These conceptions, however, produced as they were by a remarkable stroke of originality, no sooner passed from general outline to particular determinations, from the first idea or inspiration to concrete development, than they appear to become confused, fluctuating and unstable. We may set aside the various opinions successively held by Vico, and bound up with the historical growth of his mind, upon the subjects of poetry, language or metaphor, beginning with his academic orations, passing thence by way of the _De ratione_ and _De antiquissima_ to the _Diritto universale,_ from these to the first and thence to the second _Scienza Nuova_: a study of these might supply subject-matter for a special essay, but does not come within the scope of our treatise. But even in the final form of his aesthetic thought, contradictory doctrines exist side by side. He is not content with saying, as he does say, that poetical form is the primary activity of the mind; that it is composed of feelings of emotion; and that it is entirely imaginative and devoid of concepts and reflection. He goes on to add that poetry, as opposed to history, "represents reality in its best idea," and therefore fulfils the justice and gives every man the reward or punishment which he does not always get in history, governed as the latter often is by caprice, necessity and chance. Again, he says that the end of poetry is "to give life to the lifeless," since its most sublime task is the attempt to give life and sensation to insensible objects. He says that poetry is "nothing but imitation"; that children, with their great imitative powers, are poets; and that primitive races, the children of mankind, were also sublime poets. He says that poetry has for its special subject-matter "the impossible made credible": for instance, it is impossible that body should be mind, and yet it was believed that the thundering sky was Jupiter. Hence the miracles performed by magicians by means of incantations were a favourite subject of poetry. He says that poetry is due to "poverty," that is, that it is a pathological product of the mind. Since uncivilised man is of low brain-power and cannot satisfy the thirst he feels for the general and the universal, he fills their place by inventing imaginary genera, poetical universals or characters. Consequently the truth of the poet is identical with the truth of the philosopher: the one abstract, the other clothed in images: the one a metaphysic of reason, the other a metaphysic of feeling and fancy, suited to the understanding of the people. From poverty also, that is from inability to articulate, arises song, and therefore mutes and stammerers utter sounds which are songs: and metaphor arises from inability to express things in an accurate manner. He says, finally, that the aim of poetry is to teach the people to act virtuously.