Foundations of a new science on the common nature of nations

Material for the New Science is the history of nations, recorded by Vico in a chronological table , which is divided into columns dedicated to seven nations according to their antiquity. Starting with the flood and ending with the beginning of the Second Punic War, it is a history of the ideas and deeds of nations. In order to clothe the material in a certain form, Vico introduces the philological and philosophical axioms of the New Science, which aim to substantiate the general nature of human nations.

Axioms

The axioms contain the main ideas of the New Science, to which the author will refer throughout the work. Vico formulates the principle of anthropomorphism as a way for a person to master the world, saying that a person makes himself the rule of the universe where his mind is lost from ignorance. ^[5] To all incomprehensible things they give their own nature. ^[6] Therefore, when knowing things, a person endows them with spiritualized properties that are inherent to himself (the nature of the magnet is explained by the fact that the magnet is in love with iron). Vico likens ancient people to children who, interacting with an inanimate object, give him feelings and passions, talk to him. Children tend to imitate, and from imitation of nature, ancient people brought all the ancient arts. Vico draws attention to the fact that among peoples who have no contacts among themselves, common ideas arose. These ideas have a common source. The common sense of the human race is inspired in nations by Divine Providence. This position is also proved philologically: all nations uniformly understand the essence of things, which is manifested in ancient and modern sayings and maxims, universally valid for all existing and existing peoples. Philologists must compile a dictionary of this common mental language. Vico considers it necessary to study folk traditions and the language in which they are composed, linking languages, customs and rituals. Languages ​​were formed when ancient rituals were practiced, they were witnesses of their occurrence and conduct. This explains the need for philology data for the New Science.

Philosophy and Philology

The two main disciplines of the New Science are philosophy and philology . Philology for Vico is the science of the unconditional, of all those phenomena of the human spirit that are left to the arbitrariness of a person's language, customs, deeds. She, being a science of facts and language, gives Science specific information. In fact, philology represents history, ethnology, and the science of language. ^[7] Philosophy considers reason, from which the knowledge of truth flows. It, proceeding from an ideal world, has as its subject matter necessity, the direction in which the development of civilizations is proceeding. ^[8] One of the tasks of the New Science follows from this - to find the basis of truth in numerous folk traditions. These sciences complement each other. Philosophy equips philology with truth, and philology philosophy with accuracy. ^{[9] The} new science needs accuracy and certainty, the facts that philology gives us, and the truth and eternity of philosophy.

Vico also defines the tasks of mythology . She interprets the myths that need to be studied in order to find out the early history of pagan nations, for the beginnings of any pagan history are mythical. He notes that uniform myths arose among many peoples who did not know about each other. From the myths of various nations, we learn about the flood and the giants that were the first representatives of the pagan nations. The myth ( μύθος - legend) originated in dumb times (as evidenced by the kinship of the Greek word with the Latin mutus - dumb), so that the ancient people, according to the plan of Providence, did not talk about Gods, but thought. Language originated as signs or gestures that have a natural relationship to ideas already present in people. Theologian poets, explaining the objects of the world around them, used metaphors, which themselves, according to Vico, are “little myths”. ^[10] They transferred the characteristics of man to inanimate things, with the word “head” they denoted the peak of something, the wave for them was “whispering”, and the wind “whistling”. Due to the insufficient ability of people to abstract qualities from the subject, the reason from the action, metonymy arose. Later, when a person began to elevate particulars to universality, a synecdoch appeared. From the time when a person learns to reflect, poets use irony. Thus, Vico concludes that the paths were a way of expressing the first nations .

Vico, announcing the thesis that all nations have a common nature, is looking for features in which they converge. These features will be the universal and eternal foundations of the New Science. On their basis, nations arose and are preserved.

