Let us move on to the contemplative aspect of Vico’s ‘New Science’: “the reader will experience in his mortal body a divine pleasure as he contemplates in the divine ideas this world of nations in all the extent of its places, times and varieties” (sec. 345).
What the ‘New Science’ leads to is a feeling of admiration for the architecture of the universe, considered from the standpoint of its historical laws. But Malebranche had said exactly the same, in reference to the general laws of the physical world: …
… “I do not admire so much the trees covered with flowers and fruits as their marvelous growth as a result of the natural laws”. Learning to behold the fabric of the world and the principles of unity that govern it, …
… shifting the attention from the objects to the way in which God fills the world with them, and to the coordination of the various systems of laws: this is the foundation of the aesthetic emotion in its purity according to Malebranche.
This extremely similar union of aesthetic emotion, science and piety – the final words of the ‘New Science’ are “this science carries inseparably with it the study of piety, and … if one be not pious he cannot really be wise” – [...] manifests the kinship of the two systems.
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