f commonwealth was brought about in the age of divinity where man, by the natural law of divine, believed themselves and all their institutions to depend on the gods, since they thought everything was a god or was made or done by a god. (Vico 169) In this situation mans sovereign power was the gods that he himself had created, and the fear of these gods kept man on the respectable path.Differing from Hobbess view on mans state of nature, Vico states that human nature is one of intelligence, and hence modest, benign and reasonable, recognizing for laws conscience, reason, and duty. (Vico 168) Once man progressed from the age of divinity, he moved into the age of heroism where the nobles or elites, believing to be of divine origin, ruled the lesser people spawning from bestial origin. These common people allowed themselves to be ruled, according to Vico, because of their own knowledge that the ruling should be done by those of higher status and intelligence, and those with the experience of leadership. Eventually, Vico states, that a human government will form in which virtue of the equality of the intelligent nature, which is the proper nature of man, all are accounted equal under the laws, this being an early form of democracy. As the governments progress though, Vico states that the men change but they retain for some time the impressions of their previous customs. For example, the first gentile fathers, passing from the bestial life to the human, retained, in religious times in the state of nature under the divine governments, much of the savagery and cruelty of their recent origins. (Vico 177) As well as in the formation of the first aristocratic commonwealths the private sovereign powers remained intact in the hands of the family fathers, just as they had held them in the previous state of nature. (Vico 177)Pertaining to the maintenance of these regimes, Hobbes states that even if a member of the commonwealth has a different ...
