ABSTRACT
Vico's doctrine of mythology is not entirely lucid: for the relations between poetry and myth are so close that the shadow cast upon the one must of necessity extend to some degree over the other. Vico did not and could not give a more precise determination of the nature of myth, precisely because owing to the fluctuating character of his concept of poetry itself he was not in a position to lay down the boundary between the two forms. Mythology, embodying its concepts in images, which are always individual things, at last animates them like living beings. Simultaneously with his theory of myth and its relation to philosophy, Vico expounds his theory of religion, and the relation it bears to philosophy. Setting aside religion in its practical aspect, religion in its theoretical aspect is surely nothing else than the imaginative universal, poetic animism, or myth.
