The key to this advance had not been found. It was not seen that the constant desire for improvement implanted in man, with the constant effort consequent thereon in a life susceptible of indefinite Progress, caused, naturally, under the laws of a beneficent God, an indefinite advance,--that the evil passions of individuals, or of masses, while retarding, could not permanently restrain this divine impulse,--and that each generation, by irresistible necessity, added to the accumulations of the Past, and in this way prepared a higher Future. To all ignorant of this tendency, history, instead of a connected chain, with cause and effect in natural order, is nothing but a disconnected, irregular series of incidents, like separate and confused circles having no common bond. It is a dark chaos, embroiled by "chance, high arbitress," or swayed by some accidental man, fortunate in position or power. Even Macchiavelli, the consummate historian and politician of his age,--Bodin, the able speculator upon Government,--Bossuet, the eloquent teacher of religion and history,--Grotius, the illustrious founder of the Laws of Nations,--whose large intelligence should have grasped the true philosophy of events,--all failed to recognize in them any prevailing law or governing principle. It was reserved for a professor at Naples, Giambattista Vico, in the early part of the last century, to review the history of the Past, analyze its movements, and finally disclose the existence of a primitive rule or law by which these movements were effected. His work, entitled "The Principles of a New Science concerning the Common Nature of Nations,"[246] first published in 1725, constitutes an epoch in historical studies. Recent Italian admirers vindicate for its author a place among great discoverers, by the side of Descartes, Galileo, Bacon, and Newton.[247] Without undertaking to question, or to adopt, this lofty homage to a name little known, it will not be doubted, that, as author of an elaborate work devoted expressly to the philosophy of history, at a period when history was supposed to be without philosophy, he deserves honorable mention. [246] Principj di una Scienza nuova d'intorno alla comune Natura delle Nazioni. The fourth book is entitled _Del corso che fanno le nazioni_; the fifth book, _Del ricorso delle cose humane nel risurgere che fanno le nazioni_. [247] Cataldo Jannelli, Cenni sulla Natura et Necessità della Scienza delle Cose et delle Storie Umane. Cap. 3, sec. 6.