3IO THE FAITH PHILOSOPHY. The philosophy of the Illumination is related to that of Kant as argument to science, as halting mediation to prin- cipiant resolution, as patchwork to creation out of full resources, yet at the same time as wish to deed and as negative preparation to positive achievement. It was unde- niably of great value to the Kantian criticism that the Illumination had created a point of intersection for the various tendencies of thought, and had brought about the approximation and mutual contact of the opposing systems which then existed, while, at the same time, it had crumbled them to pieces, and thus awakened the need for a new, more firmly and more deeply founded system. 4. The Faith Philosophy. The philosophers of feeling or faith stand in the same relation to the German Illumination as Rousseau to the French. Here also the rights of feeling are vindicated against those of the knowing reason. Among the distin- guished representatives of this anti-rationalistic tendency Hamann led the way, Herder was the most prolific, and Jacobi the clearest. That the fountain of certitude is to be sought not in discriminating thought, but in intuition, experience, revelation, and tradition; that the highest truths can be felt only and not proved ; that all existing things are incomprehensible, because individual — these are convic- tions which, before Jacobi defended them as based on scientific principles, had been vehemently proclaimed by that singular man, J. G. Hamann (died 1788) of Konigs- berg. From an unprinted review by Hamann, Herder drew the objections which his "Metacritique" raises against Kant's Critique of Reason — that the division of matter and form, of sensibility and understanding, is inadmissible ; that Kant misunderstood the significance of language, which is just where sensibility and understanding unite, etc. In Herder* (i 744-1 803 ; after 1776 Superintendent-General in Weimar) the philosophy of feeling gained a finer, more perspicuous and harmonious nature, who shared Lessing's interest in history and his tendency to hold fast equally to
- On Herder cf. the biography by R. Haym, 2 vols., 1877, 1885 ; and the
work by Witte which has been referred to above (p. 306, note).
