is supreme: when speculation itself deduces and recognises that standpoint, there results a complete reconciliation between philosophy and common sense as premised in my system.
'For what good, then, is the speculative standpoint and the whole of philosophy therewith, if it be not for life? Had humanity not tasted of this forbidden fruit, it might dispense with all philosophy. But in humanity there is a wish implanted to behold that region lying beyond the individual; and to behold it not merely in a reflected light but face to face. The first who raised a question about God's existence broke through the barriers, he shook humanity in its main foundation pillars, and threw it out of joint into an intestine strife which is not yet settled, and which can only be settled by advancing boldly to that supreme point from which the speculative and the practical appear to be at one. We began to philosophise from pride of heart, and thus lost our innocence: we beheld our nakedness, and ever since we philosophise from the need of our redemption.'
P. 50. Physics and Philosophy of Nature: cf. _Werke,_ vii. i, p. 18: 'The Philosophy of Nature takes up the material, prepared for it by physics out of experience, at the point to which physics has brought it, and again transforms it, without basing it ultimately on the authority of experience. Physics therefore must work into the hands of philosophy, so that the latter may translate into a true comprehension (Begriff) the abstract universal transmitted to it, showing how it issues from that comprehension as an intrinsically necessary whole. The philosophic way of putting the facts is no mere whim once in a way, by way of change, to walk on the head, after walking a long while on the legs, or once in a way to see our every-day face besmeared with paint. No; it is because the method of physics does not satisfy the comprehension, that we have to go on further.'
P. 51, § 24. The distinction of ordinary and speculative Logic is partly like that made by Fichte (i. 68) between Logic and Wissenschaftslehre. 'The former,' says Fichte, 'is conditioned and determined by the latter.' Logic deals only with form; epistomology with import as well.
P. 54, § 24. The Mosaic legend of the Fall; cf. similar interpretations in Kant: _Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft_, CHAPTER III.
P. 61, § 28. Fichte--to emphasise the experiential truth of his system--says (_Werke,_ ii. 331): 'There was a philosophy which professed to be able to expand by mere _inference_ the range thus indicated for philosophy. According to it, thinking was--not, as we have described it, the analysis of what was given and the recombining of it in other forms, but at the same time--a production and creation of something quite new. In this system the philosopher found himself in the exclusive possession of certain pieces of knowledge which the vulgar understanding had to do without. In it the philosopher could reason out for himself a God and an immortality and talk himself into the conclusion that he was wise and good.'
Wolfs definition of philosophy is 'the Science of the possible in so far as it can be'; and the possible = the non-contradictory.
P. 64, § 29. The oriental sage corresponds (cf. Hegel, _Werke,_ xii.
229) to the writer known as Dionysius the Areopagite (_De Mystica Theologia,_ and _De Divitus Nominibus._)--The same problem as to the relation of the Infinite (God) to the Finite (world) is discussed in Jewish speculation (by Saadia, Mamuni, _&c._) as the question of the divine names,--a dogma founded on the thirteen names (or attributes) applied to God in Exodus xxxiv. 6. (Cf. D. Kaufmann, _Geschichte der Attributenlehre._) The same spirit has led to the list of ninety-nine 'excellent names' of Allah in Islam, a list which tradition derives from Mohammed.
P. 65, § 31. Cf. _Werke,_ ii. 47 _seqq.:_ 'The nature of the judgment or proposition--involving as it does a distinction of subject and predicate--is destroyed by the "speculative" proposition. This conflict of the propositional form with the unity of comprehension which destroys it is like the antagonism in rhythm between metre and accent.
The rhythm results from the floating "mean" and unification of the two.
Hence even in the "philosophical" proposition the identity of subject and predicate is not meant to annihilate their difference (expressed by the propositional form): their unity is meant to issue as a _harmony._ The propositional form lets appear the definite shade or accent pointing to a distinction in its fulfilment: whereas in the predicate giving expression to the substance, and the subject itself falling into the universal, we have the unity in which that accent is heard no more. Thus in the proposition "God is Being" the predicate is Being; it represents the substance in which the subject is dissolved away. Being is here meant not to be predicate but essence: and in that way God seems to cease to be what he is--by his place in the proposition--viz.
the permanent subject. The mind--far from getting further forward in the passage from subject to predicate--feels itself rather checked, through the loss of the subject, and thrown back, from a sense of its loss, to the thought of the subject. Or,--since the predicate itself is enunciated as a subject (as Being or as Essence) which exhausts the nature of the subject, it again comes face to face with the subject even in the predicate.--Thought thus loses its solid objective ground which it had on the subject: yet at the same time in the predicate it is thrown back upon it, and instead of getting to rest in itself it returns upon the subject of the content.--To this unusual check and arrest are in the main due the complaints as to the unintelligibility of philosophical works,--supposing the individual to possess any other conditions of education needed for understanding them.'
