Jacobi - Allwill

THE MAIN PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS
AND THE NOVEL ALLWILL

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
Translated and edited by George di Giovanni
This scholarly edition of Jacobi's major works is the first extensive

English translation of these literary and philosophical classics. A key but
somewhat eclipsed figure in the German Enlightenment, Jacobi had an
enormous impact on philosophical thought in the later part of the eigh-
teenth century, notably on the way in which Kant was received and the
early development of post-Kantian idealism.
Jacobi was propelled to notoriety in 1785 with his polemical tract
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn,
included in this translation, along with David Hume on Faith, or Idealism
and Realism; Jacobi to Fichte; and the novel Allwill.
In his comprehensive introduction, George di Giovanni situates
Jacobi in the historical and philosophical context of his time. Avoiding
a simplistic portrayal of Jacobi as a fideist or proto-existentialist, di
Giovanni shows how Jacobi's life and work reflect the tensions inherent
in the late Enlightenment. To learn about Jacobi is also to learn about
the period in which he lived.
This book will be invaluable to students of German Idealism and to
anyone interested in the Enlightenment and early Romanticism.
George di Giovanni is professor of philosophy, McGill University.

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McGiLL-QUEEN'S STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
1 Problems of Cartesianism
Edited by Thomas M. Lennon, John M. Nicholas, and
John W. Davis
2 The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity

Gerald A. Press
3 Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid:

Two Common-Sense Philosophers
Louise Marcil-Lacoste
4 Schiller, Hegel, and Marx:

State, Society, and the Aesthetic Ideal of Ancient Greece
Philip J. Kain
5 John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England

Charles B. Schmitt
6 Beyond Liberty and Property:

The Process of Self-Recognition in Eighteenth-Century
Political Thought
J. A. W. Gunn
7 John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind

Stephen H. Daniel
8 Coleridge and the Inspired Word

Anthony John Harding
9 The Jena System, 1804-5: Logic and Metaphysics
G. W. F. Hegel
Translation edited by John W. Burbidge and George di Giovanni
Introduction and notes by H. S. Harris
10 Consent, Coercion, and Limit:

The Medieval Origins of Parliamentary Democracy
Arthur P. Monahan
11 Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768-1800:

A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy
Manfred Kuehn
12 Paine and Cobbett:

The Transatlantic Connection
David A. Wilson
13 Descartes and the Enlightenment

Peter A. Schouls
14 Greek Scepticism
Anti-Realist Trends in Ancient Thought
Leo Groarke
15 The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought

Donald Wiebe
16 Form and Transformation

A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus
Frederic M. Schroeder
17 From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights

Late Medieval and Early Modern Political Thought, 1300-1600
Arthur P. Monahan
18 The Main Philosophical Writings

and the Novel Allwill
Translated and edited by George di Giovanni
THE MAIN
PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS
AND THE N O V E L ALLWILL
Translated from the German, with an

Introductory Study, Notes, and
Bibliography by
George di Giovanni
McGill-Queen's University Press

Montreal & Kingston • London • Buffalo
© McGill-Queen's University Press 1994
I S B N 0-7735-1018-4
Legal deposit fourth quarter 1994
Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the
Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by
the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 1743—1819

The main philosophical writings and the novel Allwill
(McGill-Queen's studies in the history of ideas; 18)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7735-1018-4
1. Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 1743-1819.
I. Di Giovanni, George, 1935-
II. Title. III. Series
B3°55. 5 441 1995 !93 C94-9°°769-2
E D
This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc.

in 10/12 Baskerville.
For Julian and Adrian, who arrived in that order.
Contents
Preface xi
I N T R O D U C T I O N : THE U N F I N I S H E D P H I L O S O P H Y OF
F R I E D R I C H H E I N R I C H JACOBI
I Jacobi and His Spiritual Landscape: An Essay in Synthesis 3
II Philosophical Arguments: An Essay in Analysis 67
III Literary Witnesses: An Essay in Interpretation 117
IV The Last Word: Jacobi on Jacobi 152
Note on the Texts 169
TEXTS
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn

(1785) !73
David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, A Dialogue (1787) 253
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn

(1789), excerpts 339
Edward Allwill's Collection of Letters (1792) 379

x Contents
Jacobi to Fichte (1799) 497
David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, A Dialogue: Preface and

also Introduction to the Author's Collected Philosophical Works (1815) 537
Notes to Jacobi's Texts 591
Notes to Jacobi's Footnotes 635
Bibliography 649
Index of Names 675
Index of Subjects 679

Preface
W H E N I A P P R O A C H E D Emil Fackenheim—it is now a quarter-century

ago—to ask him whether he would be willing to direct a thesis on
Hegel's Logic, I remember his first look of disconcertment and the warn-
ing that followed. It was not just that the Logic is a fiendishly difficult
work and that nothing very enlightening had ever been written about it.
Experience showed that serious students of Hegel have a tendency to
lose themselves in their subject and not come up with anything publish-
able for years after their first exposure to it. That was not a happy pros-
pect for someone who would soon be looking for a job in academia.
I did manage to find a position a few years later. Yet Fackenheim's
warning proved true in a way. The thesis was completed in a reasonable
length of time, but at the price of limiting it to what had originally been
intended as only its introductory chapter. The rest, which I had hoped
to complete and publish as a book in short order, has yet to see the light
of day. I soon discovered that Hegel's Logic cannot be properly under-
stood without being studied in the context of the Enlightenment scep-
tical tradition, which continued unabated throughout the high period of
German Idealism. Hegel has more in common with this tradition than
is usually recognized. With an eye to my planned future book, I there-
fore undertook to document it, in co-operation with H. S. Harris, with
a translation of relevant texts from the period (Between Kant and Hegel,
1985). However, it did not take me long to realize that the discussions
in those texts of the epistemological and metaphysical issues were all mo-
tivated by broader and deeper interests in religious and moral matters.
The ancient "faith versus reason" debate was in all cases just below the
surface. One could not, however, broach this debate without comingO
face to face with Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Jacobi was not, indeed, a
xii Preface
first-rate philosopher. Yet his polemic against abstract reason on behalf

of faith undoubtedly shaped the course of philosophical discussion in
Germany in the last fifteen years of the eighteenth century. Its influence
continued in the following century and was, in some respects, just as im-
portant for the development of philosophy as Kant's Critique. At the time
when I was preparing Between Kant and Hegel I found it impossible to
represent Jacobi among the texts chosen for translation. Jacobi simply
defied every attempt at excerption. I promised myself, however, to make
up for this failure sometime in the future. The present work, which
turned out to be a much greater enterprise than I had originally
bargained for, is the fulfilment of that promise. The book on Hegel is
of course still to be written, but I am not despairing yet.
I chose the first five texts that I have translated because, in my opinion,
they best convey the philosophical promise that unfortunately Jacobi
never fulfilled. The open letter to Fichte is a good expression of Jacobi's
growing concern, at the time, over the new idealism that was taking
shape in Germany in the wake of Kant. The introduction to the 1815 edi-
tion of the David Hume was chosen because it is Jacobi's final statement
of his philosophical position. In the case of his two novels, Allwill and
Woldemar, the choice was difficult. Practical considerations finally tipped
the scales. I chose Allwill because of its relative brevity in comparison to
Woldemar. I have made it a point in my introductory study and in my
notes to Jacobi's texts to cite extensively from the rest of Jacobi's major
works, and from most minor ones as well, in an effort to provide as com-
plete a picture of Jacobi's opus as possible. I have made my translations
from first editions, and I have ordered them chronologically. I have fol-
lowed this policy because Jacobi's thought altered over the years, not
necessarily for the better, in my opinion, and the reader ought to be
given an opportunity to note the changes. Although I make no preten-
sions to have provided a critical edition of the texts translated, I have
made every effort to identify Jacobi's many references and to explain
their context. Two of Jacobi's quotations (Otway, p. 257; and Heder,
p. 324) have, however, escaped my most diligent searches. I trust that
some reader will eventually find them for me. Finally, I have made no
effort in the footnotes and in the Bibliography either to modernize or
in any way to standardize the eighteenth-century spelling of German,
French, or Italian words.
A work as complex as the present one would not have been possible
without the help of many. It is now my pleasure to acknowledge this
help. The staff at the libraries of the Universities of Munchen, Munster,
Preface xiii
and Tubingen were always very kind and helpful. Most of all, however,
I must thank the staff of the McGill Library. The fine collection at McGill
of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts was for me a veritable
treasure-trove. So was the Kierkegaard Library, now housed at McGill. It
appears that Kierkegaard had in his possession copies of many of the
books that Jacobi had also read and used. Any book that I could not find
in either of these two funds, or that I had not already examined in
Europe, was procured for me by the staff of the Interlibrary Loans
Department. I thank them for their competence, their graciousness, and
the humour with which they met even my most extravagant requests.
My colleagues Harry Bracken, David Norton, and Jeremy Walker were
invaluable sources of scholarly information and of encouragement. I
thank them for both.
Jeremy Walker came to my aid with his poetic skills by rendering in
English verse Goethe's two poems that appear in the Spinoza Letters.
Hans-Jakob Wilhelm and Louise Collins (both PhD candidates at
McGill) were, at different times, my research assistants. Hans-Jakob,
whose first language is German, tested my translations for accuracy and
occasionally found them wanting. Louise tested my English, and she too
had cause to protest. Louise also subjected my introductory essays to a
rigorous analytical examination that often made me feel as if I were back
in the hands of a stern teacher. I thank her for her splendid work, just
as I thank Hans-Jakob for his.
My thanks to Frederick C. Beiser and the anonymous reader for
McGill-Queen's University Press, whose sharp and informed criticisms
helped me to clarify some of my statements, at least to my satisfaction,
though not necessarily to theirs.
To H. S. Harris I owe a special debt. It was he who first suggested to
me, shortly after I completed my thesis on Hegel, that I turn my atten-
tion to Jacobi. I did not take the bait then, mostly because I was too
ignorant to recognize Jacobi's historical importance. But I eventually
came around to his early suggestion. To Harris also fell the ungrateful
task of reading and improving the first version of my translations, when
the text was still raw and definitely German-sounding. I thank him for
this work, for his original suggestion, and for all the encouragement.
The Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada awarded me
a two-year grant for research assistants and travel to German libraries.
Computer equipment was provided through a grant from the McGill
Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. It is a sign of the times, and
hopefully an indication that we are back to the cosmopolitanism so dear
xiv Preface
to the Enlightenment, that this translation of German texts into English

was done by one whose first language is Italian, in an institution of
Scottish origin in a French-speaking part of Canada.
I am responsible for any error.
George di Giovanni
Introduction
The Unfinished Philosophy of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
I
Jacobi and His Spiritual Landscape.

An Essay in Synthesis
THE FIGURE
I. When Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi died in 1819, four years had elapsed
since the Congress of Vienna and the second Peace of Paris finally put
an end to Napoleon and the Napoleonic regimes in Europe.1 The
Restoration was in full swing. "Old Fritz," as Jacobi was known to friends
and foes alike, died a septuagenarian. The years of his life saw many
changes in German society. At his birth in 1743, almost a century had
elapsed since the Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended the Thirty Years'
War. That war had been fought mostly on German lands and, apart from
the carnage and the material devastation that it wreaked in the towns
and countryside, it had also brought to a standstill whatever cultural and
intellectual life German society had previously enjoyed. Nor was the cen-
1. For the general historical and literary background I have drawn from many sources,
but especially from the following: Emil Adler, Herder und die deutsche Aufklarung (Wien:
Europa Verlag, 1965); Richard Benz, Die Zeit derDeutschen Klassik, 1750-1800 (Stuttgart:
Reclam, 1953); Ernst Cassirer, DiePhilosophie der Aujkldrung (Tubingen: Mohr, 1932); Hajo
Holborn, A History of Modern Germany, 1648-1840 (New York: Knopf, 1968); H. A. Korff,
Geist der Goethezeit, iv (Leipzig: Koehler and Amelang, 1966); Friedrich Meinecke,
Machiavelism: The Doctrine of Raison d'Etat and Its Place in Modern History, tr. D. Scott (New
Haven: Yale, 1962); Angelo Pupi, Alia soglia deU'eta romantica (Milano: Universita Cattolica
del Sacro Cuore, 1962); Paul Rilla, Lessing und sein Zeitalter (Miinchen: Beck, 1973);
Hermann Timm, Gott und die Freiheit. Studien zur Religionphilosophie der Goethezeit: I, Die
Spinozarenaissance (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1974); Valerio Verra, F. H. Jacobi,
daU'illuminismo aU'idealismo (Torino: Filosofia, 1963; in my opinion, still the best general
treatment of Jacobi and his age); Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte,
1700-1815 (Miinchen: Beck, 1987). I have also made ample use of the Allgemeine deutsche
Biographie, the Neue deutsche Biographic, and the Biographie universelle.
4 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
tury that followed to be a peaceful one. Wars followed upon wars with
singular regularity, and in the process the whole socio-political face of
Europe was modified. England rose to the status of unchallenged world
power, and in the eighteenth century it began to exercise direct influ-
ence on the German lands through its possession of Hanover. On the
continent, while the influence of Spain eventually collapsed and the
Holy Roman Empire was reduced to an ineffectual symbol, other centres
of power were beginning to assert themselves. France soon became the
single strongest continental nation. Austria gradually gained in strength
and eventually turned itself into an empire. There was also the steady
rise of Brandenburg-Prussia, which, together with the influence that
Russia had begun to exercise, added one more factor to the balance of
power in Central Europe. It was the ordinary folk who bore the brunt of
the destruction caused by all these changes. Yet in spite of the constant
dislocations, cultural and intellectual life had slowly come alive again in
Germany. The revival was clearly dependent on influences coming from
France and England, which exercised cultural and political hegemony
over Europe at the time. But to these foreign influences the Germans
always added elements drawn from their particular intellectual and reli-
gious tradition, so that, by the middle of the eighteenth century, the typ-
ically German phenomenon of the Aufklarung was in full swing.
Jacobi was born, therefore, to a world full of the tensions and contra-
dictions that rapid change always leaves in its wake, and the rest of his
life was to witness changes even more radical. At the political level, the
French Revolution was to challenge long-established ideas about the
role of the prince in society. At the intellectual level, under the stress of
ideas that it had itself nurtured, the Aufklarung gave way to new attitudes
that eventually provided the ideology required to justify the French
Revolution. The attitudes themselves persisted even after the revolution
had run its course, so that, under the trappings of the old political order,
the "Restoration" of 1815 in fact established a totally new one. A new
state absolutism emerged that had little to do with the absolutism of the
eighteenth-century princes.
Jacobi did not shy away from active life, as we shall see. He was also to
suffer at first hand some of the effects of the French Revolution. But un-
like his younger and more famous contemporary Goethe, he never was
an effective participant in the great events of the day. Like the characters
of his philosophical novels, for whom action is mostly restricted to emo-
tion and discussion, Jacobi lived through those events emotionally and
verbally, through his writings and countless letters to just about everyone
Introduction 5
of consequence in his day. If he did leave a mark on his world, it was pre-
cisely in his role as a commentator on the contemporary scene—most of
all, as an acute critic of the ideas by which the new socio-political tend-
encies were seeking legitimization. In this respect Jacobi's literary work
proved to be a catalyst for both the ideologies justifying the new order
and the reaction against it, as we shall see in what follows. As a commen-
tator on a world in transition, Jacobi came to reflect the tensions and
contradictions of the latter in his own personality and work. In order to
be justly measured, therefore, his figure must be viewed as part of a
larger and complex spiritual landscape. Jacobi was not just a defender of
faith vis-a-vis the Enlightenment or a man of feelings (a typical
Herzensmensch} in opposition to the rationalism of the schools. Nor
was he just a realist in opposition to the scepticism of Hume and the
idealism of Kant. Jacobi was all these and much more, at his best holding
his beliefs together in a unity of tension, at his worst, especially in his
later years, reconciling them under a facile account of the notions of
faith and reason.
2. The main events of Jacobi's life can be related here briefly. He was
born in Dusseldorf, of a merchant family. His older brother, Georg, was
to make a name for himself as an anacreontic poet. His two younger half-
sisters, Charlotte and Helene, eventually became part of Jacobi's family,
acting as secretaries and, at the death of Jacobi's wife, as household man-
agers. Of his childhood we know only what Jacobi himself gives us to un-
derstand from hints in the David Hume and from what are probably
autobiographical characterizations in his Allwill.* As a child Jacobi ap-
parently was very awkward and withdrawn, stubborn and highly strung,
and given to brooding on religious matters such as the existence of God
and the reality of an everlasting time. His father intended him for a busi-
ness career and so had him apprenticed for a brief period (1759) at a
merchant house in Frankfurt-am-Main. After that he was sent to Geneva
for a three-year period of general education. Jacobi himself explains that
there, under the tutelage of the renowned Lesage, he became ac-
quainted with both the traditional philosophy of the schools and the
thought of the French philosophes, notably, among the latter, Rousseau
and Bonnet. After this Geneva stay, on his father's refusal to have him
pursue medical studies in Glasgow, Jacobi returned to Dusseldorf, where
2. See below, David Hume, pp. Gyff., and Allwill, pp. a8ff. References to texts included
in this translation are to the pagination of Jacobi's editions.
he joined his father in running the family business. There, after a brief
liaison with an older maidservant3 that resulted in an illegitimate son
and was kept secret by Jacobi for fear that it might jeopardize his be-
trothal, Jacobi married Elisabeth (Betty) von Clermont in 1764.
From all accounts (including Goethe's) Betty was a most charming
and talented woman.4 Her premature demise in 1784, coming soon
after the death of an eleven-year-old son, proved a heavy emotional blow
for Jacobi, and he never remarried. Jacobi enjoyed excellent relations
with Betty's family, especially her brother. To the latter's capable hands
he soon entrusted his financial affairs, thus freeing himself more and
more from the burdens of business. Together with Betty he established
in Pempelfort near Diisseldorf, at his father's country estate, what
amounted to a centre of social, literary, and philosophical activities.5
Few people of literary consequence at the time did not manage to make
their way there, or were not reached from there through Jacobi's lively
correspondence. Among his acquaintances were Sophie La Roche,
Heinse, Wieland, Goethe (whose friendship with Jacobi took, as we
shall see, a rather uneven course), Lavater, Diderot, Hemsterhuis,
Furstenberg, Princess Gallitzin, Dohm, Stolberg, Hamann, Herder,
Wilhelm von Humboldt, Georg Forster—and the list could continue. We
also know that at Pempelfort Jacobi was in close contact with a congre-
gation of pietists, for whose particular brand of religiosity he always felt
a special affinity.
The Pempelfort period lasted until 1794, at which time the French
Revolution touched Jacobi directly.6 Because of the occupation of
3. Anna Katharina Miiller. The liaison has come to light only recently through the dis-
covery of the correspondence between Jacobi and Marc Michel Rey, bookseller and editor
in Amsterdam, whom Jacobi used as an intermediary for passing money to the mother of
the illegitimate child and apparently buying her silence. See: LesAnnees deformation deF. H.
Jacobi, d'apres ses lettres inedites a M. M. Rey (1763—1771), avec "Le Noble," de Madame de
Charriere, ed. J. T. de Booy and Roland Mortier (Geneve: Institut et Musee Voltaire, 1966).
The affair (which does not do honour to Jacobi) is related on pp. 27-34.
4. Goethe describes her as "having the right feelings without a trace of sentimentality."
Aus meinem Leben, Dichtung und Wahrheit, ed. Karl Richter, Part m,Johan Wolfgang Goethe,
Sdmtliche Werke, 19 Vols. (Miinchen: Hanser, 1985 ff), Vol. 16, p. 661.
5. Goethe describes it in Campagne in Frankreich 1792, Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 14, p. 470.
6. Jacobi had already had occasion to feel the threat of the invading French armies. See
his letter to Herder of 23 October 1793, in which Jacobi describes the fears in his house-
hold, during a return trip from Karlsruhe to Pempelfort, upon hearing that a French army
had crossed the borders and had set Speier in flames, and that another army was three
hours from Karlsruhe. Fortunately, the rumours about the French advance on Karlsruhe
Introduction 7
Diisseldorf by French troops, he moved north, first to Wandsbeck as the

guest of Claudius,7 then to Eutin, where he settled. Earlier Jacobi had
demonstrated his interest in political economy practically, by serving,
from 1773 to 1779, as a member of the treasury of the duchies ofjulich
and Berg along the Rhine,8 and in 1779 he had also been appointed
minister and privy councillor for the Bavarian department of customs
and commerce. In both posts he gave evidence of his strong preference
for open trade policies. However, his plans for a liberalization and ratio-
nalization of local customs and taxes were never implemented. Upon
being appointed to the Bavarian position he soon ran into stiff opposi-
tion from his superiors and from enemies at court; unwilling to engage
in a power struggle, he resigned within months of his appointment. And
that was the end of Jacobi's active intervention in practical politics. The
only remnants of it, apart from the correspondence that it generated,
are two essays ("A Political Rhapsody" and 'Yet Another Political
Rhapsody," both written in 1779)9 that attack the mercantilistic policies
of the Bavarian government and defend free trade along orthodox phys-
iocratic lines.
Jacobi's early literary ventures also belong to this time. They took the
form, at first, of translations and occasional pieces on topical themes.10
By temperament, and because of his close connections with his brother
Georg and his poetic circle, Jacobi was naturally drawn to the baroque
sentimentalism much in vogue at the high point of the Enlightenment.
But he could not for long remain immune to the cult of genius and
proved to be false. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's auserlesener Briefwechsel, 2 Vols., ed. Friedrich
Roth (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1825-27), Vol. n, Letter 217, pp. 11 iff. (henceforth, Auserlesener
Briefwechsel).
7. For Claudius, see below, David Hume, footnote to p. 206.
8. See letter to Sophie La Roche, 29 November 1772. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi,
Briefwechsel, 1.1, ed. Michael Briiggen and Siegfried Sudhof (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:
Fromann-Holzboog, 1981), Letter #268, p. 178 (henceforth, Briefwechsel).
9. Eine politishce Rhapsodie and Noch eine politische Rhapsodie. They are reproduced in
Vol. vi of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Werke, 6 Vols. (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1812-25). This is the
edition that Jacobi personally supervised until his death in 1819, and was brought to com-
pletion by Friedrich Koppen and Friedrich Roth (henceforth, Werke). It can of course
be argued that Jacobi exercised considerable political influence indirectly, through the
intellectual influence he had on other figures such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and
Georg Forster. For Jacobi's liberal ideas and their influence, see Frederich C. Beiser,
Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought,
1790-1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), especially ch. 6.
10. See below, Bibliography.
the interest in the deeper and often darker side of the emotional
life that the Sturm und Drang movement was promoting in reaction to
what they took to be the superficiality of Enlightenment reason and
Enlightenment sentiment. In 1774 Jacobi made the personal acquaint-
ance of the young Goethe, the great exponent of this new group of lit-
erati. He thereupon embarked on two novels, Allwill and Woldemar, in
which he explored but also sharply criticized some common themes of
the Sturm und Drang.
The two novels were initially published in fragments and were not
given final form until the 17908. Their literary value was questioned
from the beginning. But then, the constant, long drawn-out philosophi-
cal discussions engaged in by the novel's characters should have made
it clear that Jacobi was basically a philosopher, not a poet. Metaphysics—
specifically the problem of establishing the possibility of theoretical and
moral truth—had been Jacobi's concern since the Geneva years, and it
was still the interest motivating his novels. One significant development
of these years—one directly related to the encounter with Goethe—was
precisely Jacobi's discovery of Spinoza. This previously much-reviled phi-
losopher was enjoying a revival because of the Sturm und Drang's attrac-
tion to those very views about God's immanent relation to nature that
had been the cause of his earlier rejection. Jacobi made an intensive
study of Spinoza's philosophy, with a twofold result. On the one hand,
he found in it what he took to be the root cause of philosophy's inability
to deal with questions of existence effectively. In this respect Spinoza
helped Jacobi to formalize his opposition to the philosophy of the
Enlightenment. Even more than before, therefore, Jacobi found himself
squarely on the side of those who, like Hamann, Claudius, Herder, or
Goethe, were all reacting, though for a variety of reasons, against the ra-
tionalism of the Berlin Aufklarer. On the other hand, Jacobi also found
in Spinoza the justification for his suspicions about the cult of nature
and history that the reaction against the Enlightenment was promoting.
When his famous correspondence with Mendelssohn regarding the al-
leged Spinozism of Lessing was published in 1785—thus giving rise to
what was to be known as the Spinozism Dispute—the book could justly
be taken as a critique of Goethe no less than an attack on the
Enlightenment of which Mendelssohn was at the time the most brilliant
light. The second edition of 1789 was to include a critique of Herder as
well.
Two polemical political pieces had appeared in 1781 and 1782, about
which more in the following section. In these essays Jacobi had attacked
Introduction 9
the absolutism of the princes vehemently (just as he would eventually at-

tack, after 1789, the absolutism of the new order engendered by the
French). However, it was the Spinoza Letters that established Jacobi firmly
at the centre of the literary discussion of the day as a commentator and
critic of all things philosophical. In this work Jacobi appealed to com-
mon sense and faith as means of overcoming the inability of philosophi-
cal reflection to reach out to existence. He did not, however, spell out
the exact nature of the evidence that he hoped to achieve through these
instruments, nor for that matter the exact place, within the economy of
human knowledge, of the evidence thus achieved.
In the dialogue David Hume, which followed in 1787, Jacobi tried to
remedy this deficiency by defining his own position in more positive
terms and by somehow connecting it with both Hume and Leibniz. He
also went on to develop the thesis, which he had already stated in the
Spinoza Letters,11 that there is no "I" without reference to a "Thou," and
on this basis sought a way out of idealism. Yet this work too remained in-
conclusive, as Jacobi himself later admitted (though not necessarily for
the right reasons).12 It showed signs, moreover, thatjacobi's attention
was now being drawn to Kant's transcendental idealism, which at die
time was dislodging the philosophy of the schools from centre stage, and
that, as he braced himself for a new polemic, Jacobi was instinctively re-
verting to the polemical stance of the Spinoza Letters. However much
Jacobi admired Kant, he came to interpret his idealism as one more form
of crypto-Spinozism and as therefore ultimately liable to the same fatal-
ism and consequent amoralism that the latter implied. This line of crit-
icism culminated with the publication in 1801 of the essay "On the
Attempt of Critique to Reduce Reason to the Understanding, and in
General to Give a New Purpose to Philosophy."13
By that time Jacobi was also busy attacking the new kind of idealism
born of Kant's critique. Jacobi's first target had been Fichte—a thinker
11. See below, Spinoza Letters, p. 163.

12. See below, Preface to the David Hume (1815), pp. 3—9; andjacobi's footnote to p. 221
of the 1815 ed. of the David Hume (in the present text, pp. 2ggff.).
13. Uber das Unternehmen des Kriticismus, die Vemunft zu Verstande zu bringen, and der
Philosophie uberhaupt eine neue Absicht zu geben, in Beytrdge zur leichtern Ubersicht des Zustandes
der Philosophie beym Anfange des 19. Jahrhunderts (Contributions to an Easier Overview of the
Situation of Philosophy at the Beginning of the igth Century), ed. C. L. Reinhold, 6 Vols.
(Hamburg: Perthes, 1801-03), Vol. in (1802), pp. 1-110. The essay is reproduced in
Vol. in of the Werke (1816).
who, ironically, had drawn his inspiration fromjacobi's personalismjust

as much as from Kant's subjectivism. At first Jacobi had admired him. ^
But he soon began to be suspicious of the highly reflective constructions
on which Fichte's science of the "I" was being built, not least because
Jacobi also perceived a connection between this new idealism and the
political ideologies behind the French Revolution. He came to interpret
Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, or "Doctrine of Science" (the new name that
Fichte gave to philosophy),15 as a type of inverted Spinozism, an ideal-
ized mathesis that merely replaced Spinoza's abstract concept of sub-
stance with an equally abstract idea of subjectivity and was, in fact, just
as incompatible with personalism and individual freedom as Spinozism.
Jacobi made public his criticism of Fichte in an open letter of 1799,
at the height of the so-called Atheism Dispute—a sad episode that saw
Fichte charged with atheism and eventually forced to resign from his
university chair at Jena. At that time Jacobi was collaborating with
Reinhold (a sometime popularizer of Kant and erstwhile Fichte sympa-
thizer), even though the two men had little in common intellectually
and temperamentally except their dislike for idealism and a bent for re-
ligious piety.16 In his campaign against idealism, however, Jacobi was
also to attract to his side members of a younger generation, such as
Koppen and Salat (both his disciples), Bouterwek, and Fries. The last fa-
mous battle took place after Jacobi—in financial straits because of the
bankruptcy of the Clermont family—moved to Munich in 1805 to an-
14. See letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt of 2 September 1794, Auserlesener Briefwechsel,
Vol. ii, #234, 180-81.
15. The first statement was published in 1794. J. G. Fichte, Uber den Begriff der
Wissenschftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophic (Concerning the Concept of the Doctrine of Science
or So-called Philosophy; Weimar: Comptoire, 1794). Wissenschaftslehre has commonly been
translated into English as "Science of Knowledge."
16. Jacobi registered his first impression of Reinhold to Elise Reimarus in a letter of
11 January 1775 [sicl It should read 1795 instead]; Auserlesener Briefwechsel, Vol. 11, #240.
The impression was not too favourable. Jacobi thought of Reinhold as too narrow a philos-
opher, only interested in the mistakes and prejudices that prevented others from under-
standing him. He did not really care for what others had to say, since he already carried
everything with him—the metaphysics of nature in one pocket and the metaphysics of
morals in the other. "One should just make him turn these pockets out!" (p. iga^Jacobi's
opinion did not change with the years. See his letter to Bouterwek of 5 July 1804, in which
Jacobi says to Bouterwek that he has let Reinhold know that he has had enough of him and
now hopes to be delivered from Reinhold's "logical enthusiasm" for a long time to come.
Friedr. Heinr. Jacobi's Briefe an Friedr. Bouterwek aus demjahren 1800 bis 1819, ed. W. Meyer
(Gottingen: Deuer, 1868), #11, p. 81 (henceforth, Bouterwek-Briefiuechset).
Introduction 11
swer a call to join the newly founded Academy of the Sciences there, and
was thereupon elected its first president.17 The attack was directed this
time at Schelling, with whom Jacobi had already skirmished in connec-
tion with the publication of Hegel's essay Faith and Knowledge18 (to which
Jacobi had replied in three letters to Koppen).19 It culminated in 1811
with the publication of Of Divine Things and Their Revelation, in which
Jacobi took issue with Schelling because of his pantheistic doctrine of na-
ture.20 Jacobi's attack was a bitter one. Schelling replied in kind,21 and
thus was launched the so-called Pantheism Dispute, the third (and last)
of the three famous disputes either initiated by Jacobi or in which he
played a leading role.22 This last cost him the final break in relations
with Goethe, who sided with Schelling.23
In 1812 Jacobi retired. He spent the remaining years of his life super-
vising the publication of his Werke, which, however, he did not see to
completion. Throughout his life Jacobi had developed his own philo-
sophical position indirectly, mostly through polemics against others. In
1815, in a new introduction to the dialogue David Hume that was also to
serve as preface to the rest of the collected works, Jacobi finally gave his
most direct and positive statement of what he stood for, though even
17. Jacobi's inaugural address is included in Vol. vi of Werke. Ubergelehrte Gesellschaften,

ihren Geist und Zweck, gelesen . . . zu Miinchen i8oj (Of Learned Societies, Their Spirit and Goal,
read . . . at Munich in 1807).
18. "Glauben und Wissen, oder die Reflexionphilosophie der Subjectivitat, in der
Vollstandigkeit ihrer Formen, als Kantische, Jacobische, und Fichtesche Philosophic"
("Faith and Knowledge, or the Reflective Philosophy of Subjectivity in the Complete Range
of Its Forms as Kantian, Jacobian, and Fichtean Philosophy"), Kritische Journal, 11.1 (1802):
3-4H-
19. Published in F. Koppen, Schellings Lehre oder das Game der Philosophic des absoluten
Nichts, nebst drei Briefen verwandten Inhalts von F. H. Jacobi (Schelling's Doctrine or the Whole of
Philosophy of the Absolute Nothing, Together with Three Letters of Related Content by F. H. Jacobi;
Hamburg: Perthes, 1803).
20. See below, Preface to David Hume, footnote to p. 77.
21. Jacobi complained to Bouterwek: "In the meantime Schelling has had fifteen folios
of the most wrathful vituperations published against me and my little book." Letter of
i February 1812, Bouterwek-Briefwechsel, #23, pp. 139—40.
22. See Lewis S. Ford, "The Controversy between Schelling and Jacobi," Journal of the
History of Philosophy, ill (1965): 75-89.
23. Goethe wrote to Jacobi: "As poet and artist I am polytheist, pantheist instead as stu-
dent of nature, and am the one just as decidedly as the other." Letter to Jacobi of 6 January
1813, Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe andF. H. Jacobi, ed. Max Jacobi (Leipzig: Weimann, 1846),
#121, p. 261 (henceforth, Goethe-Briefwechsel). See also Letter #119, 10 May 1782,
PP- 254~55- The tone between the two remained courteous and affectionate to the end.
here he did not eschew polemic. How true to Jacobi's own past this state-
ment was, and how cogent the philosophy it delivered, are points at
issue. He died in Munich.
THE L A N D S C A P E : POLITICS
5. So much for a sketch of Jacobi's figure. Now, to the landscape. The

rise of the absolute state was perhaps the one most important political
and social development in the Europe of the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries. The Thirty Years' War had made this development
practically possible by sweeping away in the aftermath of its general de-
struction the institutional remnants of post-feudal political pluralism.
But the phenomenon was also in keeping with the general mentality of
the age, and there were many attempts to legitimize it theoretically.
People looked at the world as an aggregate of individual units of energy,
each striving blindly for its own preservation yet achieving a wonderful
harmony with the rest through a universal self-equilibrating system. It
was not difficult to extend this picture to apply to the power-plays of
political entities. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588—1679)
provided the ideological justification for this move by claiming that the
laws of political behaviour are only special cases of physical necessity.
And since the force thereby identified as the basis of political life was the
amoral nature of the new contemporary science—selfishly blind in its
striving for self-preservation—the same could be expected of the politi-
cal entities supposedly born of it. As the new theoreticians of the raison
d'etat were to argue, the state ultimately had no other rule of conduct ex-
cept the interest to assert its power. All other considerations, moral and
religious ones included, had to be subordinated to this fundamental
rule.
Yet it was part of the complexity of the age that the same picture of na-
ture that made for political absolutism could also support the individu-
alism and the respect for conscience so much prized by Enlightenment
culture. In fact it did. One had only to apply the image of autonomous
units of energy seeking discharge to the individuals who make up any so-
ciety to come up with a thoroughly liberal theory of the state. Starting
from premises about the relationship of moral to physical laws essentially
the same as Hobbes's, a philosopher like Spinoza (1632-77) could
nevertheless draw the most liberal conclusions concerning freedom of
conscience and expression. And the situation was further complicated
Introduction 13
because of the continued widespread appeal of classical (essentially

Stoic) ideas of cosmic reason and cosmic harmony, and the general
tendency to apply them to the contemporary scientific picture of the
universe—though in fact there was little in common between the mor-
ally qualified world of the Stoic and the Newtonian universe.
All this meant that state absolutism and liberal ideals as well as liberal
practices could often go hand in hand. In some of the smaller German
lands absolutism meant little more than the despotism of some petty ty-
rant intent on extracting as much taxation as possible from the impov-
erished subjects for the sake of personal advantage.24 But in a state like
Prussia, by contrast, the situation could be quite complex. Frederick
William i had ruled the country between 1713 and 1740 and organized
it strictly around the needs of the army. However, Frederick the Great
(1740—86), his son and successor, turned out to be of much more re-
fined temperament. A keen student of philosophy, one of his first acts
upon ascending the throne was to recall Christian Wolff (1679-1754),
whom his father had exiled from Prussia at the instigation of pietist the-
ologians, to the University of Halle. During his reign he revitalized the
existing Berlin Academy originally founded by Leibniz. It now assumed
the name of Academic des Sciences et Belles Lettres. Frederick drew to
it renowned scholars from all over Europe, Voltaire included. There is
no doubt that his commitment to the ideas of the Enlightenment were
genuine—even in matters concerning the duties of a ruler towards his
subject—and that in times of personal tribulation he often drew conso-
lation from a spirit of resignation nurtured by a deeply held scepticism.
He was, in brief, a truly enlightened ruler. Yet for all his philosophy,
Frederick the Great did not alter the policies of his father but on the
contrary reinforced them. The state needed power in order to assert it-
self as an autonomous entity. But since power required a strong army,
the whole society had to be organized around the needs of maintaining
one. Frederick the Great never questioned this imperative.
At least in continental Europe, then, state absolutism was part of the
ethos of the eighteenth century, even though there were in that same
ethos strong elements militating against it. It is in the context of this ten-
sion that Jacobi's two political pieces referred to above must be read. In
1777 his friend and literary collaborator C. M. Wieland (1733-1813)
24. For some striking examples, see Rilla, p. 262.

had argued that power is the only source of legitimacy for political au-
thority.25 Right follows upon the ability to enforce obedience. Jacobi re-
plied in the first piece with a scathing point-by-point rebuttal that was
only published four years later.26 Wieland was wrong on all counts.
Historically, he had misconstrued anthropological data regarding the
origin of societies. Conceptually, he had failed to notice that moral law
and natural necessity are parts of the one concept of natural right only
in a very broad sense. Because of this failure he was forced to absurd con-
clusions, such as that every human action is morally correct, given that
it occurs, for, like any natural event, if it occurs it must presumably be
governed by necessary laws. An attempt on the monarch's life is thus
morally justified provided that it is successful—so regicide is always mor-
ally justified. Wieland would also have to hold that the right of an indi-
vidual to defend his life or property follows with the same necessity as
that by which a heavy body falls to the ground, or certain seeds grow into
big trees and others into smaller ones. But this is absurd. Contra Wieland,
Jacobi asserted that moral rights derive their force from the freedom of
an individual, not from any consideration of natural laws. There is an ir-
reducible difference between the domain of nature and that of freedom.
This is Jacobi's crucial point. But even assuming per impossibile that
human conduct is purely a natural product, Wieland was still wrong in
his defence of despotism as the most effective form of government. On
the contrary, a philosopher like Spinoza, starting from purely naturalis-
tic premises, had argued quite consistently to the very opposite
conclusion—for it is unreasonable to expect that any individual, driven
25. See Wieland's essay, "Ueber das gottliche Recht der Obrigkeit" ("On the Divine
Right of Authority"), which appeared in Der Teutsche Merkur, xx (1777): 119-45. Jacobi
told Hamann some years later that the essay "had revolted him." Johann Georg Hamann,
Briefwechsel, Vols. v-vn, ed. Arthur Henkel (Wiesbaden: Insel, 1965-79), Vol. vi, Letter
#896, 17-18 November 1785, p. 147 (henceforth Hamann-Briefwechsel). See Levy-Bruhl, La
Philosophic deJacobi (Paris: Allcan, 1894), pp. 126. Levy-Bruhl is wrong in saying that there
is an inconsistency in Jacobi, in that he wants to be a liberal but rejects the moral philos-
ophy of Kant. This objection makes sense only on the assumption that Kant's moral philos-
ophy (as contrasted to Kant's personal attitudes and intentions) leads to liberalism. But this
is an assumption open to challenge. Levy-Bruhl speaks from the point of view of the neo-
Kantianism of the nineteenth century.
26. "Ueber Recht und Gewalt, oder philosophische Erwagung eines Aufsatzes von
dem Herrn Hofrath Wieland, iiber das gottliche Recht der Obrigkeit" (anonymous,
"Concerning Right and Power, or a Philosophical Consideration of an Essay by Councillor
Wieland on the Divine Right of Authority"), Deutsches Museum, i (1781): 522-54; reprinted
in Werke, Vol. vi, pp. 419-64.
Introduction 15
as he is by private interest, can fairly recognize the welfare of a whole

society.
Wieland's essay led to a cooling off of Jacobi's relations with him.27
Jacobi renewed his attack in 1782 with his second piece, on the occasion
this time of the publication by the historian Johann von Miiller of a
pamphlet entitled The Travels of the Popes,*8 in which, contrary to current
"enlightened" views, a positive revaluation of the role of the papacy in
the Middle Ages was offered. Miiller himself was reacting against the
Austrian emperor Joseph n's attempt to assert complete control over the
Catholic church in his domains.2Q With Etwas das Lessing gesagt haft0
Jacobi came out in defence of Miiller's position. This was not because
Jacobi felt any particular affinity toward the papacy,31 nor was it a rever-
sal of his secularism,32 but because he thought that its spiritual despo-
tism was much to be preferred over the secular, supposedly enlightened,
despotism of the princes.33 At least the popes' authority over their sub-
jects presupposed a spiritual life on their part, whereas that of the mod-
ern princes worked only to its destruction. The basic issue for Jacobi was
how one conceives of humanity. On one conception the motive force be-
hind man's actions are his passions, and these are purely natural sources
27. See Briefwechsel, 1.2, Letter #475, to Wieland, Middle of December, p. 69.
28. The pamphlet was originally published in French in 1782. Jacobi asked for a copy
from Princess Gallitzin. See Briefwechsel, 1.3, Letter #774, to Princess Gallitzin, 10 May 1782,
p. 27; Letter #775, toj. Miiller, 14 May 1782, pp. 28-29. An anonymous German transla-
tion, complete with a point-by-point refutation, appeared shortly after. DieReisen derPdbste,
aus dem Franzosischen. Neue rechtmdssige Auflage mil notigen Anmerkungen und einer Vorrede ver-
mehrt (The Travels of the Popes, from the French; A New Legitimate Edition, Augmented with
Required Comments and a Preface; n. p. p., 1783).
29. See Pupi, Alia soglia dett'eta romantica, pp. 1—3.
30. Subtitled Ein Commentar zu den Reisen der Pdpste (Something That Lessing Said, A
Commentary on the Travels of the Popes). It was published in Berlin anonymously. See Werke,
11, p. 327.
31. See letter to J. A. J. Reimarus, 30 October 1782, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #825, pp. 72-73.
32. See Jacobi's letter (in French) to F. F. Fiirstenberg, in connection with the educa-
tional reform that the latter was introducing in the Bishoprics of Minister and Cologne:
"The principle you are establishing is indeed a wonderful triumph for sane reason: that in
the colleges natural morality, or philosophy, and Christian morality ought to be taught sep-
arately. Whenever we found the system of our obligation solely upon revealed religion, we
almost always destroy the precious germ of morality in the hearts of children." Briefwechsel,
1.1, #203, i7july 1771, p. 118.
33. Kant takes the opposite position, perhaps deliberately, in Religion innerhalb der
Grenzen der bloflen Vernunft. Kant's Werke, Academy Edition, Vol. vi (Berlin: Reimer, 1907),
p. 133, footnote (end of Book Three).
of energy seeking their discharge blindly. Reason's function in this con-

text is simply to channel the energy thus released in the most efficient
way consistent with the greatest discharge possible. On the opposing
conception, action's motive force is reason itself and the spiritual desire
for happiness that accompanies it. The passions are merely channels
through which reason, which is an autonomous source of energy, makes
its way, drawing indeed from their natural resources but for purposes
that transcend them altogether. On the first conception, the laws of a
state are merely formal devices that regulate the blind passions of the
subjects from the outside. The state itself is a machine (as Hobbes had
said) and its ruler necessarily a despot. On the second conception, ruler
and state are subject instead to the rule of the same reason that also an-
imates the citizens as individuals. External coercion has no place in this
context, except to the extent that it is necessary to remove obstacles to
the free exercise of individual rights. Jacobi sees these two models as
exhausting the conceptual possibilities. On his interpretation, Wieland
endorses the first, and he himself the second.
What strikes one in these early essays is how much Jacobi still assumes
an essentially classical notion of reason, even though he is obviously
thinking within the conceptual framework of a theory of individual lib-
erties that only made sense in the context of eighteenth-century scien-
tific ideology and eighteenth-century socio-economic debates. This
explains why the Platonizing of a Hemsterhuis could have such a fasci-
nation for him. For this early Jacobi, reason has nothing to do with the
abstract concept of humanity in general, or with universal laws of con-
duct, nor, for that matter, with the concept of an "individual" as such.
It is the measure, rather, of right action and right feeling with respect to
the individuals of one's immediate society, just as it was at the time of
Aristides, Epaminondas, or Timeleon.34 Political upbringing means the
internalization of this measure through proper guidance and practice.
It means moral education in the classical sense, in other words, and if
Jacobi objects to the princes of his day ("Our popes," as he calls them), 35
it is precisely because with their despotic policies they ignore the moral
nature of their subjects and, in ignoring it, they corrupt it.
But despotism suffers from practical weaknesses as well, as Jacobi
34. See letter to Furstenberg, 17 July 1771, Briefwechsel, 1.1, #203, pp. 119-20.
35. See letter toj. Miiller, 14 May 1782, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #775, p. 28. Jacobi calls the
princes "popes" because they exhibited all the despotics traits of which the Aujklarer
accused the popes.
Introduction 17
points out. History shows that no single ruler can ever be clever enough
to take into consideration all the contingencies that affect the workings
of a state-machine. Sooner or later the passions of its members will over-
flow the margins set by formal reason, and the state will be flooded from
within. But above all the problem lies in the functional definition of what
constitutes its external boundaries. On the assumption of the state as a
machine, the most that one can do is to define its boundaries in terms
of a number of square miles of territory. But who is to say that this square
mileage is inviolate and that some neighbouring state will not at some
point want to annex it? If we deny that the state is merely a machine and
claim that it is rather an entity with some defining good or function,
then a non-arbitrary limit can be found to its boundaries. But Jacobi had
difficulty understanding what the good of a state could consist in, except
the good of the individual members freely associated in it.
When Jacobi wrote Etwas das Lessing gesagt hat, he was already in
private correspondence with Moses Mendelssohn on the subject of
Lessing's Spinozism, and it probably was with the ulterior motive of
showing his affinities to Lessing that he quoted Lessing's words to the
effect that whatever Febronius and his followers had said against the
supremacy of the popes over the churches applied to the princes in
twofold, nay threefold, measure as well. "Justinus Febronius" was the
pen-name of the Austrian bishop Johann Nicolaus von Hontheim, who
defended the autonomy of local churches against the supremacy of
Rome. For both Lessing and Jacobi, to withdraw the churches from the
authority of the popes meant in fact to subject them to the more repres-
sive power of the princes. From Mendelssohn there came a reply in
defence of the princes, and also the suggestion that Jacobi had not
understood the spirit of Lessing's words.s6 Jacobi countered with an-
other article.37
All in all the picture was that of a surprisingly free exchange of polit-
ical ideas. Most remarkable of all was the fact that (as Jacobi himself was
to note retrospectively in 1815) Jacobi's essay, though rejected byj. A.
36. "Gedanken Verschiedener iiber eine merkwiirdige Schrift" (anonymous;

"Reflections of Various People concerning a Remarkable Writing"), Deutsches Museum, i
(1783): 3-9; see Werke, 11, pp. 389-411.
37. "Erinnerungen gegen die in den Januar des Museums eingeriickten Gedanken iiber
eine merkwiirdige Schrift" (anonymous; "A Memorandum Regarding the Reflections
Reported in the January Issue of the Museum Concerning a Remarkable Writing"), Deutsches
Museum, i (1783): 3-9, 389-400. Cf. Werke, 11, pp 400-11.
H. Reimarus for publication in Hamburg because it might offend the

Austrian royalty, was published in Berlin unaltered with the approval of
the censors.38
We have again an example of the complexity of the Enlightenment,
where despotism could harbour liberal dissent and Enlightenment phi-
losophy provide the conceptual basis for a defence of despotic political
practices. The situation was soon to change, however, and not in favour
of liberalism. The events leading up to the French Revolution and the
subsequent Terror naturally promoted a conservative reaction. But it
would be a mistake to interpret this reaction simply as a defence reflex
on the part of established despotism against the new freedoms being de-
clared by the revolution. Both in practice and in ideology the new order
turned out to be even more tyrannical than the old one, for the state was
now identified with the will of a quasi-mystical entity called the "people,"
and individual citizens were therefore expected not only to obey it exter-
nally but to feel loyalty towards it as well. The bond uniting them to the
"people" was supposed to be an internal one. The tyranny of the state
was now extended over the domain of the mind as well, whereas accord-
ing to the old order external obedience did not in any way imply per-
sonal loyalty. In Germany the average burgher, not to speak of the
peasants, had been notoriously indifferent to the fortunes of his prince.
It is this new absolutism that the nineteenth century inherited and that,
as we suggested above, made of Europe after the Restoration a totally
new political entity.
Jacobi, who quickly became engrossed in the affairs of the revolu-
tion,39 harboured suspicions about it from the beginning.40 It has been
said that one motive behind Jacobi's rejection of it was fear of the threat
that the revolution seemed to pose to private property.41 And the claim
is very likelyjustified. But there certainly also were conceptual and moral
38. See Werke, n, p. 327. See letter toj. Miiller, 4 October 1782 (Briefwechsel, 1.3, #808,
pp. 54—55), which shows Jacobi in search of a publisher, and Letter #851, to C. K. W.
Dohm, 3 December 1782 (p. 100), in which Jacobi praises "die Berliner PreBfreiheit."
39. Letter to Georg Forster, 12 November 1789, Auserlesener Briefwechsel, H, #181, p. 11:
"The French doings have totally immersed me in the political realm."
40. See letter to Reinhold of 7 November 1789, in Karl Leonhard Reinhold's Leben und
litterarisches Wirken, nebst einer Auswahl von Briefen Kant's, Fichte's, Jacobi's, und andrer
philosophirenden Zeitgenossen an ihn (K. L. Reinhold's Life and Literary Work, Together with a
Selection of Letters of Kant, Fichte, Jacobi, and Other Philosophers to Him), ed. Ernst Reinhold
(Jena: Fromann, 1825), p. 226 (henceforth, Reinhold's Leben).
41. Thus Reiser in Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism, p. 150.
Introduction 19
reasons behind it, all consistent with Jacobi's past attitudes. At least since
the Spinoza LifersJacobi was no longer using "reason" in a classical sense
but had rather given the term a pejorative meaning that he was to re-
serve for it until the last phase of his development. "Reason" now meant
for him the misuse of the power of abstraction. It stood for the tendency
to assume as the principle of explanation or moral action a conceptual
representation of reality that in fact has no meaning except by reference
to the very matter it is expected to clarify or direct, and owes its appear-
ance of intelligibility only to its lack of content. This poverty on its part
makes it a particularly apt instrument for simplifying our perception of
the world and thus satisfying our innate desire for order. But its prag-
matic value apart, reason's ideal order is not to be mistaken for the re-
quirements of actual existence. It is at best only a distant reflection of it,
and to assume it instead as the source of intelligibility and value is in fact
to invert the real order of things. It is like transforming reality into a
nothingness by means of abstraction and then trying to retrieve the
reality from the nothingness by means of purely conceptual means of
inference.
This is in effect the objection that Jacobi raised in the fragment of a
letter intended for Jean Francois Laharpe, member of the Academic
franchise, in lygo,42 but repeated in other contexts as well. It is not sur-
prising that people do not everywhere flock to the cry of liberty for all
coming from Paris. For the freedom being proclaimed there is only an
empty concept, and common people do not see how it connects with
their individual needs and individual desires. Brave words indeed those
of Mirabeau, according to which one has finally discovered "a fixed way
of being governed by reason alone,"43 a feat accomplished by finally de-
stroying the rule of the passions. But in fact this creation of a new society
ex nihilo is achieved at the price of ignoring "individual and person."
"Until now," Jacobi says, "reason never was alone for us; considered as a
separate entity or as pure reason, it appeared to us neither as legislative
nor as executive but simply as judging, simply as applying given deter-
minations to given objects. Reason is a superb bearer of light; by itself,
however, it would neither give light nor move."44
42. Bruchstuck eines Briefes an Johann Franz Laharpe, Mitglied der franzosischen Akademie
(Fragment of a Letter to Johann Franz Laharpe, Member of the French Academy), published in
Werke, n, pp. 513-44.
43. Jacobi cites in French. An Laharpe, Werke, n, p. 515.
44. An Laharpe, p. 516.
2O The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
It is interesting that Jacobi's objection to Laharpe is essentially the

same as the one he had moved in 1787, only three years earlier, against
the Berlin Aufklarer, who at the time were waging a campaign against the
new religious piety promoted by such people as Lavater. Behind that
piety the Aufklarer detected a hidden papist plot to subvert the principles
of the universal religion of pure reason that they advocated.45 Jacobi
made his counter-objection to the Aufklarer in an occasional piece pub-
lished in the Deutsches Museum, where he has a fictional believer reply to
the charges of superstition levelled against him by an enlightened phi-
losopher.46 The believer's basic point is that the philosopher might in-
deed have the right to criticize faith. But the believer has just as much
right not to accept the philosopher's portrayal of his faith. For at the ab-
stract level of conceptualization on which philosophy operates he is in
no position even to recognize the true nature of the object of his attack.
He cannot see that there is nothing that he expresses about God and the
world with his abstract concepts that the believer does not already know
and has not already held on the strength of his historical faith from time
immemorial. The philosopher also forgets that his reason too has a
history—that it was born of the very faith he is now trying to discredit but
on which he still relies even to be understood, let alone command as-
sent. By attempting to destroy historical faith, philosophical reason thus
runs the risk of undermining its own source of evidence. And this objec-
tion to the Aufklarer was in effect also Jacobi's objection to Laharpe con-
cerning the social experiment undertaken by the French Revolution.
The enterprise was a self-defeating one, for in trying to establish a society
de novo exclusively based on the supposed needs of individuals in gen-
eral, the architects of the new social order had lost sight of the fact that
real individuals have the needs that they really have only because they are
all born in historically given societies. They can therefore respond to the
call of enlightened needs only to the extent that they have been pre-
pared for them by their particular society. By cutting itself loose from the
past, the new society was actually destroying its own social material.
45. See below, footnote to p. 15 of David Hume.