1. Religion. Vico is convinced that any nation, barbarian or cultural, has a religion. He identifies four primary religions: the religion of the Jews, Christians, Gentiles, and Mohammedans.
2. Marriage Free cohabitation and communication, not being prohibited, will give rise to sins and iniquities in the human race and will return people to a state of savagery. Marriage forms the family order, which is the basis of the state order. The plebeians in Rome demanded that the patricians have the right to marry in order to become full members of the state. Morality began with piety, and it came from fear of the terrible image of the Gods, that is, from religion. Only religion can maintain morality and modesty. Initially, people satisfied their lust in the face of Heaven, but then the giants, out of fear of the Gods, were afraid to do it openly. They took one woman and retired with them in the depths of the caves, bashfully hiding from the eyes of the Gods. So there were marriages. Therefore, even now, wives accept the religion of husbands, for it was the husbands who informed them of the idea of ​​hiding in shame from the Gods. Brides, in shame, wear a veil. In our times and now, the bride is taken in wives with the use of fictitious force to her as a sign of the real force with which the ancient people dragged women into the caves.
3. Burials. The pious giants, sensing the stench of the dead, began to bury them in the ground, and a pillar was placed on their grave in memory of the dead. The funeral of the dead speaks of a belief in the immortality of a person and his afterlife, because the unburied will wander unrested, and the graves of the fathers bind a person to a certain territory. No wonder Vico produces the word humanitas (humankind) from humare (to bury).

Human culture begins with these signs, and therefore they are sacredly protected by the peoples so that the season of savagery does not return.

Vico put forward the theory of the progressive development of mankind through the cyclical development of individual nations. Vico named seven ancient nations: Jews , Chaldeans - Assyrians , Scythians , Phoenicians , Egyptians , Greeks , Romans . Vico begins the story from the biblical Great Flood and from the Chaldean tribe. All nations are descended from biblical characters - the sons of Noah , who escaped from the Flood. The peoples of the East descended from Shem , the peoples of Europe from Japheth , the peoples of Africa and South Asia from Ham . Each civilization has contributed to history, and also borrowed the achievements of the previous one. Thus, the Phoenicians, seafarers and merchants, adopted the "folk letters" of the Chaldeans and measurement methods, transferring them in turn to the Egyptians. The Greeks began to philosophize, and the Romans were strong in law.

Vico begins the chronological table with the Flood, a tradition of which is preserved among all peoples. The people of the Hama race, the founders of pagan culture, have renounced the true religion of Noah, forgetting customs and surrendering to a sinful life. Developing only physically, they increased in size, becoming giants, the tradition of whom was preserved among different peoples. Therefore, the Jews, fearing the terrible disproportion of the giants, complied with so many regulations about the purity of the body. After the flood, the earth was saturated with moisture for a long time and did not send dry fumes, fire into the air. When she dried up, lightning flashed for the first time in heaven. The giants, turning their eyes to the sky, were the first to experience fear. And in view of the general property of human consciousness to explain the unknown through the known, they began to consider the Sky as a huge animated Body, calling it Jupiter, who wants to tell them something with thunder and lightning. There is still a habit among ordinary people to animate something, the nature of which they do not know. “It was fear that created in the world of the Gods, but not one people’s fear of others, but their fear of themselves,” writes Vico, for people, being in a state of savagery, having no rules and laws, not being cooperated with others, are helpless in the face nature. He, powerless before her wild temper, calls for help something that is higher than Nature, i.e. Of God. He gives measure to human passions, forcing him to moderate his selfishness. With the new Divine order, a person begins to think about justice, take care of others and curb his body. So, for the ancients, nature began to speak the language of Jupiter. God was considered in the attribute of his providence. Therefore, there were sages who were supposed to understand the speech of the Gods, perceived in auspices. ^{[11] The} sacrifice was performed in order to achieve or correctly understand auspices, as well as to help in the war. The rite of sacred bathing has appeared among all nations, through which they are cleansed of sins. Thanks to fear of gods and fathers, giants have decreased in size. They began to limit their revelry, to take care of a clean body. A sign of this is preserved in ancient languages: πολιτεία - civil rule and Latin politus - pure cousins.

Poetic Wisdom

“Wisdom is the ability that dominates all disciplines, thanks to which all the sciences and arts that make up culture are recognized. ^{[12] The} wisdom of the ancients was poetic in nature and contained the beginnings of all branches of human knowledge: poetic logic, morality, economics, politics, physics. Poetic wisdom began with sensual metaphysics. The founders of pagan culture through natural theology (metaphysics) created gods for themselves. The poetic metaphysics of the ancient pagans was sensual and fantastic, for people then did not yet have reason. They made the Gods the reasons for the surprising and felt things. The Pantheon of Deities grew with the development of culture: with the advent of the institution of marriage, Juno arose, and with the development of the memory of the race and history, Clio's muse arose.