P. 66, § 32. On the relation of dogmatism and scepticism see the introduction to Kant's _Criticism of Pure Reason,_ and compare Caird's P. 67, § 33. The subdivision of 'theoretical' philosophy or metaphysics into the four branches, Ontology, Cosmology, Psychology (rational and empirical), and Natural Theology, is more or less common to the whole Wolfian School. Wolf's special addition to the preceding scholastic systems is found in the conception of a general Cosmology. Metaphysics precedes physics, and the departments of practical philosophy. In front of all stands logic or rational philosophy. Empirical psychology belongs properly to physics, but reasons of practical convenience put it elsewhere.
P. 69, § 34. The question of the 'Seat of the Soul' is well known in the writings of Lotze (_e.g. Metaphysic,_ § 291).
Absolute actuosity. The _Notio Dei_ according to Thomas Aquinas, as well as the dogmatics of post-Reformation times, is _actus purus_ (or _actus purissimus_). For God _nihil potentialitatis habet._ Cf.
_Werke, xii._228: 'Aristotle especially has conceived God under the abstract category of activity. Pure activity is knowledge (Wissen)--in the scholastic age, _actus purus_--: but in order to be put as activity, it must be put in its "moments." For knowledge we require another thing which is known: and which, when knowledge knows it, is thereby appropriated. It is implied in this that God--the eternal and self-subsistent--eternally begets himself as his Son,--distinguishes himself from himself. But what he thus distinguishes from himself, has not the shape of an otherness: but what is distinguished is _ipso facto_ identical with what it is parted from. God is spirit: no darkness, no colouring or mixture enters this pure light. The relationship of father and son is taken from organic life and used metaphorically--the natural relation is only pictorial and hence does not quite correspond to what is to be expressed. We say, God eternally begets his Son, God distinguishes himself from himself: and thus we begin from God, saying he does this, and in the other he creates is utterly with himself (the form of Love): but we must be well aware that God is this _whole action itself_ God is the beginning; he does this: but equally is he only the end, the totality: and as such totality he is spirit. God as merely the Father is not yet the true (it is the Jewish religion where he is thus without the Son): He is rather beginning and end: He is his presupposition, makes himself a presupposition (this is only another form of distinguishing): He is the eternal process.'
Nicolaus Cusanus speaks of God (_De docta Ignorantia,_ ii. I) as _infinita actualitas quae est actu omnis essendi possibilitas._ The term 'actuosity' seems doubtful.
which the human intelligence can attain a knowledge of God. By the _via causalitatis_ it argues that God is; by the _via negationis,_ what he is not; by the _via eminentiae,_ it gets a glimpse of the relation in which he stands to us. It regards God _i.e._ as the cause of the finite universe; but as God is infinite, all that is predicated of him must be taken as merely approximative (_sensu eminentiori_) and there is left a vast remainder which can only be filled up with negations [Durandus de S. Porciano on the Sentent, i. 3. I]. The _sensus eminentior_ is the subject of Spinoza's strictures, Ep. 6 (56 in Opp. ii. 202): while Leibniz adopts it in the preface to _Théodicée,_ 'Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos âmes, mais il les possède sans bornes: il est un océan, dont nous n'avons reçu que les gouttes; il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque connaissance, quelque bonté; mais elles sont toutes entières en Dieu.'
The _via causalitatis_ infers _e.g.,_ from the existence of morality and intelligence here, a Being whose will finds expression therein: the _via eminentiae_ infers that that will is good, and that intelligence wise in the highest measure, and the _via negationis_ sets aside in the conception of God all the limitations and conditions to which human intelligence and will are subject.
CHAPTER IV.