46. "Einige Betrachtungen iiber den frommen Betrug and uber eine Vernunft, welche
nicht die Vernunft 1st" ("A Few Comments Concerning Pious Fraud and a Reason Which
Is No Reason"), Deutsches Museum, 1.2 (1788): 153-84; reproduced with some alterations
in Werke, n, pp. 457-59)-1 suspect that this dialogue between believer and philosopher is
behind Hegel's dramatic confrontation of reason with faith in chapter vi of the
Phenomenology of Spirit.
Introduction 21
So far as Jacob! was concerned, both the tyranny of the French

Revolution and the despotism of the enlightened ruler were phenomena
of one and the same abstractive reason. Constitutional monarchy ap-
pears to have been his favourite form of government,47 and during the
French Revolution he was clearly drawn to the conservative ideas of
Burke.48 But then, we cannot expect a fully worked-out theory on the
part ofJacobi here. It is notjust that he eschewed systematization in prin-
ciple. Jacobi's attitudes harboured an inconsistency that of necessity
stood in the way of any clearly defined position. Signs of it could be seen
even in his letter to Laharpe. For there, to Mirabeau's exalted picture of
a society founded on the formal rule of reason Jacobi opposed the more
pedestrian one of individuals held together, organically, as it were, by
bonds forged dirough history on the basis of particular needs. This pic-
ture of Jacobi's presupposed, however, a rational order in human affairs
that would unfold out of the historical and biological basis of experience
without any break with it. It presupposed, in other words, some sort of
pre-knowledge rooted in muscle reflexes, so to speak, or in sexual drives,
which Jacobi could then oppose to the rule-driven reason of the philos-
ophers. Jacobi had in fact presupposed this (classical) notion of reason
in his early political writings, when he had clearly and deliberately de-
fended the idea of the liberal state without, however, espousing the ide-
ology of abstractive rationality upon which the liberalism of his day was
based. Now that the French Revolution was dramatically demonstrating
the possibly catastrophic effects of this same rationality, one would have
expected him to develop his own implicit theory of reason in open con-
tradistinction to it. But Jacobi did nothing of the sort. Nor could he, for,
as we shall see, Jacobi indulged in a purism of sentiment that was the
exact counterpart of the purism of reason for which he was attacking the
revolutionary ideologues. And this purism denied him the historical and
organic basis for the kind of social rationality he was groping for—the
net result being that, as the letter to Laharpe illustrates (and so too, as
we shall see, his Woldemar},^ while he could clearly argue against what
47. See letter to C. K. W. Dohm, 3 December 1782, in the aftermath of the publication
of his Etwas, das Lessinggesagt hat: "I won't allow that you should pass my essay for an apol-
ogy of democracy. I have made crystal clear, on the contrary, my indifference to any nom-
inal property of the states, and condemned every arbitrary use of power. I have only praised
the rule of law." Briejwechsel, 1.3, #851, p. 100.
48. See letter to Rehberg, 28 November 1791, Auserlesener Briefwechsel, vol. n, #205,
pp. 68-69.
49. See below, Section in, pp. 146-48.
politically he stood opposed to, he could only fall back upon a statement
of traditional values when it was a matter of defending what he stood for.
But then, in this respect Jacobi was only reflecting inconsistencies that
had been deeply rooted in the Enlightenment from the beginning.
THE LANDSCAPE: PHILOSOPHY
4. Many ingredients had gone into the making of the characteristically

German form that the Enlightenment assumed in the German lands,
where it was blooming by the middle of the eighteenth century. The
remote inspiration of the Enlightenment everywhere had been
Descartes—more specifically, Cartesian rationalism, which had rid the
world of final causes and thereby made the world itself into a machine.
"Under mechanism I include every concatenation of purely efficient
causes," Jacobi was to define. "Such concatenation is eo ipso a necessary
one, just as a necessary concatenation, qua necessary, is by that very fact
a mechanistic one."50 This kind of rationalism was part and parcel of
Enlightenment thought, yet, though always present, it by no means con-
stituted its essence in Germany or anywhere else. For one thing, philos-
ophers and theologians had been quick after Descartes to reintroduce
finality by picturing the world as indeed organized according to mech-
anistic lines of causality, but for purposes that God had formulated and
that lay in his mind. Of course, this kind of external finality had very little
if anything in common with Aristotelian ends, which made up the very
nature of things. It determined the whole of reality formally without in-
trinsically affecting the determination of any of its parts (which had to
be left to efficient causality). In Germany, however, Cartesian rational-
ism had meant most of all Leibniz's (1646—1714) version of it. And in
this version, though the Cartesian picture of a universe in which every
part reflected and balanced every other part was preserved, the harmony
of the whole thus established was conceived as induced, so to speak,
from within each of the parts, because of a part's specific intensive de-
gree of life. The result was a peculiar synthesis of Cartesian mechanism
and Aristotelian vitalism, and this synthesis, in the systematic and highly
scholasticized form given to it by Christian Wolff (1679-1754), became
the basis in Germany of Enlightenment philosophy. Spinoza (1632-77)
also entered into the picture, albeit belatedly. Although perhaps the
most consequential of all Cartesians, he was indirectly to provide the im-
50. Spinoza Letters (1789 ed.), p. 355.

Introduction 23
petus for the emergence of early Romanticism because of his quasi-

mystical insistence on the immanent presence of God in the universe.
Leibniz must be mentioned a second time because, with the posthumous
publication in 1765 of his Nouveaux Essais sur Ventendement humain, he
made a second entrance on the scene, so to speak. And this time he
came equipped with a vitalistic theory of the mind in which the uncon-
scious figured prominently as a dimension of consciousness itself. When
Herder or Goethe (andjacobi himself in the David Hume) reacted to the
contemporary vogue for mechanistic explanations of mental processes,
and when they strove for a more organic view of nature, they were draw-
ing from a vitalistic tradition deeply rooted in German thought.
More to the point for our immediate purposes, however, the
Enlightenment was also born of a reaction against the formalism of
Cartesian rationalism. The rationalists came under attack because of
their utter disregard for experimentation and sense experiences and
their naive pretence that they could derive knowledge of the real world
from the mind a priori. The inspiration for this new recognition of the
importance of empirical knowledge had come from England—from
John Locke's (1632—1704) theory of mind based on the primacy of sen-
sations, and from Isaac Newton's (1642-1727) experimental method in
physics.
By the middle of the century, therefore, Wolffs metaphysics was al-
ready falling into disrepute in Germany.51 This is not to say that his style
of philosophy died out in Germany. But, although always faithful to its
metaphysical ancestry, Wolffian-style philosophy remained alive pre-
cisely because it began to respond to the issues raised by English empir-
icism and eventually incorporated many of its elements. Kantian critique
was a case in point. According to Kant's explicit testimony, his critical
work was inspired by the desire to establish metaphysics on a sure con-
ceptual foundation. To the extent that Kant still shared in the belief that
science is foundational and systematic that is the hallmark of Wolffs
metaphysics, his critique fell on the side of the Wolffian tradition.52 But
according to Kant's equally explicit testimony, he had been awakened
from his "dogmatic slumber" by Hume's scepticism;53 much of his cri-
51. Though in all fairness to Wolff it must be said that he had already made plenty of
room in his rationalism for a role to be played by the senses.
52. Kritik derreinen Vernunft, and ed. (Riga: Hartnoch, 1787), p. xxxvi.
53. Prolegomena zu einerjeden kunftigen Metaphysik (Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics;
Riga: Hartknoch, 1783), Academy Edition, Vol. iv, p. 260.
tique, moreover, was intended to restrict science to empirical knowl-

edge. Here was a case in which Wolffian metaphysical assumptions and
classical metaphysical problems were being reasserted indeed, but in the
light of English empiricism.
The English influence had come to Germany through various chan-
nels, including France. Since the seventeenth century French culture
had established a massive presence in the German territories, where it
had found a natural ground of expansion because of the cultural vac-
uum caused there by the Thirty Years' War. The French language had
become the accepted medium of communication in the chancelleries,
and in the Prussia of Frederick the Great it was the language of the court.
Since Frederick had imported French experts to introduce French
methods of tax collection in the kingdom, the language had also filtered
through to the lower echelons of the bureaucracy. (Hamann was bitterly
to resent the petty tyranny of these French tax experts, to whom he was
subjected first as translator and then as a minor official in the customs
house in Konigsberg). The French language was also adopted by the
German nobility for daily use. Until 1778 state minister Furstenberg and
the Princess Gallitzin (both friends of Jacobi) carried on their thick cor-
respondence, which was entirely dedicated to personal and even inti-
mate matters, in French; and when in 1780 they shifted to the use of
their mother tongue, they did so deliberately, knowing quite well that
they were conforming to new trends in Germany.54
Along with the French language there had come into Germany
French tastes and French ideas. As it happened, by the middle of the
eighteenth century the passion for things English had become almost a
craze in France, and this passion too was exported into Germany. The
first to fuel it had been Voltaire (1694-1778). Originally an orthodox
rationalist, Voltaire made his acquaintance with the philosophy and the
political institutions of England during an early exile there (1726-29),
from which he returned to France totally converted to the historico-
empirical study of nature and the human mind and (a refugee as he had
been from the intolerance of the French establishment) enthusiastically
convinced of the merits of political, juridical, and economic liberalism.
During the following fifty-odd years he translated these newly acquired
beliefs into a relentless, often satirical, always brilliant attack on the ste-
54. See Gisel Oehlert, "Fiirstenbergs Briefe an die Fiirstin Gallitzin," in Furstenberg,
Furstin Gallitzin, und ihr Kreis, Erich Trunk (Miinster: Aschendorff, 1955), pp. 7-14:
p. 8.
Introduction 25
rility of the doctrine of innate ideas, the naivete of Leibnizian-style meta-

physical optimism, and the inhumanity of any form of autocracy. And
Voltaire used poetry and the stage as his medium of expression just as
effectively as the philosophical essay.55 This point is important, because
it touches on the essence of the new Enlightenment philosophy.
Abstraction is now considered the one great source of error. In order to
yield knowledge, representations ought to respect the details of the re-
ality that they portray; they must remain as close as possible to the exis-
tential conditions under which such reality appears in sense experience.
All knowledge, in other words, must respect the individuality of its ob-
jects. And since the narrative form of representation, even when fic-
tional, still models itself after real situations and real people, it follows
that plays, stories, or novels can be vehicles of truth just as good as, if not
better than, any other, more theoretical means. The upshot was that in
the literature of the Enlightenment the distinction between literary and
philosophical production tended to blur. Hence Jacobi, and others be-
sides him, could write in the new literary form that was establishing itself
at that time and yet think of themselves as doing philosophy.
Voltaire was not isolated in France. He was one among a whole group
of enlightened philosophes, all of whom had drawn their basic ideas from
England but were now remoulding them in a uniquely French cast. They
all figure, in one way or another, in Jacobi's life. Their special contribu-
tion was an anti-establishment (also anti-ecclesiastical) spirit that obvi-
ously reflected the social situation in France at the time. But even more
important, they added to empiricism the belief that if one were ever to
discover by observation and experimentation the basic laws of nature—
and there was no doubt that one eventually would—then the whole ma-
chinery of the universe could be deduced from them as if a priori. This
belief was definitely Cartesian in inspiration, and when transposed into
moral and social affairs it gave rise to the expectation that eventually, on
the empirically discovered laws of human nature, a new society would
emerge free from every form of oppression and other evils. In fact this
unbounded trust in the power of reason eventually begot the tyranny
of the French Revolution and could be harnessed in defence of state
55. Voltaire at times supplemented literary action with more political manoeuvres in the
defence of individuals unjustly persecuted. There is the celebrated case of his defence of
the Protestant Jean Galas (1762). Voltaire's break with Frederick the Great in 1753 was due
in part to the unjust condemnation of the philosopher Johannes Samuel Konig by the
Berlin Academy.
despotism. Yet so far as established institutions were concerned, it

still remained the most destructive element of the empiricism of the
philosopher.
The trust came to be documented in many ways. Its most effective
channel of propaganda was the Encyclopedic, a monumental work in
twenty-eight volumes published intermittently, at times underground,
between 1751 and 1772 under the editorship of Jean d'Alembert
(1717-83), best known as a mathematician, and Denis Diderot
(1713-84) ,56 a literary figure of Voltaire's type. But it also found expres-
sion in such works as Etienne de Condillac's Traite de sensations (1754),
or the Essai de psychologic (1754) and the Essai analytique sur lesfacultes de
Vdme (1760) of the Swiss Charles Bonnet (with whomjacobi became ac-
quainted during his Geneva years). These works tried systematically to
account for all the contents of the human mind (including the belief in
an external world) and every aspect of man's personality on the basis of
primitive sense impressions. They argued using such purely imaginary
experiments as the assumption of a marble statue in the shape of the
human body, to which the five senses were added one at a time. As im-
pressions began to flow into it through them, the extent of the mental
life thereby aroused was measured methodically, in the experimenter's
imagination at least.57 Neither Condillac nor Bonnet would have wanted
to be called "reductionist" in the modern sense of the word. They simply
wanted to build an explanatory model of mental life, taking into consid-
eration the best empirical (including anatomical) data available at the
time. Yet to their step-by-step reconstruction of the mind on the basis of
sensory elements they were applying the same a priori method Descartes
had advocated for the combination of his clear and distinct ideas, and
the result was an organized whole (whether one called it "body" or
"mind") that was as much of a machine as Descartes had claimed all
bodies to be. In other words, materialism, and a Cartesian one at that,
was always just below the surface in the thought of the philosophes. There
were those among them who made it explicit. A case in point is Diderot,
who also managed to slant the whole Encyclopedic to reflect his own
avowed materialism and atheism. Another to be mentioned is Julien de
56. "During the past week Diderot was here, and I have got to know him fairly well. This
famous man possesses a fiery spirit, a keen and lively wit. But the ascendancy of the feeling of
the beautiful and the true is certainly not what makes him a Genius—if he is a genius." Letter
to Sophie La Roche, 30 August 1773, Briefwechsel, #300, p. 211. Jacobi was writing from
Diisseldorf.
57. See below, footnote to p. 142 ("breathe the fleeting soul into it") of David Hume.
Introduction 27
la Mettrie (1709-51), who in his influential L 'Homme machine (1747) de-

picted man precisely as a mechanism without soul. La Mettrie eventually
found refuge at the Berlin Academy, and when he died his eulogy was
delivered by Frederick the Great.
It was to be one of the paradoxes of the Enlightenment, and a source
of its inner tension, that, when transposed on to French soil, English em-
piricism should yield a new form of Cartesian rationalism.58 In Germany
the results were not quite the same, because of the other forces there
that militated against French-style rationalism. This circumstance made
for an even more complex situation. We have already mentioned the in-
fluence of Leibniz. Another major difference was the direct influence
that English ideas had also had in the formation of the Aufklarung and
the role that the English presence itself played in the growth of German
self-awareness. The very fact that there was an English language—that
there had been a Shakespeare and, before him, an Ossian (the legend-
ary ancient Celtic bard whose apocryphal ballads the Germans univer-
sally accepted as authentic)—and that this language and its products
shared a common origin with German indicated that there was great po-
tential yet to be tapped inherent in the latter. In German philosophy it
was the scepticism of Hume, the Scottish dimension of British empiri-
cism, that provided one important corrective to the rationalism of the
philosophes. This is not to deny that Hume was known in France59 or that
his reception in Germany was mediated by the French in part at least.
Nor is it to deny that the philosophes were also sceptics in their way, or that
there was a tradition of scepticism indigenous to French culture—
witness Montaigne (1533—92) and Bayle (1647—1706). 6o But it is
significant that Voltaire attacked Montaigne in his writings just as
vigorously as he attacked Pascal and Leibniz. Voltaire's scepticism, which
was representative of the scepticism of the philosophes, constituted more
an attack on the possibility of a priori metaphysics than a genuine doubt
about the possibility of ever achieving certain knowledge through un-
aided scientific means. Condillac and Bonnet had no doubt that their
imaginary experiments provided indubitable evidence for the existence
58. But perhaps it is not a paradox at all, because Locke's method had many Cartesian
elements. On this point, see Peter A. Shouls, "The Cartesian Method of Locke's Essay
Concerning Human Understanding," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, iv (1975): 579-601.
59. He was even known personally. He was for a few years charge d'affaires at the British
embassy in Paris.
60. Pierre Bayle had to operate from Holland because, born a Calvinist and converted
to Catholicism, he relapsed to Calvinism. He used his scepticism to promote religious
tolerance.
of an external world, apparently unimpressed by Hume's point that, in-

asmuch as "sensations" (understood in Locke's way as events internal to
the mind) are the only direct objects of our knowledge, any claim that
they actually represent an outside world must constitute an inference
and cannot therefore ever deliver certainty.
Hume's doubt touched upon the very possibility of theoretical knowl-
edge of an external world, and it is this doubt that became the central
problem in post-Wolffian metaphysics. The importance of Hume for
German Enlightenment philosophy is well known because of the Kant
connection. It is less well known but also important that Hume's Scottish
critics were known in Germany and exerted a considerable influence
there as well, notably on Jacobi.61 By the "Scottish critics" are meant the
Thomas Reid (1710—96) school of common-sense realism that met
Hume's doubt by attacking it at its base, in the "sensationism" of Locke.
Reid's contention, in brief, was that sensations are indeed mental acts
that give rise to knowledge and, in this sense, are cognitive media. They
are not, however, the direct objects of knowledge, which are to be sought
rather in the things of the external world towards which the sense acts
are directed. These acts have a revelatory function; they provide the im-
mediate evidence on the basis of which external things are apprehended
in a judgment of perception precisely as external. That the senses have
this function must be accepted, according to Reid, simply as a fact of
experience.62 Common-sense realism was an original attitude of mind,
just as was Hume's "idealism."63
Jacobi defended this kind of realism in his David Hume. Much later in
61. On the subject, see Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768—1800:
A Contribution to the History of Critical Philosophy (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's,
1987)-
62. See Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), Essay 11, chs. 3 and 4, where Reid
argues that "sensations," understood as mere impressions in the manner of Locke and
Hume, are physical events that do not constitute as such consciousness proper, even
though God has made them the necessary pre-conditions of mental life. The latter begins
only with perception, and it is clear that "if, therefore, we attend to that act of our mind
which we call the perception of an external object of sense, we shall find in it these three
things:—First, Some conception or notion of the object perceived; Secondly, A strong and
irresistible conviction and belief of its present existence; and Thirdly, That this conviction
and belief are immediate, and not the effect of reasoning." The Works of Thomas Reid, ed.
Sir William Hamilton (Edinburgh: MacLachlan and Stewart, 1872), Vol. i, p. 258. See also
Reid's critique of Hume's theory of ideas in ch. 14. Reid's An Inquiry into the Human Mind
on the Principles of Common Sense was published in 1764.
63. At the time a common name for his phenomenalism.
Introduction 29
his life, in 1804, in a letter to his young friend Frederick Bouterwek con-
cerning the latter's latest attempt to sum up recent trends in philosophy,
he complained that Bouterwek had not done him justice. Bouterwek
had attributed to Schulze and Fries the merit of having attacked idealism
at its source, whereas in fact, "so far as [Jacobi] knew, he [Jacobi] had
been the first [in the David Hume] to do away in a radical way with the
"third thing" which, since Locke, had been assumed between knowing
subject and things to be known."64 Jacobi was of course correct in claim-
ing priority of credit over Schulze and Fries. But he was equally being
disingenuous not to note how much he, as well as Schulze and Fries,
owed to Thomas Reid.
Jacobi indirectly acknowledged this debt to Reid in at least one
place—in a passage of the 1784 Woldemar in which he has one of his
characters (a Scotsman named Sydney, who expresses many of the views
dear to Jacobi's heart) praise the Scottish philosopher.65 But then,
64. Bouterwek-Briefwechsel, Letter #8, 8 January 1804, p. 64.

65. Part i, p. 80 of the 1796 ed. (Konigsberg: Nicolovius). See Werke, v (1820): 71.
Jacobi also praises Reid in a letter to Johann Neeb, 18 October 1814, Auserlesener
Briefwechsel, u, #351, p. 445. For Reid's influence on Jacobi, see Kuehn, pp. 143-49,
158-66, and also Giinther Baum, Vernunft und Erkenntnis: Die Philosophic F. H. Jacobis
(Bonn: Bouvier, 1969), pp. 42-49. In his "Tagebuch der Reise nach dem Reich 1788"
Wilhelm von Humboldt reports Jacobi as saying to him in 1788: "No proposition which is
not based on mere analysis of concepts should be held as true until it is intuited in concrete.
Intuition is the one single means by which to attain certainty oneself and convince others.
We must get the other also to intuit. But this is not otherwise possible except by turning
the thing around on all possible sides and trying to position it in the right point of view.
For this turning around we need dialectic." "There is a great and important distinction be-
tween perception and sensation, between the beholding of external alterations and the
feeling of internal ones, and this is a distinction that Kant denies, because, according to
him, everything is only a modification of the soul itself, only sensation. We do not perceive,
as usually assumed, merely the picture of external things; we perceive these very things
(though, to be sure, modified according to the relation of our position to the thing that
we perceive and to the rest of things in the world). This perception occurs, as Reid quite
correctly says [in English], by a sort of revelation; hence we do not demonstrate that there
are things outside us but believe it. This faith is not an assumption based on probability.
It is a greater and more unshakeable certainty as a demonstrarion could ever afford." "We
intuit the things outside us; these things are actual things, and the certainty which intuition
affords us we call faith. This certainty is for us so strong, and so necessary, that every other
certainty, indeed, our very self-consciousness, hangs on it. We cannot be certain of our
selves before being certain of some thing outside us. Here is where Kant has gone wrong:
he reduces all things to man himself; explains all things as modifications of the soul, ac-
cepts external things only in word while denying the reality itself." Wilhelm von Humboldt,
Gesammelte Schriften, Academy Edition; Vol. xiv, Wilhelm von Humboldts Tagebuecher,
ijSS-ijyS, ed. Albert Leitzmann (Berlin: Behr, 1916), pp. 58, 61.
Reid's influence on Jacobi should have been obvious to everyone, given

the wide acceptance of Scottish common-sense realism in Germany.
Among the neo-Wolffians it helped to temper the rationalism of their
otherwise purely conceptual inferences about reality, yet it also checked
the possibility of scepticism implicit in their otherwise sensationist psy-
chology by providing for both their metaphysics and their theory of
knowledge a basis of immediate evidence in the senses. It made possible,
in other words, that mixture of old-fashioned metaphysics and English-
inspired empiricism typical of the Aufklarung philosophy that was
centred in Berlin, with Nicolai as its most vocal spokesman and the
Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung, which he edited, as its official voice. Yet the
same realism could also be used, as it was by Jacobi and others besides
him, as a weapon against the Aufklarer. For on its basis one could also
easily argue that reason is impotent as a source of truth apart from the
revelatory character of the senses and that metaphysics is therefore an
empty, and possibly dangerous, conceptual game. This play of conflict-
ing tendencies can be seen in the Jacobi-Mendelssohn dispute, where
the two parties ended up using the same weapon to defend diametrically
opposite results. To counter the destructive effects of reason, Jacobi had
fallen back upon a simple realism based on the revelation of the senses,
clearly a theme of common-sense philosophy. Mendelssohn, for his part,
counter-attacked also in the name of common sense66 by refusing to ac-
cept what he took to be the impossible demands that Jacobi was making
on reason. Add to the dispute the further misunderstanding caused by
the inherently ambiguous Enlightenment notion of "feeling" (also asso-
ciated with immediate evidence), and the opposing religious preoccupa-
tions motivating Jacobi and Mendelssohn, and one begins to have a full
picture of the complexities and confusions of the Aufklarung.
Thomas Wizenmann (1759-87) is a striking illustration of how fluid
the situation could be—how easy it was to lump together the most di-
verse of concepts. Summing up the lesson to be learned from the Jacobi-
Mendelssohn dispute in The Results ofjacobi's and Mendelssohn's Philosophy
Critically Assessed by an Impartial [Observer],6? a book that was very well
66. Mendelssohn could very well have drawn his notion of "common sense" from the
scholastic recta ratio ("right or sound reason"), but if this was the case, it all made for an
even more complex situation.
67. Die Resultate der Jacobi'shen und Mendelssohn'ischer Philosophic kritisch untersucht von
einem Freywilligen (Leipzig: Goschen, 1786).
Introduction 31
received at the time,68 he argued thatjacobi and Mendelssohn agreed in

at least two important respects. The first was that reason is bound to im-
mediate existential evidence; it is dangerous for it, therefore, to draw
inferences without constantly returning to such evidence and orienting
itself from there. The second was that all men, be they cultivated or not,
possess an inherent certainty that God exists, and this certainty too
ought to count as immediate evidence. But Mendelssohn oriented his
reason mainly from the testimony of the external senses and what he
called "common sense," without realizing that this testimony is condi-
tioned by presuppositions that we, because of the awareness that we have
of our internal life, project on to it. Jacobi, by contrast, took his starting-
point from the image of God that he found within himself. He had an
advantage over Mendelssohn in that, on the basis of the feelings and the
actions that this image generates, he had available a source of immediate
evidence for the infinity of God. The same image, when projected on to
the external world, becomes fragmented and dispersed. And since
Mendelssohn oriented his reason from this externalized image of God,
he was necessarily bound to a finite standpoint. His metaphysics had to
be materialist and fatalist. But neither were Jacobi's subjective intima-
tions of infinity sufficient as a basis of true religion unless they were sub-
jected to the discipline of a personal relationship to God. This meant, in
effect, accepting the historical evidence of a direct manifestation of God
throughout the ages, in virtue of which God has established such a rela-
tionship with us. Ultimately, therefore, the difference between Jacobi
and Mendelssohn, or, for that matter, between the two of them and the
Christian believer, was the extent to which one's common sense is con-
ditioned by Christian faith in God's self-revelation in history.69
It is noteworthy that Kant's only public contribution to the dispute was
an essay that represents an attempt to define the nature and scope of
68. Daniel Jenisch considered this book to have been responsible, together with
Reinhold's Briefe uber die kantische Philosophic (1786-87) and Jacobi's doings, for the re-
awakening of interest in speculative philosophy among the general public, and for the
building up of support for Kant's critical work. See letter to Kant, 14 May 1787, Kant-
Briefwechsel, Academy Edition, #297.
69. This is only a brief sketch of a long and often confusing book. See pp. 39, 47, 55ff.,
65ff., i42ff., isoff., 184, 196, 223ff., 236, 246-47. For the scepticism implicit in
Wizenmann's position, see Frederick C. Reiser, The Fate of Reason (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard, 1987), ch. iv.
common sense critically.70 This is an important point to note, because

Kant was reflecting what had been from the beginning the peculiarly
German way of receiving common-sense realism, which was not just to
use the alleged evidence yielded by common sense as a basis for judg-
ment but rather to justify it on rational grounds.71 It is in this respect
that Aufklarung metaphysics remained true to its Cartesian heritage.
And Fichte was still operating within this general tradition when he de-
fined the task of his new Wissenschaftslehre precisely as the determination
of the grounds that justify the feeling of necessity accompanying our
sense impressions—their revelatory power, in other words.72 Jacobi was
of course shocked to learn that Fichte thought of himself as in fact sup-
plementing his work—as executing at the reflective level, conceptually,
the union of theoretical cognition and moral feeling to which Jacobi
was giving witness, emotionally, from the standpoint of life.73 And in a
way Jacobi was justified in reacting as he did. But then it could hardly be
said that his polemics had done much to bring the many conflicting con-
cepts and interests of the time into any sort of order. Nobody could
blame Fichte for trying, as had Kant and Reinhold before him, to do just
that.
70. Was heifit: Sich im Denken orientiren? (1786; What Does It Mean To Orient Oneself in
Thought?) Kant accused Jacobi of irrationalism, since Jacobi considered Spinozism to be
the perfect rational system yet demanded its rejection through a salto mortals. But neither
did he approve of Mendelssohn's claim that faith can be justified by rational knowledge.
Kant's claim, which is in keeping with his general standpoint, is that faith must be criticized
in the light of reason's definition of the limits of experience. But it does not follow that it
can be transformed into "knowledge" or be replaced by it. In a letter to Marcus Herz
(7 April 1786) Kant described Jacobi's doings as "Grille" (chicanery), "an enthusiasm of
genius [ Genieschwdrmerei] which is not serious but only affected in order to make a name
for himself; hence hardly worthy of a serious refutation." Letter #267.
71. See Kuehn, p. 84, igSff.
72. "The question that the Science of Knowledge has to answer is, as known, the follow-
ing: Whence the system of representations that are accompanied by the feeling of neces-
sity? or, How do we ever come to attribute objective validity to something which is only
subjective?" ZweiteEinleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre (i797),/- G. Fichte Gesammtaitsgabe, ed.
R. Lauth and H.Jacob (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Fromann, 1964-), Vol. 1.3, §2.
73. See Fichte's Letter to Jacobi, 26 April 1796, Fichte-Gesammtausgabe, 111.3, #335, p. 18;
To K. L. Reinhold, 22 April 1796, #440, pp. 325-26. For Jacobi's influence on Fichte, see
my "From Jacobi's Philosophical Novel to Fichte's Idealism: Some Comments on the
1798-99 'Atheism Dispute,'" Journal of the History of Philosophy, xxvn (1989): 75-100,
especially pp. 76-77.
Introduction 33
THE LANDSCAPE: SENTIMENT
5. There was of course more behind Fichte's early philosophical project

than the attempt to establish Jacobi's "feeling" on a rational foundation.
Another likely object of Fichte's a priori justification was the moral and
social theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), which in turn rep-
resented a peculiarly Cartesian development of the theory of moral sen-
timent originally imported to the continent as part of the empiricist
baggage from Britain. All British empiricists—from Lord Shaftesbury
(i67i-i7i3) 7 4 down through Hume, Hutcheson, Lord Kames, Adam
Smith, Butler, and Ferguson—appealed in some form or other to this
theory. It argued that, just as in theoretical science all rational evidence
had finally to lead back to the witness of the senses, so too at the moral
level values had ultimately to be justified, not on rational grounds but on
an innate feeling or sentiment for the good, the beautiful, the pleasur-
able, or whatever. It might seem strange that so much attention and im-
portance should have been given to the emotional side of man in an age
when the cosmos was being represented more and more as just a ma-
chine. But the incongruity is only apparent, for the sentiments upon
which the new moral thinking was based were the psychic equivalent of
the physical forces that held the cosmic machine together. Moral man
was a psychic machine, in other words, a bundle of feelings, passions,
and emotions that could be dissected and put together again according
to their dynamic laws.
Now, this affective side of empiricism also had, just like its theoretical
counterpart, subversive implications so far as traditional metaphysics was
concerned, and equally subversive social implications as well. The spon-
taneity of natural feelings was played against the repressive nature of es-
tablished culture. Accordingly, the new and broadly accepted theories of
education were all based on the assumption that reason ought not to be
used to impose artificial constraints upon man's natural desires but
ought to release instead the creative energies inherent in them so that
individuals could learn to cope with the necessities of their world spon-
taneously and realistically. In upholding, however, the rights of nature
over culture, these theories were only anti-rationalist in appearance, for
they all operated with a normative concept of "nature" and "natural sen-
74. He is reputed to have been the first to use the expression in philosophy.
timent." These were native endowments that nevertheless needed the

cultivation of an enlightened reason in order to bloom. Thus, despite
the cult of the simple and rustic that they spawned, the new theories fos-
tered a new kind of affective elitism based on a sublimation of feeling
that still amounted to a kind of rationalism. And in France at least, this
rationalism still had Cartesian overtones.
Rousseau—who had also done his stint of exile in Prussia under the
protection of Frederick the Great75 and whose fastidiousness of feelings
is notorious—is a clear illustration of the point. Rousseau could, on the
one hand, oppose natural virtue to the constraints of society in his
theory of education (Emile, 1762), yet, on the other, advocate in his so-
cial theory (Du contrat social, 1762) the complete alienation of individual
freedom in favour of a supposed will of society as a whole. And such an
alienation was advocated precisely for the sake of safeguarding the affec-
tive freedom that education ought to foster, because, in identifying with
society as such, individuals removed even the possibility of social com-
pulsion.76 Rousseau himself did not hesitate to justify theoretically, on
this basis, political actions that in practice would have amounted to so-
cial terror. And the French Revolution was eventually to put the theory
into practice. But the point to note is that this strange transformation of
affective freedom into political despotism would not have been concep-
tually possible had not the natural sentiments that the new moral and
educational theories were opposing to reason and society been
theory-laden entities from the start. They were the kind of units of psy-
chic energy that a Cartesian reason, bent on manipulation, could trans-
fer to configurations of a higher order, all for the sake of its abstract
requirements of order. In Germany this Cartesian reason was given the
critical orientation that we all know, and Fichte took his bearings from
there. Hegel had a valid point when, in retrospect, he interpreted
Fichte's morality as an interiorization of the Terror—a transformation,
75. He also spent a brief period in England at the invitation of David Hume, with whom
he however quarrelled just as quickly as he quarrelled with everyone he came in contact
with.
76. In a recent book, which unfortunately came too late for me to profit from, Asher
Horowitz argues that this apparent opposition can be resolved if Rousseau is seen as de-
parting from the Enlightenment idea of nature and implicitly developing instead a histor-
ical view of human nature and society. Rousseau: Nature and History (Toronto: University
Press, 1992).
Introduction 35
in other words, of Rousseau's political tyranny into a tyranny of

conscience.77
Jacobi personally testified to the influence that the British moralists
had over him. In the same letter to Bouterwek in which he took credit
for having been the first to attack idealism at its foundation, he also re-
proved his friend for not having given enough credit to Butler and
Ferguson in moral matters.78 In this connection he referred Bouterwek
to Woldemar, to a passage in which the title character "relate [s to the
company] how Ferguson's first work, his Essay on History, had marked a
turning point in his life."79 The reading of Ferguson had led Woldemar
(who in this instance clearly stands for Jacobi) to the rereading of the
classics. In the conversation that follows, which amounts to a treatise on
ethics, Aristotle's doctrine that a good man's judgment is the final and
infallible norm of correct conduct is made to sound like a version of the
British theory of moral sentiment.80
As for Rousseau, Jacobi became acquainted with him in his Geneva
years. He signalled his affinity with him by appending to the 1776 ver-
sion of All-will excerpts from the dialogue on the nature of fiction with
which Rousseau had prefaced his Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloi'se (1756).
Jacobi's attitudes towards him obviously underwent modifications with
the changing social and political situations—witness the addition to the
77. See Phdnomenologie des Geistes, G. W. F. Hegel: Gesammelte Werke (Hamburg: Meiner,
1968-), Vol. ix, p. 323 (The Phenomenology of Spirit, tr. A. V. Miller; Oxford: Clarendon,
1977), p. 363: "So does absolute freedom leave its self-destroying reality and pass over into
another land of self-conscious Spirit where, in this unreal world, freedom has the value of
truth. . . . There has arisen the new shape of Spirit, that of the moral Spirit." Neither Kant
nor Fichte is referred to by name, but I take it that Hegel is referring to them. Hegel of
course interprets both the Terror and its subsequent idealization as positive phenomena
in the development of self-consciousness.
78. Bouterwek-Briefwechsel, Letter #8, 8 January 1804, p. 59.
79. 1796 ed., Part i, p. 79. Werke, v, p. 69. Jacobi also praises the "philosophical taste"
of the Scots, who have never held that "virtue has no value in itself but only serves as a
means to a happiness, a respect, and a culture distinct from it." The French are quite dif-
ferent in this respect. "As soon as their philosophy truly became just philosophy, and by
that token ceased to support popular belief, it became materialistic." 1796 ed. pp. 84-85,
Werke, v, pp. 74-75.
80. Jacobi thought of these pages as his "greatest contribution." "These few pages," he
said, "cost me more work, effort, and reflection than anything else that I have had to offer
in the philosophical field." Letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt of 2 September 1794,
Auserlesener Briefwechsel, Vol. n, #234, p. 180.
1792 edition of Allwill, "To Erhard O**," which can be read as a scathing
attack on the ideology of the French Revolution and, by implication at
least, on Rousseau's social theory.81 Butjacobi's ties to the cult of sen-
timent are much more complex than his connection with Rousseau or
the influence of the British moralists. Back in Germany from Geneva,
Jacobi had naturally found a place within the group of sentimental poets
who gravitated to the figure of Wieland.82 The official organon of this
group was the Teutscher Merkur. Wieland was its editor, but Jacobi had
personally taken the initiative in founding it in 1773-83 In 1774 Georg
Jacobi had added his own periodical, the 7m. Friedrich Jacobi also had
close ties with Sophie La Roche, whose literary salon in Frankfurt pro-
vided the social focal-point for the group.84 One has only to look at the
early versions of Jacobi's two novels to recognize all the moral and liter-
ary commonplaces of the ethos of sentimentality—the outpourings of
emotion, the empathy with nature, the exaltation of the simple coupled
with the utter contempt for the woodenness of the lower classes, the an-
tagonism against purely theoretical reason, the issue of the relation of
81. The criticism is explicit elsewhere. Jacobi obviously shared Burke's opinion in
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) that Rousseau had inspired the French
Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 181-84, 279-84. See injacobi's
letter to Rehberg, 28 November 1791 (Auserlesener Briefwechsel, vol. n, #205, pp. 68-73),
what he has to say about Burke, and the notes (in French) which he had written for himself
at the time of reading Contrat social and which he now communicates to Rehberg: "It's in-
deed a beautiful distinction that Rousseau draws between "general will" and the "will of all,"
and then abandons at every turn. The "general will" should not be the property of a par-
ticular society; reason alone dictates it, and dictates it equally to all men. Rousseau has
badly grasped his own idea, which is evident from the ambiguous manner in which he first
proves at the beginning of his book that the general will cannot err. It's worse later on. All
these sophisms concerning the general will particularized and then again distinguished from
the will of all go back to this big original sophism. . . . The general will of the men of today
is to have dollars, and certainly this kind of will does not annihilate the individual, what the
general will, inasmuch as it is general, must necessarily do. All that Rousseau says against
Christianity . . . can be said with greater justification against reason assumed as perfect; for
reason would then annihilate the individual to a greater degree than would Christian re-
ligion in its perfection. Conclusion: as system the Social Contract is a superficially profound
work yet profoundly superficial, and this makes it a very bad work" (pp. 79—71).
82. Reinhold was to marry one of his daughters.
83. " [It] must be something like the Mercure deFrance. We must write it in such a way that
it will not only be interesting to the learned, but also to ladies, the nobles, and the like."
Letter to Wieland, 10 August 1772, Briefwechsel, 1.1., #253, p. 159.
84. For La Roche's salon, see Heinz Nicolai, Goethe und Jacobi, Studien zur Geschichte ihrer
Freundschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1965), pp. 2 iff.
Introduction 37
art to nature, the glorification of personal relationships, the sexless erot-

icism.85 And one has only to read Jacobi's correspondence of the time,
or listen to the witness of individuals close to him, to see how much he
actually lived the ethos.86
The great enemy of the group was the abstract reason of the philoso-
phers, and that meant above all the Berlin Aufklarer. But the group had
also come under attack from the representatives of the new Sturm und
Drang movement—notably from Goethe—although the Sturm und
Drang too had no particular fondness for the scholasticism of the philos-
ophers. It made sense that the new movement should be opposed to
both the Wieland and the Berlin group, for the feud between these two
was, after all, a family affair. The devotees of sentiment might have dis-
liked the abstractions of post-Wolffian metaphysics. Yet they both drew
their psychology and their ethics from the same shallow empiricism that
was commonplace in the Enlightenment, and this meant that neither
had a secure conceptual basis to offer for the individualism and auton-
omy of reason that were the Enlightenment's fundamental values. And
it was precisely this basis that Goethe wanted to provide through his ar-
tistic medium. To be sure, Goethe's thought evolved over his long life-
span. Yet the problem of how individuals establish themselves through
85. For a documentation of the artificiality of the cult of sentiment within Jacobi's social
circles, see Heinz Nicolai, Goethe und Jacobi, note 135 to ch. iv, pp. 301-02. See also
Brachin, pp. 162-63. Wilhelm von Humboldt reports this impression of Jacobi during a
visit to Pempelfort from i to 6 November 1788: "His look, his posture, the great warmth
with which he embraced me, all confirmed my judgment of yesterday. The capacity to feel
[empfinden] is great in him, and he very easily goes over to enthusiasm." "He said that he
once composed an essay on love. He spoke beautifully on the subject, though, to be sure,
less with philosophical precision than with depth of sentiment. As he wanted to define love,
he said that it is the strongest of sentiment, the sense of all senses, etc." Gesammelte Schriften,
Vol. xiv, pp. 57, 59-60.
86. See letter of io August 1774, Briefwechsel, 1.1., #340, pp. 242-43. Wizenmann relates
the following scene that took place one evening in Jacobi's garden at Pempelfort. The two
(Jacobi and Wizenmann) were full of wonder at the sight of the setting sun. Jacobi said that
if God would grant him but one miracle to give him certainty of his grace, he would be so
enflamed by enthusiasm that he would gather the whole of humanity in one place to
preach God to the assembled crowd. Wizenmann was so moved by those sentiments that
he kissed Jacobi's hand. At that they could resist no longer. "He [Jacobi] looked around
him. Blissfully he embraced me, drew me mightily to his heart, and our lips rested long on
each other, full of fire." Alexander Goltz, Thomas Wizenmann, der Freund Friedrich Heinrich
Jacobi's, in Mittheilungen aus seinem Briefwechsel and handschriftlichen Nachlafle (Thomas
Wizenmann, The Friend of F. H. Jacobi, in Reports Drawn from His Correspondence and Unpublished
Works, 2 Vols.; Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1859), Vol. i, p. 310.
action as valid personalities—as self-justifying moral works of art—

remained with him to the end. Goethe had little patience with metaphy-
sicians, as is well known. It is not far-fetched to say, however, that his
artistic work paralleled on the literary side the critical revolution that
Kant brought to post-Wolffian metaphysics. Whether through the me-
dium of the imagination on the one side or that of the concept on the
other, the incentive behind both was the desire to justify the aspirations
of the Enlightenment by establishing them on a valid emotional and
conceptual foundation.
Jacobi never freed himself from the rhetoric of the cult of sentiment
nor from the frames of reference of Enlightenment rationalism and
Enlightenment empiricism. He was, however, deeply influenced
throughout his life both by Goethe and by Kant. Allwill and Woldemar
were originally motivated by Jacobi's encounter with Goethe, and Kant's
presence is everywhere to be found in his philosophical output. With re-
spect to Goethe, an extra factor that precluded a meeting of minds was
Jacobi's puritanism, which made him incapable of accepting much of
Goethe's literary production, let alone his personal life. Jacobi's frustra-
tion at Goethe's apparently cavalier treatment of his early passionate
feeling of friendship must also have been an obstacle. These factors
aside, however, Jacobi was indeed in a position to appreciate what both
Goethe and Kant were doing conceptually. He rejected their efforts pre-
cisely because he found them self-defeating. Kant's critical subjectivism
ended up engendering a strange kind of impersonal personalism, and
Goethe's naturalism made for a pantheism that harked back to Spinoza.
And both, so Jacobi thought, militated against the very autonomy of the
person that the Enlightenment had stood for. But the question again is
whether, his negative contribution as critic aside, Jacobi ultimately had
to offer, as an alternative defence of the Enlightenment ideal, anything
more than the rhetoric of sentiment.
THE LANDSCAPE: RELIGION
6. That rhetoric had a strong religious component. One cannot fully ap-
preciate the nature of the eighteenth-century cult of feeling unless one
also recognizes its religious dimension, and it is especially in this respect
that the overall picture becomes extremely complex. First, it must be
stressed that, despite the atheism of some and the opposition to the
church and traditional Christian faith of all, the philosopheswere not nec-
essarily anti-religious. On the contrary, they admitted a God as the chief
Introduction 39
architect of the world-machine, and some of them (Voltaire among

them) gave evidence of a deep aesthetic religiosity in the feelings of ad-
miration they displayed before the order and immensity of the universe.
So-called "secular religion," which really only amounted to right conduct
in the light of truths potentially available to every man, had widespread
appeal. It was held up against the cults of the past as the only true reli-
gion, for it alone could claim an authority that every man could respond
to from inner conviction.87 Charles Bonnet was of course a special case,
for he tried to justify scientifically, on the basis of his theory of preforma-
tion, such fundamental Christian beliefs as the immortality of the soul
and the resurrection of bodies. Using biological knowledge available at
the time, he argued that all possible individuals were created at the be-
ginning of all things at once, but in the form of "germs" that only come
to fruition at their pre-appointed time. The soul, which is only a subtler
form of matter, is also the germ of the future glorified body.88
Bonnet's case is significant because it is a perfect illustration of how
tenuous, if extant at all, was the dividing line between the sacred and the
secular for the philosophes. Religious beliefs and religious practices were
for them simple extensions of beliefs and practices based on the feelings
and empirical evidence they supposed to be common to all. In this re-
spect their religiosity did not differ at all from that based on the rational
theology of the post-Wolffian metaphysicians, who also claimed to be es-
tablishing religious beliefs on natural criteria of truth. The only differ-
ence (admittedly a big one) was in how the two schools defined these
criteria, whether on the basis of a priori reason or on that of the sense
impressions and internal feelings favoured by the anti-metaphysical side.
The unstructured nature of the supposed empirical evidence on which
the latter based its religiosity could easily accommodate a shallow type of
Christian piety. In the sentimental literature of the day it is common-
place to find effusions of feeling for Jesus mingling with praise of classi-
cal virtues or expressions of other more erotic sentiments, as if love for
Jesus, sincerity of mind, and sincerity of feeling were all on essentially the
same level of experience. Then there were those who appealed to mir-
acles to establish the truth of Christian beliefs, as if such wondrous
87. See Cassirer, Philosophic des lumieres, p. 179.

88. Palingenesie philosophique, ou Idees sur I'etat passe et sur I'etat futur des etres vivants
(Amsterdam: M.-M. Rey, 1769). Bonnet was no charlatan. He made original contributions
to the science of entomology. See his observations on the reproductive characteristics of
the aphis and other insects in Traite d'insectologie (1745).
events could afford the same kind of evidence as empirical science drew
from its facts. Thus we find Kaspar Lavater (1741 -1801), also known as
the inventor of physiognomy, describing the future state of the resur-
rected body in a glorified world with a facile mixture of biblical testimo-
nies and the evidence of contemporary biology and psychology. It is this
same Pastor Lavater who caused a furore by challenging Mendelssohn ei-
ther to refute Bonnet's Palingenesie (which he had translated into
German) or to convert to Christianity.89 The Berlin Aufklarer lumped
individuals of this sort under the derogatory rubric of enthusiasts
(Schwdrmer),, attacking them bitterly because they perceived them as op-
ponents of the Enlightenment and, for this reason, also suspected them
of being crypto-proponents of popish obscurantism.90 One cannot
blame them for their suspicions. Yet it must not be forgotten that the bat-
tle was, again, one between two sides internal to the Enlightenment. It
was really a case of a new form of secularism coming into conflict with
an older one, but a secularism in both instances just the same.
This is an important point to note in coming to a fair understanding
of the nature of Jacobi's religiosity. To make him out to be an irration-
alist91 or to portray him as a counter-Enlightenment figure92 is to adopt
the standpoint of the metaphysicians. And it is anachronistic to project
onto him attitudes that really belong to a post-Kierkegaard age. So far as
we know, Jacobi could value the friendship of a pagan like Goethe as well
as of a Schwdrmer like Lavater.93 And he could befriend many others as
well who together stood for the most contrasting forms of religiosity.
There was the pietist theologian Herder and Herder's erstwhile mentor
89. Johann Caspar Lavater, Herrn Bonnets, verschiedener Akademien Mitglieds, philosophische
Untersuchung der Beweisefiir das Christentum, samt desselben Idem von der kiinftigen Gliigseligkeit
desMenschen, etc. (Philosophical Essay in the Demonstrations of Christianity, by Mr Bonnet, Member
of Various Academies, together with his Ideas regarding Man's Future Happiness, translated from the
French, and edited with notes, by J. C. Lavater. Attached to it, the Editor's Dedication to Moses
Mendelssohn, and a Collection of the Subsequent Polemical Exchanges between Messrs Lavater,
Mendelssohn and Dr Kobbele, as well as the First Speech Held at the Baptism of Two Israelites;
Frankfurt/Main: Bayrhoffer, 1774). See Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A
Biographical Study (University, Alabama: University Press, 1973), ch. in; Blum, pp. 389-90.
Also, Jean Blum, La Vie et I'oeuvre deJ.-G. Hamann, le "Mage du Nord," 1730-1788 (Paris:
Alcan, 1912).
90. See note to p. 15 of David Hume.
91. As in Beiser, The Fate of Reason, pp. 86-88.
92. As in Kuehn, p. 141.
93. Goethe too was a great friend of Lavater, even though their minds were worlds apart.
Goethe could be quite sarcastic about him. See Heinz Nicolai, Goethe und Jacobi, p. 176.
Introduction 41
and eventual critic Hamann (about whom more later on); the evangelist
Wizenmann and the neo-classicist Hemsterhuis; the catholicizing
Munster group that gravitated to the personalities of state minister
Furstenberg and Princess Gallitzin; and the Protestant Claudius, or, later
in Jacobi's life, the pietist poet Jean-Paul. The list could be extended. If
Jacobi rejected the rational theology of the post-Wolffians, so did he also
attack the new theology of Herder, however much he shared his type of
piety. Indeed, Jacobi could find true piety even in Spinoza, whose philos-
ophy he never ceased to battle as a conceptual denial of God. The only
time Jacobi showed extreme intolerance in matters religious was on the
occasion of the Stolbergs' entrance into the Catholic church. Jacobi was
emotionally shattered—even angered—by the conversion, which he
considered a personal betrayal as well as a betrayal of the ideal of intel-
lectual and moral freedom that he and his friends all stood for.94 By
contrast Herder, and especially Lavater, exhibited in this case an
exceptional degree of understanding and tolerance.95
On the face of it, in other words, Jacobi's attitude towards religion was
typical of the Enlightenment humanist. He simply accepted as a univer-
sal fact of human nature that religion is an indispensable dimension of
experience and that nothing is subjectively more certain than God's
presence in the cosmos. But few in his day would have thought or felt
otherwise. The real issue was how to remove the historical and moral ob-
stacles that stood in the way of a true expression of this natural religios-
ity. As we know, Jacobi included the reason of the philosophers and the
materialism that was its practical counterpart as chief among these obsta-
cles, and on this ground he fought his many battles. But the conflict, we
must repeat, was one internal to the Enlightenment.
Other facts about Jacobi's life, and other witnesses, confirm this view.
We know, on his own testimony, that as a child he was given to brooding
and to experiences that bordered, perhaps, on the mystical. Other indi-
viduals have reported similar experiences. Since they are purely subjec-
tive, however, the only factor relevant to historiography is how they
translate into external actions. In an earlier age they might have inspired
Jacobi to retreat to a monastery; in a later one they might have caused
him to fall into a mood of existentialist despair and to compose novels
in that spirit. In fact they moved him to reflection and to philosophy, a
94. See, on the subject, Pierre Brachin, Le Cercle de Munster (1779-1806) et lapensee re-
ligieuse deF. L. Stolberg, p. 113. Jacobi eventually toned down his expressions of resentment.
95. Brachin, p. 115.
42 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel All will
manner of behaving congruent with his epoch's rationalism and which

is also reflected in his two romans. There is no serious plot in either of
them, except as an occasion for the characters to engage in endless de-
bates on ethical and epistemological issues. Philosophical discussion is
Jacobi's idea of dramatic action and dramatic interest. Goethe was to
sum up the figure of his late friend precisely by regretting that "specu-
lation (a metaphysical one at that) [had] become Jacobi's mishap,
though neither had he been born to it nor trained for it."96 Jacobi nat-
urally found the scholastic philosophy of his day insufficient to express
what he intimately knew to be the truth of human existence, and in this
regard he attacked "reason"—the reason of the post-Wolffian metaphy-
sicians. But he was not alone in this, nor was he alone in seeking a more
immediate, historical source of evidence than conceptual reflection. He
may indeed have made a greater show of appreciating the role of the
"historical" element in religious experience than the typical Aufklarer was
wont to. Even in this regard, however, he was not adding anything to the
meaning of "historical" that would have exceeded the limits of the
Enlightenment. So far as Jacobi was concerned, religious belief required
no more willingness to accept the immediate testimony of external
senses and internal feelings than did any other knowledge based on
historico-empirical evidence. It followed that religious belief was no less,
but also no more liable of sceptical doubt than any such knowledge. This
claim, however, had been the accepted basis of the sceptical defence of
religious faith long before Jacobi. Jacobi was simply reiterating it. That
defence, moreover, was the only one consistent with the assumption
(which every Aufklarer would have accepted) that any valid religious be-
lief must have some basis in experience. Jacobi was not willing to accept
the validity of the conceptual framework, or of the rational inferences,
with which the typical Aufklarer controlled that basis a priori. But neither
was he willing to put much trust in "sacred history"—and in this he re-
joined the typical Aufklarer. We know, from Wizenmann, that at first he
maintained at least a psychological distance from Christian believers;97
and when, in his correspondence with Hamann at the time of his po-
lemic against Mendelssohn, he argued for a special mechanism in the
96. As reported by Kanzler von Miiller from a conversation with Goethe. Cited after
Heinz Nicolai, Goethe und Jacobi, p. 271 and note 10 (p. 329).
97. See Goltz, Vol. i, pp. 324-25. See also the testimony of Princess Gallitzin of 1787,
Brachin, p. 57.
Introduction 43
human soul that would enable man to perceive God's presence, he was
obviously thinking of a disposition innate to human nature.98
In brief, Jacobi's religiosity was thoroughly secular in nature. His fond-
ness for biblical allusion and pious Christian effusions might seem to in-
dicate otherwise. But there is no reason to believe that he looked upon
the Bible as more than a source of historically sanctioned wisdom, or
that he quoted from it in any spirit other than he also quoted, often in
the same breath, from pagan sources. Jacobi's defence of biblical anthro-
pomorphisms must be understood in the context of the perfectly legit-
imate question of whether the conceptual fictions of the philosophers
are any better constructs to enlighten our knowledge of God than are
unashamed metaphors." Again, one wonders to what extent Jacobi's de-
fence of Christianity, especially in the face of the French Revolution, was
more than just the reflex of a Tory instinctively falling back upon past
values and ideas in order to ward off the madness of the present. But
Jacobi knew that the faith of old could not satisfy the new order of
things.10° At any rate, he insisted to the end that his faith was a perfectly
natural dimension of human existence, available to all men and indis-
pensable even to the most fundamental of human enterprises. In the
final stage of his conceptual development, when Kant's distinction be-
tween reason and understanding had become canonical, Jacobi even
went so far as to rehabilitate reason by belatedly acknowledging it as the
source, all along, of what he had previously called the certitude of
faith—not the reason of the philosophers, of course, which was only an
extension of the faculty of understanding, but an inward-looking reason
that had immediate access to the divine in us. One is indeed left wonder-
ing how this alleged inner light of Jacobi in any way differed, so far as
the value of the evidence that it yielded was concerned, from the
Cartesian reason that at all times functioned with the innate idea of God
as its standard of perfection. To the end Jacobi remained a rationalist.
Far from heralding future post-rationalist movements, he failed even to
understand, let alone celebrate, the breakdown of rationalism. By the
time of his death Jacobi was an anachronism.
98. Letter to Hamann, 8 October 1784, Hamann-Briefwechsel, v, #774, p. 240.

