[from Giambattista Vico’s NEW SCIENCE; Book 1, Section 4; p.124-125]
. . . we must begin our discussion at the point when these creatures began to think humanly. There was only one means of taming the monstrous savagery and bridling the bestial freedom of such creatures. This was the terrifying thought of some deity, which is the only means powerful enough to reduce savage liberty to dutiful behavior . . . Yet as I sought to discover the manner in which this first human thought arose . . . I met with arduous difficulties which have cost me a full twenty years of research to overcome. For I had to descend from today’s civilized human nature to the savage and monstrous nature of these early people, which we can by no means imagine and can conceive only with great effort.