A somewhat cynical and existential view for the 18th century. In Vico's history of the emergence of thought, human consciousness begins with fear as a response to a loud noise, with thunder being a prime example as being perceived as the Voice of God . It is fear which makes the link between emotion and external stimulus that is at the bases of sensus communis , the 'common sense' known to all humanity. This is at the most archaic level of human understanding, based in the most original and primitive forms of speech as exclamatory yelps and shouts of emotion, within a layer of thought which is not logically derived and is non-rational like that of the animals. Above this layer, is the layer of topics .
Topics is the art of making the connecting logical link between two observable propositions.
Poetic wisdom is the next layer above this, and it begins with a theory of topics as being the poetic formulae through which people identify the phenomena of the world. The link between two initial syllogisms, are self-coherent elements of thought. They provide fixed points of reference and a map upon which the flux of experience can be transposed and quantified. These puncta metaphysica or 'metaphysical points' constituted a structure for the perception of reality, as the link between topics allowing for the connection to other links. Vico believed that the most ancient people thought in metaphor.