99. See Allwill, 1792 ed., p. 315.
100. See letter to Pestalozzi, 24 March 1794, AusF. H. Jacobi's Nachlaft. UngedruckteBriefe
von und an Jacobi und andere, ed. Rudolf Zoeppritz (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1869), #54, p. 178
[henceforth, Nachlaji].
,
THE LANDSCAPE: SPIRITUALITY

7. This last point needs amplification—and also qualification, lest we
give the impression that the religiosity of Jacobi's age, and Jacobi's own,
were just a shallow mixture of rationalism, empiricism, and sentimental
rhetoric. Their pietistic component also had roots that reached deep
into the faith of the established churches, where a new and highly per-
sonalized form of religious piety had been taking hold at least since the
seventeenth century. Faith was being experienced, and described, as an
intimate affair between the soul and God that implicated God in his sal-
vific (and hence personal) presence in the world.101 This saving God
had little to do with the moving principle of the universe, which was the
only divinity acknowledged by the rationalists. Accordingly, the new
piety tended to be anti-intellectual and, inasmuch as the practices
of ecclesiastical faith always degenerated into mere formalism, anti-
establishment as well. It fostered a rather pessimistic view of the moral
capabilities of man, whose nature it represented as radically prone to sin
and burdened by guilt even when sin had been forgiven. Hence, al-
though rigorist in matters of conduct and conscience, in their intimate
relation to God the believers promoted the suspension of all internal ac-
tivities, including intellectual ones, since any effort coming from human
nature ultimately only stood in the way of God's intervention. The aim
was to practise total, quasi-mystical abandonment to God's grace.
In Protestant Germany this spiritual movement came to be known as
"pietism."102 It had its intellectual representatives103 and, at the
University of Halle, its centre of learning.104 Its theology and philosophy
101. I am not implying that faith had not been a personal affair in the past as well—
witness St Augustine and a host of other saints and mystics. But since the sixteenth century
this affair had become an object of reflection and was being documented with psycholog-
ical interest. On the Catholic orthodox side the works of St John of the Cross and
St Theresa of Avila are perfect examples of this interest, even though the two mystics wrote
within the framework of accepted scholastic theology.
102. From the collegia pietatis in Frankfurt.
103. E.g. Thomasius, Grotius, Pufendorf, Buddeus, Crusius, Oetinger, and Rudiger,
among the most notable.
104. The pietist theologians there instigated the expulsion and exile of Christian Wolff
by King Frederick William i. Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700-60) founded
a pietist community in Herrnhut that was to have great influence in the future. Friedrich
Schleiermacher and Jacob Friedrich Fries, whose names appear in the last portion of
Jacobi's life, were both educated in schools maintained by the Brethren of Herrnhut.
"Faith" will play a central role in the philosophy of both. See Holborn, p. 141.
Introduction 45
were rooted in the nominalistic strand of late scholasticism (the party of

the via moderna), though they eventually came to incorporate elements
from Locke's psychology. They stressed the need of divine revelation in
matters that concern man's destiny, since the presence of sin in his na-
ture interposes insurmountable psychological obstacles between him
and the truth. Accordingly, pietist thought was deliberately eclectic, i.e.
anti-systematic. The emphasis was on learning that brought practical
benefits to man, "logic" being essentially a method for cleansing the
mind of obscurities due to impure desires, chief among them the prej-
udice that the authority of reason is the only criterion of truth. This
pietist-inspired critique of reason was another important element of the
Enlightenment in Germany and added to it another typically German
note. In some respects, especially in his insistence that reason remain
close to actual experience, Jacobi's own critique mirrored it and proba-
bly drew from it.105
But the movement was not restricted to Germany. As a form of spirit-
uality it could accommodate itself to the most diverse social and cultural
contexts. Granted Jacobi's intellectual ties to the French world and his
105. Yet one must resist the temptation to locate Jacob! within this German pietist tra-
dition of thought. Of course, Jacobi had pietist friends (Wizenmann, Lavater, Claudius,
among others) and was exposed to German pietist rhetoric and German pietist ideas. But
the following must be kept in mind:
(1) Conceptual parallels do not, by themselves, establish historical links. Jacobi's intel-
lectual mentors were not the likes of Buddeus and Crusius but (even when he was reacting
against them) such individuals as Le Sage, Rousseau, Bonnet, Hemsterhuis, Diderot,
Pascal, Fenelon, Hume, Reid, Ferguson, Burke. Unless otherwise demonstrated with spe-
cific contrary references, the historical presumption must be that his critique of reason
drew its inspirations from these individuals.
(2) If it is true, as has been asserted (see Beiser,, TheFate of Reason, pp. 50-51 and relevant
notes), that the pietists were the first in Germany to draw inspiration from Spinoza, then
Jacobi, by distancing himself from what he took to be the pantheism (hence, in his mind,
the atheism) of Spinozism, was also distancing himself from the pietist tradition. As a mat-
ter of fact Jacobi waged one of his most vigorous polemics against Herder, who clearly be-
longed to that tradition. Nor could the school of juridical positivism, which grew out of it,
be attractive to him. He had attacked this kind of positivism in his early polemic against
Wieland—though, to be sure, Wieland can hardly be taken to be an intellectually reputable
exponent of it.
(3) Although a critic of abstractive rationalism and himself an empiricist of a sort, Jacobi
was definitely not a nominalist in the Ockham tradition (any more than Kant was). In fact,
if one were forced to apply some broad philosophical label to him, "Platonist of a sort"
would probably do better than most others. Jacobi himself made it a point of explicitly
harking back to Plato in his final Introduction to the David Hume (pp. 27-29).
social ties with the Munster circle, one would expect that he would be
exposed to it in a variety of forms. There were the so-called "enthusiasts"
among the Protestants in England and, among the French Huguenots,
the inspires. But (more to the point so far as Jacobi is concerned) some
of its traits were to be found also within the Catholic church, associated
with Jansenism. In seventeenth-century France this spiritual movement
had found supporters among such intellectual giants as Pascal
(1623-62)lo6 and Arnauld (1612-94), and nacl1caused a controversy
(with the Jesuits lined up on the side of the establishment) that rocked
the whole church. Jansenism was eventually condemned by Rome and
forced underground. As an attitude of mind, however, it persisted
unabated among Catholics during the eighteenth century and kept
on inspiring a kind of rigorist spirituality always suspect in the eyes of
orthodoxy. Many personalities fell under its suspicion of rigorism, nota-
ble among them Pascal and Francois Fenelon (1651-1715).107 Jacobi
was wont to quote both.
Now, whether in German territories or elsewhere, whether among
Protestants of various confessions or among Catholics, the interest of the
new piety centred on the personal life of the individual before God. This
interest led all sides to the dissection and examination of the most inti-
mate aspects of man's feelings and emotions and to the formulation of
strategies of control that would ultimately lead to their purification. A
new type of spiritual director was born—one whose task was to help in-
dividuals bring to consciousness and analyse their most secret motives in
order to establish their relation to God on a new and healthy basis. This
phenomenon, together with the spiritual hypochondria and the elitism
it nurtured, was perfectly consistent with the secular spirit of the age be-
cause, despite the professed preoccupation with God that inspired it, it
also brought the emotional life of the individual to a new level of self-
106. . . . whom Voltaire particularly disliked.

107. Jacobi saw an agreement between Spinoza's religion and Fenelon's. See below,
Jacobi toFichte, pp. 42-43 ofjacobi's text. In the letter to Humboldt of 2 September 1794,
concerning the new edition of Woldemar, Jacobi advises Humboldt to read Fenelon's
Oeuvres spirituelles and then to let him know "whether this mystic has anything to learn from
Kant." Auserlesener Briefwechsel,, Vol. n, #234, pp. 177-78. See also An Schlosser uber dessen
Fortsetzung des Platonischen Gastmahlen (To Schlosser, Concerning His Resumption of the Platonic
Symposium; 1796), Werke, vi, pp. 73-74. Herder referred to Fenelon as "St Fenelon" in a
letter to Jacobi in which he reminds him of Fenelon's spiritual prescription: "Let all cares
drop." In the same letter (though in a different context) Herder defended Spinoza. Cf.
Briefiuechsel, 1.3, #1102, 20 December 1784, pp. 405, 406-07.
Introduction 47
awareness. A perfect illustration of this point, within Jacobi's social

ambit, is the life of Princess Gallitzin.108 A forceful and self-educated
woman, she eventually actively re-embraced the Catholic faith109
and provided a source of inspiration for the late eighteenth-century
Romantic revival of Catholicism in Germany. Originally, however, her
energies were totally directed to a program of intellectual and moral self-
improvement quite independent of any special faith, apart, of course,
from whatever faith there was in the secular religiosity of the time. And
she carried on this narcissistic regime of perfection by deploying all the
techniques of self-examination and control that any Jesuit might have
recommended, even to the point of adopting a life-style not unlike that
of a convent.110 Her two great teachers and partners in this spiritual ad-
venture were Fiirstenberg, an ecclesiastic deeply involved in the reform
of clerical education and in the political life of the bishopric of Munster,
and Francois Hemsterhuis, a Dutch diplomat and aesthete who devel-
oped his philosophy, a mixture of empiricism and Platonism, for the
sake of instructing and guiding his spiritual friend. 11J Nothing could
have been more foreign to this new Socrates than the Bible or anything
else connected with revealed religion;112 and if his letters to his dear
Diotema (Princess Gallitzin) were full of talk about God, the only divin-
ity in question was that of Athens, not Jerusalem. Such was the ease with
which pietistic forms of spirituality could blend with secular, even pagan
search for individual perfection.
Jacobi must have known Fiirstenberg from the i76o's, and must have
heard of Princess Gallitzin at least from Diderot, a great admirer of her
qualities, during Diderot's visit to Dusseldorf in 1778.113 He met her in
108. On Princess Gallitzin and the Munster Circle, see the excellent work of Brachin al-
ready cited. Goethe too came in close contact with this group and was even rumoured at
one point to have become a Catholic. On this point, see Heinz Nicolai, Goethe und Jacobi,
pp. aaSff.
109. The decision was taken on 27 August 1786. Brachin, p. 161.
no. Brachin, 17-18.
111. At the time of his encounter with Princess Gallitzin, Hemsterhuis had only pub-
lished Lettres sur I'homme et ses rapports (1772). The Lettre sur les desirs was translated into
German and commented upon by Herder (Brachin, p. 19, notes). Jacobi translated Alexis
(1787). The translation is included in Werke, vi.
112. Jacobi reported to Hamann that to Hemsterhuis "the Bible is a totally intolerable
book." Hamann-Briefwechsel, i February 1785, Vol. v, #805, p. 345.
113. Brachin, p. 54, 17. Jacobi describes Amalia von Gallitzin to Hamann in his letter
of i February 1785 (Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. v, #805, p. 345). He tells him that the
Christian religion had been at first totally foreign to the princess. He also tells him that the
person at the end of June 1780114 and met Hemsterhuis through her at
the end of February 1781.115 Jacob! said of the princess some years after
her religious conversion: "I found her [during my visit] as I have always
found her: tense, pushy, bound to the letter, without true simplicity and
calm, and highly unreliable in everything that she related. Her preju-
dices deceive her in ways hard to conceive; they corrupt her eyes, ears,
tongue. She has ceased to pout, but has become more agitated in-
stead. . . . I was horrified by the false piety and false devotion that she
has introduced in Holstein"116—this despite the fact that he could still
find warm words of praise and admiration for her.117 We hear of him
proclaiming to the princess in 1797 that Herder's treatise on the Saviour
contains a profession of Jacobi's own faith, to wit, "Nobody possesses
God, or could ever possess Him, unless he engenders Him within him-
self, unless God has made Himself man in man's own heart." * l 8 And the
princess notes in her diary that Jacobi gave a definite anti-Catholic turn
to his declaration.
Yetjacobi also opposed Herder, who also stood within the pietistic tra-
dition of thought, though squarely on the Protestant side. Jacobi feared
the pantheism that might be fostered by Herder's attempt to show God
becoming man in man's heart. Here is where we must confront the issue
of Jacobi's relationship to the spirituality of his own times. The philoso-
phers of the Enlightenment opposed traditional religions because they
all relied on historical witnesses as a basis for authority and meaning,
whereas, because of their historical accidentality, these very witnesses
necessarily set peoples of different historical backgrounds against one
another. The light of universal reason was supposed to rid mankind
precisely of this source of irrationality. Now, inasmuch as this critique
of established religions was based on the assumption that true religion
must spring from inner conviction and not be externally imposed,
Enlightenment philosophy and the new pietist spirituality actually
princess had once expressed curiosity about Hamann but that he (Jacobi) had discouraged
her from reading any of his works on the ground that she would not have enjoyed them.
The princess managed to get hold of Hamann's works just the same, and had found them
edifying.
114. Brachin, 54.
115. Brachin, 51. See below, note to p. 39 of the Spinoza Letters.
116. Letter to Nicolovius, 9 May 1794, Auserlesener Briefwechsel,l Vol. n, #229, pp. 164-65.
117. Ibid., p. 165.
118. Brachin, 109.
Introduction 49
agreed. Any quarrel between the two was a family affair because based
on a common assumption. Yet granted the mental set of the pietist, for
whom inner conviction had to be the product of a personal encounter
between one person (mortal) and another (divine), since any such en-
counter depended on God's free decision to meet individuals at their
highly particularized location in history, legitimacy for any belief or au-
thority had somehow to be sought in historical events. Hence some
pietists (such as Lavater) sought validation for their faith in private
inspiration, prophecy, and a renewal of miracles—all these phenomena
dependent on highly individualized (and in this sense historical) wit-
ness. To the philosophers and the traditional theologians this reliance
on personal witness seemed indeed perverse; they branded as Schwarmer
the proponents of the religiosity based on it. Yet the problem was how
to invest particular events of history with universal significance, and this
problem the Schwarmer shared with the whole Enlightenment. What the
traditional philosophers and theologians did not see was that the
Schwarmer relied on historical witness for the same reason they rejected
it.
Jacobi found himself lumped with the Schwarmer at the time of the
Spinoza dispute, much to his declared surprise but not altogether un-
fairly, since he had prominently cited Lavater in the Spinoza Letters and
in the David Hume had concluded the dialogue with vague yet suggestive
hints about the need for miracles. All the same, the sincerity of his prot-
estations cannot be doubted, and we can accept that he had never in-
tended to foster irrationalism. He was also obviously unable to accept the
philosophers' way of bringing the universality of reason to bear upon the
accidentalities of history by simply abstracting from the particular and
seeking refuge in the abstractions of reason. But then Jacobi had no jus-
tification for being scandalized by Princess Gallitzin's return to tradi-
tional faith (and by the return later of Stolberg and Schlegel) or by the
pantheism of Herder or Goethe. He should have seen that, if neither the
abstractive reason of the philosophers nor the prophetic witness of the
Schwarmer were acceptable, then one solution to the problem of invest-
ing the particular with universal significance was precisely to interpret
the history of mankind as somehow the history of God as well. Princess
Gallitzin's newly rediscovered Catholicism had just as little to do with
traditional Catholic faith as had Herder's Spinozism with Luther or
Goethe's worship of nature with paganism, or, after 1815, the new state
absolutism with the absolutism of the eighteenth-century princes.
What made the difference was precisely the abstractive reason of the
Enlightenment and its symbiotic counterpart, the new pietist spirituality.

The search for the ancient roots of languages and customs that the late
Enlightenment spawned, the romantic nostalgia for the old church, the
divinization of history and nature—all these, however diverse and some
of them unexpected and unwanted, were in fact products of the
Enlightenment itself.
Once again Jacobi saw each of these new turns that the spirituality of
the day was taking and justly criticized them as sharply as he had also crit-
icized Enlightenment rationality. But it is not clear whether he had any
creative alternative to offer. To be sure, he openly advocated a historical
method in philosophy,119 and—perhaps his main contribution to the
philosophical discussions of the day, one that also had significant impli-
cations for the spiritual life—he tried to pinpoint the source of all evi-
dence in the I-Thou relationship, on the grounds that it is impossible to
assert "I" except in the face of an independent "Thou." But "I" and
"Thou" can be empty abstractions too, as Hamann was to complain, and
history simply a source-book of abstract verities of the type the metaphy-
sicians thrived on, unless one substitutes real names for those place-
holders and shows how the actions of the individuals thereby named
actually give rise to truth. This is the path followed by those of Jacobi's
contemporaries whom he was accusing either of crypto-paganism or ob-
scurantism. Jacobi, for his part, stayed at the level of abstract moral state-
ment. 120 Indeed, to the extent that in his final thought he reinterpreted
reason as an inner light, he actually withdrew it from the flux of history,
whereas the central problem of the Enlightenment was precisely to show
how reason, qua reason, could nevertheless be a historical act.
SURROUNDING FIGURES
8. Many figures have already crowded into Jacobi's landscape, though by

no means all who deserve to be there. And of those who have made an
appearance, for a complete overview many would require a detailed por-
trayal. Much could be said, for instance, about Moses Mendelssohn
(1729-86), the poor student of the Talmud who first learned how to
read German and Latin when he moved to Berlin in 1750 but quickly
119. See below, p. 183 of the Spinoza Letters.

120. Goethe is reported as saying ofJacobi:"He lacked the sciences of Nature, and one
can hardly encompass a large worldview with just a bit of morality." From a conversation
with Kanzler von Muller; cited after Heinz Nicolai, Goethe und Jacobi, p. 271.
Introduction 51
made his way up the social and cultural ladder to become a partner in
an important industrial firm in the city, a central figure in the literary
and philosophical life of the day, an authority on all things Jewish, and
a leader of the Jewish community. Mendelssohn became a close friend
of Lessing, in whose eyes, as in those of the Berlin philosophers, he came
to typify the new universal culture the Enlightenment was striving for,
based on reason and on transcending historical and ethnic particulari-
ties. But because he had thus become a symbol of the new light brought
about by reason alone, he also came under attack from those who were
not comfortable with it—notable among them Pastor Lavater, who at
one point tried to convert Mendelssohn to Christianity.1z 1 Implicit in
Jacobi's claim diat Lessing had revealed his Spinozism to him was also
the suggestion that Mendelssohn, who had known nothing about it, was
not as intimate a friend of Lessing as Mendelssohn himself and the
Berlin philosophers believed. And this denial was in turn an attempt to
wrest Lessing and the Enlightenment from Mendelssohn (this "modern
Socrates," as he had been renamed) and the ideal he typified.
Yet so far as our portrayal of Jacobi and his world is concerned,
Mendelssohn stood as an external figure, a mere foil for Jacobi's plan
(which very likely was the deep motive behind his decision to reveal
Lessing's alleged Spinozism) to attack Goethe and at same time retroac-
tively claim for himself a historical place close to Lessing. It is therefore
to Goethe and Lessing, to whom Jacobi felt much more direcdy related,
that we now want to turn and add a few more strokes—and to a third fig-
ure as well, to Hamann, who also presided, though in a different and
much more personal way, over Jacobi's dispute with Mendelssohn.
9. In 1804 Goethe summed up his relationship to Jacobi in three para-

graphs full of sadness and regret. Goethe regretted that two men such
as he and Jacobi, who obviously loved and trusted one another, could
not even understand one another's language. "We loved one another,
without understanding one anodier . . .Jacobi had spirit in mind; I, na-
ture; we were separated by what should have united us."122 Indeed, the
121. For a sympathetic and exhaustive study of Moses Mendelssohn that also conveys
a vivid picture of the life of the Jewish community in Berlin and Germany at the time,
see Alexander Altmann, Moses Mendelssohn: A Biographical Study (University, Alabama:
University Press, 1973).
122. Aus dem Zusammenhang der Tag- undjahreshefte, (Daily and Yearly Note-Books), Samtliche
Werke, Vol. xiv, pp. 327-28.
friendship between the two men underwent the wildest fluctuations.

Their first contacts were marked by bitter conflict. Goethe was part of a
moral and artistic movement radically opposed to the Wieland group, to
which the early Jacobi belonged. The movement acquired its own liter-
ary organ with the change in editorship in 1772 of the Frankfurter
Gelehrten Anzeigen. The journal stood in antithesis to the Teutscher Merkur,
which Jacobi had been instrumental in founding. In 1773, in the open-
ing editorial of the Merkur, Wieland had implicitly criticized Goethe, and
the latter reacted with a satirical piece (never published and later de-
stroyed by Goethe but much gossiped about) entitled Das Ungluck der
Jacobis (i773), 1 2 3 and later with a farce, Goiter, Helden, und Wieland
(1773). 124 Jacobi and Goethe were not obviously slated for friendly
relations.
Yet the two men moved in the same social circles (such as the
Frankfurt circle of Sophie La Roche) and had friends in common.
Because of the friendship of Jacobi's step-aunt with Cornelia Goethe,
which led to contacts between the two households, Goethe had come to
know Betty Jacobi during one of her stays in Frankfurt, and a genuine
friendship, accompanied by a brief period of correspondence, ensued
between the two. It is not surprising, therefore, that, despite all the quar-
relling at a distance, Goethe should have suddenly resolved, on the oc-
casion of a tour by Lavater to the Frankfurt area, to meet Jacobi person-
ally. 125 He presented himself unannounced at the Jacobis' house in
Dusseldorf on 21 July 1774 and, since the Jacobis were at their resi-
dence in neighbouring Pempelfort, proceeded there forthwith. His first
encounter with Jacobi occurred during a meeting of the local pietist cir-
cle called in honour of Lavater. It is not surprising that an emotionally
charged friendship should immediately have developed between the
123. The Jacobis' Misfortune.

124. Gods, Heroes, and Wieland.
125. Goethe travelled along the Rhein with Lavater and Basedow—with Lavater ex-
pounding the mysteries of StJohn's gospel and Basedow casting doubts on the modern rel-
evance of the ritual of baptism. As Goethe saw his situation:
Prophete rechts, Prophete links,

Das Weltkind in der Mitten.
("Prophets left and right:/the child of the world in the middle." Dichtungund Wahrheit, i v,
p. 661). For a description of his encounter with Jacobi, see Dichtung und Wahrheit, in,
pp. 66iff.
Introduction 53
older representative of sentimentalism and the younger genius. The two

men had been nurtured on the same cult of feeling and were by temper-
ament disposed to divinize personal encounters.126 As it happened,
Spinoza was the central topic of the heated discussions that took place
between them during the two-day visit.127 Goethe had first been exposed
to this philosopher in i773;Jacobi, on the occasion of Mendelssohn's
publication of his Philosophical Dialogues,1^ in 1755. But it is clear that,
whereas Goethe was fascinated by the picture of man as a tragic collab-
orator in God's anonymous creation, which he saw implicit in Spinoza's
pantheism, Jacobi was worried by the denial of personal freedom that
he, for his part, saw in it. Goethe's vision was expressed in the poem
"Prometheus," one of the acknowledged documents of the Sturm und
Drang movement, and this is the poem that Jacobi used to entice Lessing
into a discussion of Spinoza and an admission of Spinozism in the sum-
mer of 1780.12Q By that time Jacobi's friendship with Goethe had first
cooled off (perhaps because of the publication in 1777 of Goethe's
Stella,1"*0 which Jacobi found morally inadmissible) and then totally bro-
ken off in a great flurry of emotions on Jacobi's part in 1779, with the
publication of Woldemar. The occasion of the break had been the report,
which made the rounds of all the literati circles, of Goethe's satirization
of the novel. Goethe had dramatically crucified a copy of the book on
a tree, before a company of friends, in the Ettersburg Park.131 Yet
126. In his later years Goethe was to criticize that cult of sentiment and friendship as
shallow and self-deceiving and as promoting a narcissistic type of individualism. He consid-
ered Lavater to be at the centre of it. See Campagne in Frankreich, pp. 476—77.
127. Dichtung und Wahrheit, in, pp. 667-68.
128. Philosophische Gesprache, in which Mendelssohn tried to redeem Spinoza by showing
how much he had in common with Leibniz (who was the great authority of the German
philosophers at the time).
129. "That poem . . . became important in German literature because it occasioned
Lessing to take a stand against Jacobi on important issues of thought and sentiment. It
served as the spark for an explosion that uncovered, and forced to the level of spoken word,
the most secret relationships of worthy men—relationships of which they themselves were
not conscious yet which lay dormant in an otherwise very enlightened society. The rapture
was so violent that on its occasion, because of intervening contingencies, we lost one of our
worthiest men, Mendelssohn." Goethe, Dichtung und Wahrheit, in, p. 681.
130. In the same year, 1777, Goethe also wrote the libretto for the comic opera The
Triumph of Sentimentality (Triumph der Empfindsamkeit), obviously a take-off on everything
that the Jacobis' stood for.
131. See Jacobi's letter to H. C. Boie, upon hearing of the incident, August or
September 1779, Briefwechsel, 11.2, #517, pp. 104-05.
despite this emotional diremption, or perhaps precisely because of it,

Goethe's "Prometheus" still was to preside over Jacobi's public entrance
into the field of philosophical debate. This is how much Goethe had
captured Jacobi's imagination and affected him emotionally.
The friendship resumed in 1782 on Goethe's initiative, though the
original pitch of intensity was never recaptured. During the Spinoza con-
troversy Goethe could not give Jacobi the support that the latter ex-
pected, nor could he extend any praise for the 1794 revised edition of
Woldemar, which Jacobi had dedicated to him, much to Goethe's sur-
prise.132 The final break came in 1811-12, during Jacobi's controversy
with Schelling, when Goethe clearly lined himself up on the side of
Schelling.
10. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81) was by all standards the giant
of the German Enlightenment. The most that we can (or need) do here
is to evoke his presence. Without personal financial resources, and by
nature something of a spendthrift and wanderer, Lessing spent his life
between Leipzig, Berlin (where he became personally acquainted with
Voltaire),133 Breslau, and Hamburg, finally to settle as librarian in
Wolfenbiittel, in the Duchy of Brunswick—in every place trying to eke
out a living while always engaged in the promotion of German theatre
and in countless other literary enterprises. IM At all times, dependent as
he was for his income on the nobility, he had to suffer (like his junior
contemporary Mozart) the degrading effect of the despotic power of the
princes,135 and this experience permeated his whole literary produc-
tion. Lessing's drama carries the socio-political message that despotic
power is essentially seductive because it drives individuals to irrational
acts by forcing them into situations where they cannot exercise their
judgment freely. 13°
132. Goethe's reaction is very diplomatic. See letter to Jacobi, 26 April 1794, Goethe-
Briefwechsel, #90, pp. 182-83.
133. Voltaire eventually quarrelled with him.
134. Among them, Beytrdge zur Historic und Aufnahme des Theatres; Briefs, die neue Literatur
betreffend, in co-operation with Nicolai and Mendelssohn; Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, a
huge undertaking by Nicolai to which Lessing contributed; Hamburgische Dramaturgie.
135. See Rilla, p. 261.
136. See the play Emilia Galotti, where the false situation created by a despot leads to the
killing of a daughter by her father. Odeardo kills the daughter Emilia with the sword with
which she wanted to kill herself and that had been given to her by the tyrant's former
mistress.
Introduction 55
From a literary point of view Lessing's very complexity, the critical dis-
tance that he maintained with respect to all literary trends, was his main
contribution to the German Enlightenment. Lessing was essentially anti-
Cartesian in that he deliberately nurtured ambiguity for the sake of re-
specting the complexity of a situation. Nowhere was this aspect of his
personality more obvious than in the theological part of his output,
which was just as extensive as his literary one. Lessing had dedicated
some of his early years exclusively to the study of theology137 and always
retained a deep interest in religion. All the indications are that in this
early period he was a straightforward rationalist intent on ridding
Christianity of spurious historical accretions and restricting its beliefs to
such truths as were accessible to reason unaided by any positive revela-
tion. It was only much later, in the ten years of the Wolfenbuttel stay138
and the last of his life, that Lessing began to exhibit a much more nu-
anced position by producing a group of writings that, as it turned out,
his contemporaries found totally puzzling, if not downright perverse.
These writings were ancient texts on theological questions that
Lessing had found in the Wolfenbuttel library and was now publishing
with commentary as part of a wider program of making the library's trea-
sures available to the learned public.139 His aim, apparently, was to show
that the texts expressed beliefs that reflected deeply felt human values
and needs and that, therefore, though not rationally demonstrable, were
not irrational. They were at least conceptually coherent and hence could
be understood. It followed—and here Lessing's polemical intent against
the contemporary rationalist school of theology came out—that the be-
liefs were not to be dismissed out of hand as all superstition.14° Thus
137. Lessing spent time reading the Fathers of the Church during his Breslau stay.
138. Here too there seems to have been Scottish influence. See Henry E. Allison, Lessing
and the Enlightenment (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1966), pp. 81-82.
139. Beytrdge zur Geschichte und Literatur. Aus den Sckdtzen der Herzoglichen Bibliothek zu
Wolfenbuttel (Contributions to History and Literature. From the Treasures of the Ducal Library at
Wolfenbiittel; Braunschweig: Waysen, 1773-81).
140. "With orthodoxy, thank God, things were fairly settled. A curtain had been drawn
between it and philosophy, behind which each could go his own way without disturbing the
other. But what is happening now? They are tearing down the curtain, and under the pre-
text of making us rational Christians, they are making us very irrational philosophers. . . .
We are agreed that the old religious system is false, but I cannot share your conviction that
it is a patchwork of bunglers and half philosophers." Letter to Lessing's brother Karl,
2 February 1774 (cited after Allison, p. 84). See also "Des Andreas Wissowatius Einwiirfe
wider die Dreynigkeit" (Andreas Wissowatius's Objections against the Trinity), Zweyter
Beitrag (1773), Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 12, pp. 96.
Lessing produced reasons for defending the doctrine of the Trinity141

and for casting doubt on the belief—much cherished by rationalist
Protestants—that the orthodox doctrine of transubstantiation was an
adulteration of an earlier Christian doctrine according to which the sac-
ramental bread and wine were only signs of the body and blood of
Christ.142 He also found occasion to defend Leibniz's apparent accept-
ance of the doctrine of eternal punishment against the rationalist Pastor
Johann August Eberhard, who had argued that Leibniz was being incon-
sistent. 143 Lessing's point was that the eternity of punishment follows
quite naturally from Leibniz's axiom that nothing (and this includes sin)
happens in the world without carrying infinite consequences with it. Nor
is eternal punishment inconsistent with Leibniz's doctrine of the perfec-
tion of the universe (which Eberhard had failed to grasp in all its com-
plexity anyway)—neither metaphysically, because the perfection of the
whole is perfectly consistent with the imperfection and even the progres-
sive degradation of individual parts, nor anthropologically, because eter-
nal punishment is perfectly conceivable provided that its "eternity" is
understood as extended over an infinite time, i.e. provided that the pun-
ishment is a never-ending reformation. The only contradictory idea is
that of an "intensive eternity" of punishment, i.e. an infinite suffering all
concentrated in one place and for all times, because it would make God
concentrate the full effect of his infinite might in a finite creature.144
Lessing's polemical pieces caused surprise and aversion in the enlight-
ened circles. Even Mendelssohn found it difficult to accept the dis-
association of the perfection of the whole from the perfection of the
141. "Des Andreas Wissowatius Einwiirfe wider die Dreynigkeit," Zweyter Beitrag, Vol. 12,
pp. 7 iff. Here Lessing reproduced Leibniz's essay Defensio Trinitatis, with a history of the
circumstances that gave rise to it. See p. go, where Lessing says that it was not Leibniz's in-
tention to defend the doctrine of the Trinity with new philosophical insights but simply to
show that the doctrine was free of contradictions and sophistries.
142. Berengarius Turonensis: oder Ankundigung eines wichtigen Werkes desseWen, wovon in der
Herzoglichen Bibliothek zu Wolfenbiittel ein Manuskript befindlich, welches bisher vollig unerkannt
geblieben (Berengarius of Tours: or Announcement of an Important Hitherto Totally Unknown Work
of His, To Be Found in the Ducal Library at Wolfenbiittel; ; Braunschweig: Waysen, 1770),
Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 11. Lessing wants to suggest that originally the bread and wine were
"pregnant signs," i.e. signs reflecting some vital human needs. He makes his point while set-
ting the record straight regarding the true beliefs of Berengarius, an eleventh-century sus-
pected heretic. See pp. 67-71, 161-62.
143. In Neue Apologie des Socrates (Socrates's New Apology; 1771).
144. Leibniz von den ewigen Strafen (Leibniz on Eternal Punishment), Enter Beytrag, Sdmtliche
Werke, Vol. 11, pp. 461-87.
Introduction 57
individual.145 In the conversation that Jacobi eventually had with

Lessing, to test his Spinozism Jacobi was to probe him precisely on his
views regarding the relation of universal order to individual freedom.
But the reaction of the rationalists on this occasion paled in comparison
to what Lessing was to suffer at the hand of the orthodox Christians
when he published another group of texts. This time they included frag-
ments of a manuscript authored by a recently deceased Hermann
Samuel Reimarus, professor of Oriental languages at Hamburg and pop-
ular author. The work was a stinging attack on the reliability of the bib-
lical narratives, conducted along the customary lines of rationalistic
interpretation, and was so radical in tone that the author himself had
kept it secret during his lifetime. Lessing had got hold of the manuscript
from Reimarus's daughter Elise after her father's death and published
anonymous excerpts from it together with a rejoinder of his own in
which he defended the validity of Christian historical faith.146 The texts
drew responses from the orthodox camp that at first defended the literal
truth of the biblical narratives against Reimarus's critique of them.147
But then Pastor Goeze stepped onto the scene with an attack on
Lessing's own rejoinder, which he considered hypocritical and subver-
sive, and with his intervention Lessing became involved in a bitter con-
troversy that quickly degenerated to the level of personal attack, until
the affair was finally stopped by the authority of the Duke himself.148
What the two sets of texts show is that neither the rationalists nor the
orthodox could understand where Lessing actually stood. They could
not see that Lessing was saying both, namely that there is more to the bib-
145. Die Sache Gottes (apparently written in 1784). See Altmann, 554-56.
146. Lessing first tried to publish the fragments in 1771 in Berlin but was frustrated in
the attempt by the censors. Two years later he published one fragment, "On the Toleration
of Deists," within the series of his Wolfenbuttel Beitrage (Drifter Beytrag, 1774, Samtliche
Werke, Vol. 12, pp. 254-70). Freedom from censorship in matters relating to the library
had been one condition for Lessing's accepting the job at Wolfenbuttel. In 1777, also as
part of the Beitrage (Vierter Beytrag), he published five more fragments, "On the
Denunciation of Reason in the Pulpits," "The Impossibility of a Revelation Which All Men
Can Believe on the Grounds of Reason," "The Passage of the Israelites through the Red
Sea," "That the Books of the Old Testament Were Not Written To Reveal a Religion," and
"On the Accounts of the Resurrection." A final fragment, "On the Aims of Jesus and His
Disciples," was published in 1778,, Samtliche Werke, Vol. 13, pp. 217-327.
147. This elicited Lessing's reply, On the Proof of the Spirit and the Power, one of his more
influential polemical writings. Uber den Beweis des Geistes und derKraft (Braunschweig, 1777),
Samtliche Werke, Vol. 13, pp. 1—8.
148. The texts are collected in Vol. 13 of Samtliche Werke.
lical narrative (i.e. the "letter" of Scripture) than the universal truths im-
plicit in Christianity (i.e. the "spirit"), and yet substantially less. There is
less (this is what the orthodox could not appreciate) because no single
historical event can ever be so related to all men as to carry for them
equal authority. Lessing's famous saying, that there is a "broad ugly
ditch" separating the accidental events of history from the necessary
truths of religion, sums up this point vividly.149 (Jacobi, incidentally, had
precisely this image in mind when, in his conversation with Lessing, he
exhorted him to perform a salto mortak, or a leap "head down first," in
order to reach out from the highly particularized place where he stood
to eternal truth.) But there is more to the biblical narrative as well (this
is what the rationalists missed) because the biblical narrative is also an
account of the events in the history of a people through which the latter
came progressively into possession of what we now call the universal
truths of Christianity. These events are narrated in Scripture in a man-
ner that reflects the relative level of sophistication with which those
truths were being apprehended by the people, at any given time,
through the instrumentality of the events. The rationalist theologians
could not appreciate this, and for this reason they were led to pointless
attacks upon the veracity of the biblical stories. In other words (this is the
point that neither side could understand), Lessing was emptying the re-
ligious truths of Christianity of all their historical content while at the
same time elevating the historical event to a new level of importance as
the indispensable vehicle for achieving universal truth. In this way he was
responding to the two strains deeply engrained in the Enlightenment—
the Cartesian demand for universal truths of reason, and the emphasis
on the importance of the historical individual. Lessing's two final great
works, the drama Nathan the Wise150 and the essay The Education of
Mankind151 celebrate in quasi-Leibnizian style the great harmony that
holds together different strands of humanity and different historical
epochs by showing how the encounter of individuals with different his-
torical backgrounds, or, on a more abstract level of consideration, the
progression of history, makes for the experiences that reveal the truth
common to all mankind.
In 1777 Lessing had lost his newly born son, and soon after, in 1778,
149. Uber den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft, Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. xm, p. 7-
150. Nathan der Weise (1778). Mendelssohn is reputed to be portrayed by Nathan.
151. Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780).
Introduction 59
the wife he had recently married.152 It was therefore a much-buffeted

Lessing, harassed by long controversy,153 whom Jacobi and his sister
Helene met in Wolfenbuttel in the summer of lySo.154 The visit was
part of an eleven-week trip that took Jacobi first to Hamburg, where he
saw Klopstock and also made the acquaintance of the Reimarus family.
He then went on to Wandsbeck to visit Claudius, by whom he was deeply
impressed. Jacobi visited Lessing twice during the trip: first on the way
to Hamburg, where he was Lessing's guest from 5 to 10 July; and then
on the way back from Wandsbeck, on which occasion Lessing joined
Jacobi on a visit to "Father Gleim" in Halberstadt. In the course of these
visits Lessing allegedly confessed to Jacobi that he was a Spinozist, and
the seed was thus sown for the later controversy with Mendelssohn.
Jacobi's account of what went on between him and Lessing at this time
is very likely accurate, even though Jacobi's handing over of Goethe's
"Prometheus" to Lessing for his perusal—the occasion for the alleged
confession—cannot have been as fortuitous as it appears in that account.
Jacobi must have gone to Lessing with the deliberate intent of confront-
ing him with Goethe's Spinozism. At any rate, whether fortuitous or in-
tentional, the act of handing over the poem must appear in retrospect
as replete with historical significance. The great representative of the
German Enlightenment was being presented with a work by the greatest
among his offspring in which the tragic side of the same rationality that
Lessing had upheld was celebrated. It is not just the sinners who stand
to suffer when the perfection of the whole is considered compatible with
the imperfection of any of its parts, and reason is thereby conceived of
as a cosmic force anonymously pursuing its goal of universal order
without regard for what might happen to particular individuals in the
process. All men suffer, for since the ultimate result of their actions is
determined from the beginning a priori, their freedom turns out to be
just an epiphenomenon of impersonal forces. The only way for the indi-
vidual to maintain dignity is to defy the forces governing the universe,
as Goethe's Prometheus does, by rejoicing in his actions and glorifying
them, however evident their insubstantiality might be. And the philo-
152. Eva Konig, the young widow of a former friend of Lessing. Lessing spent much of
the 17705 trying to establish himself on a financial footing secure enough to marry.
153. Mendelssohn hints at Lessing's sad state at the time. See below, p. 5 of the Spinoza
Letters.
154. Jacobi relates the trip in a letter to J. J. W. Heinse, 20-24 October 1780,
Briefwechsel, 1.2, #582, pp. 201-11.
sophical inspiration for the neo-Prometheus is now Spinoza because

he, much more than Leibniz, clearly perceived that Cartesian reason is
incompatible with the freedom of individual choice.
The intuitions that motivated Jacobi's fateful act were right after all.
The Enlightenment could not have it both ways. It could not replace the
personal God of the Christians with an impersonal reason that none the
less possesses all the power attributed by the believers to their Father in
Heaven—it could not substitute salvific action for cosmic process—and
yet safeguard the moral inalienability of the individual. Lessing's attempt
to do just this by interpreting social situations and historical events as
learning experiences could not in principle succeed because (as we have
since learned from Kierkegaard) it is committed by its very logic, on the
assumption of an anonymous rationality as the principle of all things, to
a vision of things sub specie aeternitatis in which the sheer accidentality of
individual events is finally revealed. Jacobi's merit is to have compre-
hended this limitation of Enlightenment reason. Yet to Lessing's request
for an alternative Jacobi could only respond by exhorting him to a salto
mortale, and later, in the course of the controversy that was to follow,
when he found himself accused of irrationalism, by making Lessing's ob-
servation at the time his own, namely that the leap would only bring him
back on his feet (i.e. back to reason).155 Eventually, in the final years of
his life, Jacobi ended up declaring that that very "faith" on the strength
of which he had then proposed the "leap" was a kind of intuitive reason;
he was thus to revert to a typical Enlightenment standpoint that was as
dated by then as the Enlightenment itself. In the conversation with
Jacobi, Lessing politely declined Jacobi's offer of the "leap" on the
grounds that the move was too much for his old limbs. Hamann was to
consider it a mere exercise in verbalism.
ii. Johann Georg Hamann, also known as the Magus of the North,156
is one of the more picturesque and endearing eighteenth-century
German figures. Born in 1730, the son of a wound-physician in
Konigsberg, he studied without ever graduating; became tutor in
Hofmeister in Kurland; was then sent to London by a Riga merchant
house on a business mission with strong political overtones; went morally
astray in London but rediscovered the Bible and found himself a born-
155. Spinoza Letters (1789 ed.), p. 353.

156. Justus Moser is responsible for the name. "Magus" refers to the Magi who saw the
star of Bethlehem and followed it to the newly born Jesus.
Introduction 61
again Christian; returned to his father's house in Konigsberg and spent

his time there privately studying every conceivable subject and enjoying
the company and the table of the likes of Kant; became a translator for
the French tax collectors employed in the bureaucracy of Frederick the
Great and eventually became a petty official himself; took his father's
maidservant to himself without marrying her, yet led with her and their
four children an exemplary Christian family life; ate as voraciously157 as
he read, and his health suffered from it; was the mentor and teacher of
Herder and a great influence on the young Goethe, but showed nothing
but antipathy for Hemsterhuis; corresponded with two dozen significant
and insignificant personalities (Jacobi, whom he dubbed "his dear
Jonathan," among the more significant ones); died on 18 May 1788
while on a trip to Munster that he had undertaken, after long prepara-
tions, to visit the Princess Gallitzin and also to see in person for the first
time his beloved Jonathan, with whom he however ended up having a
tempestuous encounter. He was buried in the garden of the princess's
house.158
Hamann did not write much, and what he wrote consists of occasional
pieces renowned for their eccentricities and obscurities. Yet they have
been universally acknowledged as a powerful source of inspiration
for the anti-rationalist movement that eventually overtook the En-
lightenment. One wonders, however, to what extent the influence
Hamann had on his contemporaries was due more to what they misun-
derstood about him than to what they actually understood. Hamann re-
sists any simple historical categorization. His statement in Aesthetica in
Nuce (1762) that poetry is the mother of reason has been hailed as para-
digmatic for the whole Sturm und Drang movement.159 Statements to
157. See Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. v 11, Letter # 1060, Hamann to Jacobi, 2 7 April-3 May
1787, where Hamann refers to his "Herculean appetite." The whole letter is interspersed
with references to eating.
158. For a study of the life and works of Hamann, see Josef Nadler, Johann Georg
Hamann, ijjo-ijSS: Der Zeuge des Corpus Mysticum (Salzburg: Muller, 1949). For an ear-
lier study, see Jean Blum, La Vie et I'oeuvre deJ.-G. Hamann (cited). For an exhaustive study
of his early life and his early relationship to Kant, see Angelo Pupi, Johann Georg Hamann
I: experimentum mundi, 1730-7759 (Milano: Universita del Sacro Cuore, 1988). For a sig-
nificant collection of critical essays covering all aspects of Hamann's work, see Johann Georg
Hamann: Ada des Internationales Hamann-Colloquiums in Luneburg 1976 (Frankfurt/Main:
Klostermann, 1979).
!59- "Poesy is the mother language of the human race. . . . The entire treasure of
human knowledge and happiness rests in images. "Johann Georg Hamann, Sdmtliche Werke,
ed. Josef Nadler (Wien: Thomas Moms, 1949-57), Vol. 2, p. 66.
the same effect can be found strewn throughout his words and letters.
Yet Hamann unequivocally disassociated himself from Herder's proto-
Romantic theory of the origin of reason from unconscious forces of
nature.160 Obviously he did not mean by poetry's being the mother of
reason the same as his younger contemporaries took him to mean.
Hamann's relation to Jacobi is also ambiguous. We know that
Hamann shared every bit of Jacobi's dislike for the Berlin Aufklarer, and
even nurtured an extra measure of animosity towards them because in
his mind they had become associated with the despotic French overseers
in his tax-collection bureau. He kept Jacobi informed of the goings-on
in Berlin through the pages of a thick correspondence, and in the pe-
riod leading up to the publication of the Spinoza Letters he at least gave
the impression of being in collusion with Jacobi in the attack that the lat-
ter was slowly mounting against Mendelssohn. Some of the vivid turns of
phrase that he used in his letters found their way into Jacobi's published
text. Actually, at that time Hamann was mounting an attack of his own
that led him even to accuse Mendelssohn openly of atheism—a charge
for which he subsequently felt guilty, especially in view of the ties of
friendship that had always bound him to the great Jewish Aufklarer.161
The attack had come in a short piece that Hamann entitled Golgotha
und Scheblimini (1784). It was directed specifically at Mendelssohn's
Jerusalem,l62 a work that had scandalized Hamann because of the theory
of "natural right" and the idea of "natural religion" that Mendelssohn
defended there. Hamann would have neither of them—the first because
it made for political despotism, the second because it was a mere figment
of the philosopher's mind. These, we must remember, had also been
themes of Jacobi's political essays only a few years before, and this cir-
cumstance certainly added to the quasi-conspiratorial bond that was
forged between the two men.
Yet Hamann opposed Jacobi in substantial matters at all points. He op-
posed him not only during the Mendelssohn affair but from the begin-
ning of their relationship and throughout it. He did so unequivocally, at
times even stridently—to the point even of complaining, in the after-
160. Nadler, Hamann, pp. soyff.

161. See letters to Jacobi, 10 January 1786, 15 January 1786, Hamann-Briefwechsel, , vi,
##917, 919, pp. 222, 227.
162. Jerusalem, oder uber religiose Macht und Judentum (Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and
Judaism', 1783).
Introduction 63
math of the publication of the Spinoza Letters, that Mendelssohn's treat-

ment of Spinoza made more sense to him than Jacobi's.l63
But perhaps understanding what separated Hamann from Jacobi
might also be the key to understanding how Hamann stood with respect
to his age. Jacobi's Woldemar had been the occasion of his entering into
correspondence with Jacobi,164 just as it had been for Lessing, though
by the time of Hamann's first personal contact with Jacobi, Lessing had
already died. Lessing seems to have liked the work much more than did
Hamann,165 who found its hero's ideal of autonomy "too supercilious
for [his] enfeebled nerve-system." "This lovely hero," he complained,
"seems to me to belong to the class of beings who would like to combine an
unlimited independence of raw nature with the delights of social life."lG& This
combination of extremes would of course have resolved the problem of
human happiness. But Hamann doubted that the combination was
really possible on Woldemar's terms, and in his usual cryptic style he
asked Jacobi: "Is [Woldemar's solution] a wall? or is it a door?"167 And
again, to Jacobi's description of the anguish that he experienced as he
delved into the depths of his hero's heart and discovered there, opening
up before him like an abyss, the limitations of human nature in which
whatever image of God there is in us is ultimately bound to be lost168—
to this Hamann replied, somewhat tongue in cheek, by reproving Jacobi
for his propensity to brooding.169 But then he also accused Jacobi of
being given to rationalism—for still making reason the main current
163. 15 February 1786, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #933, p. 271. See Letter #911,
28 December 1785, p. 202.
164. 12 August 1782, Briefwechsel 1.3, Letter #794, pp. 46-47.
165. Lessing to Jacobi, 18 May 1779, Briefwechsel 1.2, #510, p. 96.
166. Letter #794, p. 46. Hamann is referring to Jacobi's Vermischte Schriften, Part i
(Breslau: Korn, 1781), that contained under the new title of Der Kunstgarten, but with only
slight alterations otherwise, the text ofEin Stuck Philosophie des Lebens und der Menschheit: Aus
dem zweiten Bande von Woldemar, originally published in Deutsches Museum, i (1779). Also in-
cluded in the volume was a reproduction of Eduard Allwills Papiere, originally published in
Iris, iv. 3 (1775), and in Der Teutsche Merkur, x i v - x v i (1776). Volume i of Woldemar had
been originally published in Der Teutsche Merkur, x v n i - x x (1777), under the title of
Freundschaft und Liebe: Eine wahre Geschichte, von dem Herausgeber von Eduard Allwills Papieren,
and then reissued in somewhat altered form as Woldemar: Eine Seltenheit aus der
Naturgeschichte, Vol. I (Flensburg and Leipzig: in der Kortenschen Buchhandlung, 1779).
See below, Section in, p. 117, note.
167. Letter #794, p. 47.
168. 16 June 1783, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #908, p. 164.
169. 2 November 1783, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #963, p. 223.
from which our wisdom flows and relegating passions to a merely regu-
lative role (like banks containing a stream). 170 For Hamann true wis-
dom consisted in becoming like children again, and that could hardly be
achieved by means of clear and distinct ideas.
Jacobi had reasons for being puzzled. It was Hamann who insisted that
existence precedes any conceptual expressions of it and that the meta-
physicians were guilty of hiding it by substituting a play of empty inten-
tions. Hence Hamann stayed away from metaphysics, which he claimed
not to understand anyway, but preferred instead to look for the power
of reason in language—by which he meant the spoken word and not any
scholastic jargon.1*71 Hence, in opposition to Mendelssohn's contractual
theory of society, Hamann had argued that the beginning of society lies
in the power of saying "yea" and "nay," which makes us beholden to our
word and hence also capable of entering into contracts.1?2 Again it was
Hamann who said (referring to Lessing) that true religion consists in ac-
knowledging God, professing him, and praying to him, and nothing be-
sides; 173 and he who also said that "experience and revelation (Erfahrung
und Offenbarung)g) are one and the same."174
Yet Hamann objected to Jacobi's suggestion of a salto mortale to
Lessing. Hamann's point was that "to the Kingdom of God there belongs
no salto mortale"; on the contrary, so far as that kingdom is concerned,
"the first commandment is 'eat!', and the second, 'everything is accom-
plished!' "1?5 He found Jacobi's talk about "the I and the Thou," and the
objective evidence of the presence of an "other" that the "I" supposedly
brings with it, another form of metaphysical formalism, nothing short of
logomachy;176 and Jacobi's conflation in the David Hume of immediate
empirical evidence with religious faith he considered not only concep-
tually muddled but downright dishonest.177 Hamann repeatedly reacted
with irritation, almost peevishly, to Jacobi's claim that in order to dis-
cover God in us we must presuppose a special propensity for the divine
170. Letter, 2-22 November 1783, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #963, p. 224.