P. 80, § 38. The verses (forming part of the advice which Mephistopheles, personating Faust, gives to the recently-arrived pupil) stand in the original in a different order: beginning "Dann hat er die Theile in seiner Hand," &c. The meaning of these and the two preceding lines is somewhat as follows, in versification even laxer than Goethe's:-- If you want to describe life and gather its meaning, To drive out its spirit most be your beginning, Then though fast in your hand lie the parts one by one The spirit that linked them, alas! is gone.
And 'Nature's Laboratory' is only a name That the chemist bestows on't to hide his own shame.
One may compare _Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre,_ iii. 3, where it is remarked, in reference to some anatomical exercises: 'You will learn ere long that building-up is more instructive than tearing-down, combining more than separating, animating the dead more than killing again what was killed already...Combining means more than separating: reconstructing more than onlooking.' The first part of _Faust_ appeared P. 82, § 39. The article on the 'Relation of scepticism to philosophy, an exposition of its various modifications, and comparison of the latest with the ancient'--in form a review of G. E. Schulze's _Criticism of Theoretical Philosophy_'--was republished in vol. xvi. of Glauben und Wissen (an article in Sendling and Hegel's _Journal_) Hegel attaches more weight to a factor in the critical theory of knowledge, here neglected. Kant, he says, has--within the limits allowed by his psychological terms of thought--'put (in an excellent way) the _à priori_ of sensibility into the original identity and multiplicity, and that as transcendental imagination in the "higher power" of an immersion of unity in multiplicity: whilst Understanding (Verstand) he makes to consist in the elevation to universality of this _à priori_ synthetic unity of sensibility,--whereby this identity is invested with a comparative antithesis to the sensibility: and Reason (Vernunft) is presented as a still higher power over the preceding comparative antithesis, without however this universality and infinity being allowed to go beyond the stereotyped formal pure infinity.
This genuinely rational construction by which, though the bad name "faculties" is left, there is in truth presented a single identity of them all, is transformed by Jacobi into a series of faculties, _resting_ one upon another.'
say it here again, that my system is no other than the Kantian. That means: it contains the same view of facts, but in its method is quite independent of the Kantian exposition.' 'Kant, up to now, is a closed book.'--i. 442. There are two ways of critical idealism. 'Either' (as Fichte) 'it actually deduces from the fundamental laws of intelligence, that system of necessary modes of action, and with it, at the same time, the objective conceptions thus arising, and thus lets the whole compass of our conceptions gradually arise under the eyes of the reader or hearer; or' (like Kant and his unprogressive disciples) 'it gets hold of these laws from anywhere and anyhow, as they are immediately applied to objects, therefore on their lowest grade (--on this grade they are called _categories),_ and then asseverates that it is by these that objects are determined and arranged.' And i. 478: 'I know that the categories which Kant laid down are in no way _proved_ by him to be conditions of self-consciousness, but only said to be so: I know that space and time and what in the original consciousness is inseparable from them and fills them both, are still less deduced as such conditions, for of them it is not even said expressly--as of the categories--that they are so, but only inferentially. But I believe quite as surely that I know that Kant had the thought of such a system: that everything he actually propounds are fragments and results of this system; and that his statements have meaning and coherence only on this presupposition.' Cf. viii. 362.
der reinen Vernunft,_ § 16: 'The _I think_ must be able to accompany all my ideas...This idea is an act of spontaneity...I name it pure apperception...or original apperception...because it is that self-consciousness which can be accompanied by none further. The unity of it I also call the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, in order to denote the possibility of cognition _à priori_ from it.'
P. 92, § 44. _Caput mortuum:_ a term of the Alchemists to denote the non-volatile precipitate left in the retort after the spirit had been extracted: the fixed or dead remains, 'quando spiritus animam sursum vexit.'
