ABSTRACT
Poetry, Giambattista Vico writes, is the key to the 'New Science', and his discovery of the true character of poetry is the discovery beyond all others. The essential note of the Vichian conception of myth is its verediciousness, its truth-bearing power. For Vico the myth is wholly a vehicle of truth, a veredicious structure of consciousness. The economy of the mythical or poetic order of consciousness is summarized in a rubric of the 'New Science': the first nations thought in heroic characters, spoke in fables, and wrote in hieroglyphics. The origins of language must be as natural and necessary as those of poetry itself. These conceptions of the nature of poetry and myth, of the origin of language and of scripture provide the basis for the canons of the interpretation of the 'obscure times' of human history and thus for the initiation of the positive programme of the 'New Science'.