171. See Briefwechsel, 1.3, #963, p. 224; 14-15 November 1784, Briefwechsel, i. 3, #1091,
p. 386.
172. Golgotha und Scheblimini, Nadler, Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 3, p. 300.
173. 31 March 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #823, p. 405.
174. 14-15 November 1784, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1091, p. 388.
175. 1-5 December 1784, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1098, p. 399.
176. See 27 April-5 May 1787, Humann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vn, #1060, p. 166.
177. 27 April-5 May 1787, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vn, #1060, p. 167.
Introduction 65
in us, a special faculty.178 So far as Hamann was concerned, it seemed,

Jacobi could do nothing right. The more the latter strove to reflect in his
thought and writing Hamann's religiosity, his sense of the sacredness
and historicity of reason, the more Hamann rebuffed him.
To Jacobi himself, or, for that matter, to any external observer,
Hamann's behaviour might indeed have looked capricious. Yet there
was method in it. Jacobi and he were simply not operating at the same
intellectual level. What inspired Hamann's claims about the pre-
eminence of existence, or his realism in general, was a kind of orthodox
Christian religiosity to which Jacobi was blind. To Hamann's eyes God
was present everywhere in the world, not just as a law-giver or foundation
of existence in general but through his highly personalized acts of cre-
ation and redemption. Every fact of nature and every event of history as-
sumes, therefore, a double meaning. It stands for what it appears to be,
and for God's presence and God's action as well. Hence Hamann could
compare his own thinking to an exercise in the Cabbala. It is as if God's
being were strewn haphazardly, so to speak, across the world, and our
task were to piece it back together, just as the Cabbalists try to recon-
struct God's true name, deliberately disguised by him in the words of the
Torah, by endless mutations and permutations in the letters of the latter.
It is no surprise, therefore, that Hamann would show little patience
for Jacobi's assumption of a special faculty for the divine in us. The as-
sumption presupposed all the subjectivism of the philosophy of the day.
So far as Hamann was concerned, evidence for God's presence was to be
found everywhere, simply by looking at things outside us. To believe in
God and grow in his grace was no more exceptional or requiring of spe-
cial spiritual gymnastics than being born and dying. Thus it is no surprise
that Hamann's notion of faith did not concur with Jacobi's, or that
Hamann should have found Woldemar too "supercilious" for his nerves
or Jacobi's fastidiousness of feeling especially irritating. To Princess
Gallitzin, who was looking for spiritual perfection with a Jansenist-like
rigorism, Hamann was to say during his visit to Minister that this quest
is itself a form of pride, and that God is best found in the mundane ac-
tivities of eating and drinking and communing with one's friends, with
all the imperfections that these imply.' 79
178. 14-15 November 1784, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1091, p. 388. See Jacobi to Hamann,
18-22 October 1784, Briefwechsel, 1.3., #1084, p. 373.
179. Brachin, p. 166.
In a different culture and at a different time this attitude of Hamann

would have been recognized as a form of sacramentalism.18o This was an
attitude that his age was particularly unable to understand, let alone ap-
preciate, for, contrary to all that the Enlightenment stood for, it presup-
posed the belief that rationality is not a system (not even a historical one
as in Herder) but is a sense that grows out of individual situations,
adapting itself, so to speak, to the contingencies of the moment. In the
case of Jacobi there was an added impediment—widely shared by his
contemporaries—his quasi-Manichean attitude to sexuality or to any-
thing connected with the body, which made it even more difficult to
look for God in finite flesh. Jacobi, incidentally, did not particularly en-
courage Princess Gallitzin to get involved with Hamann. This reluctance
to share his friend proved to be premonitory, because, as is widely ac-
knowledged, it was Hamann's visit to the princess that provided the
catalyst required for her return to the church.181
Be that as it may, Jacobi's intention was still, like Hamann's, to con-
ceive of reason historically. That is the one theme that brings together
all aspects of his work—the political, literary, philosophical, religious, or
polemical. And the issue that still faces us is whether Jacobi ever really
succeeded in giving to it a coherent sense. At the height of the Spinoza
Dispute, Jacobi's first, Mendelssohn bitterly complained to Kant that the
Spinoza Letters was a strange monster that sported Goethe for head,
Spinoza for torso, and Lavater for feet. l8a Hamann, to whom Kant had
shown the letter in confidence,183 could not refrain from repeating the
bon mot to Jacobi, though in modified form and without attributing it to
Mendelssohn.l84 He left enough ambiguity in the way he used it that it
could conceivably be taken as expressing his own opinion.185 Could it
serve as a final statement on Jacobi's work?
180. This is Nadler's thesis in Hamann 1730—1788.

181. Brachin, pp. i62ff.
182. Letter of 16 October 1785, #248.
183. Hamann-Briefwechsel, letter to Jacobi of 5 November 1785, Vol. vi, #889, p. 119.
184. Ibid., pp. 119-20.
185. See his later letter to Jacobi of 30 November 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi,
#900, p. 159, a propos the image: "Your composition, dear Jonathan, is like my sleeping
pelt. . . . The beginning is historical, the middle metaphysical, and the end poetic at least
and betrays your weakness for dithyrambic writers."
II
Philosophical Arguments: An Essay

in Analysis^
The philosophers analyse, and argue, and explain: To what extent do we actually
experience that something exists outside us?
I must laugh at these people, among whom I too was once numbered.
I open my eye or my ear, or I stretch out my hand, and in that very instant I
feel the You and I; the I and You.
Were everything outside me cut away from me, I would sink in insensitivity, in
death. You, You give life. [. . .]
God, I abide with You and in You, separate and one, i I in You, and You in Me.
Were you without number, You would be without life, without love, without
power and name. [. . .]
Jacobi, Letter to an unknown, 16 October 17752
And just as Lavater required that we become one substance with the Christ, in
accordance with his example, so Jacobi asked that we make his way of thinking
our own, individualistic, deep, and hard to understand as it was.
Goethe, Daily and Yearly Note-Books, 17943
1. I am indebted to the following authors, even though I generally follow quite different
lines of thought and reach different conclusions: Gunther Baum, Vernunft undErkenntnis;
die Philosophic F. H. Jacobis (Bonn: Bouvier, 1969); Karl Homann, F. H. Jacobis Philosophic der
Freiheit (Miinchen Alber, 1973); Klaus Hammacher, Die Philosophic Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis
(Miinchen: Fink, 1969). I have also learned from the contributions to the excellent collec-
tion Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Philosoph und Literal der Goethezeit, ed. Klaus Hammacher
(Frankfurt/Main: Klosterman, 1971).
2. Briefwechsel, 1.2, #424, pp. 27-28.
3. Tags- und Jahreshefte, Samtliche Werke, Vol. xiv, p. 30.
/.Jacob! used the Prometheus poem as a means of luring Lessing into de-
claring his position vis-a-vis Spinoza.4 But how could that poem ever be
taken as a manifesto of Spinozism? This issue was raised as early as 1786,
in an anonymous review of the Spinoza Letters published in the Allgemeine
Literatur Zeitung. To the author, that Lessing should have thought of
those verses as "good, indeed very good," was itself a mystery (unless per-
haps Lessing had assumed thatjacobi was their author and was just being
courteous). But it was an even greater mystery that Lessing had found
Spinozism in them. "For to say," as the reviewer goes on to argue, "that
the Gods are wretched beings, that man saves himself, that he is his own
help, that the Gods do nothing but sleep and we need not revere them—
none of this yet amounts to agreeing with Spinoza."5 It could also have
been said that, in spirit at least, the Prometheus was not unlike the other
poem by Goethe thatjacobi had put at the head of his book,6 in this case
with Goethe's own name attached to it. 7 The only difference between
the two was that, whereas in the Prometheus the gods are rejected because
they stand in the way of a new humanity, in the other they are praised
because, being nothing but man writ large, they prefigure the true Man.
In believing in them, we thus believe in our own true self. Yet Jacobi had
chosen this poem as the visage with which his book was to face the world.
One can well appreciate the reviewer's puzzlement. Not only was
Spinoza not widely read or understood at the time, but Jacobi's under-
standing depended on a philosophical position that he was adumbrating
for the first time in the Spinoza Letters. Neither his position vis-a-vis
Spinoza nor his general philosophical assumptions were to be found
anywhere clearly spelled out. It is unlikely thatjacobi himself clearly saw
through those assumptions at the time. Nor could the 1786 reviewer
have known that Goethe was the author of the Prometheus, or that in
Jacobi's mind Goethe was naturally associated with Spinoza because of
the circumstances of Jacobi's first encounter with the poet. On that oc-
casion it had been the memory of Spinoza that had fuelled the passion-
ate friendship that suddenly sprang up between the two men.
4. For an account of how Goethe himself understood the poem, see his Dichtung und
Wahrheit, Part in, Book 15, Samtliche Werke, Vol. xvi, pp. 68iff.
5. Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, i (1786): 292-96; see column 293.
6. I.e., only in the first edition.
7. For the poems, and their connection with the text of the first edition of the Spinoza
note
Letters, see below, pp. 175-77, note 4' PP- 185-86.
Introduction 69
In retrospect, now that we can fill in many of these details, the associ-
ation of the Prometheus with Spinoza makes more sense. We can at least
understand how it might have appeared obvious to Jacobi. On the one
hand, his pietistic religiosity demanded a personal God. On the other,
at a conceptual level Jacobi was under several further constraints. He
was unable to disassociate "personality" from "consciousness." Con-
sciousness required, in turn, the real distinction between at least two
terms, a subject and an object—ultimately, between two subjects who
recognized one another to be "subjects." So far as Jacobi was concerned,
however, a real distinction had to be one between actual existents, and
existence entailed radical individualization. A person, in other words,
had to be numerically distinct from all others.8 Individualization was
also required (again, so far as Jacobi was concerned) to satisfy another
indispensable condition of personality. And that was responsibility of
action, or the possibility, in any given situation, of connecting an action
with an individual subject as its absolute initiator. Personality implied in-
dividual and irreducible freedom of action.
The God whom Jacobi the believer worshipped had to be, in other
words, a "person" in the common understanding of that word. Jacobi
recognized that it was difficult, indeed impossible, to explain how this
understanding could extend to an infinite God. But the main thrust of
his criticism of the philosophers was precisely that their concepts were
not suited to deal with God. For that one needed faith, and whenever
one tried to philosophize where one ought to believe instead, the result
was the creation of a false image of God. Spinoza's philosophy was a case
in point. His "substance" could not be a recognizable individual since it
had no counterpart before which it could utter "I" in a meaningful
sense. It had neither consciousness nor individual freedom—no person-
ality, in other words, as Spinoza himself clearly admitted. And since by
its very presence it tended to dissolve whatever distinction was intro-
duced within it, neither did it allow for personality to subsist within it
as a limited reality. In a Spinozistically conceived universe, individual
freedom and individual consciousness—the necessary conditions of
personality—had to be mere phenomena due to a limited, and ulti-
mately false, view of things.
"Personality," in other words, its meaning and its denial in metaphys-
ical systems, was the issue that Jacobi wanted to raise by pushing the
8. See David Hume, p. 202.

philosophy of Spinoza to centre stage. Goethe's Prometheus (Jacobi's

personal reasons for calling it into play apart) served as a natural staging-
point for his strategy because in that poem Goethe subjugated man to
impersonal Fate and, to this extent at least, accepted Spinoza's monistic
view, which, in Jacobi's mind, ended up denying human freedom and
personality. Once this piece of Jacobi's strategy is seen, one can also de-
tect, as the 1786 reviewer was unable to do, two clues—one purely typo-
graphical, the other contextual—thatjacobi himself so carefully laid out
for his readers, to direct them to his special point of view.
The first is Jacobi's handling of Goethe's poem, with which he had
prefaced his work. In its printed text he was careful to emphasize in bold-
face on his own initiative certain key words, thereby lifting them out of
context and, by this purely mechanical means, conveying the message
dear to his heart that in the deeds of Goethe's gods we have an intima-
tion of man's transcendence over nature. For brute nature is without
feelings or discernment, whereas man can judge, draw distinctions, and
dare the impossible, and it is this ability that we see, writ large, in
Goethe's gods. This was Jacobi's message, not Goethe's, and one may
well object to this kind of opportunistic interpretation. Yet at a purely
rhetorical level the device worked because, as so edited byjacobi, the
poem stood in conceptual opposition to the Prometheus, and the result-
ing contrast served to highlight precisely what Jacobi found so objection-
able in the latter. For the Prometheus suggested that, though endowed
with superhuman emotions and superhuman discernment, the gods no
less than men are subject to the blind "almighty time" that rules over all.
But in a world thus governed by "eternal fate," mortals have one quality
that puts them at an advantage over the gods, and that is their ability to
capitalize on their very finitude in order to rebel against the order of
things and thereby to retain their dignity. This is not to say that mortals
can ultimately escape, any more than can the gods, the rule of Fate. But
the point is that mortals, as typified by Prometheus, can rejoice in their
very sufferings. They can go on acting and rejoice in their actions, in full
knowledge that all their efforts will eventually be swept away by anony-
mous time, and by this defiant agency they manage to uphold their in-
dividuality in the face of Fate. For Goethe this was enough to maintain
man's claim to personality. But it was not for the believer Jacobi, who
looked for a much more positive relationship of man to God and the
universe and to whom, therefore, this Promethean playing at being free
while knowing all along that the language of freedom is only a game
appeared to be merely nihilistic nonsense.
Introduction 7l
The second clue that Jacob! used to direct his readers to the issue of
personality was his reference to §73 of Lessing's Education of Mankind.9
In this paragraph Lessing uses the traditional Christian doctrine of the
Trinity as an illustration of the thesis, which he has been developing
throughout the essay, that many doctrines found in the Old and New
Testaments convey deep philosophical truths, but under a pictorial guise
more suited to an earlier stage in the development of man's mind.
Lessing's point is that God's unity cannot have the same meaning as the
unity of any finite thing, for God could not know himself without a com-
plete representation of himself, but in order to be true to its prototype
this representation must render God present once more as necessarily ac-
tual, i.e. according to the fullness of his existence. It follows, therefore,
that God's knowledge of himself constitutes a true doubling of his exis-
tence, and according to Lessing there is no better way of expressing this
philosophical truth in popular form than by invoking the picture of a
Son of God generated by God from all eternity.
Now, why is it that Jacobi should have singled out this paragraph of
Lessing's essay as being for him particularly obscure prior to his discov-
ery of Lessing's alleged Spinozism?10 What is especially Spinozistic for
Jacobi in §73 of the Education of Mankind? Jacobi himself hints in his text
that there is more at issue in the paragraph than the unity of God's
being. For the moment one introduces the idea of a doubling of God's
being, by virtue of which all the properties of his essence come to exist
"twice over," his identity or personality also becomes problematic. How
can the two terms in this doubling of God be kept numerically distinct?
Given Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles, to which
Jacobi explicitly refers, one would have to say that they are only relatively
distinct—that, although the distinction posited between them expresses
something true about God's being, it does so only from our finite stand-
point. Or, in other words, the distinction itself, and the terms dependent
on it, are at best phenomena bene fundata. But that is all that Spinoza's
modes are, even the necessary ones; and that is all that God's personality
would have to be on Lessing's interpretation of the traditional doctrine
of the Trinity.11 Jacobi required, by contrast, irreducible numerical
identity.
9. See below, Spinoza letters, p. 4 of Jacobi's text.

10. Ibid.
11. According to orthodox doctrine, the three Persons, although one in substance, are
truly distinct per se, and not just from a finite point of view.
According tojacobi's report of his conversation with Lessing, the lat-

ter had discussed with Mendelssohn that aspect of §73 that had also
struckJacobi—i.e., presumably, its Spinozistic implications—but the dis-
cussion had never reached a conclusion.12 Apart from the desire to
sound as historically objective as possible, Jacobi's motive for bringing
the point up could only be to show that Mendelssohn was not, after all,
as privy to Lessing's mind as Mendelssohn himself and the Berliner phi-
losophers in general had assumed.13
"Pantheism" can mean many things, and Jacobi has often been re-
proached (by Mendelssohn first of all) for having mistakenly identified
it with "atheism." From the beginning, however, Jacobi had given clear
signals that, on his definition of the casus controversies, the whole point of
bringing up the issue of Lessing's Spinozism was to argue that neither
Spinozism, nor, for that matter, any metaphysical system was in a posi-
tion to express conceptually the possibility of true individuation and
hence (in Jacobi's concatenation of ideas) true personality. The real
issue was not whether, in some sense or other, a true distinction could
still be maintained within a Spinozistic universe between God and finite
existence but whether, in any such distinction, the terms thereby being
distinguished could still stand with respect to one another in the relation
of one true individual (and possibly a person) to another. Jacobi's claim
was that they could not—that Spinoza's God was not an individual and
therefore not a genuine person. But since it was part of Jacobi's religios-
ity to expect that God be a person,14 it followed that Spinozism and all
12. Ibid., p. 3.
13. At the time of the publication of Mendelssohn's Philosophical Dialogues, Lessing had
objected to Mendelssohn for positing a created world over and above Spinoza's universe
of attributes and modes. In those Dialogues Mendelssohn had tried to save Spinoza from the
charge of pantheism by interpreting his doctrine about God's attributes and modes as re-
ferring to God's knowledge of himself before creation, as if all that Spinoza says about the
universe applied in fact to God's representation of himself. Jacobi could not have been
aware of Lessing's objection. If he had, he could have used it as further evidence for his
claim that Lessing was at heart a Spinozist, for Lessing's point had been that God's repre-
sentation of himself in the universe already constitutes creation. On this argument it fol-
lows that the procession of the Son from the Father as interpreted by Lessing in his §73 is
exactly what Jacobi took it to be, i.e. a metaphor for the Spinozistic relationship of natura
naturans to natura naturata. See Rilla, pp. 367—68.
14. See letter to Hamann, 11 January 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. v, #797, p. 321:
"I'll have none of a being without consciousness, without personality. I would rather be the
neediest among the natura naturatce than a Spinozist natura naturans, which, if we care to
play with words, we can call the most perfect form of love since it is all things only in some-
thing else: a nothing yet all!"
Introduction 73
traditional metaphysics as well were in fact forms of atheism. One can of

course reject Jacobi's religiosity. Since Jacobi, however, had subjectively
sufficient reasons for holding on to it that cannot be objectively dis-
puted, on his statement of the terms of the controversy the inference was
both logically incontrovertible and sound.
Yet it must be stressed that if one rejected Jacobi's religiosity—if one
believed, contrary to Jacobi, that happiness and salvation consist in
freeing oneself of the mirage of individual identity and individual
freedom—Jacobi's polemic would have lost its motivating force.
Spinoza, for one, would have failed to appreciate its value. Nor would
Spinoza have reacted any more positively to Goethe's Prometheus, for
there too, however Spinozistic in inspiration the poem might have been,
the implicit moral assumption was that individual identity has value per
se and hence must be upheld at all cost, even at the price of futile defi-
ance. This—that personalism based on individuality is a moral goal in
itself—is precisely the premise that Spinoza would have denied but that
Goethe and Jacobi equally took for granted. The two were much closer
to each other than either was to Spinoza. Jacobi's polemic was more of
a lover's quarrel with Goethe than a dispute with Spinoza. This is the
deep sense in which the Prometheus presided over the Spinoza-Letters.1 ^
2. Jacobi's treatment of Spinoza in his correspondence with

Mendelssohn and in the consequent "little book"l6 is hardly methodical,
and one cannot blame Mendelssohn for having at one point mistakenly
assumed that Jacobi belonged to the party of the Spinozists.17 Yet in
15. It also presided over the attempt to reconcile Jacobi's language of the "I" with a mo-
nistic metaphysics that constituted the first phase of post-Kantian Idealism (the Fichtean
phase). Holderlin (who, incidentally, had first come in contact with Spinoza through
Jacobi's Spinoza Letters) inaugurated the second phase by rejecting Fichte's idealism and,
by implication, Goethe's Promethean view of the human situation on which Fichte's ideal-
ism was based. Holderlin marked a return to a more genuinely Spinozistic standpoint. I
owe this insight to Margarethe Wegenast, Holderlins Spinoza-Rezeption und ihre Bedeutungfur
die Konzeption des "Hyperion" (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1990).
16. Das Spinoza Buchlein is the title that Claudius gave to it and which stuck. See
Hamann's letter to Jacobi, 5 November 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, vi, #889, p. 119.
17. This is at least the impression that Mendelssohn conveys in his memorandum
to Jacobi of i August 1784. See especially Spinoza letters (1789), p. 80 ("Your view is
that. . . ."); p. 89 ("In my opinion the source of these illusory concepts . . . ."). Jacobi was
especially keen to set the record straight on this point. See Spinoza Letters (1785), p. 177.
We gather from Wizenmann that Jacobi was given to citing Spinoza as a philosophical
authority. See Goltz, Vol. i, pp. 3oiff.
spite of the confusing presentation, Jacobi there evinces a sophisticated

understanding of the philosophy that he was criticizing.18 He had
understood—as neither Bayle nor Wolff had—that Spinoza had finally
made explicit the ultimate logical consequences of the principle on
which Western metaphysics had been based from the beginning, namely
that gigni de nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil potest reverti.19 In brief, these were
the consequences according to Jacobi.
First, it follows from the principle (again, according to Jacobi) that, as
regards the dynamics of the universe, there cannot be any absolute be-
ginning or absolute cessation of any action or determination of being.
For to be absolute and not merely apparent, any such transition would
have to be preceded (or followed) by a state at which the action or de-
termination was not (or shall rn^be), i.e. by an element of nothingness,
and this contradicts the principle. A parallel conclusion can be drawn
with respect to the structure of the universe. Absolute determination is
not possible, for determination implies exclusion, the negation of one
thing by another, and this too would contravene the principle that being
cannot be qualified by nothingness. It also follows, therefore, that sub-
stance, or unqualified being, can only be a blind stirring of efficient cau-
sality with no inherent formal or final determinations, for any such limits
would imply nothingness and, therefore, only qualified existence.
Second, it does not follow that one therefore cannot attribute proper-
ties to substance nor, for that matter, grant the existence of determinate,
i.e. finite, beings. But properties must be simply attributed or imputed
to substance with reference to the structure of our consciousness of
reality—i.e. inasmuch as we must conceptualize substance precisely as
the ground of all reality, our consciousness included. And since the dis-
tinction between subject and object is of the essence of consciousness,
we must think of substance as having both infinite extension and infinite
thought; the attributes of "thought" and "extension" thus simply express
substance as constituting the ground of the possibility of our conscious-
ness of an objectively determined world. However, we do not thereby
imply that substance itself is to be identified with any individual ex-
tended thing or any individual mind. So also with respect to finite
existents—the so-called modes or modifications of substance. These too
18. I am basing the following exposition of Jacobi's understanding of Spinoza on his sev-
eral statements of Spinozism in both the 1785 and the 1789 editions of the Spinoza Letters,
as included in this volume.
19. Nothing is generated from nothing; nothing can revert into nothing.
Introduction 75
must be referred in toto to substance as the ground of their reality in gen-

eral, without, however, thereby implying that substance is the direct
cause of the particular determinations that individualize them. The par-
ticular determination of each is explained, rather, with reference to the
equally particular determination of some other individual mode—the
regression or progression from mode to mode extending ad infinitum.20
It is essential that this chain of explanation be thus infinitely extended
because, should the chain ever reach a final point in either direction, it
would follow that at that point we would have found within substance it-
self the explanation for the existence of a certain particular set of modes
(i.e. a certain finite world) as contrasted with some other. But this would
amount to determining absolute substance, or to absolutizing determi-
nation, two possibilities that are both denied to us ex hypothesi. Of course,
once substance and its infinite attributes (which Spinoza, according to
Jacobi, considered to be infinite in number as well as in kind) 21 are
posited on the one hand, and the infinity of finite modes on the other,
one can posit a hierarchy of sets of finite modes with reference either to
thought or to extension. Some of these sets will have a relatively more
and some a relatively less definite number of members than others, and
they will carry degrees of necessity accordingly. We can thus think of an
Infinite Understanding, or an Infinite Will, or of natura naturans (the
creator Father, according to Jacobi) and natura naturata (the created
Son), all of which, though finite with respect to substance and depen-
dent on it, are however considered by Spinoza infinite in the sense that
they contain all other modes. Yet their determination and their necessity
are functions of the role that such "infinite" modes play in our concep-
tion of the universe. They define conditions of the possibility of intelli-
gibility, in other words, whether on the side of thought or on the side of
extension. In no way can they be taken to signify acts or actual states of
being, let alone actual determinations of substance as such.
Third, it follows that, whether in principle, with reference to sub-
stance, or in particular concrete cases, with reference to the mode that
exercises localized control over the relevant portion of the world, every-
thing can be explained in Spinoza's universe—everything, that is, except
the fact that there are finite modes in the first place, or, since rationality
20. On this point, see also Wizenmann's testimony, Goltz, Vol. I, p. 301.
21. Jacobi thought that Spinoza had a problem on this score. See the comment added
to p. 140 of the 1785 edition of the Spinoza Letters (pp. igoff. of the 1789 ed., as included
below).
is itself a function of distinctions that imply finitude, everything except

rationality itself. This surd is what the system predicts rather than an em-
barrassment for it. It points to the absurdity of the task that opponents
would wish to impose upon the system, namely to retrieve in rational
terms, i.e. from within the system itself, the grounds of rationality that
ex hypothesii lie outside it. So far as Spinoza is concerned, the only way to
deal with the surd is to move beyond the process of ratiocination
through a process of intellectual ascesis that allows the mind to escape
from the determination of space, time, and logic and see things all at
once sub specie ceternitatis.
Accordingly, insight, not conceptualization, was for Spinoza "the best
part in all finite natures."22 Jacobi did not dispute this point. On the con-
trary, Spinoza's recognition that truth is ultimately its own immediate
witness especially endeared the Benedictus (the Blessed One) to him. 23
But granted Spinoza's conceptual system, the substance that one was to
behold immediately at the end of spatio-temporal distinctions and at the
limit of ratiocination evoked in Jacobi's mind the picture of a sheer
outburst of self-creating energy that does not aim, itself, at anything
in particular and in relation to which, therefore, the finite modes are
superfluous by-products, so to speak. Jacobi instinctively recoiled at this
vision because it meant the obliteration of individuality. Were Spinoza's
substance to be conscious of its effects (as in fact it cannot, since con-
sciousness requires distance between subject and object and hence lim-
itation), or were it in any way interested in them, it would find their
presence surprising—a "brute fact" that strictly speaking ought not to
be, since it adds nothing to its infinite energy, and that therefore must
ultimately be denied. This, so far as Jacobi was concerned, was the up-
shot of Spinozism. And Jacobi found it all the more frightening because
of the political implications that he saw in it, namely that all rational and
social relationships are epiphenomena of what is in fact only a play of
competing forces all blindly spewing forth from the same undifferenti-
ated source.
There was one final consequence of the principle on which Spinoza's
system was based, an ethical consequence that brought this implication
home to Jacobi in an especially significant way. As Jacobi understood
Spinoza, in a Spinozistic world the term "I" can no longer be used in any
recognizable sense. We are back to the issue of individuation as a neces-
22. Spinoza Letters (1785), p. 20.

23. Ibid., p. 29.
Introduction 77
sary condition of personality, or of the possibility of identifying a truly

autonomous and hence responsible source of action. The problem is
that there cannot be individuation without genuine determination, i.e.
without an individual standing in a significant relation to another indi-
vidual through determinations that establish each on its own and apart
from the other. But Spinoza's substance does not meet these conditions
because, though a One, it is an all-encompassing One; and hence,
though the source of activity in general, it cannot be directly connected
to any single act in particular. The finite modes fail the test too, though
this time not because they do not stand in relation to one another but
because their mutual relations are so far extended that whatever deter-
mination they entail is never complete. The individuality of the modes,
in other words, can only be a passing phenomenon. It follows that, on
Spinoza's principles, there is no strict determination and, since actuality
entails determination, no "act" in a strict sense of the word either.
Nobody, according to Jacobi, has the right in a Spinozistic world to say
unequivocally, "I act." One would rather have to say, "There is an anon-
ymous action taking place of which I appear—but only appear—to be the
subject." Or, as Jacobi liked to say, in that world would-be subjects of
action can in fact only observe themselves going through certain motions
(which we mistakenly call "action") as if they were things external to
themselves. And of course, upon being asked whether they are at least
responsible for the operation of observing, they would have to reply that
they are in fact only observing themselves observing; and if the question
is repeated, that they observe themselves observing an observation, and
so on ad infinitum. So far as Jacobi was concerned, Spinoza had subverted
the very language of the "l."24
3. Jacobi's brief against Spinoza thus came down to the objection that
Spinoza had undermined the possibility of freedom understood not just
as spontaneity—a sense perfectly consistent with the picture of a uni-
verse of forces blindly seeking to discharge themselves—but as the
source of individual responsibility. The brief extended to the whole of
traditional metaphysics as well. Part of Jacobi's veneration of Spinoza was
directed precisely towards Spinoza's consistency in carrying his princi-
ples, which also constituted the premises of any kind of metaphysics, to
their logical conclusion. Leibniz's doctrine concerning freedom did not
differ in principle from Spinoza's, according to Jacobi. And it could also
24. See ibid., pp. i8ff., 99-104.

be argued that, despite all the vincula supposedly binding them together
internally, how Leibniz's monads stand apart from God or, for that mat-
ter, from one another, is difficult to understand. Jacobi felt justified in
saying that in Leibniz's world of monads he still could not tell "left from
right."25
But Jacobi's attitude towards Spinoza was a complex one—ultimately
not as negative as it might appear at first. His attack was directed at
Spinoza's system only to the extent that the latter shared the assump-
tions and the methodology of rationalistic metaphysics. There was an-
other aspect to the system, however, of which Jacobi was well aware and
which, as we must now see, he even shared. When, in his conversation
with Lessing, Jacobi came to defend his own position, he turned for help
to none other than Spinoza himself. To recognize this positive side of
Jacobi's relationship to Spinoza, however, we must first consider what, in
his mind, was the fundamental cause of reason's tendency to destroy it-
self. For Jacobi had come to Lessing with more than just a brief against
Spinoza and metaphysics in general. He also had a diagnosis of what he
saw as the intellectual sickness affecting them.
According to Jacobi, the problem was that by its very nature explana-
tion requires that whatever is to be explained be reduced to something
else already known, which thereby provides the sought-for explanation.
Explaining is essentially a reflective process. It is a synthesis of the rep-
resentations of things known carried out on the basis of what is common
to them, according to the general formula idem per idem.2& Now Spinoza,
driven by the common metaphysician's need to explain everything, had
ended up inverting the natural order of knowledge by substituting the
requirements of reflection for the requirements of existence. Instead of
limiting conceptualization to the representation of actual existence, he
had taken as the criterion of true being the capacity on the part of its
representation to provide the basis for as comprehensive a synthesis of
other representations as possible. As a result, he had elevated to the level
of first principle of explanation, and of existence as well, an inadequate
concept of substance. This concept was the product of an abstractive re-
flection upon the content of the representations of individual actual
beings and had no meaning except with reference to the latter.
According to Jacobi, since it was impossible to retrieve the determina-
tions of a real world out of an empty abstraction, as Spinoza's logicism
25. Ibid., pp. 2gff.

26. The same through the same. See ibid., p. 32.
Introduction 79
required, Spinoza found himself in the absurd position of having to treat

as an inescapable surd of his system what by any standard of common
sense constitutes the real, i.e. the very presence of a world of finite
individuals.27
Jacobi's attack on rationalistic metaphysics as typified in Spinoza's sys-
tem thus focused on the "irrationalism" that that metaphysics in fact
bred. Jacobi was therefore understandably surprised when, in the wake
of the publication of the Spinoza Letters, he found himself accused of ir-
rationalism because of the salto mortale that he had proposed to Lessing
as a way out of the impasse posed to human freedom by Spinoza's sys-
tem.28 As he eventually was to say in his own defence, the proposal had
to be understood in context. His conversation with Lessing had been
about all those individuals (i.e. the metaphysicians) who, since they con-
fused conditions of existence with conditions of explanation, were al-
ready as good as walking on their heads. To ask of these people to jump
down head first was tantamount to asking them to fall back upon their
feet, where they would rejoin upright common sense.29
But Jacobi had more than common sense to appeal to in the presence
of Lessing in his critique of rationalism. He also had Spinoza's authority.
Here is where the positive aspect of his relationship to the very man he
most criticized begins to show. Jacobi himself had no reticence signal-
ling it to Lessing. "I love Spinoza," he said to him, "because he, more
than any other philosopher, has led me to the perfect conviction that
certain things admit of no explication: one must not therefore keep
one's eyes shut to them, but must take them as one finds them."30
Despite Spinoza's predilection for expressing his insights in reflective
form more geometrico, Spinoza still considered insight itself the basic vehi-
cle of truth: the knower was immediately related to the known at the mo-
ment of knowledge. This is the very point that Jacobi wanted to make
against the rationalists. Paradoxically, therefore, in rejecting Spinoza's
metaphysics he could equally think that he was thereby turning "towards
27. This point is made explicit in Supplement vii of the second edition of the Spinoza
letters. It is also clear from this text that, granted Jacobi's conception of "reason" at the
time, apprehension of God must be intuitive for him, just as it is for the Spinoza whom he
is criticizing. But Spinoza's contemplative knowledge escapes space and time, whereas
Jacobi's must be rooted in it. Jacobi's intuition is a historical event, and for this reason the
title of "faith" that Jacobi gives to it is not altogether inappropriate.
29. See Spinoza Letters (1789), p. 353 (included in this volume).
8o The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
the light," as he declared to Lessing, "of which Spinoza says that it illu-
mines itself and the darkness as well." In a footnote to this passage intro-
duced in the published report of the conversation, Jacobi went on to cite
Spinoza: "Truth is the index of itself and of what is false."31 The subjec-
tive state of mind corresponding to this self-revelatory character of truth
is immediate and infallible certainty, and Spinoza's whole system re-
quires and implies the possibility of such states. But this was precisely the
certainty that Jacobi had in mind when, in his diatribe against
Mendelssohn, he opposed faith (i.e. immediate knowledge, subjective
certainty) to the derived or "second-hand"32 knowledge of reason.
Jacobi himself acknowledged this much—witness the letter that he sent
to Herder on 2 September 1785, accompanying a copy of the just pub-
lished Spinoza Letters. "The definition of certainty," Jacobi wrote, "is trans-
lated from [Spinoza] verbatim, and the whole first paragraph almost
verbatim; he just does not use the word 'faith,' which I, for my part, only
use because, as I go on to explain explicitly, it is common practice to call
any acceptance of a truth [Fiirwahrhalten] not inferred from principles
faith."33
But Jacobi had chosen that term for another reason that again con-
nects him back to Spinoza. "Faith" denotes an element of passive recep-
tivity before the accepted truth—also implicit in Spinoza's metaphor of
vision—that suited Jacobi's religious as well as conceptual needs. Faith
and revelation are correlative terms that presuppose immanence as
much as transcendence in the relationship of subject to object. The com-
pelling authority that a revealed truth has, leaving its receiver no choice
but to accept it immediately, is due precisely to its self-presentation to
the receiver as something transcendent. The receiver has no power to as-
sert control over it. The receiver's acceptance of this transcendent truth
is faith. But faith equally presupposes that the receiver interiorizes that
transcendent truth—and thereby renders it immanent—so totally that
his very identity is defined in accepting it. The essence of any faith lies
precisely in this willingness to stake one's whole existence on the accept-
ance of a revealed truth. But then again (here we return to the moment
31. For the reference to Spinoza, see Jacobi's text.

33. Auserlesener Briefwechsel, Vol. i, #142, p. 390. The intended passage in the Spinoza
letters is likely on pp. 162-63 of the first edition. See Spinoza's Treatise on the Emendation
of the Intellect, tr. E. Curley (Princeton: University Press, 1985), Vol. i, pp. 18.5-21
(Gebhardt, 11.15). Timm's thesis is that Jacobi's use of "faith" derives from Spinoza, and
has little, if anything, to do with Hume's "belief." Gott und die Freiheit, p. 217.
Introduction 81
of transcendence), in thus defining his self in terms of the accepted

truth, the receiver equally sets that self apart from it because he thereby
defines the limits of his being. The result is two individuals (a subject
and its object) who are significantly related to one another precisely be-
cause of the distance that separates them. This is the very relationship
that Jacobi enshrined in the saying that there is no "I" except with ref-
erence to a transcendent "Thou." The "Thou" stands first and foremost
for God, whose immanence yet transcendence with respect to every cre-
ated subject serves to individualize the latter radically. But once thus in-
dividualized, a created "I" is in a position to meet another equally
created and individualized "I," and the two can then enter into a gen-
uine relationship because, being irreducibly limited, they can truly face
one another as real individuals.
Of course, to the classical metaphysician this position would appear
paradoxical—even scandalous, for it implies that God himself would
have to be somehow individualized, hence in some sense finite, precisely
in order to play his role as absolute Thou. And how can the infinite God
be finite?34 But here is where Jacobi would refuse to be drawn into ar-
gument, for any paradox arises only on the assumption of the philoso-
phers' "infinite," which eschews determination and individuality by
definition. So far as Jacobi is concerned, he only needs to identify the
conditions that make for genuine personal relations. And if, to be true
to these conditions, one must use with respect to God the language of
metaphor—which portrays him both as almighty yet as someone who
loves and hates like us—then metaphor will have to take precedence
over concept. Through conceptualization we cannot penetrate to God's
being anyway; why should we then dismiss the witness of universal com-
mon language?
Faith and revelation thus were for Jacobi the conceptual vehicles for
conveying his vision of a world made up of individuals radically distinct
yet significantly related. Yet Jacobi made this vision dependent on an im-
mediate relationship to truth such as Spinoza too claimed to have. To re-
fute Spinoza's system he was appealing to the very kind of certainty that
he endorsed. To return to the passage already cited, "I love Spinoza,"
Jacobi had said to Lessing, "because he, more than any other philoso-
34. Herder had indirectly pointed out this difficulty to Jacobi while defending his own
Spinozism. 'You want God in human shape, as a friend who thinks of you," he wrote to
Jacobi. "Consider that He then must also think of you humanly, i.e. in a limited way, and,
if he is a partisan on your side, he must be against others." Briefwechsel, 1.3, Letter #1102,
20 December 1784, p. 406.
pher, has led me to the perfect conviction that certain things admit of
no explication." And then he had continued, "I have no concept more
intimate than that of the final cause; no conviction more vital than that
/ do what I think, and not, that I should think what I do." Given that Jacobi
also shared with Spinoza a vitalist vision of existence that made of each
form of life a striving for self-preservation, it is no surprise, therefore,
that the readers of the Spinoza Letters should have found Jacobi's message
puzzling. Mendelssohn among them had more than just the historical
style of the book (which was, incidentally, the only feature of Jacobi's
work that Goethe approved of) 35 to excuse him for assuming at first that
Jacobi was a Spinozist. And Mendelssohn's confusion and discomfort at
Jacobi's message was further heightened by the fact that, to the extent
that Jacobi tried in his text to articulate his positive vision of reality as
based on faith, he appealed quite indiscriminately to every anti-
rationalistic tendency of his age without ever drawing them into a coher-
ent picture. His words suggested variously that reason derived its validity
from proper feelings, uprightness of character, right action, social tradi-
tion, sacred history, or from education. Whatever Jacobi took to be the
theme common to these claims was never made clear. And Jacobi cited
from his authorities just as indiscriminately—from classical authors as
well as from the Bible, from Hamann as well as Herder, from Claudius
as well as Voltaire, Goethe as well as Lavater—his whole discourse
infused with a tone of pious self-righteousness that fully deserved
the charge of Schwdrmerei. Faced by the rhetoric of Jacobi's text,
Mendelssohn had every right to suspect himself the target of an assault
mounted by the Christians.36
In the general confusion, the fundamental weakness in Jacobi's con-
frontation with Spinoza went unnoticed. Jacobi was relying on immedi-
ate intuition for the fundamental criterion of the truth that he saw. Yet
Spinoza, as Jacobi recognized, had operated on the strength of a convic-
tion just as vital. He had been motivated by a vision of the truth just as
immediate and compelling as Jacobi's seemed to him, yet had been led
to a totally different conceptualization of the world and its relation to
God. It was well and good for Jacobi to reject the conceptualization and
even to offer a historico-psychological account of how one might be way-
35. Goethe-Briefwechsel, #35, 11 September 1785, pp. 87-88.

36. See the report that reached Jacobi of what Mendelssohn had said about him: "He
[Mendelssohn] could not see any other purpose [in Jacobi's book] except his [Jacobi's]
wish to convert him, just as he [Jacobi] perhaps also wanted to convert Lessing." Letter to
Hamann of 23 December 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #909, p. 193.
Introduction 83
laid into it. The fact remains that, short of engaging in a contest of com-
peting prophecies, the import of any presumed insight can only be
measured and tested in terms of how one translates it into some reflec-
tively articulated, intersubjectively available vision of reality. Spinoza's
merit was that he had, after all, defined more geometrico the implications
of his allegedly ineffable insight into the truth, and in this he had at least
held himself up to refutation. Butjacobi's insight apparently precluded
the possibility of its being expressed in any methodical form. And how
was one to have a reasoned argument with him? It is no wonder that his
salto mortale provoked charges of irrationality from his contemporaries.
In all fairness to Jacobi it must be said that hidden in the general ver-
bosity of the Spinoza Letters there were seeds of a definite and original po-
sition. But this position, though implicitly the object of much reflection
in the literature of the day, was one for which Jacobi's age and Jacobi
himself were singularly unequipped in language and concepts. At issue
was the problem that Lessing had dramatized only a few years before, at
the time of his polemic against Pastor Goeze, with his striking image of
a "broad ugly ditch" separating the contingent truths of history from the
necessary ones of reason.37 It was Leibniz's original problem of connect-
ing universal truths of reason with contingent facts of history without
sacrificing either the concreteness of history to the abstractions of
metaphysics or the universality of truth to the relativism of space and
time. Jacobi had played on that image of Lessing when he recommended
his salto mortale to him. Metaphors and rhetoric apart, however, Jacobi
was making the point that, to resolve the problem, rationality could not
be based on metaphysical abstractions but had to be defined—though
Jacobi did not spell out how—in terms of relations between actual indi-
viduals. Theory of rationality and theory of human individuality had to
be inextricably bound together.
This was an extremely important philosophical point to make. And if
Jacobi had himself seen it and stated it clearly and distinctly, he would
have indeed cut himself loose, once and for all, from the prejudices of
classical metaphysics. He would have succeeded at least in making expli-
cit the parameters of what we might call (for lack of a better name) a
theory of "historical reason." Any such theory would not be concerned
with reason as presiding (so to speak) over the creation of the physical
universe, either as a system of laws that govern every detail of existence
without regard to individuality or (in the way the philosophers of the
37. In Uber den Beweis des Geistes und der Kraft (1777), Samtliche Werke, Vol. xin, p. 7.
Enlightenment had tried to invest the universe of Newtonian physics

with finality) as a system of ends that God conceived at creation and re-
alized (also without regard to individuality) through the general laws of
physics. Its concern, rather, would be with rationality as it emerges
through human actions—within relations between human individuals
and (as Jacobi would insist) between human individuals and God, which
relations establish meanings and values that are absolute yet never to be
abstracted from the historical contexts within which they arise. Jacobi
had a model of a rationality of this sort in the classical sources he con-
stantly cited. "Natural right," in its more classical formulations, had more
to do with the dignity of persons (which can never be emptied of histor-
ical content) than with any cosmic theory. These sources, rather than
the ideology of the standard liberalism of his day, had been the real
inspiration behind Jacobi's defence of individual freedoms in his ear-
ly political writings.38 In the present confrontation with Spinoza and
Enlightenment philosophy, however, the problem was how to define, in
opposition to their abstract rationality, a reason thus bound to the his-
torical individual. And this, despite his claims in defence of both, Jacobi
was failing to do.
So too was he to fail in later writings. But it was perhaps too much to
expect him to leap over his own age. Standing in the way was the prej-
udice that had given rise to the "broad ditch" problem in the first place,
namely the belief that to bring reason down to history was to detract
from the universal validity of its truths and values. Jacobi knew of those
who—as, for instance, Herder and Moser39—were trying to understand
rationality developmentally. And he recognized that interest in the par-
ticularity of historical events was what motivated them. But Jacobi could
not see how their "historical system" (their "historicism," as we would
now call it) was any improvement over the metaphysical system of the tra-
ditional philosophers. In both cases the present was reduced to some-
thing else that undermined its absolute standing while explaining it; the
only difference was that, whereas the metaphysicians took the abstract
concept as their explanatory principle, the proponents of the new histor-
ical system replaced it with the "past." In both cases the reality of the in-
dividual rooted in the present was being relativized, exactly what Spinoza
had done and the very opposite of what the proponents of the historical
38. See above, p. 16.

39. Justus Moser (1720-94), lawyer, diplomat, playwright, and historian; an advocate of
patriotic values.
Introduction 85
system intended. But it was there, in that present, that Jacobi made his
stand.40
What Jacobi needed, and was groping for, was not an explanatory sys-
tem but a theory of reason based on relations established between indi-
viduals. This kind of reason Jacobi's age was not equipped to conceive
of, precisely because it could not see past the relativism that it assumed
history necessarily implied. Yet Jacobi had not shied away from claiming
that "faith" (which must be a historical phenomenon) is the matrix of
reason. And he must have known that at least some Christians never
found it particularly irrational to stake their beliefs in universal values on
the testimony of highly individualized events, on the miracle, the "excep-
tion."41 Why then did not Jacobi explore, despite his loud religious
trumpeting and his professed love for Hamann, the intellectual re-
sources of this religious tradition? Why go on identifying, as he did, the
certainty of his faith with the certainty of Spinoza's intellectual vision
when, on Jacobi's avowed premises, that faith ought to be the matrix
of individual encounters resulting in highly particularized actions
and expressions, whereas Spinoza's vision marks, on the contrary, the
point at which time and space, even language, is absorbed into the all-
encompassing substance?
We are back to the fundamental weakness, already signalled, in
Jacobi's confrontation with Spinoza's rationalism. Jacobi was using a
Spinozistic assumption (intellectual intuition) to combat the Spinozistic
system, apparently without realizing that that assumption was devised to
serve the conceptual needs of the system. It provided the existential basis
for a system of concepts (as Jacobi saw it) that abstracted from the con-
40. "I can hardly understand how you [Rehberg] should believe that the historical sys-
tem would better hold its ground in the present state of things [i.e. the French revolution]
than the metaphysical. What is has absolutely no more rational ground in what was. [ . . . . ]
Yes, my dear! Only a historical being has style [Haltung]; but the old history is apparently
at an end, and the fables which kept it moving are too fatuous for reason to put up with
them. And so we now start with a new history! From the fashionable [Tauglichkeit] to the
fashionable? Give me a place on which to stand!!!" Letter to A. W. Rehberg, Auserlesener
Briefwechsel, 28 November 1791, vol. n, #205, pp. 72-73. (Frederick Reiser reminded me
of the importance of this text, and also made me aware of the importance of distinguishing
what I have called "historical reason" from "historicism" as usually understood.) August
Wilhelm Rehberg (1757-1836), philosopher, literary figure, and a proponent of the
"historical system," is best known for his journalistic activities and his political writings. He
contributed to the Spinoza controversy with Uber das Verhdltnis der Metaphysik zur Religion
(On the Relationship of Metaphysics to Religion; Berlin: Mylius, 1787).
41. See Jacobi's panegyric on the "exception" in the Letter to Fichte, pp. 32ff.
ditions of actual existence. It validated the abstractness of the system's ra-

tionality (again, as Jacobi saw it) by finding truth beyond the distinction
of subject and object. Jacobi's faith, if it seriously was a function of his-
torical reason, should have led him, on the contrary, to that testing and
interpretation of witnesses, that constant dialogue with others and re-
flection upon oneself that make for historical truth.
Jacobi had not sufficiently disentangled himself from the rationalism
that he was combatting. This was, in short, the source of the confusion
of the Spinoza Letters. That he had also chosen to couch his historical
faith in the language of Lavater's piety did not help matters either.
Mendelssohn—we remember—had put Goethe at the head of the mon-
ster that the Spinoza Letters was, and in a sense Goethe had indeed pre-
sided over that work. From a metaphysical if not a moral standpoint,
however, Hamann's edited version of the image, which made Spinoza
the head and Herder the torso,42 was a more likely statement of the case.
That is how complex Jacobi's relation to Spinoza was. One thing is
certain. Mendelssohn was right about the monster's feet. They were
Lavater's, and there were clear indications that they were made of clay.
4. This combination of Spinoza and Lavater is consistent with the judg-

ment that Jacobi was to pass upon himself at the end of his life. 'You see,
dear Reinhold," he wrote in 1817, "I am still the same—a thorough
pagan with my intellect, constitutionally totally a Christian, I swim be-
tween two waters that simply won't come together for me and, the two
at once, deceive me."43
Jacobi's Christianity had none of Hamann's or Herder's theological
depth. Jacobi was arguably mistaking for Christian faith what was in fact
his own propensity for pious but highly individualistic and self-centred
feelings. It must be remembered that, in the correspondence leading up
to the publication of the Spinoza Letters,4* Hamann had criticized Jacobi
most of all for being too much of a philosopher and for thereby miscon-
struing the attitude of true faith. He had reproached Jacobi for his tend-
ency to brood, which had no place in a world where the word of God
42. Goethe's were the toes. See Hamann-Briefwechsel, letter to Jacobi of 5 November
1785, Vol. vi, #889, pp. 119-20. Jacobi felt flattered by the image, or at least so he gave
Hamann to understand. Letter to Hamann, ibid., 17-18 November 1785, #896,
pp. 145-46.
43. Auserksener Briefe, 8 October 1817, Vol. 11, #362, p. 478.
44. See above, Part i, p. 63.
Introduction 87
grew on its own like the mustard seed. His basic complaint throughout
was thatjacobi's need for a salto mortale, and his assumption of a special
faculty of the soul for the apprehension of the divine, belied the attitude
of passive receptivity that is essential to faith and, for that matter, the self-
revelatory power of God's presence everywhere. Jacobi's spirituality (like
Princess Gallitzin's) was too busy with itself, too concerned with human
things rather than with God, for Hamann's tastes. To the extent that
there were flaws in human nature, philosophy alone could not remedy
them.45
And Hamann did not really change his tune after the publication of
the book. His letters to his friend became more frequent than ever, and
even though much space was taken up by familial affairs, Jacobi's dispute
with Mendelssohn still ran through them as the unifying thread.
Hamann keptjacobi informed of Kant's reaction. It transpired that Kant
could not understand Spinoza either per se or in Mendelssohn's or
Jacobi's treatment of him,46 and had admitted that he had never studied
Spinoza's philosophy seriously.47 Kant also intended to write an exact
refutation of Mendelssohn's Morgenstunden, and Hamann did his best to
satisfy Jacobi's curiosity about his plans on this score too,48 although, so
far as the dispute with Mendelssohn and his adepts was concerned,
Hamann finally had to console Jacobi by telling him not to take to heart
Kant's decision to remain strictly neutral in the matter.49 The two men
were also in collusion in the preparation of Hamann's defence of his at-
tack against Mendelssohn in Golgotha and Scheblimini, and of Jacobi's
reply to Mendelssohn's reaction (which appeared posthumously) to the
Spinoza Letters.^0 Though Hamann felt pangs of remorse upon
Mendelssohn's death on 4 January 1786, because he had failed to reas-
sert his friendship with the man despite his hostility to Mendelssohn's
thought,51 there can be no doubt about Hamann's basic feelings on
45. 22 January 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. v, #801, p. 329.

46. Letter of 22-30 October 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #884, p. 107.
47. Letter of 30 November-4 December 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #900,
p. 161.
48. See the following letters, all from the Hamann-Briefwechsel: Vol. vi: 22-30 October
1785, #884, p. 107; 5-6 November 1785, #889, p. 119; 28 November 1785, #899, p. 152;
15 January 1786, #919, p. 228.
49. Letter of 9 April 1786, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #953, p. 350.
50. Talk about Hamann's work, and Jacobi's, pervades the correspondence of the
period.
51. Letters of 10-11 January 1786, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #917, pp. 222-23; and
15 January 1786, #919, p. 227.
the matter. "Certainly you are to be blamed," he wrote to Jacobi, "and

this is your unacknowledged guilt, that you have sought and presup-
posed truth in a Jew, a natural enemy of it."52
Yet despite this general closeness Hamann maintained his distance
with respect to the Spinoza Letters. Indirectly he poked fun at it.53
Directly, he simply withheld judgment, on the ground that he did not
understand Spinoza and needed more time to study his philosophy.54
He declared himself in agreement with Jacobi in form alone—not in
content, which he had still to understand. And he kept on advising
Jacobi to temporize, not to rush into a reply to the Berliners, at least not
until his own defence had come out. Ab hoste consilium! became his re-
frain, until Jacobi, piqued, asked for a clarification of its meaning.55
Hamann never really gave one. It eventually transpired, however, that he
had given up studying Spinoza56 and that he did not really think his phi-
losophy worth refuting.57 Actually, he had put his substantive judgment
on the Spinoza Letters on record from the beginning, as if by accident.
"Therein is my whole friendly advice quoad formam," he wrote to Jacobi,
"until I come to the very matter and substance, which, as it seems to me,
[. . .] ultimately comes down to a mere logomachy, or to an optical illu-
sion of reason, as our dear Kant teaches his readers but not himself."58
So far as Hamann was concerned, the Spinoza Letters was too much of a
work of philosophy—it had engaged Mendelssohn and the Berliners on
their own ground. Worse still, with the poems, Goethe's at the beginning
and Lavater's at the end, Jacobi had in fact fed sweets ("douceurs") to
the Berliners, who had seized upon them in order then to expel them
with their Spinozism and atheism—their heroic cure for the superstition
they saw in the poems. Jacobi had played into the hand of his oppo-
52. Letter of 4 March 1786, Hamann-Briefivechsel, Vol. vi, #939, p. 299.