P. 92, § 45. Reason and Understanding. In the Wolfian School (_e.g._ in Baumgarten's _Metaphysik,_ § 468) the term intellect (Verstand) is used of the general faculty of higher cognition, while _ratio_ (Vernunft) specially denotes the power of seeing distinctly the connexions of things. So Wolff (_Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, &c._ § 277) defines Verstand as 'the faculty of distinctly representing the possible,' and Vernunft (§ 368) as 'the faculty of seeing into the connexion of truths.' It is on this use of _Reason_ as the faculty of inference that Kant's use of the term is founded: though it soon widely departs from its origin. For upon the 'formal' use of reason as the faculty of syllogising, Kant superinduces a transcendental use as a 'faculty of _principles_,' while the understanding is only 'a faculty of _rules.'_ 'Reason,' in other words, 'itself begets conceptions,' and 'maxims, which it borrows neither from the senses nor from the understanding.' (_Kritik d. r. Vern., Dialektik,_ Einleit. ii. A.) And the essential aim of Reason is to give unity to the various cognitions of understanding. While the unity given by understanding is 'unity of a possible experience,' that sought by reason is the discovery of an unconditioned which will complete the unity of the former (_Dial._ Einleit. iv), or of 'the totality of the conditions to a given conditioned.' (_Dial,_ vii.)
It is this distinction of the terms which is dominant in Fichte and Hegel, where Verstand is the more practical intellect which seeks definite and restricted results and knowledges, while Vernunft is a deeper and higher power which aims at completeness. In Goethe's more reflective prose we see illustrations of this usage: _e.g.
Wilh. Meister's Wanderjahre,_ i. it is said to be the object of the 'reasonable' man 'das entgegengesetzte zu überschauen und in Uebereinstimmung zu bringen': or Bk. ii. Reasonable men when they have devised something verständig to get this or that difficulty out of the way, &c. Goethe, in his _Sprüche in Prosa_ (896), _Werke,_ iii. 281, says 'Reason has for its province the thing in process (das Werdende), understanding the thing completed (das Gewordene): the former does not trouble itself about the purpose, the latter asks not whence. Reason takes delight in developing; understanding wishes to keep everything as it is, so as to use it.' (Similarly in Eckermann's Convers. Feb. 13, 1829.) Cf. Oken, Naturphilosophie, § 2914. Verstand ist Microcosmus, Vernunft Macrocosmus.
Kant's use of the term Reason, coupled with his special view of Practical Reason and his use of the term Faith (Glaube), leads on to the terminology of Jacobi. In earlier writings Jacobi had insisted on the contrast between the superior authority of feeling and faith (which are in touch with truth) and the mechanical method of intelligence and reasoning (Verstand and Vernunft). At a later period however he changed and fixed the nomenclature of his distinction. What he had first called Glaube he latterly called Vernunft,--which is in brief a 'sense for the supersensible'--an intuition giving higher and complete or total knowledge--an immediate apprehension of the real and the true. As contrasted with this reasonable faith or feeling, he regards Verstand as a mere faculty of inference or derivative knowledge, referring one thing to another by the rule of identity.
This distinction which is substantially reproduced by Coleridge (though with certain clauses that show traces of Schellingian influence) has connexions--like so much else in Jacobi--with the usage of Schopenhauer, 'Nobody,' says Jacobi, 'has ever spoken of an animal Vernunft: a mere animal Verstand however we all know and speak of.' (Jacobi's _Werke,_ iii. 8.) Schopenhauer repeats and enforces the remark. All animals possess, says Schopenhauer, the power of apprehending causality, of cognising objects: a power of immediate and intuitive knowledge of real things: this is Verstand. But Vernunft, which is peculiar to man, is the cognition of _truth_ (not of reality): it is an abstract judgment with a sufficient reason (_Welt als W._ i. § 6).
One is tempted to connect the modern distinction with an older one which goes back in its origin to Plato and Aristotle, but takes form in the Neo-Platonist School, and enters the Latin world through Boëthius.
_Consol. Phil._ iv. 6: _Igitur uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio, ad id quod est id quod gignitur, ad aeternitatem tempus,_ and in v.
4 there is a full distinction of _sensus, imaginatio, ratio_ and _intelligentia_ in ascending order. _Ratio_ is the discursive knowledge of the idea (_universali consideratione perpendit): intelligentia_ apprehends it at once, and as a simple _forma (pura mentis acie Reasoning belongs to the human species, just as intelligence to the divine alone. Yet it is assumed--in an attempt to explain divine foreknowledge and defend freedom--that man may in some measure place himself on the divine standpoint (v. 5).
