comparisons," result "from lack of the genera and species required to define things with propriety," and "are therefore, by reason of natural necessities, common to entire peoples."[24] The earliest languages must have consisted of "dumb gestures and objects which had natural connexions with the ideas to be expressed."[25] He observes very acutely that to these figurate languages belong not only hieroglyphics but the emblems, knightly bearings, devices and blazons which he calls "mediæval hieroglyphics."[26] In the barbarous Middle Ages "Italy was forced to fall back on the mute language ... of the earliest gentile nations in which men, before discovering articulate speech, were obliged like mutes to use actions or objects having natural connexions with the ideas, which at that time must have been exceedingly sensuous, of the things which they wished to signify; such expressions, clad in almost vocal words, must have had all the lively expressiveness of poetic diction." [27] Hence arise three kinds or phases of language: dumb show, the language of the gods; heraldic language, or that of the heroes; and spoken language. Vico also looked forward to a universal system of etymology, a "dictionary of mental words common to all nations." [Sidenote: _Inductive and formalistic_] A man with ideas of this sort about imagination, language and poetry could not say he was satisfied with formalistic and verbal Logic, whether Aristotelian or scholastic. The human mind (says Vico) "makes use of intellect when from things which it feels by sense it gathers something that does not fall under sense: this is the true meaning of the Latin _intelligere_."[28] In a rapid outline of the history of Logic, Vico wrote: "Aristotle came and taught the syllogism, a method more suited to expound universals in their particulars than to unite particulars by the discovery of universals: then came Zeno with his sorites, which corresponds with modern philosophic methods and refines, without sharpening, the wits; and no advantage whatever was reaped from either by mankind at large. With great reason, therefore, does Verulam, equally eminent as politician and philosopher, propound, commend and illustrate induction in his Organum: he is followed by the English with excellent results to experimental philosophy."[29] From this source is derived his criticism of mathematics, which have always, but especially in his day, been considered as the type of perfect science. [Sidenote: Vico opposed to all formal theories of poetry.]