53. See above, the footnotes at the end of Part i, pp. 64-66.
54. See the letters of 28 September-3 October 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #874,
p. 75; and of 5-6 November 1785, #889, p. 120-21. Hamann goes so far as to say that
Mendelssohn's "translation" of Spinoza in the Morgenstunden is more enlightening to him
than Jacobi's exposition of the system. Letter to Jacobi, 15 February 1786, Hamann-
Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #933, p. 271.
55. See among others, Jacobi's letter to Hamann, 17 November 1785, Hamann-
Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #896, p. 144; Hamann to Jacobi, 15 February 1786, #933, p. 269; and
also the note to Ab hoste consilio, below, in the David Hume, p. 6.
56. Letter of 28-29 December 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, #911, p. 202.
57. Letter of 15-16 March 1786, Hamann-Briefwechsel, #944, p. 318.
58. Letter of 22-30 October 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, #884, p. 110.
Introduction 89
nents.59 Hence, in the face of the dispute with Mendelssohn and his
Berlin friends that the Spinoza Letters caused, Hamann's opinion on how
best to deal with it was simply to drop it.
Hamann was right. Jacobi had not disentangled himself from the ra-
tionalism of his Berlin opponent. But if lack of clarity (injacobi's own
mind first of all) about Jacobi's philosophical position was the cause of
the conceptual confusion that reigned on all sides of the dispute subse-
quent to the publication of the Spinoza Letters, the book's pious compo-
nent added a personal dimension to it. Given the lack of a clear
statement of how the two, Spinoza's head and Lavater's feet, fit together,
the book's pious tone had to appear tendentious to the Berlin philoso-
phers. To Jacobi, since he had a point, after all, in believing that he un-
derstood Spinoza better than his adversaries, and that Spinoza's monism
was not reconcilable with Christian personalism, the philosophers' reac-
tion to his book had to appear, on the contrary, politically motivated. It
was part of the Berliners' attempt to impose their religion of reason upon
society. The ensuing controversy was therefore bitter, and quickly dete-
riorated to the level of personal attack. It also became implicated in the
crypto-Catholicism dispute raging at the time.60 Mendelssohn replied to
Jacobi's book with his To Lessing's Friends: An Appendix to Herr Jacobi's
Correspondence Concerning the Doctrine ofSpinoza.&1 He died while arrang-
ing for its publication, and Jacobi was even accused of having caused his
death, thus completing the job begun by Lavater.62 Jacobi came back
with his Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi against Mendelssohn's Accusations Relating
to the Letters Concerning Spinoza's Doctrine6^—all in all, not an edifying
59. See letter of 15 March 1786, Hamann-Briefiuechsel, #944, p. 318. Hamann's text is
very obscure, and I am interpreting.
60. See the note on the subject to p. 15 of the David Hume.
61. An dieFreunde Lessings. EinAnhangzu Herrnjacobis Briefwechsel uberdieLehre des Spinoza
(Berlin: VoB and Sons, 1786). The text can be found in Heinrich Scholz, ed., Die
Hauptschriften zum Pantheismusstreit zwischen Jacobi und Mendelssohn (Berlin: Reuther &
Reichard, 1916).
62. See Scholz, Hauptschriften, pp. Ixxv-lxxvi. Also, Jacobi's letter to Hamann of
2-3 February 1786, Hamann-Rriefwechsel, Vol. vi, #925, p. 251.
63. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen betreffend die Briefe uber die
Lehre des Spinoza (Leipzig: Goeschen, 1786), also to be found in Scholz's Hauptschriften and
injacobi's Werke, iv.2. Excerpts from both Mendelssohn's and Jacobi's polemical pieces
have been translated into English and can be found in The Spinoza Conversations between
Lessing and Jacobi: Text with Excerpts from the Ensuing Controversy, introduced by Gerard
Vallee, tr. G. Vallee, J. B. Lawson, C. G. Chappie (New York: University Press of America,
1988).
go The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
spectacle. Again, in the general confusion the genuinely philosophical

issue that Jacobi was raising—that of the possibility of a historical
reason—was obscured.
5. Closely connected with the issue is the problem of how one is to un-
derstand faith. Jacobi turned to this task—the clarification of the notion
of faith—in a dialogue, David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, that
he published in 1787 while preparing a second edition of the Spinoza-
Letters.64 The first part of the dialogue, which constitutes Jacobi's justifi-
cation of his use of the word "faith" in the Spinoza Letters, is the most
polemical, and also, although artistically successful in the sense that it
skilfully leads to the discussion of Jacobi's realism, philosophically the
least enlightening. In fact, if Jacobi succeeded in anything, it was to com-
pound the original confusion by his appeal to the authority of Hume.
There was, of course, the special difficulty caused by the German word
Glaube, which, like the English word "faith," is replete with religious con-
notations, yet was the only one available to Jacobi when, in the Spinoza
Letters, he apparently had Hume's "belief in mind. This point was
brought home incisively by an anonymous reviewer of the dialogue in
the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. The reviewer began by decrying the asso-
ciation of a speculatively sophisticated and learned man like Jacobi with
confused characters like Lavater. Jacobi now claimed that by "faith" in
the Spinoza Letters he had only meant the immediate evidence that ac-
companies sensations, as in the Humean mode of perception. But how,
asked the reviewer rhetorically, could he have also cited Lavater—that
crude defender of Christian dogma—on this subject, and also said, with
Lavater, that God and immortality were the proper objects of faith, and
yet expect that he would be understood to mean anything but "blind
faith"? "Furthermore," the reviewer continued, "Hume's precedent is
not relevant here, for the simple reason that in English 'belief does not
have the connotations that the German Glaubehas assumed through the-
ological use. . . . The English equivalent of this Glaube is 'faith,'" and
surely Hume would not have said "Faith is the true and proper name of
this feeling" (to wit, sensible evidence), even though he once used the
expression "repose faith in the senses."65 This complication could easily
have been disposed of with proper explanation.
64. The dialogue was originally planned as three separate works on themes that are still
clearly recognizable in the one published text. See Jacobi's prefatory note to the dialogue.
65. See Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, n (1788), No. 92, columns 105-07. The reviewer is
Rehberg. See Samtliche Schriften von August Wilhelm Rehberg, 2 Vols. (Hanover: Hahn,
1828-31), Vol. i, p. 25.
Introduction 91
The real problem was that Jacob! defined faith as the assent given to
a stated truth even though the said truth does not admit of proof. Since
by "proof Jacobi here clearly means inference based on premises, i.e.
the product of ratiocination, he might as well have said that faith is an
immediate assent to truth. However, there can be two distinct and poten-
tially conflicting reasons why some truth requires such an immediate
assent—because it is incapable of proof or because it is self-evident and
thus does not require proof. In the first case the assent must be based
on subjective factors that compensate for the lack of objective evidence
from which the presumed truth suffers. In the second, truth provides its
own objective "evidence," so compelling that it elicits immediate subjec-
tive assent. But by any common standard, assent informed by compelling
objective evidence constitutes basic knowledge. Unless, therefore, one
wants to restrict objective evidence to the product of ratiocination,
which Jacobi definitely did not, by defining faith as he did Jacobi denied
himself the possibility of drawing in any unequivocal fashion the distinc-
tion just made. The result was that he could not avoid conveying the im-
pression that, so far as he was concerned, all our presumed knowledge
is in fact ultimately dependent on subjective grounds for assent rather
than on objective evidence, i.e. that it normally depends on faith as nor-
mally understood. But this was precisely the sceptical position that he
wanted to oppose.
In appealing to Hume's authority Jacobi simply reinforced the mis-
leading impression that he was giving. The test of any theory of truth is
whether it can account for the possibility of an existential judgment.
Quite properly, therefore, Jacobi immediately directed his dialogue to
the question of how we can know, not just that things appear to us as ex-
isting outside us (for no doubt they do), but that they actually do exist
there. But now, in the Humean context, Hume's point in the passages
cited by Jacobi was that, strictly speaking, we have no objective evidence
that there are things outside us, since our immediate knowledge does
not extend further than our representations. Our certainty about their
objective existence is based solely on certain characteristics inherent in
some of our representations, such as their vividness, that ineluctably
elicit in us a feeling for which Hume can find no better name than that
of "belief," i.e. Glaube in German, or "faith." But these characteristics,
and the feeling associated with them, are subjective factors. On this score
Hume was actually conforming to the traditional definition of religious
faith as the assent to a truth based on subjective interest rather than suf-
ficient objective evidence, except that, in die non-religious context
Hume assumed, the reliance on belief was only intended as a subjective
device for dealing with an otherwise practically untenable scepticism re-

garding all objective truth. Jacobi's name for the position that Hume
represented was "idealism," a term that at this stage he still used almost
interchangeably with "scepticism." And Jacobi was at pains to distance
himself from it.66 But if that was not his own position, why, in order to
justify his use of the word "faith," did he ever appeal to the authority of
its most famous exponent? If it was not the case that in the Spinoza Letters
he had sounded a retreat from rational argument under the banner of
Christian faith, as Mendelssohn had thought, why did he seek refuge, in
the David Hume, behind the banner of Hume's scepticism?
The answers to these questions can only be sought in Jacobi's special
psychological make-up and cannot be dealt with here. The important
point is that Jacobi was a realist—to the point that he reacted impatiently
even to the idea that our direct knowledge stops at representations and
that we can only reach certainty about the reality of things outside us in-
directly, by way of rational inference. And he had a theory to justify his
position, a theory that in turn implied a notion of historical reason. It is
to these that we must turn.
6. In the David Hume Jacobi provides all the elements for what we would
now call a transcendental argument in defence of his realism. The prem-
ises had already been adumbrated in the Spinoza Letters. The most funda-
mental is Jacobi's claim, which he assumes as a fact of experience, that
existence is irreducibly individualized. According to Jacobi, however, in-
dividualization requires a multiplicity of individuals, each explicitly de-
nned as distinct from the rest. It requires number, in other words, for a
"one" that is not the first of a series would be without definable limits
and, as such, lack the fundamental condition of existence. Moreover,
purely formal distinctions are not sufficient to keep individuals apart, for
they are a function of conceptual systems and (another of Jacobi's strong
claims) conceptualization is necessarily abstractive. It serves a purpose
indeed in conscious life, but only on the assumption of a prior and more
immediate awareness of existence on which it depends for its meaning.
Significant distinctions, so far as Jacobi is concerned, must implicate ac-
tual existents.
Once these premises are granted, Jacobi's argument goes through eas-
ily. In reconstructed form, it would go like this. We cannot act without
in fact giving witness to the immediate awareness that we have of our own
66. See David Hume, p. vii.

Introduction 93
existence. But we could not name this existence—we could not say "I"
in a significant way—without at the same time positing it in contradis-
tinction to another existent with reference to which that existence is in-
dividuated. Awareness of this distinction must be implicit in the original
immediate awareness of our existence, for otherwise the utterance of the
"I" would lack an adequate existential basis. The relevant "other" suffi-
cient in this case to individuate the "I" (and, in turn, sufficiently individ-
uated by it) is a "Thou." As certain, therefore, as we are that we say "I"
with existential seriousness, just as certain we also are of the existence of
a "Thou." But we do say "I" and mean thereby to make an existential as-
sertion. Therefore, a "Thou" exists independent of my existence though
significantly related to it. Any doubt that might arise in this respect is
merely due to the work of reflection.
In later years Jacobi hinted that Kant's refutation of idealism in the
second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason was based on this argument
about the impossibility of positing an "I" without a "Thou."67 At the time
of the David Hume, however, Hume's scepticism was at issue, and Jacobi
thought that with his argument he was turning a Humean observation
against Hume. We are in no better position to apprehend the reality of
a supposed "self than we are to apprehend the reality of "things" sup-
posed outside us. From this observation Hume had derived what Jacobi
later described as Hume's "twin-scepticism,"68 i.e. a scepticism directed
to the subject as well as the object of consciousness. Jacobi's retort was
that it is indeed true that our knowledge of the self is not privileged with
respect to the knowledge of other things. But precisely for this reason we
are just as certain of the existence of other things as we are of the exis-
tence of the self.69
Jacobi thought that, once this principle had been established, he
could justify rationally the objectivity of other categorial relations under
attack by Hume, notably the relation of cause to effect. This further ar-
gument depended on the claim, already made, that the distinction be-
tween a self and its object posited in consciousness is a real one, i.e. it
67. See below, Preface to the David Hume (1815), p. 40, footnote.
68. See David Hume, p. 107. The gloss "universal twin scepticism" was added to the text
in the 1815 ed., p. 204.
69. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of Hume. It could be argued, how-
ever, that that is precisely what Hume also wanted to say. Hume and Jacobi are both making
the same point, namely that certainty of the existence of the self and of things outside it
is experiential. Experientially speaking, that existence is indubitable, even though it might
be doubted at the reflective level.
implicates actual existents. It requires a real, not merely conceptual dis-

tance between two terms, and so far as our experience is concerned, any
such distance would have to be cashed out as a measure of extension.
Jacobi now makes a crucial move. If it is an extended distance that sep-
arates a subject from its object, since extension is in principle infinitely di-
visible, to determine the distance in question, to determine the point at
which the two terms would actually meet, we must introduce some other
experiential factor. The subject meets its object precisely at the point
where it feels the presence of the object interfering with its own pres-
ence, i.e. at the point where the two have in fact already transcended
their respective limits and invaded those of the other, yet, in so doing,
they are forced to recoil back into into themselves and thereby add fur-
ther determination to their individuality. In other words, the subject-
object distinction ultimately translates in experiential terms into a play
of action and reaction acted out between the subject and its world. It is
this play that gives concrete content to the otherwise empty concept of
the cause-effect relationship. As interpreted by Jacobi, every effect turns
out also to be a causal contributor to the cause.
Little did Jacobi know that his analysis of the subject-object relation-
ship was to provide the blueprint for Reinhold's, and later Fichte's and
Schelling's construction of the genesis of consciousness. At the time of
the David Hume he could only have had the rationalists and Kant in
mind, and it is clear that he did have them in mind. He congratulated
himself for having established the objectivity, i.e. the universal validity,
of the cause-effect category experientially, without having to fall back
upon its logical characteristics or to consider it a prejudgment of human
understanding. In an oblique reference to Kant, Jacobi added that, if the
category of causality were a mere prejudgment of the understanding, it
would lack strict universality, since its validity would be dependent on an
accident of the human mind.70 Jacobi's demonstration had been based,
by contrast, on an analysis of the structure of consciousness in general,
of what it took before one could meaningfully say, with reference to ac-
tual experience, that a subject is aware of itself and of its object. Kant
could have pointed out, of course, that that amounted to a transcenden-
tal argument and that he had the patent on that kind of inference. Yet,
Jacobi could have responded even to this. For on his use of the argument
it should have become clear, as we must now see, that the "I" and the
70. See David Hume, pp. n8ff.; also, David Hume (1815), Introduction, p. 215,
footnote.
Introduction 95
"Thou" facing it had to be historical entities, and so too (though Jacobi

never drew this conclusion) the reason binding them together.
7. Kant had posited an irreducible distinction between sensation and

thought, assigning to sensation the function of providing the existential
touchstone of experience and to thought the function of bringing to-
gether into meaningful totalities, by means of its reflective representa-
tions, the otherwise rhapsodic content of sensations. By this distinction,
however, Kant had precluded ex hypothesi the possibility of demonstrat-
ing that the determinations required by thought can be instantiated in
objects actually present to the senses; that such determinations are not
just superimposed on an otherwise meaningless sense-content in order
to form objects only capable of being exhibited in the imagination. The
scepticism that immediately reasserted itself in the wake of Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason was based in part on precisely this difficulty.71
Hamann had immediately seized on it too—though he veiled his criti-
cism in his usual eccentric language. He accused Kant of intellectual pu-
ritanism ("purismus of reason" are his words) or of wanting to have a
virgin birth of experience by the concepts of reason alone. For his part,
Hamann preferred to talk of "language" rather than "reason," presum-
ably (to gloss on Hamann) because language was a meaningful yet incar-
nate activity of the mind. 72
Jacobi recognized the power of the objection. The most significant
element of Jacobi's analysis of experience is its basic assumption that
consciousness is a complex state of mind requiring from the beginning
that a subject distance itself from, yet relate to, an object. Thus, sensation
is not at all "blind," as Kant would have it, but is itself a process of dis-
tinguishing and comparing that from the beginning amounts to a sort
of judgment.73 The implication is that there is no strict separation of
sensation from reason. There is no need for reason to intervene and im-
pose its abstract categories of meaning on otherwise "blind" sensations.
Reason is itself a degree of sensibility; to the extent that reason remains
true to its origin, as it should, it only adds a higher degree of reflectivity
71. See my "The Facts of Consciousness," in Between Kant and Hegel, Texts in the
Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, tr. and annotated by George di Giovanni and H. S.
Harris (Albany, N . Y . : S U N Y , 1985), pp. 3-44.; also, my "The First Twenty Years of
Critique: The Spinoza Connection," in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. P. Guyer
(Cambridge: University Press, 1992), pp. 417-48.
72. See Letter to Jacobi, 27 April 1788, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vn, #1060, p. 169.
73. See p. 142 of the David Hume, and the note on Uber ein Weissagung Lichtenbergs.
and hence determination to objects that have already been appre-

hended in principle even in the simplest of sensations. A reason that has
to function in the way prescribed by Kant, as if bringing to the senses dis-
tinctions and relations not already present there, is a reason that has be-
come abstracted from its existential foundations and now finds itself in
the absurd position of having to bring forth existence again out of empty
concepts.
The precedent for Jacobi's theory was to be found in Leibniz, and in
the David Hume Jacobi explicitly appealed to his authority. He also
turned to Leibniz to support his further claim that reason is an activity
coextensive with life, so that a higher degree of rationality, which equals
a higher degree of sensibility, also equals a higher degree of life. Yet de-
spite this stress on reason as a form of action, Jacobi continued to assert
its essentially contemplative character. He disputed the practice, wide-
spread among his contemporaries, of referring to reason as a "light";
according to Jacobi, it was an "eye"74—reason is life's conceptual
re-enactment of its vital forms and vital activities. The problem of how
one can be assured that the re-enactment conforms to the original act
simply does not arise in Spinoza's system, since thought and extension
(the two presuppositions of all conscious life) are just two aspects of the
one undivided substance. In Leibniz the problem is dealt with via the as-
sumption of pre-established harmony. As for Jacobi, he simply side-
stepped the issue by claiming that conscious life is existence and
awareness of existence—simultaneously both action and the setting up
of the "eye" that beholds the action, in a complex yet undivided event.
All this could have amounted to a theory of historical reason. For, on
Jacobi's position, reason indeed retains for its concepts their claim to
universal validity. Their function is simply to represent forms of life
ideally, as "types" that, in principle, can be realized at any time and any
place. In this respect reason is universal. Moreover, although reason can
err by overstepping its limits and can also accidentally muddle its repre-
sentations, so long as it limits itself to the careful analysis of these types
thus abstracted from their existential conditions, it cannot go wrong. In
this respect it is also in principle infallible. Yet despite this universality and
infallibility, its work is dependent on the existential conditions under
which the forms of life from which it draws its concepts are realized. Its
only necessity is ex post facto, based on the assumption of a historical sit-
uation in which it is rooted but which, from the standpoint of its ab-

Introduction 97
stracted types, it declares merely "contingent." In fact reason never

overcomes the contingency. For the Jacobi of the David Hume there
could not be any ugly ditch separating contingent truths of history from
eternal truths of reason. Rather, rationality itself should be found in the
very contingency of history.
8. However, Jacobi's overall position suffered from problems of internal

consistency. At issue was the very claim of existence's primacy over con-
ceptualization, which Jacobi had made the hallmark of his philosophy
from the beginning. In the David Hume he was reasserting it, this time
in the context of a critique of the widely accepted proof of God's exis-
tence "from the concept" (the "ontological argument," as we now call it
since Kant), which Jacobi claimed never to have found in the least
convincing. He used his criticism also as a way of connecting his name
with Kant's, whose early essays New Elucidation of the First Principles oj
Metaphysical Cognition75 and The Only Possible Ground of Proof for a
Demonstration of God's Existence7^ had caught his attention from the be-
ginning.77 Kant's way of demonstrating God's existence met with
Jacobi's approval because it amounted to no more than a statement that
any process of explanation necessarily assumes that there be something
to be explained. Any statement of possibility is ultimately dependent on
the first condition of all possibility, and that is existence itself. To the ex-
tent that the ontological proof was simply a recognition of the primacy
of existence over thought possibilities, Jacobi had no difficulties with it.
According to Jacobi it was another way of saying, as he had maintained
all along, that there is no need to demonstrate God's existence, since we
cannot say or do anything without in fact giving witness to it.
The problem, however, for the coherence of Jacobi's view—a problem
that he apparently did not realize—is that final causality presupposes the
distinction between actuality and possibility, and this distinction presup-
poses in turn the distinction between existence and the thought of exis-
tence. But now, if God's being is to created existence what existence as
such is to thought (as Jacobi seemed to imply), it follows that, on Jacobi's
assertion of the primacy of existence over thought, God's being would
have to transcend all modal distinctions. These apply rather to the realm
of created being alone. It also follows, therefore, that the only fair way
75. Neue Erhellung der ersten Grundsdtze metaphysischer Erkenntnis (1755).

76. Der einzig mogliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseyns Gottes (1763).
77. See David Hume, pp. 74-75, 84.
of referring to God would be as causa sui, an expression that is indeed

self-contradictory (as Hamann had once pointed out tojacobi)78 but ap-
propriate precisely because, in subverting meaning, it at least betokens
God's transcendence to the universe of thought distinctions. The
Spinozistic implications ought to have been (but were not) obvious to
Jacobi. The irreducible element of contingency that existence (or, more
concretely, any historical fact) holds out to philosophical reflection
would turn out to be a phenomenon of this very reflection. If we were
to assume the point of view of existence—while still operating, however,
within the categories of reflection—it would be the reflection itself, and
the illusion of historical contingency consequent on it, that we would
have to declare contingent. That reflection occurs has no explanation,
nor is any required for the event outside the event's own sphere.
In the Spinoza Letters Jacobi had summed up this conclusion (as apply-
ing to Spinoza) in the formula "substance precedes thought." Thought
is therefore reduced to a mere accident of substance. And he had
opposed the formula on the ground that it amounted to a denial of
freedom of choice and of final causes in general. Yet precisely this
Spinozistic position was now implicit in the David Hume. The fault did
not lie injacobi's claim that thought is a form of life; taken narrowly and
by itself the claim could have been interpreted in a purely Aristotelian
sense to mean that "thinking" is a goal-oriented act like all other vital ac-
tivities. What caused the trouble was rather the larger claim, which the
dialogue suggested by the way it unfolded, that the narrower claim was
intended by Jacobi as a particular expression of his fundamental belief
that existence precedes reflection, and that the latter is therefore only
an accidental by-product of an otherwise blind yet efficient power.
Ironically, Jacobi's figure for representing reason—an "eye" that certain
forms of life don at the moment of action to add to their being the sen-
timent of being79—carried this implication with singular rhetorical
force. The picture conveyed was of an observer simply taking stock of ac-
tivities that originate at a level of life where there is yet neither conscious-
ness nor, hence, any issue of individual attribution and responsibility.
Jacobi's objection to Lessing and Spinoza had been precisely that their
descriptions of the human situation make of human individuals observ-
ers rather than responsible agents of their own actions. Yet in the picture
implicit in the David Hume he now seemed to be adopting just this
description as his own.
78. Letter tojacobi, 16January 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. v, #800, p. 326.

Introduction 99
Jacob! apparently never noticed this inconsistency in his own position.

Decades later, in a retrospective look, he declared the dialogue incon-
clusive.80 Even then, however, Jacobi showed no awareness of the
Spinozism implicit in it. In retrospect the source of embarrassment
seemed to be, rather, the Lavatarian note on which the dialogue ends.
Jacobi's claim throughout the dialogue had been that knowledge cannot
transcend the intuitive certainty attained in sensations and feelings; rea-
son, to the extent that it yields real knowledge, must be a higher form
of sensitivity.81 The problem with this claim is that, when it is applied to
our knowledge of God, it follows that any such knowledge would also
have to carry intuitive certainty—that in some sense we must be able to
see or feel God. The claim thus calls for a special manifestation of God's
presence. It calls for some extraordinary events on his part that would
make him sensibly present to us—for miracles, in other words, the sort
of things that Hamann found objectionable but Lavater's gospel re-
quired. The David Hume concludes precisely with intimations of the pos-
sibility of special supernatural interventions in our life.82 Though
Lavater is not mentioned by name, his influence here is clear.
And Lavater was present in another way as well. It was Jacobi's religi-
osity, the Lavaterian element in his make-up, that very likely conspired
to hide from him the Spinozistic implications of his thought. Jacobi
found the "eye" metaphor especially fitting as a characterization of
human reason because the physical eye, just as human reason, according
to Jacobi, must presuppose its object as given. The metaphor under-
scored the difference between a reason that, like the human, is finite
and receptive, and God's creative one. The distinction was motivated by
the desire to retain a filial-like, personal relationship between creature
and creator. Jacobi's religiosity, not any logical necessity, required it. Yet
by the time Jacobi came to it in the David Hume, he had already implicitly
undermined it because of his stress on the primacy of existence over es-
sence, which, as we have seen, logically led to the conception of a non-
personal God. This is where the inconsistency in Jacobi's position lay.
But the same religiosity that required a personal relationship to God also
forbade (again, for the sake of protecting that relationship) that God be
known philosophically. Jacobi was simply not looking for a system of
80. See David Hume (1815), p. 221, footnote (below, pp. 298-99).
82. See pp. igGff. The reviewer cited above, p. 90, remarks on how suddenly the dia-
logue ends when the subject of God and immortality, and in what sense they are the object
of "faith," is brought up. See columns 111-12 of the cited article.
ioo The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
premises and conclusions. Nor was he promoting any particular philo-

sophical concept of God. It is no surprise, therefore, that he failed to no-
tice the inconsistency. Had an objector pointed it out to him, he would
only have become more convinced that the intellect is radically pagan
and that nothing good can come from trying to work into a full meta-
physical theory comments he intended only as a description of how
human reason de facto operates.83
These are, of course, only hypothetical glosses on howjacobi might
have reacted to the charge of Spinozism in the David Hume. The one in-
disputable fact is that the Spinozism was in the dialogue and that Jacobi
never confronted the issue of its being there. It is perhaps ironic that the
philosopher who so clearly saw the irrationalism implicit in the rational-
istic metaphysics of the day should not have detected it in his own posi-
tion. Be that as it may, at the end of the David Hume Spinoza still stood
as the head of the monster of the Spinoza Letters. The only significant new
development was that in the dialogue, while trying to give some sort of
definite content to what he had meant by faith and reason in the Spinoza
Letters, Jacobi actually moved in the direction of the new vitalism that
Herder was promoting as a reaction to Spinoza. When, therefore, in the
second edition of the Spinoza Letters that appeared two years later, Jacobi
added two whole appendices in which he criticized Herder's reworking
of Spinoza in God: Some Conversations, he definitely sounded as if he were
protesting too much. Hamann had been right again from the beginning.
The torso of the monster had turned out to be none other than
Herder.84 As for the feet, they were still Lavater's.
9. Yet by the time of the publication of the David Hume, rational meta-
physics was already a moot issue. The age of critique had begun, as the
prominent references to Kant interspersed in the dialogue clearly sig-
nalled. In an appendix Jacobi confronted the new philosophy directly.
83. In Jacobi to Fichte, Jacobi was to praise Kant precisely because, unlike Fichte, he had
been inconsistent and had dared to sin against System rather than against "the majesty of
the place." See below, p. viii of Jacobi's text.
84. Jacobi was dismayed when, later, Hegel associated him with Herder. In fact Hegel
was showing more insight than Jacobi was willing to grant. See Jacobi's letter to Koppen,
10 August 1802, in Friedrich Koppen, Schellings Lehre oder das Ganze der Philosophie des ab-
soluten Nichts, nebst drey Briefen verwandten Inhalts von Fr. H. Jacobi (Schelling's Doctrine, or the
Whole of the Philosophy of the Absolute Nothing, Together with Three Letters of Related Content by
F. H. Jacobi; Hamburg: Perthes, 1803), p. 213; G. W. F. Hegel, "Glauben und Wissen"
("Faith and Knowledge"), Kritisches Journal der Philosophie, 11.1(1802): 93-94-
Introduction i oi
The text is historically important because the fundamental objection

that Jacobi raised against Kant there was to become canonical in the
Kant reception. As Jacobi argued, critical philosophy must be committed
to subjectivism, since any attempt at inferring the existence of the "thing
in itself as the source of sense impressions would require the uncritical
extension of the use of the category of causality outside the realm of pos-
sible experience. On the face of it the argument was a strong one, and
it did find a wide audience.85 On a deeper level, however, it showed by
how far Jacobi had failed to grasp the meaning of the Critique and how
much Jacobi's failure was symptomatic of a lack of insight into his own
position. For there was a continuity of thought between The Only Possible
Ground of Proof for a Demonstration of God's Existence, which Jacobi had so
much admired, and the Critique of Pure Reason, which he now criticized.
Jacobi had more than he supposed in common with Kant, even more
than what he had shared with Spinoza.
Kant's Critique focused, after all, on reason's inability to overtake itself,
and concluded that reason can explain everything except itself. On this
score even Hamann,86 as well as Jacobi, agreed. The function of the
"thing in itself is not to account for the origin of sense impressions—
except perhaps at a very superficial and controvertible level—but to can-
onize the limitations to which reason is subject. For in its operations,
reason must presuppose that it is itself already at work and that the
"thing in itself is already implicated in the conditions of the operations
in question. To try to transcend such conditions and objectify the
"thing" as it is "in itself," not just as it is "for reason," would be tanta-
mount to reason's trying to re-enact its own beginning—or to a crea-
ture's wanting to preside over its own creation. Kant's assumption of the
"thing in itself was precisely his way of canonizing the radical contin-
gency that affects the whole of rationality with respect to existence. It
played in the critical system the conceptual function equivalent to
Spinoza's primacy of substance over thought and extension.
Kant had denied, of course, the possibility of the sort of insight into
being per se that Spinoza had taken for granted. When it is a matter of
determining the "thing in itself," one must go beyond reason and rely on
what Kant called "faith." On this score Hamann, Jacobi, and Kant were
agreed, at least verbally. The substantive difference (and it was a crucial
one) was that Kant retained the classical ideal of the autonomy of rea-
85. On this see my "The Facts of Consciousness."

86. Letter to Jacobi, 25-27 March 1786, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #948, p. 331.
son, though he restricted it to "formal reason" and tried to have reason

legislate the content of "faith" by subjecting the latter to reason's theo-
retical and practical interests. To Hamann and Jacobi any such move ap-
peared nothing short of blasphemous. To be sure, unlike his rationalist
predecessors Kant had understood that reason cannot function without
assuming realities that it cannot comprehend and must, therefore, ac-
cept on faith. His system relied for its closure on certain admittedly con-
tingent doctrines. In this respect at least, his reason, like the reason of
any religious believer, was historical in character. But instead of simply
relying for the validation of the required faith on the authority of certain
privileged historical events or on a communal witness, Kant was trying to
determine its content a priori, on the basis of reason's interests. Here, so
far as Hamann and Jacobi were concerned, was the blasphemy. It was not
just a matter of pure reason's trying to beget objects "virginally"
(Hamann's word), as all philosophers do when they determine existence
from abstract principles. It was also a matter of excogitating a priori the
kind of ideal world within which this miraculous parturition would ap-
pear perfectly normal. It was like arrogating to pure reason the miracu-
lous power of God's presence in history in order to validate pure
reason's pretensions to the miraculous parturition.
So "faith" did turn out to be, at the end at least, the main issue of the
David Hume—though Jacobi had certainly done his best in the dialogue
to mask its true significance. Years later he was to return to the issue of
Kant's formalism, and he then succeeded in formulating his objections
to Kant in a way that truly touched the essence of Kant's system.87 So far
as the appendix to the David Hume was concerned, however, Jacobi was
still interpreting Kant psychologically—as if the central issue of the
Critique were the justification of our belief in things "outside us"—and
this is how Kant's contemporaries as a rule also read the work.88
However, since that was not the central issue of the Critique, neither
Jacobi's objections to it in the David Hume nor those of Kant's other con-
temporaries really touched it. To the extent that the issue was, rather,
the limitations of reason, Jacobi had failed to see, first, that he and Kant
were both saying that rationality is itself a contingent phenomenon; sec-
ond, that that position was also implied in Spinoza's system; third, that
87. Von den Gottlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung (Of Divine Things and Their Revelation;
Leipzig: Fleischer, 1811), in Werke, in (1816); see especially pp. 369-71. By that time,
"reason" meant for Jacobi what "faith" had previously meant. On this point, see my "The
First Twenty Years of Critique: The Spinoza Connection."
88. On this point, see my "The Facts of Consciousness."
Introduction 103
Kant's way of determining the content of faith reflectively was a way of

checking the irrationalism potentially inherent in the position and al-
ready recognized byjacobi himself in Spinoza's system; and finally that,
short of retreating to a purely religious position or, at the opposite ex-
treme, of providing an alternative and perhaps more attractive theory of
historical reason, Jacobi could not oppose Kant without at the same time
showing up the inconsistency of his own position.
In the wake of the Critique Reinhold duly tried to demonstrate the exis-
tence of the "thing in itself," in Kant's defence.89 Schulze came along
and attacked both Kant and Reinhold on the ground that no such proof
was ever given, or could be given, on critical any more than on metaphys-
ical premises.90 He recommended Pyrrhonic scepticism as the only rea-
sonable alternative to the new "critique of reason." And more of the
same came from other quarters as well. At least two of Jacobi's contem-
poraries, however, gave evidence of having appreciated the metaphysical
significance of Kant. One was Solomon Maimon;91 the other, Johann
Gottlieb Fichte, had also noted the connection with Jacobi.
jo. Before turning to Fichte, at least enough must be said about

Hamann's reaction to the David Hume to allow us later to show how pro-
phetic Hamann's words were to prove of Jacobi's handling of the new
idealism. Jacobi sent Hamann a first copy of the book (still without
preface) on i April lySy. 92 Hamann acknowledged receipt on the
twenty-second of the same month but withheld any judgment.93 On
27 February, Jacobi had announced Wizenmann's premature death to
Hamann,94 and so the friends were devoting a great deal of attention to
Wizenmann's Resultateand critical reaction to it. Hamann's judgment on
the David Hume finally did arrive, in a long letter that took him from
27 April to 3 May to write,95 and there was no comfort in it for Jacobi.
Hamann let Jacobi know that Kraus had complained about the book's
lack of unity (p. 162), and himself complained because too much had
89. For Reinhold's attempt at reading Kant as a compromise between Jacobi and
Mendelssohn, see my "The First Twenty Years of Critique: The Spinoza Connection."
90. For the details of the story, which can only be hinted at here, see my "The Facts of
Consciousness."
91. He can only be mentioned here. See my "The Facts of Consciousness," pp. 32-36.
92. Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vn, #1052, p. 132.
93. Ibid., #1058, p. 154.
94. Ibid., #1045, p. 114.
95. Ibid., #1060, pp. 161-81.
been compressed into one single dialogue.96 Hamann simply could not
understand how Jacobi's claim in the Spinoza Letters that we are all born
in the faith could possibly be interpreted as Humean or philosophical in
nature. And Jacobi now had the gall to say that Mendelssohn had no
cause to read Christian motives into it! (p. 167) As far as Hamann could
see, Jacobi's whole thesis amounted to the old "Nil in intettectum. . . . " But
if this was all that he wanted to say, why confuse the issue by bringing up
faith and mixing its evidence with the evidence of the senses? Nobody
else was tweaking Jacobi's nose; language was the wax nose that he had
himself donned, and the only tweaking going on was at his own doing
(p. 166). Furthermore, Jacobi had failed to recognize that any distinc-
tion between faith and reason, realism and idealism, was really a product
of the reason of the schools—not anything that we find in real life. Faith
has as much need of reason as reason has of faith (p. 165). Jacobi's fault
was that he had set up the distinction in the first place and then had con-
fused its terms by his use of language. The result was that anyone nurtur-
ing a religious belief in petto would expect to find its truth as self-evident
as the testimony of the senses, and would by the same token be justified
in suspecting any opponent who refused to accept this alleged evidence
of being under the undue influence of an opposite religious belief also
held in secret.97 If Jacobi was born in the faith, and if faith was the
source of his evidence, why was he building his case on unreliable
human authorities such as Spinoza and now Hume as well? (p. 168)
"Your theory is truly a piecemeal assortment of philosophical and
human authorities," Hamann went on. " . . . Fail to feel this, dear
Jonathan, and you'll go the way of women who turn from street walkers
into church pillars."98
There was more in Hamann's letter, about which more later.
Hamann's principal complaint against Jacobi is already clear. Jacobi had
96. Hamann added that the three dialogues originally intended would have been a
more adequate forum (p. 165). With reference to the opening of the dialogue, where the
main character (obviously Jacobi himself) is represented sitting up in bed nursing a cold,
Hamann says: "Had you cited your Hume without a cold and a flu, with a bottle of wine
and after a good pudding, I would have done my reading with greater social involvement
and sympathetic appetite." (pp. 168-69) • ^tnis was in keeping, of course, with Hamann's
irrepressible and impertinent humour. But the humour had an edge to it.
97. See p. 174. Here I am systematizing Hamann's usual stream-of-consciousness
comments.
98. P. 173: literally, "from paramours to bigots." I am trying to create a coherent image
in English just as Hamann does by playing on the German words.
Introduction 105
not had the courage to stand on his Christianity alone. Just as in the
Spinoza Letters, Jacobi was here attacking philosophy while at the same
time playing its game. Worse still, he was not aware of what he was doing.
"Alas, my dear Jonathan Pollux!" Hamann warned him, "You do not un-
derstand yourself, and you rush to make pwrs^understood by others and
to share your sick philosophy with them" (p. 168). And he lamented, "It
pains me, [dear Jonathan], to see you still chewing on your Spinoza"
(p. 175). If he ever got to Pempelfort, he would abduct that "highway
bandit and murderer of common sense" (i.e. Spinoza), even at the risk
of being accused by Jacobi of temple robbery and sacrilege (p. 177). As
events turned out, Hamann eventually did make his way to Munster, and
while there he did visit Pempelfort. Much of his correspondence from
this point on is taken up with the preparation for the impending visit to
Princess Gallitzin. But Hamann's days were numbered. He died at
Munster, and Jacobi lost perhaps the only contemporary critic who really
understood him.
More about this in due course. The point here is that Hamann was
right. Jacobi's polemic against rationalistic philosophy did imply a defi-
nite philosophical position, however much Lavater's pious rhetoric, into
which Jacobi constantly lapsed, tended to mask it. How would somebody
who did not share Jacobi's prejudice against philosophical abstraction
but yet was sympathetic to Jacobi's implicit position set about to make a
system of it? From statements gleaned from Jacobi's own texts, the task
would appear as follows. Find a system of the kind that posits that (i) ex-
istence precedes essence (Jacobi's fundamental claim); (2) the origin of
determination and intelligibility is connected with the origin of con-
sciousness (the distinction between the "I" and the "Thou," which is the
most significant determination and the source of intelligibility, origi-
nates in consciousness); (3) the "I" must be (in some sense to be spec-
ified) the system's absolute first principle (this to satisfy Jacobi's concern
that the "I" be never reduced to a mere object of impersonal observa-
tion); (4) action (and the freedom that action presupposes) is the
source of meaning, yet human reason must remain (in some sense also
to be specified) irreducibly theoretical (this to retain the finitude of
human reason); (5) philosophical abstraction acquires existential signi-
ficance precisely as a form of action and hence as an expression of free-
dom (this to sidestep Jacobi's polemic against philosophical abstrac-
tions); (6) the system must be perfectly rational, yet be born of
faith (this to overcome the dichotomy between system and faith posited
by Jacobi); and finally (7) "feeling," of the kind that must be connected
io6 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
with the body yet is not merely "natural," is a dimension of rationality,

and so too is historical contingency (this, again, to habilitate reason
existentially).
Thus would the task appear. Fichte took up the challenge of realizing
it.
ii. It is well known that the early Fichte drew much inspiration from
Reinhold for his project of systematizing Kant's critique of reason," and
that Fichte admired Jacobi.100 Fichte's thought developed, even during
its earliest stage, and this is not the place to document either the devel-
opment or his final thought. Yet it is important to take cognizance of the
extent to which Fichte's new idealism was a reflection of Jacobi's thought
if one wants to understand the significance of Jacobi's reaction to Fichte
for Jacobi's own thought.
Fichte's master-stroke was to use as the instrument for constructing his
system the very operation of "reflection" that to Jacobi had meant the
end of "first-hand" knowledge. In the act of reflection subject and object
are distinct, for reflection implies taking cognizance of "something"; yet
the two are inextricably bound together, because in the cognized "some-
thing" (i.e. the object) the subject expects to recognize itself. What more
appropriate paradigm, therefore, for the act of which Jacobi had spoken
in the David Hume—in virtue of which subject and object are first distin-
guished in consciousness and individuated—than reflection itself, so un-
derstood? And Fichte used the very same metaphor of the "eye" as had
Jacobi. For Fichte existence indeed precedes reflection (Jacobi's condi-
tion one); yet reflection is existence's original deed, whereby it sets up
an eye for itself with which it can then contemplate itself.101 Since con-
sciousness only begins with this act, the subject-object identity that pre-
99. See "The Facts of Consciousness," p. 26.

100. On this point, see my "From Jacobi's Philosophical Novel to Fichte's Idealism:
Some Comments on the 1798-99 'Atheism Dispute,'" Journal of the History of Philosophy,
xxvii.i (1989), especially pp. 76-77.
101. "Es werden Augen eingesetzt dem Einem" ("Eyes are inserted into the One"). This
is a gloss entered by Fichte in his copy of Das System der Sittenlehre (Jena und Leipzig: Gabler,
1798), on the margin of §2, p. 29. See Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, 1.5, p. 48 (note). This work of
Fichte contains the clearest and most concise statement of his system in the first period of
Fichte's development. I am using it as my basis for my exposition. It must be noted that
Fichte made use of the metaphor of the "eye" in his Wissenschaftslehre only from 1801 on.
But the distinction between the "I" as purely creative activity and the determinate con-
sciousness of the "I" that results from that activity is in Fichte even in the first stage of his
thought. The metaphor of the "eye" expresses precisely that distinction.
Introduction 107
cedes it, and that the subject expects to recognize in its object is always
apprehended at a distance—always as having been left behind with the
onset of the subject-object distinction or as being yet to be retrieved in
actual consciousness. Hence, although the whole of consciousness orig-
inates in an attempt at ^consciousness (condition three), it must dis-
cover its object as if it were just given to it.—i.e. consciousness retains an
irreducible theoretical moment (condition four).
The consequence of this theoretical moment is manifold. Its presence
implies that subjective certainty always exceeds objective evidence (con-
dition six). Thus it implies that reflective conceptualization necessarily
apprehends its object indirectly, at "second hand," according to Jacobi's
expression, i.e. as an attempt to objectify an identity that ex hypothesi it
cannot bring to representations but must presuppose as its motivating
principle none the less. Access to that identity can only be attained by
each individual subject directly, in that immediate awareness of its own
existence that the said subject gains by engaging in an act of reflection.
Fichte called this self-awareness "intellectual intuition" and made a point
of asserting its possibility as against Kant's denial of it. He also made a
point of denying the need to posit the "thing in itself," since conscious-
ness was now being reduced to a dimension of self-consciousness. Yet
however existentially important the assumed intellectual intuition was,
its content could still only be determined through a process of reflective
conceptualization (condition six). Fichte's Wissenschaftslehrehad to oper-
ate strictly at the level of reflection, no less than did Kant's transcenden-
tal idealism. And as for the "thing in itself," the transcendent pull that
it exercised with respect to the whole world of experience in Kant's sys
tem was still retained in Fichte's. But Fichte now reinterpreted that
"thing" constantly eluding objectification as a "self yet to be brought to
reflective consciousness. This way of bringing the "thing" into conscious-
ness itself, and of replacing its interplay with "appearances" with a play
between pre-conscious existence and reflective objectification, made for
a more coherent picture of mental life. However, it did not in any way
lessen the distance between existence and reflection or allow reason ever
to retrieve its own origin rationally (condition six).102
102. This is a brief exposition deliberately slanted to highlight the affinities between
Fichte and Jacobi, which, in my opinion, are considerable. A more thorough and balanced
treatment would point out that "intellectual intuition" was first brought into play by the
young Schelling in his earliest attempt at interpreting Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, and that
Schelling, in thus introducing "intellectual intuition," was in fact injecting (very likely un-
der the influence of Holderlin) Spinozistic elements into what Fichte had originally in-
io8 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
This last point is especially important because it suggests why Fichte

might reasonably have thought that he was in spirit a disciple of Jacobi
and that he had turned Jacobi's very objections against philosophy into
a philosophical asset. On Fichte's new statement of the premises of ideal-
ism, the object of the alleged intellectual intuition that accompanies
every act of reflection does not acquire determination except as a result
of the reflection itself. Therefore, that it should be conceptualized as an
absolute "I" and not, as in Spinoza, as "substance" requires a decision
that exceeds objective evidence and hence constitutes an act of faith.
This faith can only be motivated by the desire on the part of free indi-
viduals to conceive of their world as itself the product of an original act
of freedom (condition 5).103 The Wissenschaftslehre consists in a series of
ever more complex reflections, each an attempt at interpreting things
that would otherwise appear to our consciousness as "thrown at us," i.e.
as predetermined by unknown external factors,104 rather than as objects
that derive their determinations from being incorporated into a network
of intentions freely undertaken by us.105 The series culminates in an at-
tempt to interpret the whole of reality as essentially social in character,
i.e. as a system of legal and ethical relationships, with respect to which
nature itself becomes just a medium for defining property rights. The
meaning of nature, its only justification, is to be an extension of human
existence—an object for exploitation that testifies to human freedom. In
this respect Fichte was indeed the great German spokesman of homo pred-
ator. The important point is that, on Fichte's own assumptions, the vision
of humanity incorporated in the Wissenschaftslehre can only appeal to any-
one who shares Fichte's intuition of freedom and subscribes to his ac-
count of the nature of this freedom. Fichte could honestly say with
tended simply as a conceptual reconstruction of the dynamics of mental life. "Intellectual

intuition" became for Fichte part of this reconstruction only at a second moment of reflec-
tion, to ground the whole reconstruction. (See Xavier Tilliette, Schelling: Une philosophic en
devenir, 2 vols (Paris: Vrin, 1970), Vol. i, pp. 72-73. At any rate, whether simply intent on
describing mental facts or already trying to add a subjective dimension to Spinoza, Fichte
was still mirroring elements of Jacobi's thought, namely Jacobi's desire, on the one hand,
to restrict himself simply to the description of experience, and, on the other, his apparent
symbiotic relationship with the great philosopher whose atheism he was trying to expose.
103. Das System der Sittenlehre, §3, p. 58—59.
104. Fichte uses the word Objekt, which is the German transliteration of the Latin
Ob-iactum, i.e. "thrown in front."
105. The Objekt thus becomes a Gegenstand, as in the Latin contra-stare.
106. Jacobi to Fichte, p. 55 of Jacobi's text below.
Introduction 109
Jacob! that, on his own assumptions, what a man is also determines what
his philosophy will be.lo6
Furthermore, Fichte granted to Jacobi that philosophy is the product
of a totally arbitrary abstraction and that to anyone not animated by
"logical enthusiasm"107 it might therefore look like a mere conceptual
game. But it is precisely this feature of philosophy that makes it the most
compelling witness to that freedom of which the whole of experience is
the expression (condition five). The philosopher's freely taken decision
to reconstruct experience conceptually, on the basis of the idea of the
"I," is itself the conscious re-enactment of the absolute "I" 's original pre-
conscious act that gave rise to consciousness and its world of determinate
objects (condition two). The very fact that the decision is freely taken is
guarantee of its validity—of the potential not to accept any world as real
except one that conforms to logical requirements. Accordingly, in
Fichte's new Wissenschaftskhre one always finds two series of reflective ob-
jectifications of the content of experience, one that describes how an ob-
ject appears to consciousness in immediate experience and another that
defines what it in fact is and how it ought to appear to be, on the assump-
tion that the world is the product of freedom.lo8 The ideal is ultimately
to reach a point at which the content of immediate experience is to be
found again, with no residue, reflectively expressed. At that point the
two series of objectifications would coincide. The philosopher would
then indeed rejoin the standpoint of ordinary people—but that is be-
cause ordinary people have been shown to be, in fact, philosophers.
Admittedly this situation can only be the object of an ideal that must be
nurtured in faith and that can only be realized pragmatically through
proper social action, without ever finding adequate theoretical expres-
sion. But then, the point of freedom is action, not theoretical explana-
tion. And the great service that philosophers accomplish for humanity
is that, though they might seem to be playing intellectual games, they in
fact bring to the level of reflective awareness and reflective expression
the sense of freedom that would otherwise remain in ordinary people
just a feeling.109 In this spirit Fichte could say to Jacobi that the two of
107. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

108. See "Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre" ("Second Introduction to the
Science of Knowledge"), Philosophisches Journal, v (1797): 319-78, vi (1797): 1-40, §§3-4
(Vol. v, especially pp. 330-31).
109. See ibid., Vol. vi, §§10-11, especially pp. 3%2ff.
them were in fact fighting for the same cause of freedom. Whatjacobi
testified to in the language of feeling from the standpoint of life, he,
Fichte, was expressing instead in the language of the concept from the
standpoint of speculation110 (condition seven).
12. As one might expect, Jacobi did not appreciate Fichte's casting of his
part in the cause of freedom. It was not just that the role offered con-
flicted withjacobi's understanding of himself and of Fichte. Jacobi also
detected an element of disingenuity in Fichte. Fichte left unsaid that his
faith was tailor-made to suit the requirements of his system. It was the
faith that a reflection bent on reflectivity for reflectivity's sake required
to validate itself existentially. Without that faith, and the logical enthu-
siasm that motivated it, there was no compelling ground for interpreting
the so-called standpoint of life as the pre-reflective acting out of the free-
dom to which Fichte was giving expression reflectively. Ordinary people
would have already to have stepped into the "magic circle" of Fichtean
reflection, and to have been at least inchoately Fichtean, to be able to
recognize their humanity in Fichte's system. Jacobi, for his part, was re-
fusing to step into that circle precisely because from his uninterpreted
standpoint of life he found no good reason for making the leap. He had
on the contrary every good reason to shun it.
Jacobi's own statement of how he stood vis-a-vis Fichte came in his
open letter of 1799, at the height of the atheism dispute. The bitterness
of Jacobi's declaration is evident despite the pervasive rhetoric of broth-
erly love. Historical circumstances, which included the political situation
at the time and the acerbic attack on the Woldemar by a disciple of
Fichte, J11 contributed to this bitterness. But Jacobi was obviously also
galled by the patronizing attitude that Fichte had displayed towards him.
There was moreover nothing in Fichte's new science that could in any
way satisfy Jacobi's personalism, Fichte's disclaimers to the contrary.
Fichte had indeed chosen to give the name of "I" to his first principle
and had clothed his account in the language of the "I." But this choice
had meaning only programmatically, i.e. only inasmuch as, in terms of
the assumed principle, it was possible to explain the possibility of genu-
ine "selves." On Fichte's own admission, any such self would require in-
110. See on this point "From Jacobi's Philosophical Novel to Fichte's Idealism,"
PP- 96-97-
111. See Jacobi to Fichte, p. 7, and footnote on Schlegel.
Introduction 111
dividuation and hence historical determination. The supposed original

"I," however, was ex hypothesi an unlimited act, a sheer Agilitdt112 that in
itself defied all determination. Fichte himself compared it to an empty
space, an x, that makes determination possible without itself being de-
termined. 113 There was nothing to distinguish it per se from Spinoza's
substance, in other words, except perhaps, as just mentioned, the system-
atic work that it performed.
As Fichte's system unfolded, the original "I" gave place to a series of
finite selves that were absolute only in the sense that they strove to be-
come so. Any one of these selves might have given the appearance of
coming closer to recognizable historical entities. But the appearance was
deceptive, and it certainly did not fooljacobi. As the object of theoretical
determination, the "self was now to be understood as a "willing in
general," as "tendency" and "intelligence."114 These are categories that
carry indeed connotations of personal life, but only because they are
parasitic on ordinary language usage. Taken objectively, according to
their meaning in Fichte's system, they could just as well stand for some
blind force of nature that has no intelligence in a subjective sense—even
though, to a hypothetical external observer, such a force might well ap-
pear as if issuing forth into a series of intelligibly connected effects.
Again, there was nothing intrinsic to the categories in question that
would significantly distinguish them from Spinoza's "thought" and
Spinoza's "extension."
At the practical level the situation might have appeared more conge-
nial tojacobi's personalism. As the subject of moral obligations and legal
contractual relations, the self did finally acquire an actual body and,
therefore, genuine individuation. In Fichte's system nature is finally
granted reality, but precisely because it is needed for this individuation.
The struggle against the pull in the direction of heteronomy coming
from empirical feelings adds existential seriousness to the striving after
autonomy in which moral life consists, and also constitutes the content
of individual moral histories. Furthermore, the very presence of a phys-
ical space, which provides the possibility of establishing spheres of terri-
112. See Jacobi to Fichte, p. 70, and Fichte, "Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der
Wissenschaftslehre" ("Attempt at a New Exposition of the Science of Knowledge"),
Philosophisches Journal, vn (1797): 16.
113. See Das System der Sittenlehre, §3, pp. 42—43.
114. See ibid., §1, pp. 23-24.
torial influence, makes for the concept of "private property."115 This in

turn makes conceptual room for private property and, at the practical
level, for the particularized demarcation of one self as contrasted to an-
other. Here especially Fichte seemed to be dancing to Jacobi's tune of
the primacy of action over theoretical signification.
Yet in the practical part of Fichte's system nature was being incorpo-
rated into the play of human intentions only as a tool to be controlled
and not for its own sake.116 Nature appears as a means whereby a histor-
ical self could, by dint of hard work, demonstrate that nothing (not even
lakes and forests) would be allowed to exist except as it ought to be, in
accordance with property laws or whatever other imperative of freedom
a particular situation called for. In this way the self exhibits its transcen-
dence vis-a-vis anything natural, or (it amounts to the same thing) it
gives proof that its existence is but an expression of the absolute free-
dom of the original indeterminate "I." But by this very fact the whole
world of nature and the individuation of the historical selves dependent
upon it are reduced, no less than were Spinoza's nature and Spinoza's
individuals reduced, to the level of mere phenomena with no intrinsic
existence of their own. And the original "I" loses any claim to the lan-
guage of personality, except by way of metaphor. Jacobi could well have
said that if the "I" at the head of Fichte's system was said to have eyes to
see with, or ears to hear with, it was only because Ficthean believers had
chosen to conceptualize their own historical ability to see and hear in
terms of that ultimate abstraction. They had done so for the sake of le-
gitimizing in the light of reason what was in fact a very subjective inter-
pretation on their part of an otherwise immediate feeling of being free.
Jacobi was perfectly justified, therefore, in calling Fichte's idealism an
inverted form of Spinozism117—one in which the attribute of thought
replaces substance, and substance itself is reduced to an attribute of
thought. Contemporary scholars have criticized Jacobi for making this
identification, on the grounds that Fichte was not interested in a meta-
physics or a cosmology but rather in conceptualizing—and in this way
bringing to reflective awareness—certain fundamental facts of con-
sciousness. In this sense the Wissenschaftslehreeis a purely ideal construct.
115. See J. G. Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts (Foundation of Natural Right; Jena und
Leipzig: Gabler, 1796), §§5-6 (where the concept of "material body" is legitimized apriori)
and §18.
116. See ibid., §19.
117. Jacobi to Fichte, p. 4.
Introduction 113
Jacobi's criticism, if at all valid, would rather apply to Schelling.ll8 But

Jacobi could reply to this criticism by pointing out that, in bringing his
alleged facts of consciousness to reflective awareness, Fichte is interpret-
ing them, and he could not interpret them as he does without assuming
a Spinozistic metaphysics. Unless Fichte's science is a mere conceptual
game (something that Fichte would not wish to grant), it cannot avoid
making ontological commitments. One cannot conceive of human free-
dom, as Fichte does, as an unceasing effort to overcome limits and
achieve the pure spontaneity of an unlimited act (which ex hypothesi is
void of personality) without implying that the supposed limits, and the
human individuality dependent upon them, ought not to be. That there
are such limits and that human individuality is possible must itself be a
product of finitude since there cannot be a positive ground for what
amounts to a lack, something to be overcome, a mere epiphenomenon
of consciousness. But this is exactly Spinoza's position. Fichte had only
added to it a language by which the individual caught up in the
Spinozistic cosmos, though in fact an epiphenomenon of substance, can
none the less go on talking about his or her experience of freedom as
if subjectivity in general were the origin of being and substance itself an
epiphenomenon of it. If Spinoza had subverted the language of subjec-
tivity, and if Goethe, as we saw in the Spinoza Letters, had tried to redeem
it artistically through his figure of the Prometheus, Fichte had turned it
instead into a language of lies.119
118. See R. Lauth's review of Hammacher, Die PhilosophicJacobis, "Nouvelles recherches

surjacobi," Archives dephilosophic, xxiv (1971): 285.
119. In all fairness to Fichte it must be added that he, on the contrary, thought that
Jacobi was the one who undermined human personality and human freedom by subjugat-
ing it to a transcendent and infinite God. Fichte agreed with Jacobi that personality and the
freedom associated with it require individuality. But precisely for this reason he restricted
it to the sphere of legally defined entities and their contractual relations. These entities
might feel themselves to be infinitely free, but immediately translate their would-be infinite
freedom into finite social determinations. This picture derived of course from the same lib-
eral tradition of thought from which Jacobi also drew his inspiration. Jacobi was, however,
interpreting that tradition with traditional, Aristotelian notions of individuality and person-
ality in mind. He accordingly objected to Fichte's picture because it was based on an ab-
stract conception of freedom and this, according to him, ultimately negated real freedom
of action. This shows how much the opposition between Jacobi and Fichte was due to an
opposition between an old fashioned, Catholic-like understanding of "person" and a
Cartesian one. For Fichte's suspicion that Jacobi was sacrificing human freedom to divine
omnipotence, see his letter to Reinhold, SJanuary 1800, Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, 111.4, #5*8.
the whole letter but especially pp. 182-83.
73. One can therefore appreciate the quiet rage that animates Jacobi's
open letter to Fichte. Yet, for an understanding of Jacobi himself, the
most important passages in the letter are not those that directly attack
Fichte but those that do him the ambivalent honour Jacobi accords great
philosophers. In the Spinoza Letters Jacobi had praised Spinoza as the
most consistent and honest of all philosophers, but precisely for this
reason—since philosophy is an inherently flawed enterprise—Jacobi
had felt himself obliged to reject him. He now hailed Fichte as the
"Messiah of reason"'20—the great mind who had carried the work of
reason to its ultimate limit, extending it even beyond Spinoza by adding
to it a subjective dimension. But he now had to reject Fichte as well and
with even more urgency. One no longer finds in Jacobi's letter the del-
icate attempt to reach a non-rationalistic understanding of the dynamics
of the human mind that one finds in the David Hume. There still is an
attempt, in the appendices, to formulate a concept of freedom free of
the absurdities of philosophical reflection. In that attempt Jacobi simply
fell back upon Augustinian images of a soul that can either be earth-
bound, and hence slave to the passions, or heaven-bound and free—
images that have significance only in a religious context. By contrast,
what one finds in the letter, as an alternative to Fichte's philosophically
consequent yet wrong-headed conception of freedom, is merely the stri-
dent preaching of religious faith. Jacobi had reverted to the simple di-
chotomy of philosophy and faith with which he had confronted
Mendelssohn in the Spinoza Letters, and was now insisting on the need to
make a choice between the two with more passion than ever before.
Jacobi would not have been forced to the choice, of course, had he not
accepted Fichte's definition of rationality as reflection for reflectivity's
sake. But it is even more significant that the definition had been Jacobi's
own in the first place. In exploiting it for systematic purposes, Fichte was
only trying to demonstrate that, far from being detrimental to the cause
of freedom, reflectivity was on the contrary its best expression, and a phi-
losophy based on it the clearest manifesto of the primacy of action and
existence over theory that Jacobi had promoted from the beginning.
Jacobi thus found himself in the curious bind of having to grant to
Fichte the title of philosopher par excellence in order to be consistent with
himself, yet of not being able to make this concession without implicitly
also conceding that Fichte's idealism was, philosophically, the conse-
quent result of some of the premises dearest to his own heart. As he
120. Jacobi to Fichte, p. 2.