The doctrine of the world and man (poetic physics)

The first idea of ​​the Universe among ancient people was derived from human characteristics: Chaos seemed to them to be a mixture of human seed in a state of the vile community of women. ^[13] This view was transferred by physicists to nature, where they talked about mixing the seeds of nature, calling it also “chaos”. They represented chaos as a formless monster devouring everything, poets thought of him as the god Pan. Physicists further mistook Chaos for the first matter of nature. Jupiter, which appeared to people, gave them fear and effort, from which the world of nature and the world of people arose. Also from this effort came the Civil Light (Apollon). The world arose from four elements: from Air, where Jupiter is, Water represented by Diana, Fire (Volcano) and Earth (Cybele). Theological poets, giving sensual and living forms to the elements of nature, created a huge number of gods. Theological poets distinguished two metaphysical ideas in man: being felt in food and existence. Existence is a substance, something that supports life. They thought the soul as the vehicle of life and placed it in the air or in the movement of blood. The spirit (animus), acting on the soul, was placed in the nerves, it was the basis of effort, power, the inner God. All the internal functions of the spirit boiled down to three parts of the body: head, chest and heart. ^{[14] The} head was attributed with memory and knowledge, which they had fantastic and sensual. The chest was the seat of passions, the source of angry passions was in the stomach, lustful - in the liver. Vico insists that our modern consciousness is fundamentally different from the consciousness of the first people: in the latter it is concrete, individual, they could not reach the general concepts with their minds. We cannot fully understand the "logic" of the first people, but we can get closer to it by studying myths and language.

Based on the division of nations into three centuries, which, as the Egyptians said, took place in the world before them, i.e., the division into the age of the gods, the age of heroes and the age of people: after all, we see that according to this division of the nation in a constant and never broken order causes and effects always go through three types of nature, and that three types of morals follow from these three types of nature, and that three types of natural law of peoples follow from these three types of morals, and accordingly, these three types of law establish three types of civil status, i.e. e. States; and so that it is possible for people who have reached human society to communicate to each other all of these three kinds of great things, three kinds of languages ​​and the same kinds of characters (signs) are formed, and that, for the sake of affirming the latter, three kinds of jurisprudence arise, accompanied by three kinds of authority, and as many kinds of understanding of law, and so many kinds of court. These jurisprudence existed for three types of times that permeate the entire progressive movement in the life of nations. Three such particular unities, together with many other unities arising from them, originate in one general unity, in the unity of faith in a providence deity, and it is the unity of the spirit that gives form and life to our world of nations. ^[15]

Age of the Gods

1. The first Nature was poetic nature, that is, creative, divine: she attributed to the bodies the existence of divine animated substances, and she attributed them accordingly to her idea. This nature was the nature of theologian poets when all pagan nations were based on the belief that each of them had certain, their own Gods. On the other hand, this nature was wild and inhuman, but because of the same fallacy of fantasy, people were terrified of the horror of the invented Gods themselves. The following two eternal properties have been preserved from this: firstly, that religion is the only powerful means to curb the savagery of peoples. Secondly, the situation with religions is good when those who are at the head themselves fully worship them. ^[sixteen]

2. The first morals that appeared after the flood were colored by religion and piety.

3. Law is divine. People thought that they themselves and everything related to them depended on the Gods on the basis of the opinion that everything was Gods or Gods did everything. ^[17]

4. Boards are also divine, as the Greeks would say, “theocratic.” Then people believed that the Gods decisively ordered everything. This was the Age of Oracles. ^[18]

5. The divine mental language through silent religious movements, that is, divine ceremonies. This language is appropriate for religions on the basis of that eternal quality, which is more important for them to be revered than to reason about them. It was necessary in those early days, when pagan people still could not articulate speech.

