Vico rids himself of the ideal eternal code without seeming to do so: though he is quite ready to recognise that the "philosophers' natural right," _ius naturale philosophorum,_ is in idea eternal, and inexorably laid down "in accordance with eternal reason," _ad rationis aeternae libellam._ But from this verbal concession of eternity made out of respect for the old traditional scholastic philosophy, whose influence he felt now and then, he goes on to deny its real eternity and supra-historical character; since instead of placing it above and outside history he puts it in the place which belongs to it, within history. The law of violence or heroic law, after passing into the law of uncivilised society, gradually attains a certain limit of clarity, in which state the only thing wanting to its perfection is that some school of philosophers should complete it by establishing it with reasoned principles, upon the idea of eternal justice: and this reasoning and systematisation is the _"ius naturale philosophorum"_ the extreme form of the historical development of law, not its unchanging rule; a product, not a standard. Hence Vico's charge against Grotius of confusing the _"ius naturale philosophorum,"_ the law composed of reasoned principles derived from moralists, theologians and, in part, jurists, with the natural law of nations, _ius naturale gentium_ (in Grotius's language, confusing natural law with an arbitrary or positive form of law): of misunderstanding the Roman jurists, who intended to speak solely of the latter: and of offering to correct and venturing to criticise writers whose faults on inspection vanish.