Pagina 42 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

42 LEON POMPA
to thè whole conception of the New Science, for without them the meta-
physical concept of the ideal eternai history and its logicai correlate of a
‘common mental dictionary’ would be without foundation79. But this
brings us to one of the fundamental points in Croce’s criticism: that the
universality that Vico attributes to the imaginative universal can be pro-
vided only by the abstract or intelligible universal, the presence of which
he wishes to deny in the thought of poetic man.
To see how far this criticism is justified, I will turn now to two cru­
ciai passages in which Vico puts forward a new conception of how imag­
inative universals come to be formed, though there is at least one differ-
ence between them. This lies in the fact that in the first he makes use of
the relation of resemblance, stating that when men are incapable of form-
ing intelligible generi, they must imagine poetic characters, which are
generi o universalifantastici, «to which, as to certain models, or ideal por-
traits, to reduce all the particular species (spezie particulari) to each of
their resembling kinds (a suo genere simiglianti)\ through which resem­
blance the ancient fables could not but be imagined appropriately»80.
The example which Vico goes on to offer is that of Hermes Trismegis­
tus. The Egyptians, he says, faced with their discovery of things useful
or necessary to mankind, which were themselves particular products {ef­
fetti) of civil wisdom, «reduced them to the genus ‘civil wisdom’» but,
since they were unable to abstract even the intelligible genus ‘civil sage’,
much less the yet more abstract concept of civil wisdom, they imagined
{fantasticato) Hermes Trismegistus.
This is a difficult passage to interpret since it is not clear what are the
items between which the resemblance is supposed to hold. It is clear
enough that Hermes is an ideal portrait which, in some sense, replaces
the kind, ‘civil sage’. What is not obvious, however, is whether the refer-
ence to resemblance can do the work assigned to it. The cruciai point is
that resemblance is a symmetrical relationship: if a resembles b then b
must resemble a. Accordingly if Hermes resembles the genus ‘civil sage’
then the genus ‘civil sage’ must resemble Hermes. But this is impossible
since Hermes is intended to be available for a mentality which is inca­
pable of grasping a genus as a genus. The explanation would thus involve
a petitio principii in the sense that it would presuppose what it is intend­
ed to explain. On the other hand, if Hermes does not resemble the genus
79Jiirgen Trabant (op. cit., pp. 30-33) emphasises the importance of this point, and links
it to Vico’s desire to conform to Aristotle’s conception of a Science as being concerned with
«what is universal and eternai». See Sn44, § 163.
80 Sn44, § 209, my italics.