Vico makes no kind of mention of the formula _ens et verum convertuntur,_ though he knows and quotes--a fact which has escaped my critics--the analogous phrase "the true and the good are convertible," _verum et bonum convertuntur:_[9] a formula which he diverts to his own purposes, or rather unites it with his own. "In the first place," he writes, "I establish a truth which is convertible with the created, and in this sense I understand the good of the schools, convertible with existence: and hence I infer that the one and only truth is in God, since in Him is contained all Creation."[10] This union is reached quite openly by identifying _verum_ with _factum,_ then _factum_ with _ens,_ and finally the _verum-factum-ens_ with the _bonum_: by substituting the doctrine of Vico for that of the schools. By such a method of interpretation one could reduce all doctrines to a single one, a _perennis philosophia._ I do not say that it would be a method entirely devoid of truth; but it is certainly not a historical method. That Vico's criterion is not only different from but inconsistent with Thomism was shown, as I have already said, by Balmes; who pronounced it "specious but devoid of solid foundation." He uses St. Thomas's statements to controvert Vico's theological doctrine that God understands because He creates, opposing to it the Scholastic view that He creates because He understands. He denies, that the Word was conceived by the mere knowledge of what is contained in the divine omnipotence, for it is conceived not simply by creatures but also and chiefly by the cognition of the divine essence ("for the Father by understanding himself and the Son and the Holy Ghost and all other things embraced by His knowledge conceives the Word, so that thus the whole Trinity is implied in the Word, and also every creature": _Pater enim intellegendo se et Filium et Spiritum sanctum et omnia alia quae ejus scientia continentur concipit Verbum, ut sic tota Trinitas Verbo dicatur, et etiam omnis creatura);_ he objects that, granting this criterion, God could never know himself, because He is not His own cause. He denies that intelligence is only possible through causality, inasmuch as it is also possible through identity. He accuses Vico's criterion of involving scepticism: in a word he maintains that the facts of knowledge are known by reason, even if they are not the products of reason.[11] I am not concerned to ask whether Balmes is right, or whether Vico's criterion can be reconciled with Christian theology. I am concerned merely with establishing, not only by quotation from St. Thomas but also by the help of the judgment of an authoritative interpreter of his system that this doctrine is not Thomistic.