6. Divine signs - with hieroglyphs. They were originally used by all nations. These were fantastic universals, dictated by the natural, innate tendency of the human mind to enjoy uniformity. Unable to do this through abstraction in the form of generic concepts, nations achieved the same through fantasy in the form of portraits. They reduced to such poetic universals all particular species relating to each genus.

7. The first was divine wisdom (jurisprudence), called mystical theology - the science of the language of the Gods, that is, the understanding of the divine secrets of predictions. This jurisprudence considered fair only that which was accompanied by solemn rites of divine ceremonies. Here - the roots of the superstitious attitude of the Romans to solemn legal acts. ^[nineteen]

8. Divine authority - it does not require justification from Providence. Where the authority of the Senate dates back to the divine reigns of the times of the state of families, when the divine authority belonged to the Gods, since they thought that everything was from them. ^[20]

9. The divine understanding of law , available only to God. People knew about him only insofar as it was communicated to them in revelation: first to Jews, then to Christians - in the internal speech of consciousness (the word of God - pure consciousness), as well as in the external speech of both the prophets and Jesus Christ to the apostles (through them she became known to the church). To the Gentiles - in auspices, oracles and other bodily signs, representing divine directions, since it was believed that these signs came from the Gods, the latter, according to the beliefs of the Gentiles, consisted of a body. Thus, in God, who is pure reason, reason and authority are one and the same, therefore, in good theology, divine authority takes the same place as reason. ^[21]

10. Divine Judgment. In the so-called natural state, that is, the state of families, when there was no civil rule of laws, the fathers of families turned to the Gods in cases of insult. They called on the Gods as witnesses to their right, and such accusations and defense were the first speeches in the world. The evidence cited in such God's judgments was the Gods themselves, since in those days the Gentiles resolutely imagined everything in the form of Gods. One of the types of God's judgment during the barbarism of nations were fights. They were supposed to have arisen under the most ancient reign of the Gods and exist for a very long time in heroic republics. ^[22]

11. Accordingly, the first times were religious, flowing under divine reigns. ^[23]

Age of Heroes

1. The second Nature is heroic. Heroes attributed to her a divine origin. In such an origin they saw the foundation of natural nobility: after all, being apparently human, they were at the same time the princes of the human race. ^[24]

2. Morals in this period were angry and scrupulous. ^[25]

3. Heroic law , that is, the law of power, but restrained by religion, which alone can set certain limits to power where there are no human laws, or, if they exist, where they are not enough to curb power.

4. The rule is heroic, that is, aristocratic, in other words, the rule of the optimates (in the sense of the "strongest"). All civil rights belonged to the closed ruling estates of the heroes themselves, and the plebeians, to whom the bestial origin was attributed, were allowed only vital necessities and natural freedom. ^[26]

5. The language of heroic signs: it was spoken through emblems, and this speech has been preserved in military science.

6. Heroic characters (characters), ie fantastic universals to which nations reduced various kinds of heroic things. Later, as the human mind was accustomed to abstract forms and properties from objects, these fantastic genera passed into intelligible generic concepts. Such they subsequently came to the philosophers. In the end, popular letters were discovered, which went foot in foot with common languages. The latter are made up of words, which are, as it were, generic concepts for those particulars through which heroic languages ​​used to speak (from the expression: “and my blood boils in my heart” - one word was made “I am angry”). ^[27]

7. Heroic jurisprudence consisted of guaranteeing themselves with certain appropriate formulas. Therefore, all the glory of the ancient Roman lawyers consisted in their ability to make transactions, and what they called the right to clarify was nothing more than a warning to those who had to prove to the judge the right to state the circumstances of the case to the praetor so that the claim form the circumstances were in full accord with the circumstances, and so that the praetor could not refuse their right to claim. It is worth noting that the divine and heroic jurisprudence adhere to reliability in those days when nations are still immature. ^[28]

8. Heroic authority hidden in solemn formulas of laws. in the heroic aristocracy, where the senates constituted the signoria, such authority belonged to the ruling senates. Therefore, the heroic senates sanctified with their authority what had been discussed before the popular assembly. The Senate confirmed to the people the presented formula of the law, which had already been outlined in the Senate, just as the authority of the guardians in relation to the guardians is exercised.

