If the meaning of religion for Vico, either as the condition of morality, in the first sense of the word, or as synonymous with it, in the second, is once understood, it is clear that when he condemned Grotius and Puffendorf for their omission of this most important concept, he was substantially doing nothing but clenching his criticism of the insipid moralising and the concealed utilitarianism of these two thinkers. On other occasions also he resorted to the valuable weapon of the concept of religion, with the same end in view. Because if he sometimes credited philosophy with the task of assisting mankind by raising and directing fallen human nature, at other times he decided that philosophy is rather adapted to reasoning, and that the moral philosophers with the greatest powers of reasoning are of value only to stimulate the senses by their eloquence to perform the duties of virtue, while religion alone has the power of making men act virtuously. Then in the empirical science corresponding to this part of the philosophy of mind, Vico turns religion (or poetical metaphysic) and philosophy into two historical epochs, making the former characteristic of the barbaric period and the latter of the civilised. He maintains, as he is clearly bound to do, that religion is the sole foundation of all civilisation and of philosophy itself, and rejects Polybius's saying that if there had been philosophers in the world religion would have been unnecessary. How could philosophy have arisen, he objects, had not states, that is, civilisation, arisen first? and how could states have arisen without the aid of religion? Thus the saying ought to be reversed: without religion there is no philosophy. It was religion, it was the divine providence that tamed the sons of Polyphemus and reduced them to the humanity of Aristides and Socrates, of Laelius and Scipio Africanus.