ABSTRACT
It is clear from the facts that the historical portion of the New Science could not take the shape of a history of the human race in which peoples and individuals were recognised as playing each its own unique part in the whole course of events. Vico's orthodoxy rebelled against the former alternative, while his philosophy kept him from the second: and the result of his dilemma was that the history he reconstructed was not and could not be a universal history. The conflict which for the general consciousness existed between science and faith reappears in Vico's treatment of history as a distinction and opposition between Jewish and Gentile history, sacred history and profane. Vico had far too genuine and exacting scientific sense added to his natural antipathies to permit him ever to become a Selden or a Bossuet; and hence harmonisation of sacred history remains in him a mere episode, which it is possible to ignore.
