Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/561

J A C B I 537 porary Hemsterhuis, whom he resembles in many points, Jacobi kept up his interest in literary and philosophic matters by an extensive correspondence, and his mansion at Pempelfort, near Diisseldorf, was the centre of a distin guished literary circle. With Wieland he contributed to start a new literary journal, the Mercury, in which some of his earliest writings, mainly on practical or economical subjects, were published. Here too appeared in part the first of his philosophic works, the Correspondence of All- will (Allwill s Brief -Sammlung, 1774), a combination of romance with speculation, containing a remarkable delinea tion of that which we may call the principle of the early romantic school in Germany. This was followed in 1779 by Woldemar, a philosophic novel, of very imperfect struc ture, but full of genial speculation, and giving the most complete picture of Jacobi s method of philosophizing. In 1779 he was invited to Munich as member of the privy council, but after a short stay there differences with his colleagues and with the authorities of Bavaria drove him back to Pempelfort. A few unimportant tracts on ques tions of theoretical politics were followed in 1785 by the, work which first brought Jacobi directly into relation with the contemporary philosophical public. A conversation which he had held with Lessing in 1780, in which Lessing avowed that he knew no philosophy, in the true sense of that word, save Spinozism, led him to a protracted study of Spinoza s works, while his statement of Lessing s con fession induced a correspondence with Moses Mendelssohn. The Letters on Spinoza s Theory (Briefe iiber die Lehre Spinoza s, 1785 ; 2d ed., much enlarged and with important Appendices, 1789) expressed sharply and clearly Jacobi s strenuous objection to a demonstrative system in philosophy, and drew upon him the vigorous enmity of the Berlin clique, whose philosophic protagonist was Moses Mendelssohn. Jacobi was ridiculed as endeavouring to reintroduce into philosophy the antiquated notion of unreasoning belief, was denounced as an enemy of reason, as a pietist, and as in all probability a Jesuit in disguise, and was especially taken to task for his employment of the ambiguous term " belief " (Glaube, which may mean belief in the ordinary sense, or faith in the spscifically theological significance). Mendels sohn s reply showed little more than the writer s very slight acquaintance with the Spinozistic system to which he had so frequently and so earnestly appealed, and his mortification at the public disclosure of the fact that he had remained in entire ignorance that Spinoza s Opera Posthuma contained the Ethics is said to have hastened his death. Jacobi s next important work, David Hume on Belief, or Idealism and Realism, a dialogue (David Hume iiber den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus, 1785), was an attempt to show not only that the term Glaube had been used by the most eminent writers to denote what he had employed it for in the Letters on Spinoza, but that the nature of the cognition of facts as opposed to the con struction of inferences could not be otherwise expressed. In this writing, and especially in the Appendix, Jacobi came into contact with the critical philosophy, and sub jected the Kantian view of knowledge to searching ex amination. The outbreak of the war with the French republic induced Jacobi in 1793 to leave his home at Diisseldorf, and for nearly ten years he resided in Holstein. While there he became intimately acquainted with Reinhold, in whose Beitrdge, pt. iii., 1801, his important work On the Endeavour of the Critical Philosophy to bring Reason to Understanding was first published, and with Matthias Claudius, the author of the Wandsbecker Bote. During the same period the excitement caused by the accusation of atheism brought against Fichte at Jena led to the publication of Jacobi s Letter to Fichte, in which he made more precise the relation of his own philosophic principles to theology. Soon after his return to Germany, Jacobi received a call to Munich in connexion with the new academy of sciences just founded there. The loss of a considerable portion of his fortune induced him to accept this offer ; he settled in Munich in 1804, and in 1807 became president of the academy. In 1811 appeared his last philosophic work, directed against Schelling specially, On Divine Things (Von den gottlichen Dingen), the first part of which, a review of the Wandsbecker Bote, had been written in 1798. A bitter reply from Schelling was left without answer by Jacobi, but gave rise to an animated controversy in which Fries and Baader took prominent part. In 1812 Jacobi retired from the office of president, and began to prepare a collected edition of his works. He died before this was completed, on 10th March 1819. The edition of his writings was continued by his friend Koppen, and was completed in 1825. The works fill six volumes, of which the fourth is in three parts. To the second is prefixed an introduction by Jacobi, which is at the same time an intro duction to his philosophy. The fourth volume has also an important preface. The philosophy of Jacobi presents itself as in no way a system, indeed, as, from its principle, essentially unsystematic. A certain fundamental view which underlies all his thinking is brought to bear in succession upon those systematic doctrines which appear to stand most sharply in contradiction to it, and any positive philo sophic results are given only occasionally. The leading idea of the whole is that of the complete separation between understanding and apprehension of real fact. For Jacobi understanding, or the logical faculty, is purely formal or elaborative, and its results never transcend the given material supplied to it. From the basis of immediate experience or perception thought proceeds by comparison and abstraction, establishing connexions among facts, but remaining in its nature mediate and finite. The principle of reason and con sequent, the necessity of thinking each given fact of perception as conditioned, impels understanding towards an endless series of identical propositions, the records of successive comparisons and abstractions. The province of the understanding is therefore strictly the region of the conditioned ; to it the world must present itself as a mechanism. If, then, there is objective truth at all, the existence of real facts must be made known to us otherwise than through the logical faculty of thought ; and, as the regress from conclusion to premises must depend upon something not itself capable of logical grounding, mediate thought implies the conscious ness of immediate truth. Philosophy therefore must resign the hopeless ideal of a systematic (i.e., intelligible) explanation of things, and must content itself with the examination of the facts of consciousness. It is a mere prejudice of philosophic thinkers, a prejudice which has descended from Aristotle, that mediate or demonstrated cognition is superior in cogency and value to the im mediate perception of truths or facts. The fundamental principle of Jacobi s system, thus sketched, presents a most interesting analogy with that which has become familiar in English philosophy through the writings of Sir W. Hamilton. Upon the historical relations between the two thinkers nothing requires here to be said. No reader of Hamilton can fail to be made aware of the great obligations the Scotch psychologist was under to his German predecessor. But attention to the results of Jacobi s fundamental doctrine, as these were wrought out by com parison of it with the speculative systems of Spinoza, Kant, and Schelling, will throw great light upon Hamilton s writings, and make clear the connexions of the several parts which in his imper fect expositions too frequently remained in obscurity. As Jacobi starts with the doctrine that thought is partial and limited, applicable only to connect facts, but incapable of explain ing their existence, it is evident that for him any demonstrative system of metaphysic which should attempt to subject all existence to the principle of logical ground must be repulsive. Now in modern philosophy the first and greatest demonstrative system of metaphysic is that of Spinoza, and it lay in the nature of things that upon Spinoza s system Jacobi should first direct his criticism. A summary of the results of his examination is thus presented (Wcrke, i. 216-223) :"(!) Spinozism is atheism; (2) the Kab- balistic philosophy, in so far as it is philosophy, is nothing but unde veloped or confused Spinozism ; (3) the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff is not less fatalistic than that of Spinoza, and carries a resolute thinker to the very principles of Spinoza ; (4) every demonstrative method ends in fatalism ; (5) we can demonstrate only similarities XIII. 68