Introduction 115
turned to faith infugam vacui, he was fleeing not just before the nihilism
of Fichte but from himself as well.
Hamann's critique of Jacobi becomes relevant again here. In his cor-
respondence with his friend we also find these glosses on the David
Hume: "Are being and being in itself an actual object? By no means. [They
are] rather the most universal relations, whose existence and properties must
be believed, and without instruments they cannot either be brought
nearer to the insights of a third [person], or made clearer, or greater in
extension and intension."121 And, "Actual existence is nothing but an ens
rationis. Sensation [Empfindung] and rational cognition both rest upon
relations of things and their properties to our instruments for receiving
them as also upon relations between our representations. It is pure ideal-
ism to separate faith and sensation from thought. Sociability is the true
principium of reason and language, through which sensations and
representations are modified."122
The problem with Jacobi, as Hamann had complained from the begin-
ning, was that, while inveighing against the philosophers for not respect-
ing the individuality of existence, he had himself adopted their mode of
thought. He had treated existence, sensation, and reason as abstractions.
Since by their very nature abstractions exclude one another, he had
thereby landed himself with the problem of bringing them together that
lies at the base of all idealism. "It is pure idealism," as Hamann was say-
ing, "to separate faith and sensation from thought."123 In actual life, where
people do not worry about existence in general or explanation in gen-
eral but are involved in highly particularized situations that they need to
clarify through verbalization, no such problem arises. It is obvious to
everyone concerned that experience consists throughout of passive ac-
ceptance and active interpretation, individual perception and social con-
firmation. Let anyone, however, generalize problems that are by nature
particular, and let this person then try to resolve them in universal terms
as if there were one simple formula that could cover all cases, then that
person is caught in the impossible situation of having to retrieve exis-
tence in general out of thought in general. And for that feat one indeed
needs a special act of faith. Furthermore (Hamann would have added
if only he had lived to witness the Fichte phenomenon), let anyone
treat existence in general as if it were something actual, and one also
121. Letter of 27 April-3 May 1787, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vii, #1060, p. 169.
122. Ibid., p. 174.
123. Ibid.
comes up with the idea of a Tat-Tat, an act pure and simple, which a
Promethean effort at perfect reflection would then try to objectify. But
the idea of such a pure act has no meaning apart from the task of resolv-
ing the impossible problem for which it is posited. And the reflection
that should objectify it is not anything that anyone would want to posit
as the prototype of all rationality unless, by virtue of a very peculiar
moral decision, one were already bent on reducing all human relations
to a system of formal laws and obligations. Jacobi was fleeing before the
nihilism implicit in the possibility of this decision, and in flight he cried
out for faith. But so far as Hamann was concerned, Jacobi was only pay-
ing the price for having waged war against his adversaries on their own
ground. Hamann's prophecy had come true. Jacobi had taken pleasure
in philosophy, and had now become a pillar of the church.
74. It was not clear in what kind of faith Jacobi could possibly find ref-
uge. It could not be the sacramental faith of a Hamann, who could con-
clude his letter criticizing the David Hume with the fatherly advice: "Do
not fret about anything that would intrude on your sleep, appetite and
peace of mind, for you would thereby neglect the joys of the father and
the happiness of the groom."124 As for Fichte's faith, Jacobi was repudi-
ating it precisely because it was a philosopher's faith—one of those
empty faiths (as Hamann had called them) 125 that go hand in hand with
pure reason. Yet if Fichte's faith was motivated by Fichte's "logical enthu-
siasm," and in this respect it was a philosopher's faith, the motive force
behind Jacobi's was the need to escape the consequences of a system of
thought that he, Jacobi, conceded to be the best that philosophy could
offer. But this concession itself amounted to a philosophical position. It
presupposed an understanding of the nature and role of reason in
human experience that Jacobi could have refused to accept on philo-
sophical grounds. The dreadful consequences that he was trying to es-
cape by taking refuge in faith were therefore of his own making. But if
Jacobi's need for faith had been generated by Jacobi's philosophy, it fol-
lows that, in this respect, his faith too was that of a philosopher. As of
1799, at the height of the atheism dispute, the monster that had been
haunting Jacobi since the Spinoza Letters was still making its presence felt.
And there is no doubt that its head was still that of Spinoza.
124. Ibid., p. 180.

125. See ibid., p. 180: "Yes, unfortunately there is more pure reason and empty faiths,
and more rationes[,] than portiones."
III
Literary Witnesses:
An Essay in Interpretation
i. To the objection that his faith was that of a philosopher, Jacobi might
have replied that it was bound so to appear in the context of philosophi-
cal polemic. But he had also given clues to the nature of his faith in an-
other context, the literary, through the fictional characters that he had
created for the very purpose of "display [ing] humanity as scrupulously as
possible the way it is, whether explicable or not."* It is to this evidence that
one should turn before passing judgment on his faith. Of course, it is of-
ten difficult in Jacobi's two novels to draw the line between speeches that
are aesthetically required (that develop a character) and those that are
polemically required (that expound Jacobi's views). Still, Jacobi's re-
sponse would be a fair one, and for this reason the witness of his char-
acters deserves a hearing.
This is not the place to detail the publication history of Allwill and
Woldemar,2 nor to discuss the development in Jacobi's mind of the
1. Allwill (1792), p. xvi,of Jacobi's text.

2. For Allwill, see the introductory note to the translation below. As for Woldemar, it was
first published in 1777 as Freundschafi und Liebe (Friendship and Love). A revised version of
this first version appeared in 1779 under the title of Woldemar: Eine Seltenheit aus der
Naturgeschichte, Theil I (Woldemar: A Rarity in the History of Nature, Part /). In the same year,
however, Jacobi also published in the Deutsches Museum a piece entitled "Ein Stuck
Philosophic des Lebens und der Menschheit: Aus dem zweiten Bande von Woldemar" ("A
Fragment of Philosophy of Life and Humanity: From the Second Volume of Woldemar,"
and this second piece was republished in revised form in 1781 under the title of Der
Kunstgarten (The Artificial Garden), as part of Jacobi's Vermischte Schriften, Band I. The
Woldemar of 1794 (two parts) and the again-revised version of 1796 are a combination of
the Woldemar of 1779 and Der Kunstgarten of 1781. For Woldemar, see the very instructive
work of Frida David, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis "Woldemar" in seinen verschiedenen Fassungen
(Leipzig: Voigtlander, 1913).
ii 8 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
themes and characters of the two novels.3 In his final version Allwill lost
whatever charm he might have had at his first conception, whereas
Woldemar in his finally gained credibility as a human being by under-
going conversion and learning the meaning of humility. These changes
are important so far as Jacobi's intellectual biography is concerned.
What interests us most, however, is the critique of the Sturm und Drang
hero—the Herzensmensch or "man of feelings"—implicit in Jacobi's treat-
ment of his characters, which in many respects anticipates the judgment
that Jacobi was to pass on Fichte's new idealism only a few years later.
The Fichte phenomenon marked a resurgence in philosophical form of
the Promethean vision of humanity that the young Goethe had epito-
mized. Jacobi's critique comes through unambiguously only in the final
versions of the two novels, and it is on these that we shall therefore
concentrate.
One must also be careful not to transpose the philosophical pro-
nouncements made by Jacobi's characters directly to Jacobi himself.
These fictional personalities allow Jacobi to explore ideal possibilities
without necessarily committing himself to them personally. In this re-
spect they play a rhetorical role not unlike that played by "Spinoza" in
the Spinoza Letters. Moreover, the distance that their presence establishes
between Jacobi and whatever philosophical position is being advocated
in the two novels satisfies a requirement dictated by the very logic of
Jacobi's discourse. For the necessary consequence of Jacobi's belief in
the intuitive nature of truth is that any attempt to convey the latter dis-
cursively must fall short, thereby leaving a gap between speaker's inten-
tion and actual pronouncement that can only be traversed through
extra-logical means. Ultimately what must count most in Jacobi's dis-
course is not what is being said (which is by definition inadequate) but
how it is said. Jacobi's whole authorship is conditioned by this require-
ment.4 In the Spinoza Letters he satisfied it by using Spinoza as the spokes-
man for reason. He thus managed to engage in philosophical discourse
3. Nor need we be concerned with identifying figures from Jacobi's actual life among
his fictional characters. Perhaps Allwill, who was conceived at the time of Jacobi's first
friendship with Goethe and of the first cooling off in the relationship between the two
friends, is a portrait of the young poet, whereas Woldemar is throughout a stand-in for
Jacobi himself. But then, Allwill and Woldemar have many traits in common. See
"Woldemar" und "Allwill" alias Johann Wolfang Goethe. Authentische Schilderungen von F. H.
Jacobi uber Goethe, Henriette von Roussillon und deren empfindamsame Freunde nebst originalbriefen
Goethes, ed. Lothar Baus (Homburg/Saar: Asclepios, 1989).
4. It will also determine Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authorship.
Introduction 119
while simultaneously suspending belief in its ultimate veridicality, by vi-

carious participation via the character "Spinoza." The true judgment on
Spinoza's objective position is only made manifest by Jacobi's subjective
resolve, expressed at the appropriate rhetorical moment, to defy the
logic of abstract systems for the sake of asserting individual freedom. A
parallel rhetorical device is to be found in the novels. Here it is the fic-
tional characters who generate, by virtue of not being identified with
Jacobi, the required distance between any authorial voice and the many
philosophical positions they articulate. What they say is not necessarily
what Jacobi means. Yet by virtue of what they are and what they do they
also provide the required existential background against which the true
value of their words is to be gauged. What Jacobi makes them be is his
way of displaying the value of what they say—all this in keeping with
Jacobi's fundamental belief that words have no meaning except in con-
crete situations.
I have called the two novels "philosophical" for lack of any better de-
scriptive term. In fact they are sui generis. Whether Allwill ought to be
called a novel at all is itself a problem, since the work is void of dramatic
action in any obvious form. It consists of a series of letters exchanged
among the members of a closely knit group of friends and relatives, of
late infiltrated by the ominous figure of a certain Allwill. The group is
made up of Sylli, a much-afflicted woman who has recently lost her be-
loved husband as well as the only child born issue of the marriage.
Because of a lawsuit to which she must attend, which prevents her from
leaving the place where she had once settled with her late husband, Sylli
is kept apart from her brother-in-law, Heinrich Clerdon, and his wife,
Amalia, both of whom she loves and respects, as well as from her two
young first cousins, Leonore and the little Glair, who frequent the
Clerdon household. The letters exchanged among these intimately con-
nected individuals provide the structural support for the whole narra-
tion as well as the context into which other letters are introduced—one,
on the subject of Allwill's character, from Sylli's brother, Clement von
Wallberg, the rest from Allwill himself and a certain Lucy, apparently a
character from Allwill's past. Throughout there are echoes of past
actions and decisions and intimations of actions and decisions yet to be
made. Nothing definite, however, ever happens—except growth in self-
understanding on the part of some of the dramatis persona and clarifica-
tion of their characters to the readers and other actors. The epistolary
exchange is the medium of this clarification, particularly in the reports
of the philosophical discussions in which some of the characters
delight—notably Heinrich, little Clair, and Allwill himself. What we have

at the end is a psychological tableau rather than a roman—a study in
human nature painted in the variety of lights and shades that different
characters project upon one another through their words and feelings.
Woldemar is a somewhat different case. Here we have a very eccentric
though still recognizable instance of the Bildungsroman so beloved of the
eighteenth century. Woldemar is the typical Herzensmensch of the Sturm
und Drang, the young man endowed by nature with such a lively sensi-
bility and such a wealth of internal resources on which to draw that he
becomes a world unto himself. Initially, his imagination defines reality
for him. But this young man cannot avoid coming in contact with an
external world that imposes requirements on him quite different from
those of his imagination, and, short of simply withdrawing into himself
and ultimately suffering the fate of Goethe's Werther,5 he must learn to
temper his subjectivity with a sense of reality. This process of learning,
which the creators of the Sturm und Drang had to undergo in their real
lives much as did their heroes in their fictional lives, is the subject-matter
of the typical Bildungsroman. It is also the subject-matter of Woldemar,
though the situation that gives rise to the central conflict is far-fetched
even by eighteenth-century standards, and the action leading up to it im-
plausible to say the least. Nor is the pace of the plot helped by the many
philosophical discussions with which the story is interwoven. Yet, al-
though structurally these discussions could all stand on their own as
Platonic dialogues, thematically they all deal with the central issue of the
novel. That issue is the tension felt in the education to the life of virtue
between the requirements of nature and those of culture and art, be-
tween contemplation and worldly practicality, between individual action
and social demands. They provide the conceptual statement of a prob-
lem that we should then expect to see resolved through the actions of
the novel's protagonists. In this respect—if not artistically, at least
thematically—philosophical dialogue and dramatic situation become
integrally connected in the novel.
The plot itself can be sketched out as follows. Woldemar comes into
a circle of family and friends from another city. The circle consists of the
old Eberhard Hornich, a practical-minded businessman with a contempt
for idle philosophizing; his three daughters, Caroline, Henriette, and
Louise; Henrietta's friend Allwina, who is Hornich's ward; Dorenburg,
another businessman; and Biderthal, a lawyer by training who is also the
5. He committed suicide.
Introduction 121
brother of Woldemar. Dorenburg marries Caroline and joins Hornich's

firm. After a quarrel with Hornich, who does not wish to see one of his
daughters marry a scholar, Bidertahl is finally allowed to marry Louise
provided he too joins the firm. Henriette is not physically as beautiful as
the other girls but her personality has considerably more depth. She acts
as a mediating figure between the three households, and her sisters emo-
tionally continue their virginal existence (sic!) in her, just as she shares
in their pleasure in being wives and mothers.
Now, of the two approximately equal parts of the Woldemar, the first re-
lates Woldemar's settling into this circle, where he assumes the role of
philosopher, moralist, and sage-in-residence. Woldemar has obviously
been unhappy in the past, but as he experiences the friendship of these
people, he gradually opens up and begins to feel more comfortable with
his life. Through a series of quarrels about the nature of philosophy with
the old Hornich, however, the stage is set for the catastrophe that ensues
in the second part. Hornich has developed a contempt for Woldemar.
Bidertahl thinks that his brother loves Henriette and would like to see
them married. Woldemar, however, has developed a Seelenfreundschaft
with Henriette, as he explains in a letter to his brother: "We became
friends in the noblest sense of the word; friends as persons of the same
sex could never become, and persons of different sex perhaps have never
been before."6
Henriette has like feelings with respect to Woldemar. In fact she has
decided to remain single and to serve the world as a mediating aunt-
figure. In this spirit she has chosen her friend Allwina to be the wife of
Woldemar, so that the three of them can remain together and live in the
same household after her father Hornich has passed away. But it is pre-
cisely with his death (with which Part Two opens) that the problem
begins. On his deathbed Hornich asks Henriette to take a formal vow
never to marry Woldemar. Henriette resists because she wants nothing
to come between her and her friend. She tells her father that it had
never occurred to her that she would marry Woldemar. However, when
even the disclosure of Woldemar's engagement to Allwina fails to ap-
pease the old man, and when Henriette fears that her refusal to take the
vow might shorten her father's life by even one hour, she finally gives in.
Later, after Hornich's death, she feels uneasy about the whole affair but
decides never to tell Woldemar about it. However, some time later
Woldemar by chance hears of the vow from Louise, in whom Henriette
6. 1820 ed., p. 282.

had confided. From then on Woldemar begins to have doubts about his
friend, whom he had trusted and thought so completely his own. His
world threatens to fall apart because it had been constructed solely on
the supposition that he and Henriette are one soul. Henriette, for her
part, knows nothing of the cause of Woldemar's unrest, since Louise tells
no one about her accidental indiscretion until the very end of the novel.
Hence, although Woldemar and Henriette are in physical proximity
throughout this crisis and also keenly aware of each other's evident suf-
fering, they never tell each other what is on their minds. To this extent
they never really meet. And this situation persists until the very end,
when Henriette discovers the cause of Woldemar's strange behaviour to-
wards her, whereupon (with a great show of emotion that Jacobi fails to
control artistically) Henriette finally opens up and confesses her secret,
while Woldemar falls to his knees and begs all his friends for forgiveness.
So much, then, for introductory sketches of the Allwill and the
Woldemar. The task now is to define Jacobi's idea of humanity as it
emerges through the words and actions of the protagonists, and the na-
ture of the faith he thinks required by that humanity for its realization.
2. Allwill, like Woldemar, is a "beautiful soul,"7 a member of the

Herzensmensch species. Also like Woldemar he is portrayed by Jacobi as ar-
riving on the scene from a foreign place, a stranger to the given situation
who in many ways always remains a stranger, like a soul that never rec-
onciles itself to embodiment. In the case of Allwill this sense of unreality
is reinforced by a lack of temporal indices. Amalia complains about the
difficulty of placing his age (he always appears either too young or too
old) and makes a point of obtaining his birth certificate—to pin him
down somehow. And AllwiU's letters all lack dates.8 Like an ethereal
entity (a disembodied soul), Allwill flits in and out of the lives of other
people yet manages to leave an indelible mark on them.
We get a biographical report about his childhood from Clerdon, who
introduces it with a play on his name—literally, "one who is all will," or,
in Clerdon's more imaginative rendition, "He who does not yield." It ap-
pears that even as a child AllwiU's name suited him to perfection. Little
Allwill was a stubborn creature who preferred to suffer the most painful
physical consequences and the cruellest punishments rather than sub-
mit to the judgments of others or accept as real anything but the dictates
7. See Allwill (1792), p. 163.

8. See Kierkegaard's Diary of the Seducer. The parallels are remarkable.
Introduction 123
of his vivid imagination. Rather than the result of a constitutional defi-

ciency, this failure to confront outside reality was in fact the unfortunate
consequence of a superabundance of natural gifts. The wealth of his in-
ternal life made it so attractive to him that, by comparison, everything ex-
ternal paled in importance. Hence, because the standards by which little
Allwill functioned were not those of the average individual, his actions
were doomed to be misunderstood. He was often taken to be a half-wit
because of his apparent inability to size up the likely consequences of a
situation. In fact he was endowed with a livelier sensibility and a greater
power for feeling than anyone around him. He often appeared to be a
hero, for he was wont to assume responsibility for the misdeeds of other
boys and suffer the consequent punishments with the impassivity of a
stoic. Yet little Allwill was not motivated by any special compassion for
his friends or feelings of generosity towards them but by disdain for
their inability to rise above circumstances and take pain without fuss.
Self-centredness, in other words, was Allwill's defining trait from the
beginning. It was this that made him appear to others a totally muddled
boy.
And a muddled adult Allwill has turned out to be. Allwill is full of con-
tradictions. There is no doubt about the abundance of his talents, his
charm, and the natural beauty of his sentiments. Everybody gives testi-
mony to these gifts. In comparison to the average mortal he is like the
highest among the angels. But it is precisely his extraordinary natural
beauty that inspires fear in those with whom he comes into contact. As
happened to Lucifer, his beauty may be too much for him to savour, and,
in enjoying it, he may end up tasting evil. Indeed, despite Allwill's obvi-
ous beauty, there is something just as obviously repulsive about his per-
sonality. The problem is not in anything that he says or does but rather
in the contextual impropriety of what he says and does. His words and
deeds are out of place and therefore, however beautiful abstractly con-
sidered, obscene in their enactment. Nothing could be more beautiful
than Allwill's praise of the abundance of Amalia's love, or of the fullness
of her family life, or more perceptive than his analysis of the nature and
growth of her relationship to Clerdon. Nothing could be as close to
Jacobi's heart as Allwill's distinction between false friendship, which is
based on self-interest, and the true friendship that consists in two con-
scious entities becoming one in mind and heart. True friendship pro-
vides the limit that prevents the dispersal of natural potentialities for
feeling. It makes for genuine individuality and, therefore, true existence.
Or again, Allwill's passionate defence of the superiority of natural nobil-
ity of feelings over artificial morality, and of the rights of the exception
over and against the universality of principles, play on themes that are
cherished byjacobi. We find them reasserted byjacobi himself in his at-
tack on Fichte only a few years after the final version of the Allwill was
published, and in words often reminiscent of Allwill's. And it is from
AllwiU's lips that we also hear Jacobi's most concise and eloquent refu-
tation of Humean phenomenalism,9 as part of a philosophical discus-
sion in which Clerdon (strangely enough) is made to defend idealism.
On the basis of his set speeches, in other words, Allwill could well be
taken to be Jacobi's most eloquent spokesman. Yet there are aspects of
AllwiU's biography, some recorded for us by characters who have wit-
nessed him in action and others that Allwill himself reveals in apparently
unwitting confessions, that make his words ring hollow. His panegyric on
Amalia is indeed eloquent. But just before embarking on the praise of
her womanhood, Allwill has denied that women are capable of love and
has displayed an attitude towards women in general that is both flippant
and degrading. This is a sensitive point because, according to the ideol-
ogy of the day in which Jacobi fully shared, woman is the figure of cre-
ative nature. She stands at the origin of all the raw life-forces to which
reason must then give shape (Sylli is said to be the one who "knows the
beginning"). To be frivolous about woman is therefore tantamount to
being frivolous about the ground of one's own existence. But Allwill is
definitely frivolous about his women. As he himself confesses, his temp-
tation is to transform them all into goddesses resplendent in beauty and
virtue, into figments of his own imagination. But this attempt at diviniz-
ing them is not fair to them in AllwiU's own view, since the poor things
cannot live up to the expectations thus imposed upon them. It is also
troublesome to the perpetrator of the attempted transformation be-
cause of the disappointments to which he makes himself liable, and
(again in AllwiU's own view) socially dangerous as well, because of the
threat that such disappointments pose to marriage in general. Hence
Allwill prefers not to become too involved with his women. He prefers
to leave them be with all their limitations, always with the hope (which
he explicitly expresses with respect to Lucy) that they will be married off
to somebody else at some suitable stage in the relationship, and thus no
longer pose a threat to him.
In fact Allwill does not leave his women be. It is not just that he obvi-
ously manages to insinuate himself into their lives—and not to their ad-
9. I believe that it is echoed in the first chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.

Introductionn 125
vantage, as the vague but dark intimation of a past catastrophic relation

with a certain "Nanny" indicates, and so too the definite but equally dark
evidence of an affair with Lucy, or the inner turmoil that his flirting
causes in Clair. Allwill degrades his women by his practice of either turn-
ing them into an object of glorification or otherwise dismissing them, for
' he cannot then recognize them for what they really are. But to this ex-
tent he also fails to grant them the status of real existents. The ultimate
loser is Allwill himself, because, on Jacobi's principle of individuation, by
not confronting the real "Thou" in the women with whom he comes into
contact, he also fails to establish himself as a real "I." Allwill remains an
unreal entity, a phantom of being rather than anything really existing.
With the exception of Clair, who is too dazzled by Allwill's brilliant ex-
terior to be able to penetrate to its empty core, the effects of the failure
are seen by everyone around him. It is Allwill himself, however, who
identifies its cause in one of his perspicacious but, as usual, misplaced
observations. Moments after the philosophical debate in which he has
sided with realism against phenomenalism, Allwill sits at the clavier en-
gaged in a tete-a-tete wi\h Clair, alternating between virtuoso playing (mu-
sical character that he is) and whispered comment. Suddenly, with a
flurry of notes for overture, he announces to Clair that he cannot, after
all, stand by his earlier argument. Clerdon was right. Just as a note is
nothing except its own sounding, so too there is no reason to believe
that a seeing is anything more than the seeing of a seeing, or a feeling,
the feeling of a feeling. Now, as philosophical statement, this pro-
nouncement is not to be taken any more seriously than any of Allwill's
many others. Artistically, however, it is a perfect verbalization of the
situation—of the mood of suspended sensuality that is established be-
tween Allwill and Clair and that, despite the serious philosophical talk
between the two, simply feeds upon itself. Allwill and Clair are colluding
in an orgy of self-adulation. And if this narcissistic exercise can be for-
given Clair (she is still very young), in Allwill it is particularly repulsive,
not just because of his age (he ought to know better) but because,
granted all that we know about him so far, this self-adulation constitutes
his very character. This is what Allwill is, merely a feeling that feeds upon
itself, a display of events that seems to constitute a public world of mean-
ing but that, in fact, has no content beyond the display itself.
Jacobi's device of putting some of his most cherished beliefs in the
mouth of this otherwise dubious Allwill is his way of showing that, ulti-
mately, what an individual says is not as important as the test of its truth
that he or she provides through what he or she does. Clerdon can afford
to be a phenomenalist (an "idealist," in Jacobi's language) and sceptic

in theory, for in practice, as some scenes in the Allwill show, he is a real-
ist. Allwill, however, enacts phenomenalism because, whatever his theo-
retical pronouncements, he has made it his vocation to turn his whole
existence into a series of events—be they sensations, thoughts, feelings,
utterances, what have you—that give the appearance of being directed
towards an objective content but in fact have nothing to offer but them-
selves. To this extent, i.e. as the result of Allwill's own doing, phe-
nomenalism is the truth of his world. For this reason, although the
destructiveness of his behaviour is obvious to us or to any observer who
does not share his attitudes, Allwill is incapable of apprehending it. He
can throw himself into the most disparate forms of behaviour, whole-
heartedly engaging in each, without thereby acting out of character at
any time, since it is of the essence of his character that it be exclusively
defined by the passion of the moment. We said that Allwill is full of con-
tradictions. This is again how he appears to us, or to anyone else who ex-
pects to find a subjective core in him—a source of self-determined and
therefore coherent action. Viewed from within, however, Allwill is made
immune to contradiction by the very fragmentation of his being. He has
fallen victim to the lure of his own natural endowments that make him
run, now after this feeling, now after that image or that word, each time
totally dedicated to the beauty of the event. The ultimate contradiction
of Allwill's character is that he, the "All Will," the "One who does not
yield," has never succeeded in pulling his natural forces together into a
single internal principle of action. What he regards as subjective inde-
pendence is only caprice, the type that madmen also exhibit. The truth
is thus that Allwill lacks the power of choice.
'Yes, Edward," Lucy cries out to Allwill, "Theory of Immoderateness,
Principles of the Most Extended Gluttony, these are the proper names for
what you endeavour with so much zeal, with such great expenditure of
wit, hair-splitting, and poetic imagination, to put in place of wisdom."10
And she continues, "A frightful vocation, to be this Edward Allwill!
Unceasingly shaken to the marrow, in so many different ways; and a mul-
titude of deep sorrows in the wake. You, poor thing!—It's amazing that
you do not finally crumble into ruins under the shocks, everything in
you gone to pieces; or that you do not smother under the rubble."11
"Innocence, Edward!—dear Edward," she implores, "innocence, inno-
10. 1792 ed., pp. 258-59.

11. Ibid., p. 260.
Introduction 127
cencel—Doesn't any memory of it awake in your soul?"12 But Edward

has placed himself outside the bounds within which innocence has
meaning existentially, and this is indeed his fall. He is now a "sorcerer,"
for he can conjure up a mirage of reality out of mere words and
gesture—a seducer, for while giving the appearance of pointing in one
direction or of being in one place, he is in fact already elsewhere—and
this is so necessarily, because it is not in Allwill's character to deceive in
any particular situation by choice, with some specific aim in mind.
Dispersion is the rule of his being, and the price that he has paid for hav-
ing made the flux of nature the determinant of his existence.
Allwill—it should by now be clear—is Jacobi's reply to the Sturm und
Drang's cult of nature and feeling, the embodiment of his claim that that
cult makes for a false subjectivity. Jacobi may indeed have sided with the
proponents of that movement against the Berlin philosophers, and it
may also be the case that the movement was a temptation to one of his
temperament. But so too was philosophy, and if the Spinoza Letters was his
way of exorcizing his philosophical demon, the Allwill could serve the
same purpose for the demon of nature. It is remarkable that the objec-
tion that Jacobi raised against the philosophers in the one work and
against the poets in the other was essentially the same although in differ-
ent media. Just as the philosophers, in their subjective effort to compre-
hend reality reflectively, end up draining the concept of all existential
content and thus actually remove the conditions that make subjectivity
possible, so too the practitioners of the morality of natural feeling, in
their attempt to distil from experience its supposed moment of pure
spontaneity, actually reduce it to a series of fleeting events with no social
or moral significance. Allwill is as much a reflective animal as any philos-
opher. Indeed, he is worse than a philosopher, for the philosophers can
at least retain theoretical distance from the products of their reflective
concepts, whereas feelings are AllwiU's medium and the sole product of
his work is his own existence. Or perhaps one should say that Allwill
would have been worse than any philosopher prior to Fichte, for with
Fichte philosophy becomes a way of life. It is as if Fichte were an Allwill
who had finally heeded Lucy's exhortations and converted. He has
finally recognized the need to pull his otherwise scattered existence to-
gether by committing himself to live by a freely accepted limit. But the
converted Allwill still only knows how to deal in abstractions, and it is an
abstract "I," confronted by a limit in general, that he now sets out to re-
12. Ibid., p. 247.

alize with all the earnestness of a penitent.13 It is thus no surprise that

in Jacobi's open letter to Fichte we hear echoes reverberating from the
Allwill.
If we read the character of Allwill in this way, we can clarify certain as-
pects of Jacobi's authorship that are otherwise obscure. It seems strange
thatjacobi would accuse the philosophers of having excogitated them-
selves out of natural existence and oppose the virtues of nature to the ab-
stractions of philosophy, arguing the need to revert constantly to the
intuition of the senses; and yet that he would also accuse the philoso-
phers of materialism, of being held captive by nature. On the basis of his
polemic against abstractions, we would rather expect Jacobi to accuse
the philosophers of being too angelic for their own good, of ignoring
the demands of nature. But Jacobi is being perfectly consistent because,
as transpires from his treatment of Allwill's character, when he praises
nature, he is using the concept in a normative sense. What he really
means by it is a nature that has been informed and interiorized through
decision and action. Taken on its own, nature means flux, hence disper-
sion of existence and lack of subjectivity. Allwill's type of reflectivity, like
the philosophers', is fatal to the life of the spirit precisely because, in-
stead of containing nature's flux and its consequent dispersion, it hides
it behind figments of the imagination and, indeed, colludes with it.
Allwill has transformed the flux of nature into a phantasmagoria of bril-
liant forms. As for the philosophers, Jacobi's repeated complaint is that
their science is merely an instrument of manipulation. It does not com-
prehend nature but harnesses it externally with empty symbols.
Jacobi's polemic, whether directed against philosopher or poet, thus
is of one piece. And it is motivated throughout primarily by the dread
nature inspires. It is not reason thatjacobi fears but the darkness of un-
conscious life, the death that lies there in wait. In this respect, Sylli
is the other important figure in the Allwill. There is no enemy of Allwill
as implacable as she. Lucy inveighs against him, and her words carry the
authority of one who has suffered at his hand. But there is also a tone
of detachment and superiority in her reproaches—the voice of one who
has stared into Allwill's emptiness and withstood the trial, and can now
afford to show exasperation but not hatred, as towards a spoiled child.
Sylli hates Allwill, however, and with the fury that only a like can harbour
for a like. Sylli is the female counterpart of Allwill. The fact thatjacobi
puts in her mouth some of his more rapturous descriptions of the beauty
13. See Judge William in Kierkegaard's Either/Or.

Introduction 129
of nature should not distract us from her true character, any more than
Allwill's display of wisdom should distract us from his. If Allwill stands for
all that is fascinating about nature, Sylli represents its creative side—a
force that is much more primitive than the demonic power of the genius,
much less susceptible to control of language, and therefore all the more
dangerous. Sylli is wife and mother, she "knows the beginning"14—but
she is a wife and mother who has lost both husband and child, and now,
deprived of these two objective limits, she runs the risk of turning in
upon herself and sinking into the indeterminateness of her own creative
energies. Despair is her malaise. If dispersion is Allwill's sin, too much
concentration of power without the possibility of objective expression is
Sylli's. Hence Sylli is as threatening a figure as the nature that surrounds
her. Like unconscious nature she is sunk deep in her dream,15 and
death is what she beholds in her slumber: "However warmly my heart
feels touched from the outside, however glowing it is from its own light,
in its depth it still seems cold to me. Yes, the problem is that every im-
pulse of trust and friendship in my soul turns into a thought of affliction
and horror; that I see immediately and vividly before me, that I am once
more being visited by that long departed angel-like figure that left a dead
skeleton on my lap."16
It is significant that Sylli, like Allwill, makes her first appearance on the
stage as an individual who is totally alienated. Though among people,
she does not really belong to them—not just because of unfortunate cir-
cumstances but by choice as well. Sylli shows nothing but contempt for
the average mortal, and in this respect her social alienation only reflects
her psychological state. It is as if she were fated to be the victim of the
Gierigsteins, the people with whom she is engaged in a lawsuit—as if
these ugly people, who embody her worst expectations of human nature,
had been called forth from the depths of her own imagination. Her re-
lationship to the Clerdon household is to all appearances a loving and
passionate one. But it is geographically at a distance and morally not im-
mune to self-deception. Despite Sylli's protestations of love and devoted
concern, she no less than Allwill preys on the emotions that bind the
household's members together. They provide the required supporting
cast for the acting out of her solitary drama. Unlike Allwill she knows
that she is foundering and liable to sink in despair. In this she shows
14. See 1792 ed., p. 100.

15. Ibid., p. 186.
16. Ibid., p. 17.
great insight. But she instinctively wants to pull herself together on the
strength of her own inner resources. "How often has it happened to me,"
she writes to Clerdon, "that I thought I would have to cry out: Help,
Clerdon, help\—But I did not have to, and I did not. What would happen
to me, if I were to let myself be sustained only in that way! What would
I gain by it? Not any steady and reliable help. That is the help I want, and
that's the help I shall go after. It is my will to pull through, even if I don't
pull through."17 No less than Allwill, Sylli too is "all will."
Yet Sylli's salvation can only come from the outside. Short of retreat-
ing completely within herself, her alternatives are very limited indeed.
She might try to become a young woman again, as she was before her
maternal energies were unleashed. But this is clearly impossible. Her
at tempt at reliving the past vicariously through her association with
the two adolescent daughters of family friends constitutes at best an-
other bout of emotional self-indulgence, at worse another case of self-
deception. The one real alternative is for her to resume actively the role
of mother—to rejoin society. According to hints dropped in the course
of the correspondence, it appears that this is precisely what happens.
Sylli is saved by responding to Amalia's call to her to remember that by
nature she is, and will always remain, a mother. She accordingly gives up
her solitary existence to find a place in the Clerdons' household. But
whatever the resolution of Sylli's situation, the lesson thatjacobi imparts
through her, as through Allwill, is that, despite its beauty and creative en-
ergy, nature is ultimately empty. It harbours death within, and hides the
God who is in us.
It would be a mistake, therefore, to interpret the scenes of family life
at the Clerdons' as idylls of nature. To be sure, Amalia has little patience
for the "therefore's" and the "wherefore's" of philosophers, and she
seems to place more trust in the natural reactions of even a Bombaccino
(the household dog) than in their most considered reflections. Clerdon,
for his part, exhibits more wisdom in his practical affairs than in his phi-
losophizing. Yet these two figures are the nucleus of an existence of
which others (even parasites like Allwill and Sylli) partake, and by par-
taking of which are kept alive. Amalia and Clerdon are complete person-
alities because they have succeeded in establishing a social bond on the
basis of their respective natural endowments and in this way have held
the flux of nature in check. Left on their own, Amalia's creative energies
would devour their offspring just as they are begotten, in the manner of
blind nature. But in Clerdon those energies find limit and stability. At
17. Ibid., p. 187.

Introduction 131
the same time, Clerdon's penchant for reflection is prevented from run-
ning amok in an endless pursuit of interesting but empty possibilities by
the role that he must play as husband and father. This role keeps him
close to existence and gives content and seriousness to his thoughts and
actions. The will to exist as individuals that Sylli and Allwill cannot real-
ize on the strength of nature alone Amalia and Clerdon achieve by
means of a communal bond. Jacobi's faith, as it emerges from the Allwill,
is a social one.
But a heroic faith it must also be if the social union by which it stands
is poised so precariously between the demonic mania of an Allwill on the
one side and the turbulence coming from the unconscious of a Sylli on
the other. One wonders how the Clerdons' family life would fare under
attack from a moral ideology of the Fichte type, or in the midst of the
destructive frenzy of a social revolution like the one in France (from
which we hear echoes in the letter to Erhard O**), if the only language
it had at its disposal to justify itself were that of Bombaccino, or the af-
fectionate outpourings of Amalia, or the sententiousness of Clerdon.
Nowhere is the fragility of Jacobi's social ideal more evident than in the
Allwill, and the need of a philosophical justification more pressing. And
the irony is that the source of the fragility lies in a conception of nature
that need not be accepted. Since Jacobi accepted it as obvious, this pre-
supposes a prior philosophical commitment of a very specific type. It
might be that this commitment satisfied his deep and idiosyncratic psy-
chological needs rather than any logical requirement, and was thus
made unreflectively by him. So it would be accurate to say that his phi-
losophy was that of a believer rather than, as it appears in his polemic
against Fichte, his faith that of a philosopher. But then, either formula-
tion amounts to the same thing. For it was Jacobi's fear of the heteron-
omy of nature (which we shall see even further documented in due
time) that made him willing to accept Fichte's statement of the role and
vocation of philosophy. And this willingness forced him, in turn, to fall
back upon faith to avoid what he took to be the consequences of Fichte's
position. Be that as it may, the fact is that, even by the end of the Allwill,
Jacobi, who is otherwise so perceptive about the dynamics of other peo-
ple's minds, still seems to be in the dark about the dynamics of his own.
He still does not see that he is in collusion with the philosophy he
criticizes.
3. The Woldemar of 1794 was produced by interpolating two long dia-

logues into the 1779 story- Both were in the style of Plato and dealt with
epistemological as well as social and moral issues. One had already been
published twice (under the titles of Ein Stuck Philosophic des Lebens und der
Menschheit and Der Kunstgarteri),18 and the other was brand new. From a
literary point of view this interpolation had catastrophic effects. It pre-
vented the story from ever hanging together organically, and also
created the unfortunate effect (duly noted by the critics from the
beginning) that Jacobi was talking about his characters rather than dis-
playing them, as if the Woldemar were a review of itself. '9 Philosophically
speaking, however, since the interpolations constitute Jacobi's commen-
tary on the characters and the action, they offer perhaps the best evi-
dence of just where Jacobi stood as philosopher and believer.
We have already alluded to the features that make the Woldemar a kind
of Bildungsroman. It is a study in the education of the Herzensmensch that
the Sturm und Drang had created. Jacobi himself indirectly calls atten-
tion to this aspect of his novel by invoking the name of the one who had
been the creator, but who also became the most eminent critic, of this
type of hero. Despite the earlier Ettersburg incident, Jacobi dedicated
the 1794 version of the Woldemar to Goethe,20 and in the dedication he
let the poet know that it had been the publication of the Torquato Tasso
that had reminded him of his Woldemar. Goethe's Tasso was clearly a
type of Herzensmensch—a character who acts purely on the strength of
feelings but, in his attempt to create a world accordingly, loses all sense
of direction, is drawn into a solipsistic orgy of mere sentiment, and
finally collapses within himself.21 He is a Werther, in other words. Sylli
too, as we have seen, belongs to the species, and so would Allwill, were
18. See note 2 above.

19. The point made was that the Woldemar gave the impression of being a sketch of
Humboldt's review of it (a comment by Rahel Lewin to David Veil, as cited by Frida David,
p. 192, and notes). Wilhelm von Humboldt reviewed the novel in three issues of the
AllgemeineLiteratur-Zeitung, ##315-17, 26-27 September 1794, columns 801-07, 809-15,
817-21, under the rubric "Philosophy." The review was couched in very diplomatic lan-
guage. It included a summary of the novel that gave to it a much more organic unity than
it actually had. It also cast the novel in a Kantian light by interpreting it as if the philosophi-
cal point it illustrated was that virtue is indeed based on practical reason and freedom but
cannot ever be divorced from feelings and sensations; virtue must be an expression of in-
dividuality and hence cannot develop except in encounters of individuals. Throughout the
review Humboldt was at pains not to offend his very sensitive friend. Jacobi felt flattered
by it. Jacobi to Humboldt, 2 September 1794, Auserlesener Briefwechsel, n, #234, pp. 173-81.
See on this point, Frida David, p. 92.
20. The dedication was dropped in the 1786 edition but reintroduced in 1820.
21. For an insightful description of the type, see Hermann Timm, Gott und die Frtiheit
(Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1974), p. 293.
Introduction 133
it not for his flippancy and general fragmentation of character, which

make him too insubstantial for a tragic figure. In the Tasso, however,
Goethe is not intent on developing a tragic situation. He does not ex-
plore his Herzensmensch solely from within but subjects him rather to the
scrutiny of external observers, thereby exposing his impotence in the
face of the real world. The poet Tasso is thus cast in an ironic mould
that, were it not for the artistic control exercised by Goethe, might easily
produce comedy—it could never, however, yield tragedy. But Woldemar
too is subjected byjacobi to a similar external scrutiny. Not only does he
belong, more clearly than either Sylli or Allwill, to the species of the
Herzensmensch. He is a Herzensmensch who, like Tasso, is made to confront
the objective world and perhaps gain from the experience a new sense
of reality.
Jacobi's treatment of Woldemar would be much gentler than Goethe's
treatment of Tasso. None the less, the similarities between the two char-
acters and the situations in which they find themselves are striking. In
act n, scene i, Goethe has Tasso say to his Princess Leonore:
Whatever things reecho in my poem,

I owe them all to one, to one alone.
No unclear, immaterial image hovers
Before my brow, now dazzlingly approaching
My soul and now retreating. I have seen
It with my very eyes, the archetype
Of every virtue and of every beauty.
What I have copied from it will endure.22
Tasso is of course talking about the ideals of virtue and beauty that shape
his poems and will make them endure forever. His problem is that he ex-
pects the objects of the real world to exhibit the same purity of virtue and
beauty as reigns in his poetic imagination. And since such real objects
necessarily fail to correspond to his expectation, they become mere
phantoms to his eye, "now dazzlingly approaching [his] soul and now re-
treating." Princess Leonore and the state secretary Antonio Montecatino
undergo for Tasso a transformation of this sort. They become disap-
pointing and, to his eye, deceptive objects. Antonio is the man of action.
According to the story, he has become somewhat estranged from court
society because of a long absence on state business. In complete disre-
gard of these circumstances, Tasso approaches him with the demand
22. Lines 1092-99. Tr. Charles E. Passage.
that they become friends right there and then, even though the princess
has warned him, "You must not ask for everything/From one man."23
The practical man Antonio tries to make the poet aware of the funda-
mental laws that reign in the world of time and space: "All in a single
minute you ask for/What time alone can grant with careful thought."24
But Tasso sees this as a complete rejection and a betrayal, since, in the
typical manner of a Herzensmensch, he has opened himself up completely
and in good faith to the elder statesman, and this act alone, according
to poetic logic, should have induced friendship. Therefore Tasso chal-
lenges to a duel the man whose friendship he had sought just a moment
before. The apparent instability of his objects, to which Tasso himself
has given rise because of his unrealistic expectations, thus rebounds on
him and ultimately causes him to go mad.
But madness is exactly the danger to which Woldemar too is exposed.
We are given a glimpse of his childhood: "His heart grasped with inten-
sity at all things that moved him, and drew them to himself in long trains.
As soon as thoughts could form in him, every sensation turned in him
into thought, and every thought back into sensation. . . . Thus, the
closer he came to his object, the farther, in equal measure, would the
object recede from him."25 Like Tasso, Woldemar lives the life of the
imagination in search of that one object that will endure, i.e. that will
correspond to his expectations, and the effect is the same as in Tasso's
case—he finds reality escaping him. In the midst of a circle of people
who do indeed love each other but for whom there is a tendency to iden-
tify human relationships with business contracts, he makes (just as did
Tasso at the Princess Leonore's court) for a welcome and charming con-
trast.26 Jacobi treats this aspect of Woldemar very sympathetically. But
there is no doubt that, however beautiful Woldemar's life in company
with others might appear, it is nothing substantial. Woldemar's own ec-
static description to Biderthal of his relation to Allwina and Henriette
gives the story away: "Moon and stars come to life whenever Allwina and
Henrietta enfold me in their radiance. And all the love that I hopelessly
and infinitely poured out is given back to me—the breath of life pene-
trates into the earthly receptacle; it becomes man!—Now, the whole
23. Act ii, Scene i, lines 952-53.

24. Act n, Scene 3, lines 1269-70.
25. 1820, p. 14.
26. We hear: "After half a year the marriage was contracted, and at the same time the
business contract between Hornich and Dorenburg, to which Biderthal now became a
party, renewed." 1820 ed., p. 7.
Introduction 135
creation flesh of my flesh, and limb of my limb—clutched to my breast

and returning my kisses!"27
The biblical imagery of the description makes it clear that Woldemar
has assumed for himself the role of world-creator. But the only creation
of which he is capable is an aesthetic one (Biderthal thinks of his broth-
er's happiness in his life with Allwina and Henriette as a "kiinstliches
Gebaude,"28 an "artificial construct"), and it is of course always danger-
ous to react towards the real world with one's eyes fixed upon an imag-
inary one. This is not to say that Woldemar is not aware of the necessity
to test one's perception of the world, or even of oneself, against the per-
ceptions of others. As he says: "Man feels himself in others more than in
himself. We cannot become aware of our bodily shape except in another
body that mirrors it to us; our soul cannot sense itself except by means
of another spirit who throws back at it the impression that it makes.
This is the breath of life [breathed] into the nostril of the earthly
receptacle."29
But unless one is serious in accepting others precisely as one finds
them and in subjecting oneself to their judgment without any attempt
on one's part to manipulate it, one runs the risk of including the
"others" in one's own imaginary world—to make them too the object of
an artistic creation. In this case the artist would be all the more thrown
back within himself and all the less likely to confront actuality, for the
subjective product of his imagination would now come complete with
the illusion of an objective determination. This is exactly what happens
to Woldemar in his relations with Henriette. He has built his friendship
with her on the totally unrealistic assumption that there can be nothing
in her that he does not know—that she exists merely as an extension of
his own heart and mind. And to the extent that Henriette's actions seem
to confirm this belief, all goes well for Woldemar. He even shows signs
of what appears to be a permanent recovery from the frequent bouts of
doubt and depression that have afflicted him since childhood. But the
moment Henriette contracts her vow with Hornich and begins to act
while harbouring a secret in her heart, she acquires autonomy with re-
spect to Woldemar. Her motives are no longer at one with his because,
as it happens, they now are actually her own. This circumstance makes
for a qualitative change in her behaviour that Woldemar, because of his
27. Ibid., p. 271.

