
since, ex hypothesi, he would be unable to do so via thè false imaginary
ideas and thè associated language of gesture appropriate to thè divine
world, he would need some other way of identifying these features of re­
ality. Vico does, in fact, often refer to thè giants as having thè capacities
of animals, hence his use of ‘bestioni’, but, while he attributes keen sens-
es both to animals and to thè bestioni, it seems certain that he did not at­
tribute to animals thè capacity to have ideas or use language. This might
suggest that he thought that thè bestioni had no need of language in or-
der to exercise this animal-like capacity. At one point, indeed, he asserts
that for animals «each new sensation cancels thè last one»44. But this
looks like a mistake, for even animals need to be able to sense some gen­
erai characteristics of things if they are to maintain their existence45. If
they could not somehow sense such generai characteristics as would en-
able them to distinguish systematically between water and food or be­
tween poisonous and non-poisonous foods, for example, as would be thè
case if each sensory experience cancelled all trace of its predecessors, it
is difficult to see how they could survive at all. But if Vico’s remark is
mistaken and it is assumed that thè giants resembled animals in pos-
sessing a capacity to sense kinds of properties or things with kinds of
properties, it looks as though thè projection of thè giants’ idea of their
45 The human world is taken to start with thè creation of Jove, «thè first human thought
in thè gentile world» (ibid., § 447). Strictly speaking, of coursc, Jove is not a thought but thè
idea of a being about whom poetic man can, or should be able to, have thoughts.
44 Ibid., § 703.
45 Vico is unable to adm it that animals, or primitive human beings, can have such a thing
as a naturai pre-reflective consciousness, for he assigns reflection to thè third age o f human
development, thè age when reason begins to becom e more dom inant.