9. Understanding of law in the state sense. Such wisdom by nature was characteristic of the heroic senates, and above all - the Roman. For the same natural reasons that gave rise to the heroism of the first peoples, the ancient Romans naturally respected civil justice. The latter consisted of a scrupulous attitude to words expressing laws; superstitiously observing the word of laws, the Romans straightforwardly applied them to all facts, even where they turned out to be harsh, cruel and grave. Naturally, only people were guided by such strict law, but by their very nature they believed that the Gods themselves were guided by it, even in their oaths. Each of the heroes personally possessed a significant part of the public good, since these were family monarchies. For the sake of the personal interest kept for them by the state, they naturally pushed into the background smaller personal interests. Therefore, they naturally and generously defended the public good, i.e., the good of the state. ^[29]

10. The court during this period was perfectly orderly, since it paid the highest attention to words. This pedantry was called religio verborum according to the divine courts that existed before, according to the fact that divine things are everywhere accepted in such sacred formulas where even the smallest letter cannot be changed. ^[thirty]

11. The times in the age of heroes are the times of scrupulous people, such as Achilles, and in the era of the returning barbarism, of duelists.

The Age of Men

1. At this stage, Vico singled out human, rational nature . She recognizes conscience, reason and duty as laws. ^[31]

2. Morals were governed by a sense of civic duty, respectful attitude.

3. The right was dictated by a developed human mind.

4. In the boards , due to the equality of rational nature, everything is equalized by laws, because all of them were born free in their cities, in free people's states, where all people, or most of them, represent the legal force of the state. In monarchies, monarchs equalize all subjects with their own laws, and since all armed forces are in the hands of some monarchs, they alone differ in their civic nature. ^[32]

5. During this period - spoken language , articulated.

6. Human jurisprudence considers the truth of facts and inclines the meaning of laws wherever equal conditions require it. This jurisprudence is carried out in free people's republics, and more in monarchies, that is, in both types of human rule (considers truth in the most enlightened times). ^[33]

7. Human authority based on trust in people, prudence and wisdom. When in the end the republic passed from popular freedom to the monarchy, then the third kind of authority followed - it consists in trust or reverence for wisdom: the authority of the council. This should be the authority of the senates under the monarchs: the latter are absolutely and absolutely free to follow or not follow what the senates advise them to. ^[34]

8. The courts are completely disordered. They are dominated by the truth of facts, education and conscience. The guarantee is the good faith, respectively, the sincerity of the people's republics and the nobility of the monarchies, where the monarchs in these courts solemnly put themselves above the laws and consider themselves subordinate only to conscience and God.

9. Civil times , that is, moderate times of the natural law of peoples. ^[35]

The whole life of nations flows completely according to the established order through three, and no more, types of civil states, which all have their origin in the first, that is, divine, reigns. Everywhere from them, starting, as it were, from the foundations of an eternal ideal history, the following series of human things should flow: first - the republics of optimates, then - free people's republics and, finally, monarchies. ^[36]

- From small districts, which were well controlled by aristocratic republics, through conquests, to which free republics are especially prone, it ultimately comes to monarchies, which are all the more beautiful and magnificent, the more they are. ^[37]

- From the pernicious suspicion of the aristocracy, through the unrest of the people's republics, nations finally come to the conclusion that they find peace in the monarchies.

- The boards began with one in the family monarchies, then moved on to a few in the heroic aristocracy. They spread to many and all in the people's republics, where either everything, or a large part forms the public mind: finally, they returned to one in the civic monarchies. ^[38]

Cities formed from families, which is precisely why they were born in the form of aristocratic republics, naturally mixed from sovereign family authorities. When the plebeians of heroic cities grew in number and got used to the war so much that they began to inspire fears for fathers, who should have been few in the few republics, and when the plebeians began to legislate without the authority of the senates, then the republics changed from aristocratic to popular, as For a moment, none of these types of republics could live with the two highest legislative authorities, not delimited either by subject, time or territory.

