This relation is also called by Vico the relation between philosophy and philology: the former dealing with necessities of nature, _necessaria naturae,_ and contemplating the reason from which issues the science of truth; the latter with decisions of the human will, _placita humani arbitrii,_ and following the authority whence comes knowledge of the certain. The one considers the universal, the other the individual; the one, as Leibniz would have said, the _vérités de raison,_ the other the _vérités de fait._ With Vico the distinction is not so clearly expressed: in fact, authority as opposed to reason sometimes, according to him, becomes a part of reason itself, or is confused with the knowledge of the human will as opposed to that of rational volition; but the general sense is none the less quite plain. By philology Vico means not only the study of words and their history, but, since words are bound up with the ideas of things, he means also the history of things. Thus philologists should deal with war, peace, alliances, travels, commerce, customs, laws and coinage, geography and chronology, and every other subject connected with man's life on earth. Philology in a word, in Vico's sense, which is also the true sense, embraces not only the history of language or literature, but also that of events, philosophy, and politics. It is true that philology, the truth of fact or certitude, had not always been so brutally treated as it was by the Cartesians. Grotius had given evidence of immense historical learning employed on behalf of his doctrine of natural right. Gravina, Vico's contemporary and fellow-countryman, demanded as necessary to the student of law not only "the art of reasoning" (_ratiocinandi ars_) but "skill in the Latin tongue" (_Latinae linguae peritia_) and "knowledge of history" (_notitia temporum_). And Leibniz, whom we have just named, reasserted the value of learning as against the Cartesians, and extended his patronage, _en grand seigneur,_ to the varied collection of historical anecdotes which he scattered freely over his pages. But Vico observed that the philosophy and philology of his time always remained external to one another, as they had been almost entirely in Greece and Rome. All the quotations from historians, orators, philosophers, and poets accumulated by Grotius were a mere embellishment. Perhaps Vico would have passed the same judgment upon the liberal use made of history by Leibniz, if he had known of it and expressed his opinion. In reading the works of philologists he was conscious of such a sense of vacuity and weariness in the unintelligent jumble of historical observations, that he was almost led to agree with Descartes and Malebranche in their hatred of scholarship: for a time, in fact, he did entirely agree with them. But these two philosophers--so his later thought ran--ought, instead of despising erudition, rather to have asked whether it were