Taken as a whole Vico's first theory of knowledge is neither intellectualistic, sensationalistic, nor truly speculative. It contains all these three elements, harmonised to a certain extent, not by a hierarchical subordination of any two to the third, but by the subjection of all three to a recognition of the inadequacy of human knowledge. Its intention may have been to meet by a tactical manoeuvre dogmatics and sceptics at once, the former by denying that we can know everything, the latter by denying that we can know nothing at all. But its actual outcome is an assertion of scepticism or agnosticism, tinged, however, with a trace of mysticism. God's knowledge is the complete sphere of knowledge, the unity of which man's is but a series of fragments. God knows all things because he contains in himself all the elements of which he makes them: man tries to understand them by taking them to pieces. Human science is a sort of anatomy of the world of nature; it divides man into body and soul, and soul into intellect and will: from body it abstracts figure and motion, and from these existence and unity. Of these metaphysics studies existence, arithmetic unity and multiplication, geometry figure and its measurements, mechanics the motion of the circumference, physical science the motion of the centre, medicine the body, logic the reason, and ethics the will. But this anatomy meets with the same fate as that of the human body. In the latter case, the greatest physiologists doubt whether, owing to the effects of death and of dissection itself, it is possible at all to discover the true position, structure, and function of the organs. Existence, unity, figure, motion, body, intellect, and will are one thing for God, for whom they coalesce into one, and another for man, to whom they remain distinct. For God they live, for man they are dead. The clear and distinct perception is a proof not of the strength but of the weakness of the human understanding. Physical laws appear self-evident just until they are subjected to comparison with metaphysical. The _Cogito ergo sum_ is absolutely conclusive when man considers himself as a finite being; but when he includes himself in God, the one true being, he realises that in truth he does not exist at all. By means of extension and its three dimensions we believe ourselves to establish eternal truths; but in fact _coelum ipsum petimus stultitia,_ since the eternal truths exist in God alone. The axiom that the whole is greater than the part may seem eternal, but if we go back to the beginning, we find that it is false: we see that the centre of the circle contains in itself as much capacity for extension as the whole circumference. Wherefore, Vico concludes, "he has advanced in metaphysics who in the study of this science has lost himself."