28. Ibid., p. 246.
29. Ibid., pp. 49-50.
whole mental outlook, cannot countenance. His Henriette—the prod-

uct of his subjective needs—becomes estranged to his eye. Like Tasso in
his relation to Princess Leonore,30 he feels betrayed. And since
Henriette constituted his world, he becomes estranged from himself too.
It is at this point that Woldemar has his close encounter with madness.
Towards the end of his play, Goethe has Antonio give the half-mad
Tasso this fatherly counsel:
All that you think and do, leads you deep down
Into yourself. On every side of us
There lie abysses dug by destiny,
The deepest being here within our hearts,
And it gives us delight to plunge therein.
I beg you, tear yourself away from you.
The man will gain all that the poet loses.3'
This is the advice that Woldemar also needs, and the Woldemar is the
story of how he comes to make it his own counsel. Jacobi's sympathy for
his hero is manifested here by the gentle way he stages the learning proc-
ess. There is no harsh light projected onto him from a disinterested
source, as there is on Goethe's Tasso. Rather (Hornich's reaction to
Woldemar apart), the illumination of his character is induced through
discussions among friends in which Woldemar himself takes part, or, if
absent, he is at least the object of devoted concern. The two long dia-
logues interpolated in the 1794 edition are the two main vehicles in this
process of illumination, even though, as regards the first of the two,
which is only a reworking of the early Der Kunstgarten, it must be con-
ceded that it is difficult to see how it contributes in any organic way.
Much of the dialogue (the Waldgesprdch, as Jacobi now calls it) 32 is taken
up by such issues in the acquisition of virtue as the relative importance
of the natural nobility of feelings as contrasted to the social discipline of
manners. This was no doubt a topical issue in the 17705 because of the
clash of the new cult of nature with accepted French baroque culture.
30. Yes, everyone flees from me now. You too,

Beloved Princess, you withdraw from me!
Have I deserved that of her?—You poor heart,

For whom it was so natural to adore her!
Act iv, Scene 5, lines 2792-97.
31. Act V, Scene 3, lines 3073-78.
32. 1820 ed., p. 218.
Introduction 137
But it had little relevance by the mid-nineties, when France was in the
grip of a revolution that abrogated all past terms of reference, and it was
only vaguely connected with the central issue of Woldemar's reality ther-
apy. One important point that does emerge from the dialogue is that, as
of the mid-nineties, Jacobi still held on to his early fundamental beliefs.
Therefore, however much of his mental baggage Woldemar must jetti-
son before he rejoins reality, he cannot do it at the expense of these
beliefs.
For one thing, Jacobi still upholds the primacy of individual existence
over the abstractions of the concept. He has Woldemar relate to his
friends how he once wondered about the nature of the object that the
human spirit seeks in its striving for virtue. If that object were the ideal,
it would follow that the Urbild, the prototype, of the Good would be un-
fathomable; if it were rather the fleeting shadow of earthly goods, then
virtue could never recognize itself as virtue and acquire permanence.
Both alternatives posed difficulties. There was yet a third, however, that
truly frightened Woldemar: "Or was perhaps this will [for the good] only
the immediate consequence of a personal consciousness tied to univer-
sal concepts and pictures—only the instinct for self-preservation, essen-
tial to every nature, but in a purely rational form?—But then that will
had no object except its own activity. The prototype and the source of
every virtue would have been merely the pure and empty form of exis-
tence in thought—personality in general without person or personal
distinction."33
Whatever metamorphosis the Herzensmensch will have to undergo, he
cannot afford to lose his sense of radical individuality. Accordingly,
against Biderthal and Dorenburg and basing himself on classical
sources, Woldemar argues that the just, virtuous, noble, and excellent
simply is what the just, virtuous, noble, and excellent person does, and
that this person has no standard outside himself. This poetic order of
morality is what made the simple and upright Hornich so upset and so
hostile to Woldemar. Not that Woldemar doubts the existence of univer-
sal laws. His claim is that the grammar of virtue must allow for poetic li-
cence: "For such exceptions, such licences of higher poesy, the grammar of
virtue did not have any determinate rule, and did not, therefore, make
reference to them. No grammar, least of all a universal one of philoso-
phy, could encompass within itself all that belongs to a living language,
or teach how each form of speech must adapt itself to any given time.
33. Ibid., p. 119.

[But] it would be nonsensical to deny, for this reason, that there are uni-
versal laws of combination of human concepts and their signs; non-
sensical to claim, for the same reason, that anyone may speak as he
pleases."34
Nor has Jacobi changed his mind about the derivative nature of rea-
son with respect to sentiments and feelings: "We do not say of the reason
present in a man [Woldemar argues] that it makes use of its man; but
of the man, that he makes use of his reason. Reason is the original art,
the immediate organ of the spirit hidden within sensibility [Sinnlichkeit];
it is the unifying reflection [Besinnung] striving for unceasing light. And
so arise its pictures of what is common and universal, pure pictures. . . .
[So does it] produce, by dividing and combining, science and art,
and establishes theoretical and practical systems."35 And Woldemar
continues:
Everything first and last in an absolute sense lies outside the range of reason. Its
whole proper occupation is a merely intermediary one on behalf of the sense, the
understanding, and the heart, whose common economy it is its business to
manage.
This reason cannot therefore possibly be the very source of that wisdom, to-
wards which we all strive.36
This much is certain: virtue cannot be excogitated; good and noble dispositions
can only derive in us from good and noble instincts.37
Sensations, desires and passions must already be there if human reason is to

emerge. Clear concepts will never arise out of dumb senses; and where there is
weakness of instincts and desires, there neither virtue nor wisdom will find a
place.38
All this, of course, we have already heard in the Spinoza Letters. But
there Jacobi was defending the claims of existence against the abstrac-
tions of the philosophers. Although he had never unreservedly accepted
the Herzensmensch, he was in the Spinoza Letters pitting him against homo
philosophicus. In the Woldemar of 1794, by contrast, the issue is the incul-
34. Ibid., pp. 74ff.

35. Ibid., p. 123.
36. Ibid., p. 124.
37. Ibid., p. 191.
38. Ibid., pp. 193-94-
Introduction 139
cation of a sense of reality in the otherwise purely subjective feelings of

the Herzensmensch. And how isjacobi to accomplish this feat of education
if, as it appears, he still stands by the tenets—notably the primacy of feel-
ings over reason and of the individual over the requirements of society—
upon which the ideal of the Herzensmensch is based? For on these tenets
is also based this creature's tendency to solipsism. From this first dia-
logue, which, after all, originates in the late 17705, we cannot expect
much satisfaction on this score. There is, however, the new concluding
speech, in which Woldemar expresses the hope, which he pins on the
power of the moral instinct in us, that humankind will progress in the
quality of their feelings over time. "For the moral instinct," he says, "can-
not cease to show itself effective in man and active as well with respect
to the whole of mankind: it is the truly human energy, God in man. Its
object is virtue in its proper form; namely pure virtue, virtue as an end in
itself."?>? After all that Woldemar has said in defence of the moral
exception, this recourse to thinly veiled Kantian rhetoric comes as a sur-
prise. We shall have to return to it. For the moment, however, all that can
be said is that it is Woldemar's last word on the education of the
Herzensmensch in the Waldgesprdch.
More hopeful as a source of elucidation of Woldemar's character is
the second dialogue and the completely new ending of the roman to
which it leads. Jacobi interpolates it into the story at the place where
Woldemar has learned of Henriette's vow and his inner disturbance has
swelled to a new high point. He must now either change course and
begin a voyage of recovery or continue and founder upon madness. The
dialogue takes place in his absence and is thus all the more clearly a com-
ment on his character. The three active participants are Biderthal,
Dorenburg, and Henriette, and the subject-matter precisely the possibil-
ity of a recovery on the part of Woldemar—an immediate concern that
provides the staging for a discussion of the general issue (harking back
to the first dialogue) concerning the nature and the realization of virtue.
If one takes Bidertahl as a representative of Kant's morality of formal
duty and pits his comments against the many classical texts with which
the dialogue is interspersed—especially the many free adaptations of
passages from Aristotle's Ethics—the whole dialogue can be read as a
debate between Kantian deontology and classical eudemonism. It is
Jacobi's attempt to reconcile a morality of autonomy with the require-
ments of happiness.
39. Ibid., p. 217.

Henriette, after first succumbing to severe emotional distress as she

learns that Woldemar has been made aware of her secret, is now in a
buoyant mood, for she can now open herself up to her friend again and
expects that, upon asking him for forgiveness, she will be granted par-
don, and the old friendship will then resume. She has no doubt that
Woldemar will come out of his present emotional crisis because there is
a strong ethical force in him that will prevail over his present emotional
dispersion. He will pull himself together again. The natural beauty of
Woldemar's feelings worked against him in the situation leading up to
the fall because it hid from him the equally natural fragility of every
man's heart and the need to be on guard against it. She, Henriette, also
conspired to conceal this through her friendship itself, which gave
Woldemar an added objective reassurance of the nobility and infallibility
of his feelings. According to Henriette, Woldemar was not really seduced
by his feelings. He did not slide into his present hysteria simply because
he followed them, uncontrolled, in all directions. His fall was due,
rather, to a failure of faith in their nobility on his part—a failure that
Henriette's sudden, apparently unstable behaviour occasioned. She is
confident that Woldemar will regain his stability, that he will regain his
faith.
Henriette's optimism, however, does not go unchallenged. Nobody
can deny nature's innate tendency to strive, not just after the transitory
appearances of the good and the beautiful but after the good and the
beautiful in themselves. But neither can anyone deny its power, equally
innate, to distract the human heart from its search for everlasting values.
And granted this negative side of nature, is Henriette's optimistic prog-
nosis of Woldemar's recovery really justified ? Jacobi here begins to shift
to a more universal level of reflection. In brief, these are the theoretical
options open to the interlocutors. On the one hand, one can adopt an
extremely pessimistic attitude and claim—on the basis of evidence well
grounded in daily experience—that human feelings and emotions are at
the mercy of any passing external influence and that an upright and vir-
tuous life is therefore possible only through a system of external social
coercion. Woldemar will recover only if he learns obedience—which
means, of course, losing the very individuality that makes him a
Herzensmensch. On the other hand, one can take as one's starting-point
the equally evident fact that without freedom—without the spontaneous
choice of a given course of action—no moral life is possible. Classical wis-
dom testifies to this fact. Morality is equivalent to self-directed life, and
virtue is therefore just as dependent on the subjective control that one
Introduction 141
has over one's actions as on the products of those actions. In this sense
the virtuous man is a law unto himself. To assume that morality is pos-
sible is to trust in the presence in man of a love for the good and the
beautiful—the ethical energy of which Woldemar spoke earlier in the
story—that must eventually triumph over the adverse power of external
circumstances and, acting from within the individual, lead to the kind of
behaviour that social obedience can only ape but never produce. But is
this trust justified? Woldemar's present state of emotional dispersion tes-
tifies to the proclivity of human love to lose its sense of direction—and
how could one have expected that merely formal injunctions of virtue
would keep it on course? The ideal would be for that love to feed upon
its own energy, i.e. to add motivation to its striving for virtue, spurred on
by the happiness that its good and beautiful actions would generate in
the agent. In such a case, virtue—again according to classical sources—
is its own reward. But on this assumption, the Herzensmensch would
have to be the ultimate guarantee of the success of the virtue of the
Herzensmensch—a simple and attractive formula that would resolve every
problem of moral strategy, were it not that Woldemar's present sad state
is there to discredit it.
Such, then, is the peculiar situation in which humankind finds itself.
"Man," Biderthal says, "is in this strange fix. On the one side: reason and
freedom, which he cannot give up. On the other side: their forms, their
externalities and determinations—the seat of transitoriness—which he
cannot avoid and which require, for their use, passivity, often the most
unconditional obedience."40 Yet there is a way of bridging the two sides,
and the dialogue, after much divagation to and fro, finally comes to it.
Woldemar has, after all, discovered the right moral formula. For what is
needed to reconcile individual spontaneity with external direction is a
form of discipline that indeed comes to the individual from the outside
but respects the individual's autonomy all the same. And what could sat-
isfy this twofold requirement better than friendship—that bonding of
heart and mind in which two individuals, though acting spontaneously
out of love, yet make the being of the other also the law of their own?
Woldemar was right from the beginning, therefore, in seeking salvation
in his friendship with Henriette. His attempt failed only because the
logic of friendship requires that the "otherness" of the other person be
respected, and on this score he, and Henriette as well, had been in the
wrong. Henriette had wanted to share her existence with Woldemar
40. Ibid., pp. 430—31.

while at the same time, because of her secret vow, leading a private life.
And Woldemar had been so fascinated by his own feelings that he had
failed to allow for the possibility that Henriette's could be motivated by
circumstances foreign to him.
Once the power of friendship in disciplining otherwise potentially de-
structive emotions has been recognized, the roman can quickly proceed
to its denouement. Henriette asks for forgiveness, and in granting it,
Woldemar equally recognizes his wrong and asks for forgiveness in turn.
"Dear Henriette," [Woldemar said,] "no word can say how I feel! Loudly could
I—and would I—confess before the whole world that I am the guiltiest among all
men."41
"I will learn humility," he said. 'You bring me back to myself! What in me now
[lies] so dead against my own self. . . . That too is pride! Always the same hard,
unbending, pride. . . . I was not good, Henriette! But I shall becomeit—I will learn
humility; I will be yours. . . . Oh, do accept me!"42
The Herzensmensch has been socialized by learning humility, and in this

transformation he finds his salvation. The two injunctions with which the
roman ends are reminders of the two sides—the one negative, the other
positive—that make up his personality. "Whoever relies on his heart is a
fool—Judge not!" "Trust in love. It takes all but gives all." Of the two,
however, it is significant that the second comes at the very end and that
Jacobi puts it on the lips of Henriette, the one whose instincts about
Woldemar were finally proved right. At the end of the Woldemar, even
more so than at the end of the Allwill, it is clear that Jacobi's faith is a
social one.
4. But the love on which friendship is based can be perverted. This too
is clear from the Woldemar. The question that confronted the reader at
the end of the Allwill is still to be answered. On what does Jacobi pin his
social faith? The question becomes all the more pressing because it is
41. Ibid., p. 461.

42. Ibid., p. 476. See ch. vi of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: "The reconciling Yea, in
which the two Ts let go their antithetical existence, is the existence of the T which has ex-
panded into a duality, and therein remains identical with itself, and, in its complete exter-
nalization and opposite, possesses the certainty of itself: it is God manifested in the midst
of those who know themselves in the form of pure knowledge." Tr. A. V. Miller (Oxford:
Clarendon, p. 409).
Introduction 143
ever clearer now that the love of friendship is flawed in its very nature.
In the Tasso we have heard Antonio warn the poet of the "abysses" that
lie on every side of us, "the deepest being within our hearts," all dug for
us by destiny. These lines are strangely reminiscent of words thatjacobi
wrote to Hamann on the subject of Woldemar at the very beginning of
their correspondence. What he said then was that his intention was to
pursue Woldemar to his grave and "show in the noblest philosophy
known to him the great hole [Loch] that he [i.e. Jacobi] has himself dis-
covered in it," namely that "we may act as we wish; we still remain passive
beings incapable of giving anything to ourselves. It may indeed be the
case that we bring forth our ideas, as ideas, on our own strength; yet we
cannot have ideas that are not representations, and hence would not imply
passivity. Thus all that we have, including our consciousness, we hold on
loan. I cannot make my being, my substance, other than it is; and all its
accidental traits come to it from outside. . . . It is therefore false [to say]
that our happiness depends, not on circumstances, but on our self
alone."43 Jacobi then concludes by confiding to Hamann: "I cannot tell
you, dearest Hamann, what came upon me when I became aware of this
hole; suffice it now to say that I saw a horrendous abyss before me. . . .
Everything finite engenders death and finally extirpates the very picture
of divinity."44 Exactly what is the nature of this abyss thatjacobi so much
dreads?
It is here that the figure of the Herzensmensch and the world of Spinoza,
which confronted Jacobi together at the time of his first encounter with
Goethe, begin to merge conceptually. There is no doubt that, in the con-
text of Jacobi's letter to Hamann, by "the noblest philosophy known to
him" Jacobi meant the moral attitude that Woldemar personifies—i.e.
the attitude of total reliance on the creative energy of one's own being.
But Jacobi was to use equivalent praises for the philosophy of the
Benedictus, the blessed Spinoza, whose vision of reality was obsessed by
the presence of God overflowing from everywhere. In both cases,
whether in Woldemar's subjective experience or in Spinoza's objective
vision, what elicited Jacobi's enthusiasm was the fullness of existence to
which witness was being given. But the witness is in both cases ambigu-
ous, for the very plenitude of existence that makes for Woldemar's
creativity and Spinoza's religiosity also conspires to undermine the
individuality of the carrier of that existence. Woldemar's radical individ-
43. 16 June 1783, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #908, p. 164.

44. Ibid.
ualism is the feature of his being that makes him a fascinating character,
just as individuation in general, so far as Jacobi was concerned, is what
makes existence ultimately significant. And precisely this moment of in-
dividuation is lost in the plenitude of existence that both Woldemar and
Spinoza celebrate. In that fullness the individual can only stand for fin-
itude, and that means "death" and the extirpation, finally, of "the very
picture of divinity." This is the "abyss" that confronted Jacobi in the fig-
ure of his Woldemar, just as it had confronted every other Sturm und
Drang protagonist in the figure of their Herzensmensch. At the philosophi-
cal level it had been relatively easy for Jacobi to deal with it simply by re-
fusing to accept Spinoza's system of concepts. But how was he to deal
with it in Woldemar? Jacobi could not kill off the character Woldemar,
both because Woldemar obviously was too close to him personally and
because he apparently earnestly believed that the character represented
reality as it truly was.
Within the cultural and intellectual context of his time, the options
open to him were limited. One could accept as a fact of human existence
that individuality is a mere epiphenomenon, yet stand by the beauty and
worth of the individual despite its being destined from birth to destruc-
tion. This was Goethe's reaction—his Promethean Spinozism—which, in
the play Tasso, we still see reflected in Torquato's concluding words to
Antonio:
I now throw both my arms around you. Thus

The helmsman at the very last clings to
The rock on which he was about to founder.
Antonio, who stands for objective reality, is the rock that destroys but
also saves. This picture may at first appear to convey the same interplay
of pessimism and optimism that we also find at the end of the Woldemar.
But the two conclusions are radically different in spirit. Tasso's stance is
heroic. Like the Prometheus of Goethe's poem, Tasso will henceforth
"enjoy" the reality held out to him by Antonio and "rejoice" in it, know-
ing full well, however, that this same reality also means his end as the
poet-creator. In "enjoying and rejoicing," he will also "suffer and
weep."45 Not so Woldemar. His socialization is a much more positive
event. It establishes the possibility of a new outpouring of creative power
now that the tendency for destruction inherent in him as an individual
45. See the final lines of the Prometheus.

Introduction 145
is held in check (however precariously perhaps) by social bonds.

The Woldemar is, at the end, not an epitaph of the Herzensmensch but a
eulogy.46
Another option available would have been to adopt Herder's re-
formed Spinozism, which promised to be much more positive with re-
spect to individual reality than Spinoza's pantheism was. In Herder's
Christianized pantheism the individual no longer has merely negative
value because, on the contrary, it is only through the work of such rad-
ically individual entities as cultures, languages, and political structures
that God is realized. In the Woldemar Jacobi comes dangerously close
to this pantheism with his talk about a moral energy in man that works
itself out in him for the good of all, or with his expressions of hope
(put in the mouth of Woldemar) that in the future humanity will reach
a higher level of moral sensibility. He had already come close to it
in the David Hume when he denned reason as a higher form of
sense-consciousness.47
It is clear that this option was not open to Jacobi either. In the first
place, as long as individuals are used as carriers for a purpose that tran-
scends them as individuals (in Herder's case, for the realization of God),
their individuality is not seriously being respected. Jacobi would have ob-
jected that to be swept away by the march of historical progress is no bet-
ter fate for man than to be pitted against the gods (in the manner of
Goethe's Promethean Spinozism) in a battle that he is bound to lose.
There was, moreover, Jacobi's resistance to the idea that anything per-
fect could come out of the imperfect, especially if the imperfect, as in
this case, meant the dark powers of the unconscious. We are faced again,
in the Woldemar as in the Allwill, by the paradox of Jacobi—the great ad-
vocate of the primacy of feelings over the concept, of immediate over
reflective experience—recoiling in dread before the unpredictable
potentialities of the unconscious. This paradox runs through Jacobi's
46. I owe to Wegenast's already cited book, Holderlins Spinoza-Rezeption, und ihre
Bedeutungfur die Konzeption des "Hyperion," the insight that throughout Goethe's classic
Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrejahre, an ironic light is cast on the central character's
attempt at denning a social personality for himself. The attempt is bound to fail because
individuality is only an appearance, and ultimately humans can only play at being "some-
body," never actually be one. (See pp. 25off.) For Holderlin too the individual is only an
appearance. But in the Hyperion, which is also a type of Bildungsroman, salvation rests in the
wisdom finally achieved by the narrator upon recognizing that the universal is the truth of
the individual and that the latter is only realized, therefore, by merging into it.
47. See above, pp. 95, 100.
thought at all levels. In principle, at least, it makes for an intellectually

interesting and fruitful tension of opposite tendencies, just as his image
of the "abyss in the human heart" at the time of the first conception of
Woldemar made for interesting poetic and psychological possibilities.
But one has reason to wonder how much, by 1794, the paradox had
given way to a plain confusion of language and how much this confusion
limited Jacobi's intellectual options. For it is clear that by "feeling" Jacobi
now only means a highly refined emotion, nothing obviously connected
with nature or with feelings as normally understood but something in
the context of emotional life more analogous to the very abstractions
that Jacobi had decried with respect to intellectual life. As for the "abyss"
of which Jacobi once spoke, in 1794 he has his Woldemar say what its na-
ture was: "He [Woldemar] searched through every fold of his being> and
soon he discovered, to his shame and remorse, that he no longer could
consider himself pure in the very place where he had so considered him-
self. He shuddered before the abyss, at the verge of which he still stood—
before the depth of his heartl"4® And in a letter to Claudius, Jacobi glossed:
"There lies deep in all men a shame of their animal nature, and / have
always found that those who least partake of "cold blood"4^ are the ones most
inclined to be ashamed of it. Ask yourself, ask every well-disposed man,
whether upon love's first prompting the thought of sensual desire could
come near him—whether any such thought would not be loathsome to
him? Here is where the enmity between the spirit and the flesh manifests
itself most openly—where the two are accustomed to engage in their
greatest battle later."50 So the flaw in Woldemar's character that had
jeopardized his friendship with Henriette was due to his animal nature,
and the battle that raged within him had been one between the spirit
and the flesh. The stake all along had been Woldemar's purity of heart.
Jacobi's puritanical religiosity thus seems to win the day. The tension
in the Herzensmensch between the creative and the dispersive tendency of
his being, Spinoza's sublime intoxication with the divine, despite its
power to consume the individual—all this is reduced in Jacobi's mind to
the classical moral trope of a contest for man's heart between the spirit
and the flesh. This result is indeed surprising, for it brings back into play
that very dualistic view of human nature that the Sturm und Drang
movement and the pantheistic aspirations that gripped German culture
48. 1820 ed., p. 481.

49. I take this to mean, more prone to sensual desires.
50. 12 April 1794, Auserksener Briefwechsel, Vol. n, #228, p. 163.
Introduction 147
in the second half of the eighteenth century were resolved to overcome.

It undoubtedly is, however, the final result to be gathered from the
Woldemar of 1794. And on this basis we can also finally determine on
whatjacobi pinned his social faith. For if it is the case that human nature
is a mixture of such ex hypothesi heterogeneous elements as the flesh and
the spirit, and if it is the flesh that leads to destruction, then if there is
to be any hope for man's salvation, it must be based on the belief that,
however intermingled with the flesh the spirit might be, the spirit still re-
tains even in man a vestige of its suprahuman character. It is on this
more-than-human element in man thatjacobi pins his social faith. As he
was to say to Fichte only a few years after the Woldemar. "As surely as I pos-
sess reason, just as surely I do not possess with this human reason of mine
the perfection of life, not the fullness of the good and the true. And as
surely as I do not possess all this with it, and know it, just as certainly do
I know that there is a higher being, and that I have my origin in Him. My
solution too, therefore, and that of my reason is not the /, but the "More
than I"! the "Better than I"!—Someone entirely Other."51 These words
are an echo of Woldemar's:
Woldemar now related to his friends how he had once become profoundly pre-
occupied, to the point of melancholy, with the question: What does the human
spirit actually strivefor with its striving for virtue? What does it truly and solely aim
at by being directed to this object truly and solely? [. . .] I was terrified,
Woldemar said, by the darkness and emptiness that arose in, and all around me.
I anxiously stretched both my arms out, to see whether I could still grasp some-
thing that would restore a feeling of actuality and being to me. And it happened
to me as in Buffon's beautiful poem, the "First Man," where the protagonist, over-
powered by slumber, had feared to possess only an accidental and transitory con-
sciousness, no life of his own. . . . Then, as he awoke, found himself twice over. . . .
Astonished he cried out: I! ... Delighted he cried out: More than I! ... Better
than I! ... All my life flows in there!52
It is the transcendent presence of God in man—the "better than

I"—that guarantees the actuality of the distinction between the "I" and
the "Other" and the solidity of the bond connecting the two. In the
words of Dorenburg, with which he puts a final touch to a collage of
freely interpreted Aristotelian texts:
51. See below, Jacobi to Fichte, p. 30 of Jacobi's text.

52. Jacobi reproduces the whole passage in an appendix to his letter to Fichte. See
below, pp. 10 iff. of Jacobi's text.
Whoever believes in friendship necessarily believes in virtue too—in a faculty of

the Divine in man; and [. . .] whoever does not believe in such a faculty or in vir-
tue cannot possibly believe in true friendship. For both are grounded on the one
and the same disposition towards disinterested, free, immediate, and hence im-
mutable love.
And this love must be all-powerful in man—not because of its preponderance,
in the way one desire overcomes another, but because of its nature, which is
otherworldly [literally: "supra-earthly"].53
As of 1794, while one of the most radical social experiments ever re-
corded in history was taking place just across the Rhine from
Pempelfort, Jacobi was pinning his social faith on the transcendent
power of the divine in man.
5. Sophie Stolberg found the "most pregnant formula" (as Frida David
puts it) to capture the spirit of Woldemar: "Words cannot say how much
your Woldemar touched my heart [she wrote to Jacobi]. Yea, how much
is the whole man, in his greatness and his wretchedness, just this: the
body from earth and the spirit in the image of God."54 Her statement
about human nature certainly reflects Jacobi's view. However, it would
be a mistake to take it as an expression of Augustinian dualism.55 There
is nothing Christian, let alone Augustinian, about Jacobi's religiosity.
53. 1820 ed., p. 444.

54. Letter of 11 February 1794, in Rudolf Zoeppritz, ed., Aus F. H. Jacobi's Nachlafl:
Ungedruckte Brief von und an Jacobi und andere, 2 Vols. (Leipzig: Engelman, 1869), Vol. I,
#53, p. 174 (see Frida David, p. 194). The roman was a great success with the public (see
Frida David, p. 195). Friedrich Schlegel's review of the 1796 edition amounted to a scath-
ing attack (Deutschland, 111.8 [ 1796]: 185-213). Schlegel accused Jacobi of "hatred of rea-
son" (e.g. pp. 188, 205). He also complained about the roman?, lack of artistic unity, which
was due, according to him, to a contradiction inherent in the Woldemar-Henriette-Allwina
relationship. Schlegel could not understand how Woldemar was to unite within himself his
idealistic love for Henriette with his sensual desires for Allwina. Woldemar's pampered
heart might indeed desire "to love a woman as if she were a man, and to be loved by a [sur-
rogate male] friend with womanly care and adoration." But so far as Schlegel was con-
cerned, there was nothing particularly noble about this desire. On the contrary, it imposed
impossible burdens on the women it implicated, in effect requiring them to destroy part
of their personality (190-91). Schlegel concludes by claiming that there is something im-
moral about Jacobi's philosophy, because it ultimately subjugates virtue to religion; it de-
nies limits (208-09). Whereas morality begins with a categorical imperative, Jacobi's
philosophy begins with a categorical "optative"—with a decision motivated by an individual
desire; this desire is thus given universal value (210). Jacobi has in fact identified "human-
ity as it is" with "Heinrich-Jacobiness as it is" (201). The Woldemar is, according to Schlegel,
a theological work of art (213).
55. As Frida David does.
Introduction 149
And it was Sophie's husband, the Count Stolberg, who brought this
point out into the open—though in a context, and in such a way, that
indirectly cast doubt on the genuiness of the count's Christianity as well.
The occasion for the Stolberg-Jacobi exchange here at issue was not
the Woldemar but a work by the count himself, and the point in dispute
the relative merit of Christian versus pagan mysticism as pathways to
God. As one might expect, Jacobi had a low opinion of the virtues of the
visible church56 and hardly gave tuppence for a virtue motivated by the
church's promise of eternal life.57 He held, on the contrary, that "all the-
ologies are equally true according to their mystical side, and equally false
in all other respects."58 And he quoted a historical authority of the time
to the effect that mystical theology is not the property of any special
age or area or culture but is to be found anywhere and at any time, pa-
tently rooted in a disposition of the soul common to all men.59 True
Christianity does not consists in the power of any particular event such
as Christ's resurrection but in the power of a "continuous miracle that
everybody can experience." Jacobi elaborated: "In a word: only He who
works wonders is God: the rest is nature."60 So far as Jacobi was con-
cerned, the philosophies of Socrates or Aristotle were much more elo-
quent witnesses to this miracle than the sacred events of official
Christian history.
Stolberg, in reply, reproved Jacobi precisely for relying on the witness
of the ancient philosophers rather than on the power of Christ's resur-
rection, which alone, as he believed, could save. He pleaded long and el-
oquently, and as a parting remark said of the Woldemar. "After what has
been said you can easily imagine what it is that I miss in your Woldemar,
which is otherwise so rich in marvellous passages. I miss the warm, life-
giving breath of Christianity. Why is this society of excellent people, full
of spirit and love, who think with such depth, and feel with such purity,
such sublimity and refinement—why is this society restricted to
Aristotle?"61
Now, the count's reaction to Jacobi's Woldemar was just as predictable
as that of Jacobi to the count's apology for Christianity. But the most in-
teresting point in the whole exchange was the count's obvious sense of
56. Letter of 26 January 1794, Auserlesener Briefwechsel, Vol. n, #226, p. 144.

57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., p. 146.
59. Ibid., p. 145.
60. Ibid., p. 147.
61. Letter of 9 February 1794, Auserlesener Briefwechsel, Vol. 11, #227, pp. 159-60.
vulnerability before Jacobi, his fear of giving the impression of being too
much of a materialist—too concerned with the afterlife and everlasting
happiness and, most of all, too tied down to contingent historical
events.62 To Jacobi he felt obliged to protest that in fact he was himself
an "arch-mystic," and the whole of Christianity a form of mysticism.
"Our whole religion is mysticism," he wrote; "take this away, and the re-
ligion falls apart."63 Shortly before this protestation, he had claimed:
"Historical faith could not be elicited without mysticism. It is required by
God because God promised help to those who seek. If the Christians and
their teachers do not accept mysticism, that is not the fault of the
Bible."64
The interesting point in the passage is not Stolberg's insistence on the
mystical aspect of Christianity (which nobody would deny) but his need
to subordinate the historicity of the Christian faith to its mysticism—as
if this historicity were not, after all, essential to that faith. Still at issue was
the scandal that Christianity's promise of eternal salvation based on the
contingency of a historical event gave to the philosopher of the
Enlightenment. And Stolberg's attempt at presenting it to suit Jacobi's
prejudices—whatever it said about the Christianity of his faith, which is
not our concern here—said even more about Jacobi's. The champion of
the historical fact over reflective representation, the apologist of the "ex-
ception," could not countenance the possibility that human salvation
could be sought anywhere except in a subjective intuition of the truth
that somehow raised the individual above the contingencies of space and
time.
In this Jacobi showed himself to be still not so different from the typ-
ical Aufklarer, who also preached about the need to base all knowledge
on empirical evidence yet thought of reason as a light that shines from
above the contingencies of history and potentially illumines all men
equally. In fact Jacobi's mysticism appeared to be the direct counterpart
of the Aufklarer's rationalism. They both functioned within the pre-
sumed economy of moral life in the same way, the only difference being
that, according to Jacobi's version, the mystical apprehension of truth
does not subject the latter to the limitations of reflection. A negative
claim does not, however, amount to a positive characterization, and so
long as Jacobi failed to offer a positive remedy for the alleged inability
62. Letter of 9 February 1794, p. 159.

63. Ibid., p. 159.
64. Ibid., p. 154.
Introduction 151
of Enlightenment reason to deal with the particular, he still could not

claim to have escaped the conceptual framework that he was criticizing.
At the time of the publication of the final versions of the Woldemar and
the Allwill, the reason of the Enlightenment was showing its destructive
power across the Rhine from Jacobi. One wonders how much it would
have helped to stem the destruction if, in place of that reason, people
had simply enthroned the claims of Jacobi's mysticism.
From the literary evidence as well it transpires, therefore, that Jacobi's
faith is that of a philosopher—the kind of faith that Jacobi requires be-
cause he has unwittingly been in collusion all along with the philosophy
that he set out to criticize. What appears even more clearly is that the
faith in question is not just the faith of a philosopher but, more specifi-
cally, the faith of a philosopher of the Enlightenment.
IV
The Last Word: Jacobi onjacobi
True friendship is as certain as that God is truthful. And it has and maintains its
existence in the heart of man, just as religion also has and maintains its existence
there. It is the same faith that generates both, and the same power of faith that
gives them constancy. Jacobi1
The dawn of the bel esprit [das Gdstreich] has charm, because it glows with the light
of the Idea. But when the light of Reason shines, it loses this merit and, before
that light, takes on the property of darkness. Hegel2
1. Was gebieten Ehre, Sittlichkeit und Recht in Absicht vertraulicher Briefe von Verstorbenen und
noch Lebenden ? Eine Gelegenheitschrift von Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (What Do Honour, Morality,
and Law Command Regarding Letters of [People] Dead or Still Alive ? An Occasional Writing by
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi; Leipzig: Goschen, 1806). The occasion for this piece was Jacobi's
fruitless attempt to retrieve his correspondence with Gleim from the executor of Gleim's
estate after his death. Jacobi complains bitterly about the common practice in Germany of
publishing letters of friends as soon as one of them has died for the sake of making money
and/or gaining reputation as an editor. Jacobi considers this practice an invasion of pri-
vacy and a breach of trust. It can also be an attack on still extant bonds of friendship, for
often one says things between friends about a third party, also a friend, that one would not
want that party to hear. All this is, according to Jacobi, sacrilegious, because friendship is
a witness to God's presence in us. Jacobi argues that even letters between strangers ought
not to be published without the permission of all the parties implicated, and he enlarges
his argument to claim that the practice of many of relating things they have heard or seen
in the households of others in their travels is also an invasion of privacy. Jacobi praises the
French for being very sensitive to this issue and for having established strict laws protecting
privacy. "'Thou shalt not gossip!' Thus the universal, unconditional prescript," proclaims
Jacobi. The piece consists of a twenty-four-page statement by Jacobi, followed by his corre-
spondence with Wilhelm Korte (Gleim's executor), complete with notes and comments.
2. G. F. W. Hegel, "Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Werke," Heidelbergische Jahrbiicher der
Litteratur, x.i (1817): 1-32, p. 25.
Introduction 153
He [Hegel] may well be right, and I would dearly love to undertake with him,
once more, a thorough research into what the power of thought can yield by it-
self, were not the head of the old man too weak for the job. Jacobi3
The final period of Jacobi's life saw, besides the publication of some
minor pieces,4 three major undertakings by him—the first, a critique of
Kant's Transcendental Idealism;5 the second, an attack on Schelling's
Philosophy of Nature, which, as we have seen, sparked the "pantheism
controversy"; and the third, the overseeing of Friedrich Roth's and
Friedrich Koppen's edition of his collected works. In the first two Jacobi
tried to show how the critique of philosophy with which he had made his
debut as a polemicist at the time of the Spinoza Letters also applied to the
various forms of idealism that had since crowded the philosophical
scene—indeed, how the very advent of this new idealism vindicated the
validity of that critique. In the third, notably in a new preface to the
David Hume that he also declared an introduction to his whole philo-
sophical opus, Jacobi took stock of his philosophical authorship in order
to spell out for the public in which respects it had been animated
throughout by a single conviction despite the change in some of his
ideas over the years.6
3. Letter tojohann Neeb, 30 May 1817, Auserlesener Briefwechsel, Vol. n, #360, p. 468.
4. Notable among them "Uber eine Weissagung Lichtenbergs" ("Concerning a
Prophecy by Lichtenberg," Taschenbuch fur das Jahr 1802, ed. Johann Georg Jacobi
[Hamburg: Perthes, 1802], pp. 3-46), and Ubergelehrte Gesellschaften, ihren Geist und Zweck
(Concerning Learned Societies, Their Spirit and Goal; Leipzig: Goschen, 1806). This latter was"
the text of Jacobi's lecture delivered at the festive inauguration of the re-established
Academy of the Sciences at Munich, to which Jacobi was appointed as first president. The
other was Jacobi's reaction to an essay by Lichtenberg (published in Part i of his Vermischte
Schriften [Gottingen: 1800], in which it is said, according to Jacobi, that some day "our
world will become so fine, that it will be just as laughable to believe in God as it is now to
believe in ghosts" (Concerning a Prophecy, p. 3 of the 1811 ed.). Jacobi replied with a proph-
ecy of his own—namely, that "after a little while yet the world will become finer still. And
the supreme height in refinement will then swiftly come about. At its peak, the sages'judg-
ment will reverse itself; for one final time knowledge will undergo change. Then—and that
will be the end—then shall we believe in nothing but ghosts. We shall ourselves be like God.
We shall know that being and substance everywhere are, and can only be, ghosts." The
piece was reproduced in the first forty pages of Of Divine Things and Their Revelation (1811),
obviously as a parody of Schelling, whom Jacobi was accusing of deriving reality from the
"Nothing." For the cited passage, see Of Divine Things (1811), pp. 3-4.
5. "On Critique's Attempt to Reduce Reason to Understanding" (1802). The final part
of this essay (as indicated in the text) was composed by Koppen.
6. A translation of this Introduction is included in this volume.
In his Kant critique Jacobi exhibited the same sharpness of insight and
polemical flair that had caught the public's imagination thirty-five years
before, at the time of his Spinoza critique. Hegel praised the critique in
his review of the third volume of Jacobi's collected works for treating its
subject "dialectically."7 Shorn of Jacobi's metaphorical language and re-
duced to its essentials, the critique directed a two-pronged attack at
Kant. On the one side Jacobi argued that Kant had tried to establish the
possibility of synthetic a priori judgments on the assumption of an object
(= x) and a subject (= x) that we ex hypothesi cannot know but upon
which the system of experience based on the said judgments none the
less depends. There is, however, a contradiction in this attempt accord-
ing to Jacobi, for although the assumed subject and object are factors
that ex hypothesi fall outside the system of the a priori judgments to be val-
idated, they can only be defined in terms of concepts and distinctions
that have meaning exclusively inside that system. The possibility cannot
be discounted that, in the eye of a hypothetical observer capable of es-
caping the limits of the system, those assumptions might appear totally
unjustified, and the system based upon them nothing, therefore, but a
web of illusions. But so long as this possibility cannot be discounted,
Kant's transcendental assumptions remain question-begging hypothe-
ses, and the task of establishing the possibility of a priori synthetic judg-
ments is thus unfulfilled. 8
Pursuing this line of attack, Jacobi found also fault with the function
attributed in Kant's Transcendental Idealism to reason. For it is the task
of reason to enshrine in ideas the very extra-systemic conditions that
make Kant's system of experience possible. But, ex hypothesi, reason has
no knowledge of these conditions. Its ideas must remain, therefore,
empty conceptual constructions that maintain their meaning and value
only to the extent that the understanding requires them to carry out its
task of systematizing its knowledge of experience. To this extent, reason
is totally subordinated to the understanding. Yet the understanding needs
reason, and to the extent that reason does satisfy this need with its ideas,
it cannot help creating the illusion that, through them, it yields genuine
cognition—that, logically, its conceptions are therefore prior to those of
the understanding. Jacobi objected to this strange requirement (which
he found contradictory) thus being forced on reason: that it should gen-
erate illusions for the sake of discharging its systematizing function yet
7. "Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Werke," p. 12.

8. See pp. 85-91 (I am citing from the Werke edition, vol. in).
Introduction 155
recognize that, though unavoidable, these illusions are nothing but that.
As Jacobi summed up his point in the introduction to the essay: "[In
Transcendental Idealism] Reason has a right to look for the uncondi-
tional in the things in themselves. It cannot, however, make its right
good, because the understanding, for its part, impedes the upholding of
reason's entire demand with true and actual right. Because of this better
legitimized demand, reason's claims are, when viewed in the light [of
the understanding], dialectical. Yet reason is necessitated to make its de-
mands; it has the right to be dialectical and has [thus] a right to be
wrong."9
This, in brief, constituted one side ofjacobi's attack. The other was di-
rected at the interior of the system, at the work of the understanding it-
self. Since, on Kant's transcendental terms, the adcequatio rei (i.e.
object = x) et intellectus (i.e. subject = x) could not in principle ever be
established, the issue of a priori synthetic judgments resolved itself into
a problem of establishing the possibility of an a priori synthesis between
thought and sensation. However, as conceived of by Kant, these two com-
ponents of the mind were so disparate in kind that, according to Jacobi,
no antithesis between the two could ever be established. There was no
common ground upon which they could even conflict and therefore no
possibility either that the antithesis could be overcome and replaced by
a genuine synthesis.10 More specifically, Jacobi's objections add up to
two major aporias that can be reconstructed as follows:
( i ) Let it be granted Kant, for the sake of argument, that thought is
as such a purely reflective activity and sensation an amorphous event en-
tirely void of reference or meaning—that the two, though for directly
opposite reasons, are totally indeterminate. But how is it then possible—
Jacobi asks—for two such indeterminate sources as pure thought and
raw sensation to produce together a determinate object of experience?
For such an object requires, on the one hand, a suitably determinate cat-
egory of thought and, on the other, an appropriately determinate mate-
rial to be subsumed under it (a schema of the imagination). But how did
Kant ever derive from his original indeterminate sources either the re-
quired categorial determination or the required schema of the imagina-
9. P. 81; see pp. 100-01, 115. In the translated passage Jacobi is using "dialectical" in
its traditional meaning. Yet if we were to consider reason's position of having to uphold two
conflicting "rights" at once as having a possible positive result, we would have a "dialectic"
in the sense developed by Hegel in his Jena period, shortly after the publication ofjacobi's
essay.
10. See pp. 122-23, ! 34-35. 107-08. I am reconstructing Jacobi's argument.
tion? On Kant's stated terms, the only possible ground connecting

thought and sensation is the empty copula "is"—an endlessly repeated
"is, is, is . . ."—to which any determination can indeed be affixed, but
not any in particular.11
(2) Let it be granted Kant, again for the sake of argument, that the
pure intuitions of space and time intervene between thought and sensa-
tion to yield the basic delimination of determinate objects of experience.
Leave aside such questions (which Jacobi actually raises) as How is it pos-
sible for an intuition to be, as Kant claims of space and time, both pure
and sensible, intuition and object of intuition? 12 The problem still re-
mains how space and time themselves are to be determined in the first
place, for they too are indeterminate.13 In the case of space, since it in
principle contains the determinations of all possible material objects,
the problem is to determine where to make a starting-point in the proc-
ess of introducing limits.14 In the case of time, the problem is the when
to make a starting-point, for time is in principle the end of all objects;
the difficulty lies, therefore, in holding on to enough of a "now" to be
able to introduce distinctions between a "past" and a "future."15
Jacobi expounds these aporias in different ways. The only apparent so-
lution he can find in Kant, however, is an appeal to the secret art of a
supposed transcendental imagination that, spanning pure thought and
raw sensations, manages to generate determinate objects out of the
two.l6 But this, according to Jacobi, is no solution at all. It is rather a beg-
ging of the very question of the possibility of a priori synthetic judgments
that Kant's Critique was supposed to answer. For even on the assumption
of a transcendental imagination, the question still remains how this fac-
ulty is to perform its feat of synthesis, and to this question Kant has no
answer. Moreover, the question cannot in principle be answered by a re-
flective examination of the workings of the assumed imagination be-
cause such workings are self-conscious, and hence open to inspection,
only to the extent that they are directed to determinate objects, i.e. to
the extent that the transcendental imagination has already performed
the synthesis to be explained. Thus, to engage in such an examination
11. See pp. 125, nsff., i22ff.

12. See pp. 77-79-
13. See pp. i22ff.
14. See pp. 134-35-
15. See pp. 136-39.
16. See pp. 95, 97, 115**"., n8ff., 126, 135, 150, 154^
Introduction 157
would be tantamount to trying to transcend the limits of consciousness

while still remaining within them.
The truth, according to Jacobi, is that Kant has never resolved his
problem. Implicit throughout Jacobi's analysis is that Kant has rather as-
sumed synthetic a priori judgments and has reduced them to abstract
components from which they cannot be reconstructed. The parallel be-
tween this critique of Kant's Transcendental Idealism and the one that
Jacobi had directed at Spinoza's rationalism almost two decades earlier
is obvious. At issue in both cases is the possibility of determinate objects;
and Jacobi's claim, also in both cases, is that no such possibility can ever
be established on the basis of abstractions. The name of Spinoza was ex-
plicitly connected by Jacobi with that of Kant, however, only in the sec-
ond of his three final major undertakings—in the essay Of Divine Things
and Their Revelation (1811), which was intended as a critique of
Schelling's recent "System of Identity" and of the new Philosophy of
Nature connected with it.
Jacobi had begun writing the essay over ten years before and had orig-
inally intended it as a review of volume 6 of the collected works of the
Messenger from Wandsbeck.1? Evidence of this earlier purpose can still
be seen in the first part, which consists of a discussion (based mostly on
classical sources and reminiscent of similar discussions in Woldemar) of
the origin of morality—whether morality is to be based on virtue of the
soul alone, or on natural happiness, or on a combination of the two.
Jacobi concludes this part by distinguishing two possible extreme posi-
tions that one can assume on the subject, by defining virtue as exclusively
a product of the inner determination of the soul (this is the position of
the "party of total inwardness") or as exclusively the result of tendencies
originating outside spirit in nature (the position of the "party of total ex-
ternality") respectively. Jacobi himself professes to uphold a position be-
tween the two (pp. 338-39), which he explains in a discussion that
begins as apparently another attempt to come to terms with Kant, al-
though it eventually turns into a critique of Schelling's Philosophy of
Nature.
As we shall see, the discussion will leave many points unclarified, in-
cluding, ultimately, Jacobi's own position. It is clear, however, that Jacobi
now holds that there are two immediate sources of knowledge—one, the
17. I.e. Claudius (see p. 206 of the David Hume, and the note on Asmus). For the history
of Of Divine Things and Their Revelation, see Jacobi's preface to the first edition, pp. 257ff.
of the Werke in, from which I shall be citing.
senses, from which we derive our knowledge of the external world

through the intermediary of the understanding; the other, now identi-
fied as "reason," from which we directly draw our knowledge of God, the
soul, and freedom (see pp. 395ff., 400, 434-35). It is also clear that
Jacobi wants both to praise Kant and to criticize him. He praises him on
several accounts. Kant unequivocally declared that a true God must have
personality (see pp. 341-44). He also acknowledged in practice, despite
his official statements to the contrary, that we have an immediate knowl-
edge of God, freedom, and immortality, and recognized that such
knowledge cannot be achieved through merely conceptual means
(pp. 363, 435). Finally, just as Jacobi does, Kant tried to respect and har-
monize the claims of both a reason intent on God and an understanding
attentive to the senses (see pp. 351—52).
But Jacobi's criticisms outweigh these praises. Kant ultimately under-
mined his own insights and, as witness the German philosophical scene
since the publication of the Critique, thereby unwittingly encouraged the
perpetration of some of the most extravagant philosophical experiments
ever. For one thing, he invited Fichte's "ideal materialism" with his claim
that the mind only knows what it constructs—a claim that, coupled with
the failure to provide a clearly unified principle for his system, quite nat-
urally led to an attempt to make the self s creativity the principle of all
objects, nature included (pp. 354ff.). Moreover, Kant failed to reconcile
the opposite tendencies of reason and understanding positively, as
Jacobi, presumably, thought of himself as having done. Kant rather tried
to prevent conflict negatively by restricting the claims of both—in effect
denying the possibility of any truth inasmuch as, on the one hand, he re-
duced reason's intuitive knowledge of God to the reflective possession of
a mere idea of God, and, on the other, he reduced understanding's
sense-bound knowledge of nature to the apprehension of mere appear-
ances. In this way Kant hid from himself reason's immediate knowledge
of the divine, which his system, positively understood, required (see
pp. 369-72). And he thereby also let loose on the philosophical land-
scape the second of his monstrous offspring, the Philosophy of Nature.
To understand how this came about one must enquire, according to
Jacobi, into the motive that confined Kant to a purely negative harmo-
nization of the claims of reason and the understanding. Kant's system
was motivated by the desire, explicitly recognized by Kant, according to
Jacobi, to serve "the interests of science"—where by "science" Kant
meant first and foremost a cognition of the understanding directed at
the objects of the senses. But despite its earth-bound nature, the under-
Introduction 159
standing cannot help falling (again, according to Jacobi) under the in-
fluence of the higher faculty of reason. Specifically, the understanding
is caught up in reason's desire—motivated in reason by its immediate
knowledge of a transcendent divinity—to behold all things under a sin-
gle principle. Since this desire can only be satisfied by transcending the
realm of the senses, yet the understanding is neither capable of per-
forming this feat on its own nor willing to admit its limitation, the under-
standing seeks to substitute for the knowledge it requires ideas that,
though they ape the universality of the things of God as immediately be-
holden by reason, are in fact drawn from the things of the senses. They
are empty abstractions, in other words, and the result of trying to subju-
gate the whole of existence to their control is to drive away from our
world the possibility of freedom and personality, the very things that rea-
son beholds intuitively and that secretly motivate the dynamics of the
human mind. Thus was born the myth of worlds emerging from, and
eventually returning to, an original chaos—of minds being driven by a
mindless unconscious while yet nurturing the illusion of being in con-
scious control of their own existence (see pp. 372—94).
This surreptitious attempt to satisfy the demands of reason with ab-
stractions of the understanding is, according to Jacobi, the great decep-
tion that the science of nature perpetrates when it usurps the role of
wisdom. It is a deception, according tojacobi's reading of history, as old
as philosophy itself. It was practised in ancient times by the cosmologists
whom both Plato and Aristotle criticized, and it never altogether ceased
to attract adepts. Within the tradition of dogmatic metaphysics it was
given its latest and most sophisticated expression by Spinoza. Kant gave
the impression of having put an end to it by exposing the empty claims
of that kind of metaphysics. But in fact he paved the way for its revival
by way of Fichte's idealism. Just how this happened Jacobi explains in a
supplement to his essay.18 Spinoza's great philosophical "deed" was to
distinguish extended substance from thinking substance absolutely with-
out, however, separating the two. With this innovative deed he founded
his system, which—Jacobi claims—is "in truth one and the same as the
most recent system of object-subjectivity, or the system of the absolute
identity of being and consciousness" (p. 429). And Jacobi continues:
[For Spinoza] spirit and body [. . .] constitute together one and the same sub-
stance in the most stringent of senses; spirit is nothing different from, or nothing
18. Supplement A.
16o The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
more than, the soul of a body [ . . . ] . In no way, therefore, can Spinoza's ex-
tended substance be viewed as a material to which the thinking substance im-
parts form—as in Plato, for whom the soul is cause and comes, in principle, first.
For Spinoza extended substance is all that there is of objective being (formal being, in
his way of speaking), of substantial and efficient being; it is the true real. Thinking
substance, by contrast, is only a representation in conformance to extended sub-
stance. However sharp is Spinoza's [. . .] distinction of spiritual from corporeal
being, his doctrine is, therefore, in truth materialistic throughout, for, despite its
independence from extended substance, thinking substance has no other object
of representation and thought except that very extended substance, (p. 431)
The only way of deflating this full-blown materialism is to deny the reality
of extended substance. And this, according to Jacobi, is what
Malebranche, Leibniz, and Berkeley tried (pp. 431-32). But then Kant
came along, and he established for thinking substance what his prede-
cessors had demonstrated regarding the extended,
namely that, as substantial being, it can only be considered an appearance. The

cogito, now transposed to predicate, could no longer voice its ergo; it lost the sum
and, with it, reality in general.
Thus it is that our Kant, quite unintentionally, founded a second Spinozism
[. . .]. The older system [could be] characterized with the name of material ideal-
ism; the new, with the name of ideal materialism, (p. 432)
Ultimately Kant's false move was the denial that we can have knowl-
edge of the mind as an independent substance. He had reduced it to a
series of events that, since they do not originate in a cognizable real
source of activity, depend for their determinate unity and objective con-
tent, just as in Spinoza's system, on the world of extended reality. In this
sense Kant's system was, in Jacobi's view, thoroughly materialistic.
Thought must comply of course with its own reflective requirements,
which are totally independent of the requirements of extended reality,
as both Kant and Spinoza recognized. Capitalizing on these logical re-
quirements, Fichte had indeed tried to construct a purely idealistic sys-
tem, in which the limits of the real world are defined a priori as satisfying
those requirements. But this meant identifying the living God, i.e., ac-
cording to Jacobi, the transcendent author of cosmic order, with this
order itself. And the moral consequence of this move was that a subject
of activity would have to attend to the details of the world of the senses,
which are ex hypothesi bound by strict necessity, while at the same time en-
tertaining the inner belief that in so doing he or she was in fact working
Introduction 161
in the cause of God and freedom. The move meant, in effect, a practical
materialism.19 Schelling, according tojacobi, simply unmasked this ma-
terialism thus implicit in all idealism by declaring the absolute identity
of subject and object—by proclaiming once again, as Spinoza had al-
ready done, that, though distinct from it, the world of thought does not
transcend that of extension.20
This, in brief, is howjacobi summed up the logic behind the develop-
ment of philosophical ideas in Germany since Kant's Critique, in that tur-
bulent period of intellectual history where new systems replaced one
another at such a speed that, as Jacobi said citing an Italian proverb,
"una meraviglia dura tre giorni."21 The fact that Schelling explicitly re-
ferred to Spinoza as the precursor of his System of Identity bolstered in
Jacobi's mind his claim that he had nothing substantial to alter in the cri-
tique of philosophy that he had launched at the time of the Spinoza
Letters. There had, however, been at least one change in his critical strat-
egy, and that was his substitution of "reason" for "faith." This change, ac-
cording to Jacobi, was to be seen more precisely as a correction. A
footnote to the new edition of the David Hume in the second volume of
his Collected Works22 explains why he had previously used the inappropri-
ate term "faith," thereby giving rise to false charges of irrationalism. Like
many philosophers new and old since Aristotle, he had previously failed
to distinguish between "reason" and "understanding," i.e. between an
intellectual power that is directed at the things that transcend the world
of senses and has traditionally been known as reason, and the same
power inasmuch as it is exclusively concerned with the theoretical and
practical control of the objects of sense experience. Because of this con-
fusion he had attacked reason, whereas he had intended to criticize pre-
19. See pp. 345-56. I am elaborating on Jacobi's text.

