It is at once a strength and a limitation, because history emphatically does not fundamentally consist of these resemblances; but without the perception of the resemblances how could we ever determine the differences? Dante is not Homer, the barons are not the "patres," the Athenian Solon is not the Roman Publilius Philo; but certainly Dante is in some respects more closely related to Homer than to Petrarch, the early barons are nearer to the "patres" than to the later courtier-nobles, and Solon is more akin to a Roman tribune or dictator than to any other of the seven sages among whom he is usually placed. To observe these resemblances means denying or rejecting other more superficial ones, and preparing the way for knowledge of individuality by indicating the approximate place where the truth is to be found. Vico classifies, rather than narrates and represents; but there is classification and classification; it may be pressed into the service of a superficial thought or of a profound one. And the historical side of the New Science is one great substitution of profound for superficial classifications. In this process, which constitutes the strength of Vico's treatment of history, the deficiencies and errors come not from outside the limits of the process but from causes at work within these limits themselves. It has been alleged in defence of Vico that a great part of his errors is due to the scantiness and inadequacy of the materials at his disposal. But the materials for any study are always scanty and inadequate compared to our thirst for knowledge; and in judging a historian the question is not this, but the method, cautious or incautious, on which he employs the materials that are at his disposal. Again, it has been said that Vico has the faults of his age; but this is to forget that he was born in the century which saw the development of the highly critical philology of Joseph Scaliger and the whole Dutch school, and that Zeno, Maffei and Muratori were his contemporaries in Italy. The truth is that just as the attitude of thought already described in Vico confused pure philosophical method with the determinations of empirical science and historical data, so it confused historical research with the mixture of philosophy and empirical science. Vico was in a state similar to that of drunkenness; confusing categories with facts, he felt absolutely certain _a priori_ of what the facts would say: instead of letting them speak for themselves he put his own words into their mouth. A common illusion with him was to seem to see connexions between things where there was really none. This made him turn every hypothetical conjunction into a certainty, and read in other writers instead of their actual words things that they had never written, but which were internally spoken by himself unawares and projected into the writings of others. Exactitude was for him an impossibility, and in his mental excitement and exaltation he almost