 This defense of humanistic education is expanded in the Orations, directed “to the flower and stock of well-born young  manhood,”[5]  where Vico makes a case for modern humanistic education and focuses on a certain kind of “practical wisdom” or prudentia which the human mind, with the appropriate discipline and diligence, is able to attain. This theme is continued in De Antiquissima, where Vico traces the consequences of his insight that language can be treated as a source of historical knowledge. Many words of the Latin language, Vico observes, appear to be “derived from some inward learning rather than from the vernacular usage of the  people.”[6]  Treated as a repository of the past, Latin might be investigated as a way of “seek[ing] out the ancient wisdom of the Italians from the very wisdom of their words.”(DA, 40).