(_Mundus iuvenescit adhuc; nam septingentis non ultra abhinc annis, quorum tamen quadringentos barbaries percurrit, quot nova inventa! quot novae artes! quot novae scientiae excogitatae!_) But we may observe that the _De mente heroica_ is an official oration, and that Vico may on that account have suppressed for the occasion his doubts or his deepest convictions. In any case, how can we reconcile the prophecy of an imminent collapse with the rise of that creation of providence, the New Science, shedding upon the life of nations a light which rendered possible the diagnosis and cure of their ailments? On the whole it is probable that the difficulty of determining Vico's opinion as to the fate of contemporary society is due to the fact that he had really no settled conviction on the subject, and was led hither and thither in various and contrary directions by the influence of hopes and fears. If it had not been disturbed by the scheme of Roman history, the empirical theory of the reflux would never have been forced to admit so many and serious exceptions; nor would it have fallen into such painful confusions. It would have accommodated its author's historical observations with greater ease, and its general characteristics would have been much simpler and more general. It would have consisted primarily in the determination and illustration of the connexion between predominantly imaginative and predominantly intellectual, spontaneous and reflective, periods, the latter periods issuing out of the former by an increase of energy, and returning to them by degeneration and decomposition. Political history shows over and over again the spectacle of aristocracies declining from their first strength to a debased and contemptible state and yielding before the onset of classes less refined or even absolutely uncultured, but of stouter moral fibre; while these again, after becoming civilised in their turn and attaining the highest development of the historical idea whose germ they bear within themselves, enter upon a new period of decay and fermentation, from which issues a new ruling class in the vigour of a youthful barbarism. The history of philosophy again shows positive and speculative periods; philosophical solutions congeal into scholastic theory and dogma, the mind reverts to the mere unthinking observation of particular fact, and the speculative process arises once more. Literary history, too, speaks of periods of realism and idealism, romantic and classical periods: of a corrupt classicism, Alexandrian or decadent art, and of a romantic barbarism which arises from it. These are true cases of Vico's reflux. But since the nature of the mind which underlies these cycles is outside time and therefore exists in every moment of time, we must not exaggerate the difference of the periods: and if on the one hand the outline of the law must be distinct, it must on the other hand not lose a certain elasticity. We must never