The New Science

Principles of a common civil Religion; so that the children may be educated by fathers and mothers with one spirit in conformity with the Laws and Religions among which they are born: third, that the dead be buried. Whence not only was there no nation of Atheists in the World; but neither any in which Women do not pass into the public Religion of their husbands; and if there were no Nations that went entirely naked, much less was there any that used the canine or brazen Venus in the presence of others; and did not celebrate others, but vague copulations, as beasts do: nor finally is there a Nation, however barbarian, that lets the corpses of their own kin rot unburied upon the earth: which would be a nefarious state, or state sinning against the common nature of men: in which, so as not to fall, Nations all guard their native Religions with inviolate ceremonies; and with sought-after rites and solemnities above all other human things they celebrate marriages and funerals: which is the Common Wisdom of the Human Race; which began from Religions and Laws: and was perfected and completed with the sciences, and with the Disciplines, and with the Arts.

II.

Meditation of a New Science.

But all the Sciences, all the Disciplines, and the Arts have been directed to perfecting and regulating the faculty of man: yet there is none that has meditated upon certain Principles of the Humanity of Nations (2); from which without doubt have emerged all the Sciences, all the Disciplines, and the Arts: and for such Principles a certain ακμη acme/state of perfection was established; from which one could measure-

(2) It is, according to Vico himself, the common desire that men naturally have for laws, where they are not touched by passion of any private interest of not wanting them.