The pattern of Vico's creative reinvention of classical rhetoric for modern societies that do not possess the institutional preconditions for direct, open debate is becoming clear. Immersed in the genres of the classical rhetorical legacy and deeply invested in its taxonomies and devices, Vico responds to the difficulty of deploying that tradition in his own city. He replies to attacks on the rhetorical tradition by isolating elements of the mode of inquiry explored by Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and Longinus and by pushing these elements beyond their traditional applications. The same process of sublimation is discernable in Vico's most purely philosophical work, the De antiquissima Italorum sapientia of 1710. In that work, Vico makes three closely related arguments. First, he contends that the ability to make something is the best index of understanding it. If something is not doable, it is not intelligible. Second, he argues that reading is a plausible metaphor for this account of understanding because reading is essentially a process of rendering something intelligible by reenacting in oneself the thought processes that led to the particular formulation with which one is confronted. In the absence of such reenactment, reading is a basically alienating experience. Third, Vico criticizes theories of consciousness—primarily Cartesian—in which individuals are assumed to have some privileged access to their own mental lives on account of the distinction between introspection and the observation of external phenomena.