The New Science

curious about the future. Such curiosity, forbidden by nature because it is a thing proper to a God, Infinite and Eternal Mind, gave the push to the fall of the two Principles of the Human Race: wherefore God founded the true Religion among the Hebrews upon the cult of his Infinite and Eternal Providence, for the same reason that, in punishment for their First Authors having desired to know the future, he condemned the whole Human Generation to labors, pains, and death. Hence all false Religions arose upon Idolatry, or the cult of Deities fantasized upon the false credulity of being bodies provided with forces superior to Nature, which assist men in their extreme ailments, and Idolatry was born at one birth with Divination, or vain science of the future by certain sensible signs, believed to be sent to men by the Gods. Such a vain Science, from which the Common Wisdom (1) of all gentile Nations had to begin, nevertheless hides two great Principles of truth; one, that there is Divine Providence, which governs human affairs; the other, that in men there is Freedom of will, by which, if they want and strive for it, they can avoid that which, without providing for it, would otherwise belong to them. From this second truth it follows that men have the election to live with justice: which common sense is proven by this common desire, that they naturally have for laws, where they are not touched by passion of any private interest of not wanting them. This, and no other, is certainly Humanity: which always and everywhere directed its practices upon these three common senses of the Human Race: first, that there be Providence: second, that certain children be made with certain women, with whom there are at least the

(a) On the.
(1) And, according to Vico, a common sense of each People or Nation, child of the sociable spirit of Man, which regulates us in all our actions, so that they make propriety in that which all of that People or Nation commonly feel.