To tell man that he has only to turn his mind inwards to find in the most intimate recess of his soul the criterion of Truth and consequently of Justice, is a most Christian saying. But in the works of St. Augustin, where Descartes found it, it implies either the belief in God’s presence in the heart of every believer, or the immanence of the transcendental self in every empirical self, whereas in Descartes’ own writings and mind neither of the two is to be found. His rationalism seems brutally to reject belief outside philosophy, outside the theoretical and intellectual world altogether. It only _seems_ to do so, because it is one of the first stepping-stones of Idealism, but of this he could not even dream and he went on establishing between will and knowledge such a relation that every rational act ought to be good and every irrational one bad. Hence the duty of vulgarising rational thinking through education, which was to become paramount in pedagogy and politics. Hence again the radicalness of the difference between educated and uneducated which was to produce in our modern democracies a class difference far stronger than that of the Middle Ages when a man could be made squire or even knight provided he proved his personal valour in actual deeds. English philosophy received through Hobbes all the rationalism it needed to balance the excessive empiricism of Bacon and the world was ready for Illuminism, which, originating in England, became one of the greatest and noblest movements recorded in history in spite of its many flaws. Italy could not, indeed, offer anything to make up for such rationalism and empiricism. With her political virility the whole country was daily losing its speculative originality and fecundity, for as Vincenzo Cuoco was to realise a century and a half later, the two manifestations of man’s genius, political and theoretical, usually go hand in hand. The intellectual gifts of Italian scholars were wasted in academic pastimes or devoted to works of erudition, which prepared for the genius of Vico the materials of his historical vision of reality, but were of little avail to counteract the impatience displayed by France and England, turning their backs upon history in order to feel free to shake off the yoke of every traditional authority. Feeling, intention, worship, so many elements of spiritual life, were almost discarded to make room for the goddess Reason.