424 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



5. Kames and Monboddo 1 in this country. The latter 



Vico, 



5 am i? s !,! nd was known to Herder, but the class of researches which 



Monboddo. 



he initiated was not taken up in his own country till 

 much later. More important and still less recognised 

 were the original speculations of Vico during the earlier 

 half of the eighteenth century : they have only in our 

 day met with the appreciation they deserve. 



Herder did more than any other writer to place 



' Scienza Nuova' (1827), and a free 

 version of his smaller works 

 ('(Euvres Choisies de Vico,' 1835), 

 the latter through his works on 

 the 'Philosophy of History' (1874 

 and 1893), and his interesting 

 volume on ' Vico ' in " Blackwood's 

 Philosophical Classics" (188 4). Flint 

 compares the absence of apprecia- 

 tion of Vico's writings in this 

 country and of Butler's writ- 

 ings abroad, explaining this by 

 the fact that the former was as 

 specific a representative of Italian 

 thought as Butler is of British 

 thought. The editor of Hegel's 

 Lectures " On the Philosophy of 

 History," and one of his foremost 

 disciples, Eduard Gans, mentions 

 Vico as a forerunner of Herder, but 

 gives probably the correct reason 

 for the neglect of Vico's work in 

 Germany, the fact that he is too 

 much occupied with the history of 

 Greece and Rome and that he does 

 not mention the modern compre- 

 hension of Christian truth which 

 dates from the Reformation, a 

 criticism which he applies still 

 more pointedly to Fr. v. Schlegel's 

 ' Philosophy of History.' 



1 These two writers, Henry 

 Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782); 

 James Burnett, Lord Monboddo 

 (1714-1799), of whom the latter was 

 looked upon as a kind of curiosity 

 in his time, have also more recently 

 attracted merited attention, the 

 former (' Essay on Criticism ') e.g., 



in the writings of Wilhelm Dilthey 

 in Germany, the latter through 

 Professor William Knight (' Lord 

 Monboddo and some of his Con- 

 temporaries,' 1900). It is, however, 

 interesting to note that whilst 

 Monboddo " remained an isolated 

 being, anointing himself according 

 to the fashion of the ancients, 

 growling at the degeneracy of 

 mankind and regarded by them as 

 a semi - lunatic " (Leslie Stephen, 

 ' English Thought in the Eighteenth 

 Century,' vol. i. p. 69), Herder in 

 Germany was so much impressed 

 by him that he promoted the trans, 

 lation of his work, ' Of the Origin 

 and Progress of Language,' wrote 

 an appreciative preface to it, desig- 

 nating the author as the foremost 

 thinker on the subject in contrast 

 to Lord Kames and this in spite 

 of the fact that he himself did not 

 agree with the theory propounded 

 in that work. (See R. Haym, 

 ' Herder,' vol. ii. p. 224 ; also 

 Herder's ' Werke ' ; ' Zur Philo- 

 sophic und Geschichte' (1827, vol. 

 ii. p. 163 sqq. ; vol. viii. p. 117.) 

 The writer of the article "Mon- 

 boddo," in the 9th ed. of the 'En- 

 cyclopaedia Britannica,' has pointed 

 out not only that the Neokantian 

 position towards Locke's philosophy 

 is anticipated by Monboddo, but 

 that Monboddo was also one of the 

 early propounders of the modern 

 Darwinian doctrine of the descent 

 of man. 



