His thought was an anachronism in the eighteenth century, it appealed to the nineteenth.

He did not announce or conceive any theory of Progress, but his speculation, bewildering enough and confused in its exposition, contained principles which seemed predestined to form the basis of such a doctrine.

His aim was that of Cabanis and the ideologists, to set the study of society on the same basis of certitude which had been secured for the study of nature through the work of Descartes and Newton.

[Footnote: Vico has sometimes been claimed as a theorist of Progress, but incorrectly.

See B.Croce, The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico (Eng.tr., 1913), p.