CHAPTER V.. P. 121, § 62. F. H. Jacobi (_werke,_ V. 82) in His _woldemar_ (a

P. 121, § 62. F. H. Jacobi (Werke, v. 82) in his Woldemar (a romance contained in a series of letters, first published as a whole in 1781) writes: 'The philosophical understanding (Verstand) is jealous of everything unique, everything immediately certain which makes itself true, without proofs, solely by its existence. It persecutes this faith of reason even into our inmost consciousness, where it tries to make us distrust the feeling of our identity and personality.' 'What is absolutely and intrinsically true,' he adds (v. 122), 'is not got by way of reasoning and comparison: both our immediate consciousness (Wissen)--I am--and our conscience (Gewissen) are the work of a secret something in which heart, understanding, and sense combine.' 'Notions (Begriffe), far from embalming the living, really turn it into a corpse' (v. 380).

Cf. Fichte's words (Werke, ii. 255), Aus dem Gewissen allein stammt die Wahrheit, &c.

P. 122, § 62. The Letters on the doctrine of Spinoza, published in 1785, were re-issued in 1789 with eight supplements.

'A science,' says Jacobi in his latest utterance (Werke, iv. pref. xxx.) 'is only a systematic register of cognitions mutually referring to one another--the first and last point in the series is wanting.'

P. 123, § 62. Lalande's dictum is referred to by Fries (Populäre Vorlesungen über Sternkunde, 1813) quoted by Jacobi in his Werke, ii. 55. What Lalande has actually written in the preface to his work on astronomy is that the science as he understands it has no relation to natural theology--in other words, that he is not writing a Bridgewater treatise.

P. 123, § 63. Jacobi, Werke, ii. 222. 'For my part, I regard the principle of reason as all one with the principle of life.' And ii. 343: 'Evidently reason is the true and proper life of our nature.' It is in virtue of our inner tendency and instinct towards the eternal (Richtung und Trieb auf das Ewige),--of our sense for the supersensible--that we, human beings, really subsist (iv. 6. 152). And this Organ der Vernehmung des Uebersinnlichen is Reason (iii. 203, &c).

The language of Jacobi fluctuates, not merely in words, but in the intensity of his intuitionalism. Thus, e.g. iii. 32: 'The reason man has is no faculty giving the science of the true, but only a presage' (Ahndung des Wahren). 'The belief in a God,' he says, at one time (iii. 206) 'is as natural to man as his upright position': but that belief is, he says elsewhere, only 'an inborn devotion (Andacht) before an unknown God.' Thus, if we have an immediate awareness (Wissen) of God, this is not knowledge or science (Wissenschaft). Such intuition of reason is described (ii. 9) as 'the faculty of presupposing the intrinsically (an sich) true, good, and beautiful, with full confidence in the objective validity of the presupposition.' But that object we are let see only in feeling (ii. 61). 'Our philosophy,' he says (iii. 6) 'starts from feeling--of course an objective and pure feeling.'

P. 124, § 63. Jacobi (Werke, iv. a, p. 211): 'Through faith (Glaube) we know that we have a body.' Such immediate knowledge of our own activity--'the feeling of I am, I act' (iii. 411)--the sense of 'absolute self-activity' or freedom (of which the 'possibility cannot be cognised,' because logically a contradiction) is what Jacobi calls Anschauung (Intuition). He distinguishes a sensuous, and a rational intuition (iii. 59).

P. 125, § 63. Jacobi expressly disclaims identification of his Glaube with the faith of Christian doctrine (Werke, iv. a, p. 210). In defence he quotes from Hume, Inquiry V, and from Reid, passages to illustrate his usage of the term 'belief--by the distinction between which and faith certain ambiguities are no doubt avoided.

P. 129, § 66. Kant had said 'Concepts without intuitions are empty' It is an exaggeration of this half-truth (the other half is Intuitions without concepts are blind) that is the basis of these statements of Jacobi (and of Schopenhauer)--a view of which the following passage from Schelling (Werke, ii. 125) is representative. 'Concepts (Begriffe) are only silhouettes of reality. They are projected by a serviceable faculty, the understanding, which only comes into action when reality is already on the scene,--which only comprehends, conceives, retains what it required a creative faculty to produce.... The mere concept is a word without meaning.... All reality that can attach to it is lent to it merely by the intuition (Anschauung) which preceded it. ... Nothing is real for us except what is immediately given us, without any mediation by concepts, without our feeling at liberty. But nothing reaches us immediately except through intuition.' He adds, however, 'Intuition is due to the activity of mind (Sein): it demands a disengaged sense (freier Sinn) and an intellectual organ (geistiges Organ).'

P. 134. Cicero: De Natura Deorum, i. 16; ii. 4, De quo autem omnium natura consentit, id verum esse necesse est; cf. Seneca, Epist. cxvii. 6. The principle is common to Stoics and Epicureans: it is the maxim of Catholic truth Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est--equivalent to Aristotle's ὄ πᾶσι δοκεῖ, τοῦτ' εἷναι φάμεν--But as Aristotle remarks (An. Post. i. 31) τὸ καθόλον καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ἀδίνατον αἰσθάνεσθαι.

Jacobi: Werke, vi. 145. 'The general opinion about what is true and good must have an authority equal to reason.'

P. 136, § 72. Cf. Encyclop. § 400: 'That the heart and the feeling is not the form by which anything is justified as religious, moral, true, and just, and that an appeal to heart and feeling either means nothing or means something bad, should hardly need enforcing. Can any experience be more trite than that hearts and feelings are also bad, evil, godless, mean, &c.? Ay, that the heart is the source of such feelings only, is directly said in the words: Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, &c. In times when the heart and the sentiment are, by scientific theology and philosophy, made the criterion of goodness, religion, and morality, it is necessary to recall these trivial experiences.'