He always realised the supreme importance of the passions; and if he could not approve of giving them the upper hand, if he always considered the Epicurean morality a morality "of idlers shut up in their pleasure-gardens," he did not at all approve of excessively severe moralities such as that of the Stoics, which was no less than the other a morality of "solitaries," not one for men living in a state. Stoicism certainly preaches an eternal and immutable justice, and makes honour the criterion of human action; but it does violence to human nature, dehumanises it, annuls it and drives it to despair by pretending that it is quite insensible to the passions, by ignoring the utility and necessity of the bodily nature, by inculcating that rule--a rule "harder than iron"--that sins are all equal and that he who strikes a slave is as guilty as he who kills his father. The same doubts must have been aroused in Vico's mind by Jansenism, as he complains that "out of hatred of probability, Christian morality in France is becoming rigidified." We ought to follow not these solitary philosophers but rather those political ones, especially the Platonic type, which recognises that the passions should be not eradicated but moderated and "converted into human virtues." Thus out of cruelty, avarice and ambition, the three universal faults of mankind, Providence elicits the warrior, the merchant and the judge; the bravery, wealth and wisdom of states. From these three failings, which would destroy mankind on the earth, civil prosperity is formed. Concerning matters of utility, Vico observes that "in themselves," _ex se,_ they are neither good nor bad (_neque turpes neque honestae_) but become so merely through their relation to the moral consciousness ("but their unfairness is baseness, their fairness, honour: _sed earum inaequalitas est turpitudo, acqualitas autem honestas_"). In the empirical science of utility, he defends against Grotius a "prior natural law," _ius naturale prius,_ to which belong self-defence and the procreation and upbringing of children: and this right he connects with the Stoic _ἀδιάφορον._ That it has no moral authority is proved by the fact that the law which follows it in the historical order, the "posterior natural law," _ius naturale posterius,_ defined by Justinian as "that which is established among all men by natural reason and is preserved by all nations alike" (_quod naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit et apud omnes gentes per aeque custoditur_), is prior in the order of right, _prius iure,_ overcomes the former when they conflict and sets upon it the seal of immutability. Now, although this first natural law is defined and exemplified in a merely empirical manner, it is surely at bottom nothing but pure law, law not yet moralised.