This contrast between a higher mental faculty (_mens_) and a lower (_ratio_) which even Aquinas adopts from the interpretation of Aristotle (_Summa Theol._ i. 79, 9) is the favourite weapon in the hands of mysticism. After the example of Dionysius Areop., Nicolaus of Cusa, Reuchlin, and other thinkers of the Renaissance depreciate mere discursive thought and logical reasoning. It is the inner _mens_--like a simple ray of light--penetrating by an immediate and indivisible act to the divine--which gives us access to the supreme science. This _simplex intelligentia,--_ superior to imagination or reasoning--as Gerson says, _Consid. de Th._ 10, is sometimes named _mens,_ sometimes _Spiritus,_ the light of intelligence, the shadow of the angelical intellect, the divine light. From Scotus Erigena to Nicolas of Cusa one tradition is handed down: it is taken up by men like Everard Digby (in his _Theoria Analytica_) and the group of Cambridge Platonists and by Spinoza in the seventeenth century, and it reappears, profoundly modified, in the German idealism between 1790 and 1820.
P. 99, § 48. 'Science of Logic'; Hegel's large work on the subject, published between 1812-16. The discussions on the Antinomies belong chiefly to the first part of it.
P. 102, § 50. 'Natural Theology,' here to be taken in a narrower sense than in p. 73, where it is equivalent to Rational Theology in general.
Here it means 'Physico-theology'--the argument from design in nature.
P. 103, § 50. Spinoza--defining God as 'the union of thought with extension.' This is not verbally accurate; for according to _Ethica,_ i. pr. 11, God, or the substance, consists of infinite attributes, each of which expresses the eternal and infinite essence. But Spinoza mentions of 'attributes' only two: _Ethica,_ ii. pr. 1. I Thought is an attribute of God: pr. 2, Extension is an attribute of God. And he adds, _Ethica,_ i. pr. 10, Schol. 'All the attributes substance has were always in it together, nor can one be produced by another.' And in _Ethica,_ ii. 7. Sch. it is said: 'Thinking substance and extended substance is one and the same substance which is comprehended now under this, now under that attribute.'
P. 110, § 54. 'Practical in the true sense of the word.' Cf. Kant, _Werke,_ Ros. and Sch. i. 581: 'A great misunderstanding, exerting an injurious influence on scientific methods, prevails with regard to what should be considered "practical" in such sense as to justify its place in practical philosophy. Diplomacy and finance, rules of economy no less than rules of social intercourse, precepts of health and dietetic of the soul no less than the body, have been classed as practical philosophy on the mere ground that they all contain a collection of practical propositions. Hut although such practical propositions differ in mode of statement from the theoretical propositions which have for import the possibility of things and the exposition of their nature, they have the same content. "Practical," properly so called, are only those propositions which relate to _Liberty_ under laws. All others whatever are nothing but the theory of what pertains to the _nature_ of things--only that theory is brought to bear on the way in which the things may be produced by us in conformity with a principle; _i.e._ the possibility of the things is presented as the result of a voluntary action which itself too may be counted among physical causes.' And Kant, _Werke,_ iv. 10. 'Hence a sum of practical precepts given by philosophy does not form a special part of it (co-ordinate with the theoretical) merely because they are practical. Practical they might be, even though their principle were wholly derived from the theoretical knowledge of nature,--as _technico-practical_ rules.
They are practical in the true sense, when and because their principle is not borrowed from the nature-conception (which is always sensuously conditioned) and rests therefore on the supersensible, which the conception of liberty alone makes knowable by formal laws. They are therefore ethico-practical, _i.e._ not merely _precepts and rules_ with this or that intention, but laws without antecedent reference to ends and intentions.'
P. 111, § 54. Eudaemonism. But there is Eudaemonism and Eudaemonism; as Cf. Hegel, _Werke,_ i. 8. 4 The time had come when the infinite longing away beyond the body and the world had reconciled itself with the reality of existence. Yet the reality which the soul was reconciled to--the objective which the subjectivity recognised--was actually only empirical existence, common world and actuality...And though the reconciliation was in its heart and ground sure and fast, it still needed an objective form for this ground: the very necessity of nature made the blind certitude of immersion in the reality of empirical existence seek to provide itself with a justification and a good conscience. This reconciliation for consciousness was found in the Happiness-doctrine: the fixed point it started from being the empirical subject, and what it was reconciled to, the vulgar actuality, whereon it might now confide, and to which it might surrender itself without sin. The profound coarseness and utter vulgarity, which is at the basis of this happiness-doctrine, has its only elevation in its striving after justification and a good conscience, which however can get no further than the objectivity of mere intellectualism.