After everyone in the free republics surrendered to the observance of their private interests, which they forced to serve their public weapons in the mutual extermination of nations, then to save the nation, there appears only one person, such as Augustus from the Romans, who by force of arms takes over all public concerns and provides subjects to take care of their private affairs; subjects still have that concern for public affairs and only to the extent that and since the monarch permits them. In this way, nations are saved that would otherwise have to perish. (the so-called Royal Law) ^[39]

In human times, states become free, popular, or monarchical. In the first case, citizens dispose of the public good, sprayed into as many small parts as there are citizens who make up the people who command. In the second case, subjects are ordered to pursue their personal interests and provide care for the public good to the sovereign sovereign. To this should be added the natural causes that gave rise to such forms of states that are completely opposite to the state forms generated by heroism, namely, the desire for convenience, tenderness for children, love for women and the thirst for life.

States naturally mix, but not in form (then they would be monsters), but in such a way that later forms of states mix with the original forms of government. Such a confusion has a basis in the following axiom: when changing, people adhere to their previous skills for some time. ^[40]

Вико, в контексте значимой роли Провидения и установления христианства (согласно естественному поступательному движению) говорит о возникновении вооруженных наций и о зарождении нового порядка культуры среди них. Благодаря этим установлениям вернулись божественные времена, когда католические цари для защиты христианской религии, покровителями которой они являются, повсюду надевали диаконские далматики. Короли посвящали Богу свою царственную особу (от этого сохранился титул "священное королевское величество"), а также принимали церковный сан. ^[41]

Первые христианские короли основали вооруженные религии, посредством которых они восстановили в своих королевствах католическую религию против ариан, сарацин и многих других. Тогда вернулось то, что называли "чистые и благочестивые войны" героических народов. Поэтому короны всех христианских владык поддерживают мировой шар с водруженным на нем крестом, который еще раньше развевался на знаменах во время войн, называвшихся крестовыми походами. ^[42]

Вернулись некоторые виды божьего суда, так называемые канонические очищения, героические разбои, героические возмездия, а потому и войны позднейших варварских времен, как и времен первого варварства, были религиозными. Вернулось и героическое рабство, которое существовало чрезвычайно долго даже среди самих христианских наций: ведь поскольку в те времена существовал обычай поединков, постольку победители считали, что побежденные не имеют бога и принимали их просто за животных. ^[43]

Позднейшие варвары при взятии городов прежде всего заботились о том, чтобы высмотреть, найти и унести из взятых городов знаменитые вклады или реликвии святых. Поэтому народы в те времена чрезвычайно тщательно закапывали и прятали их, и соответствующие места, как мы видим, повсюду находились внутри церквей или под ними. В этом заключается причина того, почему на те времена приходятся почти все перенесения святых мощей: след от этого сохранился в том обычае, что колокола взятого города побежденные народы должны были выкупать у победоносных военачальников.

Повсюду господствовали насилия, грабежи и убийства, вызванные необычайной свирепостью и дикостью тех в высшей степени варварских столетий, и так как не существует другого действенного средства обуздать свободных ото всех человеческих законов людей, кроме божественных

законов, продиктованных религией, то естественно, что из страха быть подавленными и погубленными наиболее кроткие люди уходили к епископам и аббатам тех насильнических столетий, отдавали себя, свои семьи и свои имущества под их покровительство и получали его от них. Такое подчинение и такое покровительство являются главными основами феодов. Поэтому в Германии, которая была более свирепой и более дикой, чем все другие нации Европы, сохранилось почти что больше церковных суверенов, т. е. епископов или аббатов, чем светских. Во Франции суверенные государи титуловались графами (или герцогами) и аббатами. Поэтому же в Европе мы встречаем невероятное количество городов, земель и замков, названных именами святых. В местах недоступных или тайных открывались маленькие церковки, где можно было прослушать мессу и совершить другие обязанности, предписанные религией. Можно считать, что эти церковки были в те времена естественными убежищами для христиан, которые рядом с ними строили свои жилища: поэтому самые древние вещи, сохранившиеся от второго варварства, — это маленькие, по большей части разрушенные церкви в такого рода местах. ^[44]

Под влиянием предполагавшегося различия двух природ, героической и человеческой, феодальные синьоры назывались баронами в том же смысле, в каком греческие поэты говорили "герои", а древние латиняне — ѵігі, "мужи"; это же сохранилось у испанцев, у которых мужчина называется бароном, так как вассалов, т. е. "слабых" в героическом смысле, они считали женщинами. Кроме того, бароны назывались синьорами, а это слово может происходить только от латинского seniores (старшие), так как из них должны были составляться первые публичные парламенты в новых королевствах Европы. ^[45]

