Vico calls men to realise that in the human world of history, the only one real to man, since it is the work of man as Nature is the work of God, thought and action go hand in hand. Theories bring inevitably a modification of practical life. Man does not exist, at least not to our knowledge, as an individual devoid of a social and therefore historical frame. Art is the moment in which man moves in a self-centred world, abstracting from the universal, and is therefore the subjective moment of liberty, the moment of intuition. Religion is the moment in which man stands full of awe in front of the world which is his not-self, abstracting from the individual he is, and is therefore the objective moment of Law, the one link from the intuitive to the rational realisation of life as morality and, therefore, society. History, however, never shows the one apart from the other, as nature never shows one of two correlative terms absolutely apart from the other. Light or darkness may be prevalent, both are always there. Liberty and law have alternately held their sway over our modern, that is to say Christian world, and their synthesis may now be called into being by the grandsons of Vico. His theories could not be understood by the general public before practical life had shown the soundness of his criticism of the theories that were fostering the abstract individualism and liberty against which Fascism is reacting; and reacting through not a retrograde process, but through a forward movement which shall enforce liberty as the correlative term of law, and allow religion to discharge its function as the essential basis of man’s spiritual life and not as an instrument of politics. CHAPTER VI ILLUMINISM IN ENGLAND AND FRANCE