It has been said that in my exposition of Vico's philosophy I have followed my personal philosophical convictions: and sermons and epistles have been showered upon me preaching the duty of casting off prejudices, etc., and narrating the history of philosophy in an objective manner, etc. But I should like my critics to believe that my "convictions" cannot have, to my mind, the character of prejudices, but precisely that of liberation from prejudice, which is what they demand: that detachment and purity of understanding which is necessary for the comprehension of historical facts, and is not, as some fancy, a primeval innocence, but the fruit of laborious cultivation. To grasp Vico historically in his strict reality I have been compelled to undergo a _catharsis_ of prejudices, consisting in my case of the philosophy to which my own efforts had led me. My ideas may be untrue, but that is another question; and that means that if their falsity is proved I am bound to clear and purify my mind by means of less false ideas; but these in their turn must always be ideas and become convictions. In point of abstract method, no objection at all can be made to any one who looks at Vico through the spectacles of scholasticism if he thinks they make his sight more distinct and penetrating; the most we can do is to try and persuade him that there are better spectacles on the market. But we certainly have the right to smile if this same scholastic goes on to warn us that "in studying a philosopher, in investigating and reconstructing his thought, it is absolutely necessary to bring to the task a mind free from preconceptions and hostile to prejudices"; while all the time he is trying to pass off his scholastic opinions and religious beliefs under the banner of objectivity, sincerity and freedom from prejudice. "Philosophers"--I have seen this assertion too--"are unfitted for writing the history of philosophy, because they have ideas of their own." And who is fitted for it? People who are not philosophers? Does not Vico teach us precisely this, that where he who makes the facts (as the philosopher makes philosophy) himself narrates them, there history reaches its highest certainty?