Так как варварство своими насилиями разрушило доверие в торговых связах, так как оно предоставило народам заботиться лишь о жизненно необходимых вещах и так как всякий обмен должен был происходить посредством так называемых естественных плодов, то поэтому в те же времена появились и libelli, обмен недвижимым имуществом: польза libelli заключается в том, что у одних поля в изобилии приносят один вид плодов, которых нет на других полях, и наоборот. Поэтому владельцы меняются ими друг с другом. Вернулась mancipatio, при которой вассал вкладывал свои руки в руки синьора, чтобы обозначить этим верность и подчинение. ^[46]

В наши дни (XVII-XVIII вв.) зрелая культурность распространилась среди всех наций, поэтому немногие великие монархи царствуют в мире народов. Если среди них существуют еще варвары, то причина этого лежит в том, что их монархии в течение долгого времени развивались на основе простонародной мудрости, т. е. фантастических и диких религий. К этому присоединяется также несовершенная природа подчиненных им наций. К примеру, царь Московии, хотя он и христианин, правит людьми ленивого ума.

Сами люди создали этот мир наций, но этот мир, несомненно, вышел из некоего ума, часто отличного, а иной раз совершенно противоположного, и всегда — превосходящего частные цели самих людей, тех людей, которые ставили себе эти цели. Делая из таких ограниченных целей средства для служения целям более широким, ум всегда пользовался ими для сохранения поколения людей на земле. Ведь в то время как люди хотят удовлетворить свою скотскую похоть и растерять своих детей, они, наоборот, создают чистоту браков, из которых возникают семьи; в то время как нации хотят сами себя привести к гибели, они спасают своих потомков в том одиночестве, откуда они снова возрождаются, как феникс. И то, что делает все это, оказывается умом, так как люди, поступая так, поступали разумно. Это не рок, так как у людей был выбор и не случай, так как всегда, когда люди поступают именно так, возникают те же самые вещи. ^[47]

Если бы не было религий, а, следовательно, и государств, то вообще на свете не было бы философов. И если бы божественное провидение не расположило именно в таком порядке вещи человеческие, то у нас не было бы никакой идеи ни о науке, ни о добродетели.

Если народы потеряют религию, то у них не останется ничего, что заставляло бы их жить в обществе, никакого щита для защиты, никакого средства, чтобы посоветоваться, никакого основания направиться в ту или другую сторону, никакой формы, в силу которой они вообще могут существовать в мире.

Существует следующее принципиальное различие между нашей христианской религией, истинной, и всеми другими, ложными: в нашей религии божественная благодать заставляет поступать добродетельно ради вечного и бесконечного блага, которое не может подлежать чувствам и для которого, следовательно, сознание побуждает чувства к добродетельным поступкам; обратно тому, в ложных религиях, поставивших себе целью блага конечные и тленные как в этой жизни, так и в жизни иной, где они ожидают блаженства телесных наслаждений, чувства должны увлекать сознание для свершения доблестных поступков. и все же провидение явно дает ощутить себя в трех следующих чувствах согласно тому порядку гражданских вещей, которые были рассмотрены в настоящих книгах: во первых — в удивлении, во-вторых — в том благоговении, которое питали до сих пор все ученые к недостижимой мудрости древних, и, в-третьих, в том пламенном желании, которым они горели снова обрести ее и следовать ей, так как это на самом деле три светоча божественного провидения, пробуждавшего в них эти три прекраснейших и правильных чувства. ^[48]

Христианская религия учит столь возвышенным истинам, что для служения ей были приняты самые ученые философии язычеств. Она пользуется для своих нужд тремя языками, как своими собственными: самым древним в мире — еврейским, самым изысканным — греческим, самым величественным — латинским. таким образом, даже и для человеческих целей христианская религия оказывается наилучшей из всех религий мира, так как она объединяет мудрость, данную в откровении, с разумной мудростью самого отборного учения философов и самой глубокой эрудицией филологов

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