Note 9 — Chapter II · PRIMITIVE FREETHINKING

Vico was one of the first, after Sextus Empiricus and his modern commentator Fabricius, to insist (following the saying of Petronius, Primus in orbe deos fecit timor) that “False religions were founded not by the imposture of some, but by the credulity of all” (Scienza Nuova [1725], lib. i, prop. 40). Yet when denying (id., De’ Principii, ed. 1852, p. 114) the assertions of travellers as to tribes without religion, he insisted that they were mere fictions planned to sell the authors’ books—here imputing fraud as lightly as others had done in the case of the supposed founders of religions. ↑