'The dogmatism of eudaemonism and of popular philosophy (Aufklärung) therefore did not consist in the fact that it made happiness and enjoyment the supreme good. For if Happiness be comprehended as an _Idea,_ it ceases to be something empirical and casual--as also to be anything sensuous. In the supreme existence, reasonable act (Thun) and supreme enjoyment are one. So long as supreme blessedness is supreme _Idea_ it matters not whether we try to apprehend the supreme existence on the side of its ideality,--which, as isolated may be first called reasonable act--or on the side of its reality--which as isolated may be first called enjoyment and feeling. For reasonable act and supreme enjoyment, ideality and reality are both alike in it and identical.
Every philosophy has only one problem--to construe supreme blessedness as supreme Idea. So long as it is by reason that supreme enjoyment is ascertained, the distinguishability of the two at once disappears: for this comprehension and the infinity which is dominant in act, and the reality and finitude which is dominant in enjoyment, are taken up into one another. The controversy with happiness becomes a meaningless chatter, when happiness is known as the blessed enjoyment of the eternal intuition. But what was called eudaemonism meant--it must be said--an empirical happiness, an enjoyment of sensation, not the eternal intuition and blessedness.'
P. 112, § 55. Schiller. _Ueber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen_(1795), 18th letter. 'Through beauty the sensuous man is led to form and to thought; through beauty the intellectual man is led back to matter and restored to the sense-world. Beauty combines two states which are opposed to one another.' Letter 25. 'We need not then have any difficulty about finding a way from sensuous dependence to moral liberty, after beauty has given a case where liberty can completely co-exist with dependence, and where man in order to show himself an intelligence need not make his escape from matter. If--as the fact of beauty teaches--man is free even in association with the senses, and if--as the conception necessarily involves--liberty is something absolute and supersensible, there can no longer be any question how he comes to elevate himself from limitations to the absolute: for in beauty this has already come to pass.' Cf. _Ueber Anmuth und Würde_(1793). 'It is in a beautiful soul, then, that sense and reason, duty and inclination harmonize; and grace is their expression in the appearance. Only in the service of a beautiful soul can nature at the same time possess liberty.' (See Bosanquet's _History of Aesthetic._) P. 115, § 60. The quotation in the note comes from § 87 of the _Kritik der Urtheilskraft_ (_Werke,_ ed. Ros. and Sch. iv. 357).
consciousness, the ground of its possibility, is (as has been shown) certainly contained in the Ego: yet by this means there arises no actual life, no empirical life in time--and another life is for us utterly unthinkable. If such an actual life is to be possible, there is still needed for that a special impulse (Aufstoss) striking the Ego from the Non-ego. According to my system, therefore, the ultimate ground of all actuality for the Ego is an original action and re-action between the Ego and something outside it, of which all that can be said is that it must be completely opposed to the Ego. In this reciprocal action nothing is brought into the Ego, nothing foreign imported; everything that is developed from it _ad infinitum_ is developed from it solely according to its own laws. The Ego is merely put in motion by that opposite, so as to act; and without such a first mover it would never have acted; and, as its existence consists merely in action, it would not even have existed. But the source of motion has no further attributes than to set in motion, to be an opposing force which as such is only felt.
'My philosophy therefore is realistic. It shows that the consciousness of finite natures cannot at all be explained, unless we assume a force existing independently of them, and completely opposed to them;--on which as regards their empirical existence they are dependent. But it asserts nothing further than such an opposed force, which is merely _felt,_ but not _cognised,_ by finite beings. All possible specifications of this force or non-ego, which may present themselves _ad infinitum_ in our consciousness, my system engages to deduce from the specifying faculty of the Ego...'That the finite mind must necessarily assume outside it something absolute (a Ding:an:sich), and yet must on the other hand acknowledge that this something only exists for the mind (is a necessary noümenon): this is the circle which may be infinitely expanded, but from which the finite mind can never issue.' Cf. Fichte's _Werke,_ i. 248, ii. 478.
CHAPTER V.
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.'
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).'