20. Pp. 347ff., 431. In one of his more humorous moments, Jacobi once wrote to
Bouterwek that Schelling's merit had been to provide paper goods for Kant's and Fichte's
paper money, thereby setting Transcendental Idealism on a firm economic footing. "The
money is 'defined' by the goods; the goods, however, are 'subjected' to the money. Theyjus-
tify and realize one another . . ., both through the intermediary concept of absolute
value. This value must somehow dirempt, in an incomprehensible yet necessary, hence ra-
tional, manner—so that, under absolute value, goods and money, the sign and the thing, are
also made possible as relative value, [the two being indexed] with an infinite plus and an
infinite minus, now predominantly with the one, now with the other" Letter of 5 November
1802, Bouterwek Briefwechsel, #4, pp. 34-35.
21. "A wonder lasts three days," p. 347.
22. P. 221, translated below, and entered to p. 123 of the first edition of the dialogue.
See also the first pages of the Introduction to the David Hume, included in this translation.
cisely the reduction of reason to "the understanding." And since he had

unwarrantedly distorted the meaning of reason, he had left himself no
alternative for expressing the true function of reason except through the
use of the term "faith." Hence the confusion thatjacobi had caused and
that he now hoped finally to dispel.
In fact Jacobi was being too sanguine in his expectations. For a mere
terminological confusion could easily have been remedied with a suit-
able explication of terms. However, the idea behind Jacobi's use of the
term "faith" was itself confused; hence this confusion persisted despite
Jacobi's substitution of terms. In the essay Of Divine Things it is most ob-
vious in Jacobi's attitude towards the Science of Nature, which is the
product of the understanding. Jacobi seems to be saying both: (i) that
the Science of Nature, predicated as it is on the assumption that every
event is mechanistically determined, 23 is a perfectly legitimate kind of
knowledge provided that it remains neutral to the higher claims of rea-
son regarding God and does not try either to prove or disprove that na-
ture is the absolute;24 and (2) that the understanding could not pro-
duce a science without being inspired by reason's sense of the absolute,
which the understanding, however, translates into abstract, universal
principles—i.e. it could not produce a science without in fact denying
freedom and personality; its knowledge is therefore essentially decep-
tive.25 This contradiction is nowhere resolved in Of Divine Things. It re-
flects an ambivalence in Jacobi's mind regarding the cognitive value of
concepts that in turn betrays a confusion regarding the nature of the
knowledge to which true reason has access. Jacobi does not say very
much specific about this knowledge except that it is intuitive, that it has
as its objects (which it apprehends as transcendent) such eternal verities
as the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and that these objects can
never be expressed reflectively through concepts.26 Although this
knowledge is now attributed by Jacobi to "reason," it does not in any way
differ from what Jacobi had previously attributed to "faith." Indeed, like
faith this knowledge is more akin to "intimation" and "feeling" than to
anything recognizably cognitive. In this respect Jacobi was quite right
when he claimed that, despite external changes, his final position on the
nature of our knowledge was substantially still the same as his original
23. See pp. 401—02.

24. See pp. 410-11.
25. Pp. 384-85. The point is repeatedly made in different ways in the pages that follow.
26. See Introduction to David Hume, pp. 59-63 of Jacobi's text. The point is repeated
throughout the Introduction.
Introduction 163
one. But then, the unresolved problem that had plagued him from the
beginning and had given rise to the charges of irrationalism had also
substantially remained. How can concepts (and any science based on
them) yield true knowledge when the truth is ultimately apprehended
only by reason and is apprehended by it immediately, in such a way that
it cannot be reflectively expressed without thereby being falsified?
Jacobi's own friends complained about Jacobi's negative attitude to-
wards science.27 Jacobi responded in his introduction to the Collected
Works by reserving for the understanding the function of reflective con-
ceptualization and by stressing the fact that, without this function, and
without the understanding's power to synthesize in abstract representa-
tions the content of sensations, reason, just like the senses, would have
no form and hence no cognition of itself.28 Yet he equally stressed the
understanding's innate tendency to naturalism and its consequent athe-
ism. And the question could naturally be asked how, on Jacobi's prem-
ises, reason had to be both dependent on the understanding for its form
yet naturally exposed to falsification at its hand. In his review of Of Divine
Things Friedrich Schlegel (definitely not a friend of Jacobi) had cast
doubts on the authenticity of Jacobi's newly established peace with rea-
son. He thought that Jacobi had still not decided whether to treat reason
either as Baal or as God. On either choice, Schlegel thought, Jacobi was
in difficulty. For if reason was Baal, then reason was the source of natu-
ralism and there was no point in identifying it with divine revelation. If,
on the contrary, reason was God, then what could the source of natural-
ism be? Schlegel, at that time a convert to Catholicism, avoided the dif-
ficulty by distinguishing between reason as prior to the Adamic fall and
as affected by original sin.2Q Could it be thatJacobi too was labouring un-
der precisely this distinction—that despite his avowed secularism, the
understanding and its science were unwittingly still being considered by
him the product of sin?
One would expect this to be precisely the issue that Jacobi would have
taken up in his final major work, his introduction to the Collected Works.
Jacobi did nothing of the sort, however. Just as, in a letter to Bouterwek
of 1816, he was to declare the union in man of necessity and freedom
27. SeeJ. F. Fries, Von deutscher Philosophic, An, undKunst. Ein Votum fur Friedrich Heinrich
JacobigegenF. W.J. Schelling (Heidelberg: Mohrund Zimmer, 1812), pp. 40-49, especially
40-41, 44, 48.
28. See Introduction, pp. 58, no.
29. Deutsches Museum, 1.1 (1812): 79-98, especially pp. 8gff.
(i.e. of understanding and reason) to be a mystery,30 so he now openly

confessed his "incapacity to define in which form the knowledge of free-
dom and providence that dwells deepest in us [in reason] will present
itself (pp. 105-06). He made use more than ever of the pious rhetoric
originally displayed in the concluding part of the Spinoza Letters. His
main concern was to reassert his epistemological realism and his moral
dualism. The text of the original David Hume was duly edited and anno-
tated in order to dispel any misleading impression that he had then
thought of reason as continuous with sensibility, and hence an essenti-
ally animal faculty.31 Butjacobi had in fact asserted that continuity at the
time. To deny it now was to deprive his early philosophy of its most in-
teresting and promising element. And to proclaim a radical dualism of
matter and spirit, as Jacobi now was doing, for the sake of denying un-
equivocally reason's dependence on the senses, was for Jacobi to expose
himself, ironically enough, to the very charge of materialism that he
now laid against Kantian and post-Kantian idealism. For to the extent
that reason's transcendent knowledge was intuitive and reflectively
inexpressible—to the extent, in other words, that reason was "Christian"
in Jacobi's sense of that epithet—to that extent the understanding and
its works had to be pagan. The other side of Jacobi's mysticism of reason
was, as in Fichte, a practical materialism with respect to our sensible
world. Jacobi apparently did not see this consequence in the introduc-
tion to the David Hume of 1815. Yet that work was to be Jacobi's last word
on Jacobi himself.
How disappointing this last word was can be seen if we remember the
philosophical promise implicit in Jacobi's Spinoza Letters and more expli-
cit in the David Hume. To the Enlightenment's manifold and often con-
tradictory aspirations, to its mixture of empiricism and rationalism, of
religious faith and secular rationalism, Jacobi had reacted with the idea
of a rationality that, though it transcended and encompassed the partic-
ularity of the senses, was none the less rooted in the latter. This rational-
ity evolved from the distinctions that individuals, immersed as they were
30. That this union is a mystery was one in a list of theses that Bouterwek had apparently
posed to Jacobi in writing, and to which Jacobi had replied by entering a "Yes." The theses
were on a sheet included in the letter to Bouterwek of 2 March 1816, Bouterwek Briejwechsel,
#30, pp. 170-74.
31. See the alteration made in the 1815 edition of the David Hume to the text on p. 123
of the original edition, and the new note entered by Jacobi.
Introduction 165
in their immediate experiences, would begin to draw between them-

selves and the world around them—first of all in the distinction between
an "I" and a "Thou." And although this rationality led to the laborious
productions of the concept, it did not ever forget its origin in the imme-
diacy of the feelings and the sensations that we first harbour about our-
selves and our world; faith remains its matrix. Jacobi's implicit promise,
in other words, was the idea of a historical, social rationality.
Hegel was the critic who understood and appreciated this promise
best, even better than Jacobi's friends and disciples, although, ironically,
Hegel had practically begun his public philosophical career with an at-
tack onjacobi and his faith. The attack had come in 1802, with the essay
"Faith and Knowledge" in the first issue of the Critical Journal of
Philosophy, which Hegel edited together with Schelling.32 Jacobi was at
the time taken aback by the strident tone of the essay. He found it alto-
gether comic, moreover, that he—the flesh-and-bone Jacobi—should be
treated as an idea satisfying certain systematic requirements. "It is price-
less to read," he wrote to Koppen, "how the three sinners [indicted] in
the introduction are [in the essay] summarily heard, summarily con-
fronted, and summarily levelled off [ indifferenzirt]. They are integrated
and differentiated as the three dimensions of body. Kant's is 'the objec-
tive dimension,' Jacobi's 'the subjective,' and Fichte's 'the synthesis of
both.' Through us, and in us, all the hitherto dispersed sins of the phil-
osophical universe finally interpenetrate and become one substance."33
Years later, however, in Hegel's 1817 review of the third volume of
Jacobi's Collected Works, Hegel's tone was to be quite different; it con-
veyed sympathy and appreciation, and we know that Jacobi reacted to it
in kind. Hegel's main point was that Jacobi's merit throughout his work
had been to celebrate the rationality implicit in the structure and the ac-
tivities of natural bodies and natural societies. Humankind was immedi-
ately aware of this rationality and expressed it in myth and metaphor
long before reflection and science set in. It is the rationality of a spirit
that is still slumbering, but is not any the less a true spirit for that. Jacobi
was so rich in this spirit, and so keenly aware of it, that he instinctively
32. "Glauben und Wissen, oder die Relexionphilosophie der Subjectivitat, in der
Vollstandigkeit ihrer Formen, als Kantische, Jacobische, und Fichtische Philosophic"
("Faith and Knowledge, or the Reflective Philosophy of Subjectivity in the Complete Range
of Its Forms as Kantian, Jacobian, and Fichtean Philosophy"), Kritisches Journal der
Philosophic, n . i (1802), the full issue.
33. Letter to Koppen of 10 August 1802, in Koppen's Schellings Lehre, p. 221.
reacted to any abstract form of explicit rationality that, in expressing that

spirit reflectively, would falsify it. Hence Jacobi's unceasing polemic
against the philosophy of his day. Yet, Hegel continued, however beau-
tiful the innocent state of spirit thatjacobi celebrated, and however rich
in unreflective insight Jacobi's grasp of it, spirit does not come into its
own until it expresses its rationality reflectively. It is only then that true
knowledge, or science in the strict sense, is born. Jacobi was indeed jus-
tified in resisting a type of reflection that, like that of much of past phi-
losophy, really misses and hides its object. But he himself was not
innocent. He too did not eschew reflection. His polemicizing was, on the
contrary, a form of reflection—just as abstract, and just as much of an
impediment to the fruition of spirit, as the one that he was criticizing.34
Hegel was of course interpreting Jacobi in the light of his own concept
of rationality. Yet he at least conveyed a true sense of Jacobi's accom-
plishments. Jacobi's merit lay more in what he had promised than in
what he ever actually delivered. And Jacobi did not protest Hegel's judg-
ment, at least not with too much conviction. He wrote to his friend
Neeb:
Hegel too regards Spinozism as the final and the truest result of thought to which
any consequential philosophizing could possibly lead. But the difference be-
tween him and me is that [ . . . ] , beyond Spinozism, he comes to a system of free-
dom on a road which is only a higher, though still the same road of thought (hence,
fundamentally not higher)—without a leap. I, on the contrary, [arrive at it] by
means of a leap, by jumping on the springboard of a merely substantial
knowledge—the kind which Hegel too indeed assumes and presupposes but treats
differently than I do. To Hegel my method appears like the one we follow when,
as living beings, we transform food into fluids and blood through unconscious
digestion, without the science of physiology [intervening].35
And Jacobi added: "He [Hegel] may well be right, and I would dearly
love to undertake with him, once more, a thorough research into what
the power of thought can yield by itself, were not the head of the old
man too weak for the job."36
If Jacobi had pursued the implications of his early inkling of a new un-
derstanding of historical rationality, he might have discovered that there
34 "Jacobi's Werke," pp. 6-7, 24-25.

35. Letter to Johann Neeb, 30 May 1817, Auserlesener Briefarechsel, Vol. n, #360,
pp. 467-68.
36. Ibid., p. 468.
Introduction 167
was, after all, no need of a leap to reach his goal. But Jacob! never sur-
passed the dichotomies that encumbered the very Enlightenment to
which he was reacting. He never succeeded in explicitly formulating
and in developing the one idea that would have reconciled the
Enlightenment's many conflicting interests. In this respect, his philoso-
phy remained unfinished.
Note on the Texts
I have used three sets of notes:
(1) Footnotes listed by numbers preceded by an asterisk. These are

Jacobi's own footnotes.
(2) Footnotes listed by symbols. These are purely editorial notes.
(3) Endnotes listed by numbers. These are historical and explanatory
notes. To avoid formidable technical difficulties, I have made two
sets of these, one for Jacobi's texts, the other for his footnotes.
Anything introduced into Jacobi's text within square brackets is an

addition.
Jacobi normally cites his sources in their original language. Unless
otherwise indicated, all translations of these citations are mine. In the
case of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, I have tried to follow the Norman
Kemp Smith translation (London: Macmillan, 1992) as much as possi-
ble. In the case of biblical references, I have used the Kingjames version.
The pagination of Jacobi's original texts appears within the transla-
tions in square brackets. All cross-references refer to this pagination.
In citing works in German or French, or in reproducing Jacobi's quo-
tations in French or Italian, I have retained the original spelling even
when this does not conform to modern usage.
G.diG.
THE MAIN PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS
AND THE NOVEL ALLWILL
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza
in Letters
to
Herr Moses Mendelssohn
dos moi pou sto1

Give me a place to stand. Archimedes.2
Breslau
at Gottl. Lowe
1785
NOTE: This translation is made from the first edition (1785), which I have chosen for
two reasons: It is substantially shorter than the two subsequent ones, and its relative brevity
makes it all the more effective as a piece of philosophical polemic. I have made no attempt
to note all the textual variations from the later editions, but I have noted a few significant
ones, and I have also appended under an independent heading substantial excerpts from
the edition of 1789. This edition also differs in places, but not substantially, from the third
edition of 1819. The text is complete except for certain footnotes (as indicated) in which
I have only made reference to sources that Jacobi cites in full. Pagination from the first edi-
tion is in square brackets, that from the second edition in curly brackets.
The precepts of the dialecticians [are] forms of reasoning in which the conclu-
sions follow with such irresistible necessity that if our reason relies on them, even
though it takes, as it were, a rest from considering a particular inference clearly
and attentively, it can nevertheless draw a conclusion which is certain simply in
virtue of the form. But, as we have noticed, truth often slips through these fetters,
while those who employ them are left entrapped in them. Others are not so fre-
quently trapped and, as experience shows, the cleverest sophisms hardly ever de-
ceive anyone who makes use of his untrammelled reason; rather, it is usually
sophists themselves who are led astray.
Descartes3
Be noble, Man,
Heart-good, lordly helper!
For this alone
Sets us apart
From all the beings
That we know.
Hail, then, unknown

Higher powers
That we divine!
Man is like to them:
From his example we learn
Belief in those others.
Nature is blind, unfeeling;

The sun gives light
To both evil and good, [page]
On the best of men
And the breaker of laws
The moon and stars cast their glance.
Wind, streams,
Thunder, hail;
They storm on their ways,
Seizing up
In their headlong rush
The one and the other.
Luck, too,
Groping through the crowd,
Touches now the innocent
Curly-headed boy,
Now the old sinner's
Bald crown.
All, we all must,

According to great,
Honoured, eternal laws
Accomplish the cycle
of our existence.
But only Man

Strives for what cannot be:
Divides,
Elects, and orders;
Can make the instant
Endure.
Only he may give

Rewards to the good,
Chastise the wicked man:
May heal and deliver,
May bring together
All that is drifting and straying
And give it a use.
And we revere
[page] The Undying Ones
As if they were human,
In their great deeds
As the best of us
In our little doings are
Or might be.
O Noble Man,
Be generous, be good!
Unresting, shape
The useful and the right!
Be for us a pattern
Of those mysterious powers!
Goethe4
PREFATORY NOTE
I have named this book after its occasion and most of its content, since
even the Letter to Hemsterhuis* should here be counted as a supple-
ment to my letters to Mendelssohn.
The story of these letters, which I give here with them, will itself justify
my giving it.
After the last letter I have briefly stated the purpose of the work. I be-
lieve that from there to the end I have made my purpose known clearly
enough.
For the moment I have no more to say to the attentive and enquiring
reader, whose only concern is the truth, [page] If a different sort of reader
takes up this book, that is not my fault. Let him make no demands on
me, just as I make none on him.
Pempelfort, near Diisseldorf5

August 28, 1785
Friedrich Heinr. Jacobi
. . . . It is in relation to the king of all and on his account that everything

exists, and that fact is the cause of all that is beautiful. In relation to what
comes second, the second class of things exists, and in relation to a third,
the third class. Now the mind of man, when it has to do with them, en-
deavours to gain a knowledge of their qualities, fixing its attention on
* See p. 56 of Jacobi's text, below.

the things with which it has itself some affinity; these, however, are in no
case adequate. In regard to the king and the things I mentioned there
is nothing like this. Thereupon the soul says, "But what are they like?"
This question, thou son of Dionysius and Doris—or rather the travail
that this question occasions in the soul—is the cause of all the trouble,
and if that be not expelled from a man, he shall never genuinely find the
truth.
Plato to Dionysius, Letter n [3i2e~3i3a; tr. L. A. Post]
[ i ] [The first edition has a vignette here portraying a resplendent altar,
with smoke (perhaps of burnt offerings) rising from it, and a harp lean-
ing against it.]
In February of the year 1783 a close friend of Lessing, who through him
became my friend too, wrote to me that she was planning to make a trip
to Berlin, and asked me whether I had any commission for her there.6
She wrote to me again from Berlin. Her letter dealt mainly with
Mendelssohn, "this true admirer and friend of our Lessing." She re-
ported to me that she had talked a lot with him about the deceased of
glorious memory, and about me as well; and that Mendelssohn was
about to begin his book about [2] Lessing's character and writings.7
Various obstacles made it impossible for me to reply to this letter im-
mediately, and my friend's stay in Berlin lasted only a few weeks.
When she was home again, I wrote to her, and asked how much, or
how little, Mendelssohn knew of Lessing's religious inclinations.—I said
that Lessing had been a Spinozist.8
Lessing had declared himself on the matter to me without any reti-
cence, and since he was not generally inclined to conceal his opinions,
I could fairly presume that what I knew about him had become known
to several others as well. However, I came to know that he had never
clearly declared himself on the matter to Mendelssohn, in the following
way.
I once invited Lessing to accompany me to Berlin;9 and [3] his answer
was that we would discuss the matter together at Wolfenbuttel.10 When
I got there, some serious obstacles developed. Lessing wanted to per-
suade me to travel to Berlin without him, and every day he grew more
insistent. The main motive for this was Mendelssohn, whom Lessing
treasured most among all his friends. He was very eager that I would
get to know Mendelssohn personally. In one discussion I expressed my
amazement that a man of such clear and straight understanding as
Mendelssohn could have endorsed the proof of God's existence from
the idea [of God] as zealously as he had done in his treatise on evi-
dence;11 and Lessing's excuses led me straight to the question whether
he had ever declared his own system to Mendelssohn. "Never, Lessing re-
plied. . . . I once only told him, more or less, just what struck you in §73
of the Education of Mankind.12 We never came to a conclusion, and I let
it go at that."
[4] So the likelihood that several had been informed of Lessing's
Spinozism on the one hand, and the certainty that Mendelssohn had
never known anything reliable about it on the other, induced me to
drop him a hint about it.
My friend fully grasped what I had in mind; to her the matter seemed
to be extremely important, and she wrote to Mendelssohn at once to
reveal to him what I had told her.
Mendelssohn was astounded, and his first reaction was to doubt the ac-
curacy of my statement.13 He wanted to know precisely "how Lessing
had expressed the opinions that I was attributing to him. Whether he
had bluntly said: 'I hold Spinoza's system to be true and well-grounded';
and which system was he speaking of? the one expounded in Spinoza's
Tractatus Theologicus Politicus or the one in his Principia Philosophiae
Cartesianae, or the one that Ludovicus Mayer had [5] published after
Spinoza's death in his name.14 And if it was the system that is univer-
sally known for its atheism, then, Mendelssohn also wanted to know,
whether Lessing had taken it in the way that it was misunderstood by
Bayle,15 or as others have better explained it.16 He added, moreover,
that if Lessing had reached the stage where he could simply go along
with anybody's system without further qualification, then at the time he
was no longer in his right mind, or else he was in that peculiar mood of
his, when he would assert something paradoxical which he then himself
rejected in a more serious moment.
Or perhaps Lessing had said something of this sort: "Dear Brother,
the much decried Spinoza may well have seen further on many points
than all the criers who have become heroes at his expense. His Ethics, in
particular, contains many admirable things, better things than many an
orthodox moral doctrine, or many a compendium of world-wisdom per-
haps. His system is not as absurd as is believed." [6] If this is what had
happened, then Mendelssohn could endure it.
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza (1785) 183
In conclusion he reiterated the wish that I would be so good as to in-

form him of the relevant details exhaustively—what Lessing said on the
matter, how, and on what occasion—for he was convinced that I had
thoroughly understood Lessing, and that I retained in my memory every
circumstance of such an important conversation.
As soon as I had done this, Mendelssohn certainly meant to discuss the
incident in what he still proposed to write about Lessing. "For," so the
guileless wise man said, "even the name of our best friends should not
shine in posterity either more or less than it deserves. The truth above
all. With truth the good cause always triumphs."
I did not have the least misgiving in following this invitation, and on
the fourth of [7] November I sent him the following letter by way of my
friend. And to preserve its documentary status, I shall have it printed
without change, from the first line to the last.17
Pempelfort near Diisseldorf

November 4, 1783.
Because of certain opinions that I have attributed to the departed

Lessing in a letter to }i8 vou ^^ to iearn tne precise detail from
me; in that case, it seems best that I direct whatever I am capable of com-
municating straight to you.
It pertains to the matter at hand, or at least to the statement of it, that
I preface it with something about myself. And since I will thereby bring
you into a somewhat closer acquaintance with me, I shall gain more
courage to tell you everything freely, and shall perhaps forget what
would otherwise worry or intimidate me.
[8] I was still wearing my child-frock when I began to worry about
things of another world.* I was eight or nine years old when my childish
depth of sense^ led me to certain remarkable "visions" (I know no better
word for them) that still stick with me to this day. My yearning to attain
certainty regarding the higher expectations of man grew with the years;
and it became the leading thread on which all my fortunes were to hang.
My innate character and the upbringing that I received conspired to
keep me duly diffident about myself and, for too long a time, in all the
greater expectation of what others might have to offer. I came to Geneva
where I found excellent men who received me with magnanimous love
* See Supplement in, below.

t Tiefsinn
and truly fatherly fidelity. I later came across others, some of equal rep-
utation, and others of even greater fame, who did not however ever be-
come as much to me; and I often entrusted myself to them to my own
great disadvantage. This gradually brought me back to some [9] trust in
myself; I learned how to gather my own forces and muster them for
counsel.
Spiritually minded men who search for the truth out of inner
need—of these there are only a few, as you know. Yet to each of them
truth has revealed something of its inner life, so that none of them is so
insignificant that there is not some advantage in heeding to him.* I
picked up this clue, and followed it among the living and the dead; and
the more I did so, the more intimately I noticed that real depth of sense t
has a common direction, like gravity in bodies, but that this direction,
since it runs from different points on the periphery, cannot yield either
parallel lines or lines that cross. It is quite different with sharpness of
sense,* which I may compare to the chords of the circle and is often
taken for profundity of sense because it has depth as regards relations
and form. Here the lines intersect at will, and at times are also parallel.
A chord can run so close to the diameter as to be taken for the [10]
diameter itself; yet it only cuts across a greater number of radii without
touching the ends of those it gave the impression to be.19 Where both
depth and sharpness are missing—where there is only mere so-called
knowledge, without sharpness or depth, without the need or the enjoy-
ment of truth—what could there be more disgusting?. . . . Please forgive
all this imagery most honoured Sir—I come to Lessing.
I had always revered the great man. But ever since his theological dis-
putes,20 and after I had read the Parable,21 the desire for a closer ac-
quaintance with him had become more lively in me. It was my good
fortune that he took an interest in AllwilVs Papers; he sent me many a
friendly message, at first through travellers, and finally, in the year 1779,
he wrote to me.22 I replied that I planned a trip for the following spring
which would take me by Wolfenbiittel, and there I yearned to [ 11 ] con-
jure up in him the spirits of several wise men whom I could not induce
to speak to me about certain things.23
* I am following the text of the first edition, which also corresponds to the text of
Jacobi's letter in the Briefwechsel. Jacobi made some stylistic improvements in the second
edition.
t Tiefsinn.
t Scharfsinn
My trip took place, and on the fifth of July, in the afternoon, I held
Lessing in my arms for the first time.
On that very same day we talked about many important things; and
about individuals, moral and immoral, atheist, theist and Christian.
The following morning Lessing came to my room where I was still busy
at some letters that I had to write. I reached out to him a number of
things from my briefcase, to help him while away his time as he waited.
When he gave them back he asked me whether I had something else that
he could read. "But yes!" I said (I was ready to seal my letter), "here's a
poem yet—you have given so much scandal; you might as well receive
some for once. . . . "*1
[Cover, Zeus, your heavens with

A mist of clouds:
Practice, like a boy
With thistles, cutting
The heads off oaks and mountains heights;
But leave my Earth
Standing for me;
My cottage (you did not build it!)
My hearth, too,
Whose warmth
Gives you such envy.
Gods, I have seen nothing

Under the sun sorrier than you!
Miserably you feed
Your greatness
On tithes of sacrifice,
On breaths of prayers;
If babes and beggars
Were not filled with foolish hopes,
You would be starving.
When I was a child,

And all was new and strange,
* i. There are good reasons why this poem, which inveighs with harsh expres-
sions against all Providence, cannot be communicated here.'
I turned my straying eyes

Sunward—as if there was an ear
Above to hear my complaint,
A heart like mine,
Formed to pity the afflicted.
Who helped me
Against the Titans' hubris?
Who delivered me from death
And slavery?
Did you not achieve all this yourself,
My holy, ardent heart?
Yet, young and good, beguiled,
You glowed with thanks for your life
To one who is sleeping up there.
I, give you honour? Why?

Have you ever lightened his sorrows
For one who is labouring?
Have you ever stilled his tears
For one in anguish?
Was I not forged into a Man
By Time, the all-mighty,
And everlasting Fate,
My lord, and yours?
Did you believe, then,

I would come to hate life,
And flee to the wasteland,
Since budding dreams of my youth
Have failed to ripen?
Here sit I, shaping Men

In my likeness:
A race that is to be as I am,
To suffer and weep,
To relish and delight in things,
And to pay you no regard—
Likeme!] 2 4
Lessing: (After reading the poem, [12] and as he was giving it back to
me) I took no scandal. That I already did long ago, but at first hand.25
I: Do you know the poem? Lessing: The poem I have never seen before;
but I think that it is good. I: It is good in its kind, I agree; otherwise I
would not have shown it to you. Lessing: I mean it is good in a different
way. . . . The point of view from which the poem is treated is my own
point of view. . . . The orthodox concepts of the Divinity are no longer
for me; I cannot stomach them. Hen kai panl26 I know of nothing else.
That is also the direction of the poem, and I must confess that I like it
very much. I: Then you must be pretty well in agreement with Spinoza.
Lessing: If I have to name myself after anyone, I know of nobody else.
I: Spinoza is good enough for me: yet, what a wretched salvation we find
in his name! Lessing: Yes indeed! If you like . . . ! And yet. . . . Do you
know of a better one . . . ?
In the meantime Wolke, the director from Dessau, had come in, and
we went together to the library.
[13] The following morning, when I had returned to my room to
dress after breakfast, Lessing joined me after a while. I was in a chair,
having my hair done, and in the meantime Lessing quietly settled him-
self near a desk at the end of the room. As soon as we were alone, and
I sat down on the other side of the desk against which Lessing was lean-
ing, he began: "I have come to talk to you about my hen kai pan.
Yesterday you were frightened. I: You surprised me, and I may indeed
have blushed and gone pale, for I felt bewilderment in me. Fright it was
not. To be sure, there is nothing that I would have suspected less, than
to find a Spinozist or a pantheist in you. And you blurted it out to me
so suddenly. In the main I had come to get help from you against
Spinoza. Lessing: Oh, so you do know him? I: I think I know him as only
very few can ever have known him. Lessing: Then there is no help for
you. Become his friend all the way instead. There is no other philosophy
than the philosophy of Spinoza. [14] I: That might be true. For the de-
terminist, if he wants to be consistent, must become a fatalist: the rest
then follows by itself. Lessing: I see that we understand one another. I
am all the more anxious to hear what you hold to be the spirit of
Spinozism; I mean the spirit that inspired Spinoza himself. I: It is cer-
tainly nothing other than the ancient a nihilo nihil fit*7 that Spinoza
made an issue of, but with more abstract concepts than the philosophers
of the cabbala or others before him. In keeping with these more abstract
concepts he established that with each and every coming-to-be in the in-
i88 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
finite, no matter how one dresses it up in images, with each and every
change in the infinite, something'^ posited out of nothing. He therefore re-
jected any transition from the infinite to the finite. In general, he rejected
all causae transitoriae, secundariae or remotae, and in place of an emanating
En-Soph28 he only posited an immanent one, an indwelling cause of the
universe eternally unalterable within itself, One and the same with all its
consequences. . . .*2 [15]
This immanent infinite cause has, as such, explicite, neither under-
standing nor will. For because of its transcendental unity and thorough-
going absolute infinity, it can have no object of thought and will; and a
faculty to produce a concept before the concept, or a concept that would
be prior to its object and the complete cause of itself, or so too a will [16]
causing the willing and thus determining itself entirely, are nothing but
absurdities. . . .
. . . . The objection that an infinite series of effects is impossible (bare
effects they are not, for the indwelling cause is always and everywhere)
is self-refuting, for if a series is not to arise from nothing, it must be in-
finite absolutely. And from this it likewise follows that, since each and
every concept must arise from some other individual concept and refer
to an actually present object immediately, neither individual thoughts nor in-
dividual determinations of the will can be found in the first cause, which
is infinite by nature, but only their inner, primal, and universal mate-
rial. . . . The first cause cannot act in accordance with intentions or final
causes, any more than it can exist for the sake of a certain intention or
final cause; it cannot have an initial ground or a final end for performing
something, any more than it can itself have a beginning or end. . . .
Fundamentally, what we call consequence or duration are mere illu-
sions; for since a real effect coincides with the totality of its real cause, and
is distinguished from it only in representation, consequence and dura-
tion must in truth only be a certain way of intuiting the manifold in the
infinite.
*2. I cany on with this exposition joining things together as I can, without
writing down what was said in between, not to be too long-winded. What now fol-
lows was occasioned by Lessing referring to, as the darkest in Spinoza, something
that Leibniz had found obscure too, and had not quite understood (Theod.,
#i73)- 2
I note this here once and for all, and shall not repeat it in what follows, when-
ever I take similar liberties.
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza (i 785) 189
Lessing: . . . . We shall not dissent about our credo therefore. I: We

wouldn't want to do that in any case. But, my credo is not in Spinoza.
Lessing: I dare hope that it is not in any book. I: That's not all. I believe
in an intelligent personal cause of the world. Lessing: Oh, all the better!
I must be about to hear something entirely new.* I: You had better not
get your hopes up too much. I extricate myself from the problem
through a salto mortale,^ and I take it that you are not given to any special
pleasure in leaping with your head down. Lessing: Don't say that; pro-
vided that I need not imitate you. Moreover, you will come down stand-
ing on your feet. So, if it is not a [18] secret, let's have it. I: You can
always pick it up by looking at me. The whole thing comes down to this:
from fatalism I immediately conclude against fatalism and everything
connected with it.—If there are only efficient, but no final, causes, then
the only function that the faculty of thought has in the whole of nature
is that of observer; its proper business is to accompany the mechanism
of the efficient causes. The conversation that we are now having together
is only an affair of our bodies; and the whole content of the conversa-
tion, analyzed into its elements, is extension, movement, degree of veloc-
ity, together with their concepts, and the concepts of these concepts.
The inventor of the clock did not ultimately invent it; he only witnessed
its coming to be out of blindly self-developing forces. So too Raphael,
when he sketched the School of Athens,29 and Lessing, when he com-
posed his Nathan. The same goes for all philosophizing, arts, forms of
governance, sea and land wars—in brief, for everything possible. For
[19] affects and passions would have no effect either, so far as they are
sensations and thoughts; or more precisely, so far as they carry sensations
and thoughts with them. We only believe that we have acted out of anger,
love, magnanimity, or out of rational decision. Mere illusion! What
fundamentally moves us in all these cases is something that knows nothing
of all that, and which is to this extent absolutely devoid of sensations and
thoughts. These, the sensations and thoughts, are however only con-
cepts of extension, movement, degrees of velocity, etc.—Now, if some-
one can accept this, then I cannot refute his opinion. But if one cannot,
then one must be at the antipodes from Spinoza. Lessing: I note that you
would like to have a free will. For my part, I don't crave one. On the
whole I am not in the least frightened by what you have just said. It is
* The second edition refers here to Supplement iv.

t Literally, "a mortal jump," i.e. a leap in which a person turns heels over head in the
air
i go The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
human prejudice to consider thought as being first and pre-eminent,

and to want to derive everything from it—whereas everything, represen-
tations included, [20] depends on higher principles. Extension, move-
ment, thought, are patently grounded in a higher power that is yet far
from being exhausted by them. It must be infinitely more perfect than
this or that effect; hence there can be a kind of pleasure which not only
surpasses all concepts, but lies totally outside the concept. The fact that
we cannot entertain any thought about it does not remove its possibility.
I: You go further than Spinoza; for him insight was above everything.*
Lessing: For menl But he was far from pretending that our dismal man-
ner of acting by way of purposes is the highest method, or from placing
thought on top. I: For Spinoza insight is the best part in allfinitenatures,
for it is the part through which each finite nature reaches beyond its fin-
itude. One could almost also say that he has attributed two souls to each
and every being—one, that only relates to the present individual thing;
and anodier, that relates to the whole.*3 [21] To this second soul he also
grants immortality. But as far as the One infinite Substance of Spinoza
is concerned, it has no determinate or complete existence on its own
outside the individual things. If it had a particular and individual actu-
ality of its own as its unity (to express myself in this way), if it had per-
sonality and life, insight would be the best part of it too. Lessing: Good.
But then, how do you represent your personal, extra-mundane, Divinity
on your assumption? In the way perhaps that Leibniz represented it? I
am afraid that he was a Spinozist at heart too. I: Are you serious? Lessing:
Do you seriously doubt [22] it?—Leibniz's concepts of truth were of
such nature that he could not tolerate any narrow limits being imposed
on it. Many of his assertions derive from this kind of thinking, and it is
often difficult to uncover his true meaning even with the greatest acu-
men. This is just the reason why I appreciate him so much—I mean, be-
cause of the far-reaching character of his thought and not because of
this or that opinion which he only appeared to have, or may even actu-
*3. Although only by means of this body which [21] cannot be an absolute in-
dividual (for an absolute individual isjust as impossible as an individual Absolute.
Determinatio est negatio, Op. Posth., p. 558) but must rather contain universal and
unalterable properties and qualities, the nature and the concept of the infinite.
With this distinction one has one of the principal keys to the system of Spinoza,
without which one only finds confusion and contradictions in it.3
* The second edition refers here to Supplement v.

ally have held. I: Quite. Leibniz liked to "strike a spark from every
flint."30 But you said with reference to a specific opinion, namely
Spinozism, that at heart Leibniz was committed to it. Lessing: Do you re-
call a place in Leibniz where it is said of God that he is in a state of in-
cessant expansion and contraction: would this be the creation and
conservation of the world?31 I: I know about his "fulgurations";32 but
the passage you speak of is unknown to me. Lessing: I'll look for it, and
then you'll have to tell me what a man like Leibniz could, or must, have
thought by it.33 I: [23] Show me the passage. But I must tell you from
the start that with so many other places that I recall in this very same
Leibniz—so many other letters, essays, his Theodicy and Nouveaux Essays,
his philosophical course in general—I reel at the hypothesis that this
man did not accept a transcendent cause of the world, but only an im-
manent one. Lessing: On that side I must yield to you. And it is this side
that will retain the upper hand. I must grant that I have said a bit too
much. But, for all that, the passage that I have in mind, and many an-
other yet, remain odd.—But let's not forget our problem! On what rep-
resentations do you base your anti-Spinozism? Is your view that Leibniz's
Principia^ put an end to Spinozism? I: How could I when I am firmly
convinced that the consistent determinist does not differ from the
fatalist . . . ? The monads, with all their vincula,* leave extension and
thought—reality in general—just as incomprehensible to me as before,
and I can't tell [24] right from left. I feel as if I am being led. . . . For
the rest, I know of no doctrinal system that concurs with Spinozism as
much as Leibniz's does; and it is difficult to say which of the two authors
was fooling himself and us most—with all due respect of course . . .!
Mendelssohn has clearly demonstrated that the harmonia prcestabilita is in
Spinoza. From this alone it already follows that Spinoza must contain
much more of Leibniz's fundamental teachings; for otherwise Leibniz
and Spinoza (who would hardly have been touched by Wolffs lesson)
would not be the consistent minds that they incontestably were.*4 I
would dare to extrapolate the whole of Leibniz's doctrine of the soul
from Spinoza. . . . Fundamentally they have the same teaching on free-
dom too, and it's only an illusion that distinguishes their theories. If
Spinoza can explain our feeling of freedom through the example of a
stone that thinks and that knows that it is striving to maintain its move-
*4. See Mendelssohn's Philosoph. Writings, the 3rd discourse, at the end.4
* bonds
ment as much as it can, (Epist. LXII, Op. Posth., pp. 584 & 585), [25]
Leibniz, for his part, explains the feeling with the example of a magnetic
needle that desires to move in the direction of the North and believes
itself to be moving independently of another cause, for it cannot be
aware of the unnoticeable movement of the magnetic matter. (Theod.,
#50. )*5. . . . Leibniz explains the final causes through an appetitus, a co-
natus immanens (conscientia sui pceditum).* Spinoza could [26] say the
same, for he could perfectly well allow them in this sense; and for him,
as for Leibniz, representation of the external, and desire, constitute the essence
of the soul.—In brief, when we penetrate to the heart of the matter, it
turns out that each and every final cause presupposes an efficient one in
Leibniz just as much as in Spinoza. . . . Thought is not the source of sub-
stance; rather, substance is the source of thought. Hence a non-thinking
something must be assumed before thought as being first—something
that must be thought as prior to everything else, if not in its very actual-
ity, then in representation, essence, and inner nature. For this reason
Leibniz has called the souls, honestly enough, des automates spirituels.*6
But how can the principle of all souls subsist on its own somewhere and
*5- In the same 63rd Letter, Spinoza says: "And this is that human freedom,
which all boast to possess, and which consists solely in the fact that men are con-
scious of their own desire but ignorant of the causes by which they are determined."$
Spinoza did not at all lack the concept of that expedient by which the deter-
minists seek to avoid fatalism. But it appeared to him to be so far from being gen-
uinely philosophical, that he preferred the arbitrium indifferentice or the voluntas
cequilibrii. See, among other places, in Part i of the Ethics, the 2nd Schol. of the
33rd Prop., at the end. Farther, in Part in, the Schol. of the gth Prop., and espe-
cially the Preface of Part iv.
*6. The same characterization can be found in Spinoza, although not in his
Ethics, but in the fragment De Intelkctus Emendatione. The passage deserves quo-
tation here: "As regards a true idea, we have shown that it is simple or composed
of simple ideas; and what it shows, how and why something is or has been made;
[27] and that its subjective effects in the soul proceed according to the formal
ratio of its object. This conclusion is identical with what the ancients said, that
true science proceeds from cause to effect; though the ancients, so far as I know,
never conceived the soul (as we do here) as acting in accordance with fixed laws,
like an immaterial automaton as it were." (Op. Posth., p. 384) I am aware of the
derivation of the word automaton, and what Bilfinger says about it.6
* endowed with consciousness of itself

be efficient (I speak here in accordance with Leibniz's deepest and [27]

fullest sense, so far I understand it) . . .; how can the spirit be before the
matter; or thought before the object? This great knot, which he ought
to have untied for us if he was really going to help us get out of our
predicament—he left it just as tangled as it was. . . .
Lessing:. . . . I won't leave you be; you must clarify this parallel-
ism. . . . Yet people always speak of Spinoza as if he were a dead dog
still. . . . I: And so they will go on speaking of him. It takes too big an ef-
fort of mind, and too much determination to understand Spinoza [28].
And no-one to whom a single line in the Ethics remains obscure has
grasped his meaning; nor has anyone who does not comprehend how
this great man could have as firm an inner conviction in his philosophy
as he so often and so emphatically manifested.35 At the end of his days
he wrote still: ". . . . non prcesumo, me optimam invenisse philosophiam; sed
veram me intelligere sa'o."*7—Few can have enjoyed such a peace of the
spirit, such a heaven in the understanding, as this clear and pure mind
did. Lessing: And you, Jacobi, are no Spinozist? I: No, on my honour!
Lessing: But then, on your honour, by [29] your philosophy you must
turn your back on all philosophy. I: Why turn my back on all philosophy?
Lessing: Come, so you are a perfect sceptic. I: On the contrary, I draw
back from a philosophy that makes perfect scepticism a necessity.
Lessing: And where do you turn to then? I: Towards the light, of which
Spinoza says that it illumines itself and the darkness as well.—I love
Spinoza, because he, more than any other philosopher, has led me to
the perfect conviction that certain things admit of no explication: one
must not therefore keep one's eyes shut to them, but must take them as
one finds them. I have no concept more intimate than that of the final
cause; no conviction more vital than that / do what I think, and not, that
I should think what I do. Truly therefore, I must assume a source of
thought and action that remains completely inexplicable to me. But if I
want to have absolute explanation, then I must fall back upon the sec-
*7. In his Letter to Albert Burgh.7 He adds: "And if you ask how I know it, I
reply: In the same way as you know that the three angles of a triangle are equal
to two right angles: that this is sufficient will be denied by no one whose brain
is sound, and who does not go dreaming of unclean spirits inspiring us with false
ideas resembling the true. For the truth is the index of itself and of what is
false."—Spinoza drew a clear distinction between being certain and not
doubting.8
ond proposition, and hardly any human intellect could countenance the
application of it to individual cases, [30] taken in its full compass.
Lessing: You express yourself with almost as much boldness as the
Augsburg Diet;36 but I remain a honest Lutheran, and I hold to the
error and blasphemy that is more bestial than human, namely that there
is no free will—an error in which the pure and limpid mind of your
Spinoza could find itself embroiled even so. I: Spinoza also had to wrig-
gle quite a bit to hide his fatalism when he turned to human conduct,
especially in his fourth and fifth Parts [of the Ethics] where I could say
that he degrades himself to a sophist here and there.—And that's exactly
what I was saying: even the greatest mind, if it wants to explain all things
absolutely, to make them rhyme with each other according to distinct
concepts and will not otherwise let anything stand, must run into absurd-
ities. Lessing: And he who will not explain? I: He who does not want to
explain what is incomprehensible, but only wants to know the boundary
where it begins and just recognize that it is there—of such a one I believe
that he [31] gains the greatest room within himself for genuine human
truth. Lessing: Words, dear Jacobi, words! The boundary that you want
to establish does not allow of determination. And moreover, you give
free play to phantasies, nonsense, obscurantism. I: I believe that that
boundary can be defined. I have no intention of establishing a boundary,
but only of finding one that is already established and leaving it in place.
And as for nonsense, phantasies, obscurantism. . . . Lessing: These are
to be found wherever confused concepts rule. I: And even more where
fictitious concepts do. Even the blindest, most nonsensical faith, if not the
stupidest, finds its high throne there. For once one has fallen in love with
certain explanations, one accepts blindly every consequence that can be
drawn from an inference that one cannot invalidate—even if one must
walk on one's head.*
. . . . In my judgment the greatest service of the scientist is to unveil
existence, and to reveal it. ... Explanation is a means for him, a pathway
to his destination, a proximate—never [32] a final—goal. His final goal
is what cannot be explained: the unanalyzable, the immediate, the
simple.
. . . . Obsession with explanation makes us seek what is common to all
things so passionately that we pay no attention to diversity in the process;
we only want always to join together, whereas it would often be much
* In the second edition Jacobi refers to Supplement v 11 here. See David Hume, p. 62 of
the 1787 ed.
more to our advantage to separate. . . . Moreover, in joining and hanging

together only what is explainable in things, there also arises in the soul
a certain lustre that blinds us more than it illumines. And then we sac-
rifice to the cognition of the lower genera what Spinoza (being of pro-
found sense and sublime as he was) calls the cognition of the supreme
genus; we shut that eye of the soul tight by which the soul sees God and
itself, to look all the more undistractedly with the eye of the body
alone. . . .
Lessing: Good, very good! I can make use of all this too; but I myself
cannot do the same with it. On the whole I don't dislike your salto mor-
tale, and I see how [33] a man can turn his head up-side-down in this way,
to move from it.* Take me with you, if it can be done. I: If you were just
to step on the elastic place that propels me, it would be no sooner said
than done.37 Lessing: But that too takes a leap that I can no longer ask
of my old legs and heavy head.38
This conversation, of which I have here conveyed only the essentials,

was followed by others that brought us back to the same topics by more
than one route.
Lessing once said, with half a smile, that perhaps he was himself the
supreme Being, and he was now in the state of extreme contraction.—I
beseeched him for my existence.—He replied that that was not at all how
it was intended to be, and explained himself in a way that reminded me
of Henry More39 and von Helmont.40 Lessing became ever more expli-
cit, to the point that, when pressed, I [34] could again raise the suspi-
cion of cabbalism against him. That delighted him not a little, and I took
the occasion to speak in favour of the Kibbel, or the cabbala in the strict
sense—that is, taking as starting point the view that it is impossible, in and
for itself, to derive the infinite from a given finite, or to define the tran-
sition from the one to the other, or their proportion, through any for-
* " . . . und ich begreife, wie ein Mann von Kopf auf diese Art Kopf-unter machen kann,
um von der Stelle zu kommen." ". . . von Kopf. . . Kopf-unter machen" conveys the double
image of jumping heels over head starting from one's head, and of bringing down (i.e.
humbling) the head. I take it thatjacobi is here referring to the kind of man, of whom he
has just spoken, who is addicted to explanation and therefore "must walk on his head." The
head inversion would of course bring the man back on his feet. See Supplement v, p. 353
of the second edition. The expression "leap of faith" is nowhere to be found in Jacobi.
mula whatever. Hence, if anyone wants to say anything on the subject,

one must speak on the basis of revelation. Lessing insisted on having
everything "addressed to him in natural terms" and I, that there cannot be
any natural philosophy of the supernatural, yet the two (the natural and
the supernatural) obviously exist.
Whenever Lessing wanted to represent a personal Divinity, he thought

of it as the soul of the All; and he thought the Whole after the analogy
of an organic body. Hence, as soul, the soul of this Whole would be [35]
only an effect, like any other soul in all conceivable systems. *8 Its organic
compass, however, cannot be thought after the analogy of the organic
parts of this compass, inasmuch as there is nothing existing outside it to
which it can refer, nothing from which it can take or give back. In order
therefore to preserve itself in life, this organic compass must somehow
withdraw within itself from time to time; unite death and resurrection
within itself with life. One can however envisage several representations
of the internal economy of such a being.
Lessing was fascinated by this idea, and he applied it to all sorts of
cases, sometimes jokingly, sometimes in earnest. At Gleim's house, 9
when it suddenly began to shower while we were sitting at table and
Gleim was moaning because we were to have retired to the garden after
dinner, Lessing, who sat next to me, said: 'You know, Jacobi, perhaps
I am doing it."*10 And I said: "Or perhaps I." Gleim looked at us as if we
were going too far;* but then, for the whole three days that we spent with
him he took great care to face us constantly and untiringly with his
cheerful, intelligent, and spirited whimsicality, his humorous wit, and his
always loving and friendly teasing, sharp though it is.
*8. According to Leibniz's system too.—The entelechy only becomes spirit

through the body (or the concept of body).9
*g. Lessing was kind enough to accompany me to Halberstadt [where Gleim
lived] the second time I visited him, on my way back from Hamburgh.10
*io. In the sense in which one says, I digest, I produce good or bad fluids, etc.
* Second edition: "looked at us somewhat perplexed, but did not investigate further."
Lessing could not accept the idea of a personal, absolutely infinite

Being, unfailingly enjoying his supreme perfection. He associated an
image of such infinite boredom with it, that he was troubled and pained
by it.
[37] He regarded a continuation of life associated with personality
after death not unlikely. He told me that he had run across ideas on this
subject that coincided remarkably with his own and with his system in
general in Bonnet, whom he was reading up just then. Because of the
tenor of the conversation and my exact acquaintance with Bonnet
(whose collected works I had just about learned by heart), I neglected
at the time to question him more closely on this point. After that, since
there was nothing either obscure or debatable left in Lessing's system for
me, I never consulted Bonnet on this score, until the present occasion
led me to do it. The essay of Bonnet that Lessing was reading at the time
was probably none other than the Palingenesie that you know so well;41
and Section VII of Part I, in connection with the 13th main paragraph
of Section IV of Contemplation de la Nature (to which Bonnet himself
refers), presumably contains the ideas that Lessing had in mind. [38] I
was struck by a passage (p. 246 of the original edition) where Bonnet
says: uSerait-ce done qu'on imagineroit que I'univers seroit moins harmonique,
j'ai presque dit, moins organique, qu'un Animal?"42
There still was much and lively talk on all these subjects the day I
parted from Lessing to continue my journey to Hamburg. We were not
far apart in our philosophy, and only differed in faith. I gave Lessing
three writings of the younger Hemsterhuis of whom, apart from the
Letter concerning Sculpture,43 he knew nothing. They were, Lettre sur
Vhomme & ses rapports, Sophyle [ou de la philosophie], and Aristee [ou de la
divinite].44 I let him have the Aristee, which I had just obtained as I was
journeying through Miinster and had not yet read, reluctantly; but
Lessing's desire was so very great.
On my return I found Lessing totally fascinated by just this Aristee, so
much so that he had resolved to translate it himself.—It was patent
Spinozism, [39] Lessing said, and in such a beautiful and exoteric a
guise that this very guise contributed in turn to the development and the
explication of the inner doctrine.—I assured him that Hemsterhuis, so
far I knew him, (and at that time I still did not know him personally) was
no Spinozist; Diderot had personally said this to me about him.—45
"Read the book," retorted Lessing, "and you won't doubt it any more. In
the letter sur I'homme & ses rapports there still is a bit of hesitation, and
it is possible that Hemsterhuis did not at the time know his Spinozism
fully yet; but now he is quite clear about it."
One must be as conversant with Spinozism as Lessing was, not to find
this judgment paradoxical. What he called the exoteric guise of the
Aristee, can with all justice be considered a mere elaboration of the teach-
ing on the indivisible, inner, and eternal conjoining of the infinite with
the finite; of the universal and (to this extent) indeterminate power with
the determinate and individual; and of the necessarily contrary tenden-
cies of these [40] powers. As for the rest of the Aristee, one would hardly
want to use it against a Spinozist.46—Here I must however solemnly at-
test that Hemsterhuis is certainly not an adept of Spinozism, but that on
the contrary he is entirely opposed to the essential tenets of the doctrine.
At that point Lessing had not yet read the essay of Hemsterhuis, Sur
les desirs. It arrived in a packet at my address just as I was leaving.*11
Lessing wrote to me that impatient curiosity had given him no peace un-
til he had broken open the envelope; he sent the rest of the contents to
me in Cassel. "About the essay itself (he added), which gave me uncom-
mon gratification, more later on."47
Not long before his death, on the fourth of December, he wrote to
me: "A propos Of***,48 it [41] occurs to me that I committed myself to
communicate to you my thoughts on Hemsterhuis's 'love system'. You
wouldn't believe how exactly those thoughts chime with this system. And
this, in my opinion, does not help explaining anything but, to speak with
the analysts, seems to me only to be the substitution of one formula for
another, by which I am more likely to end up on some new wrong track
than come closer to a solution.—But am I in a condition to write what
I want?—Not even what I must, etc."
Before I came to know Lessing's opinions in the way just narrated, but
had firm and convincing evidence that Lessing was an orthodox theist,*
there were things in his Education of Mankind that were totally inexplica-
* 11. I had had to write home for it during my stay at Wolfenbuttel in order
to satisfy Lessing's great desire for this essay.
* Second edition: "deist"
ble to me, especially §73.49 I would like to know how anyone can make
sense of this passage except in accordance with Spinozistic ideas. With
these, the commentary becomes quite easy. Spinoza's God is the pure
principle of the [42] actuality in everything actual, of being'm everything
existent; is thoroughly without individuality, and absolutely infinite. The
unity of this God rests on the identity of the indiscernible and hence
does not exclude a sort of plurality. However, considered merely in its
transcendental unity, the Divinity must do without any actuality what-
ever, for actuality can only be found expressed in determinate individu-
als. This, i.e. the actuality, and its concept rest therefore on the natura
naturata (the Son from all eternity); just as the other (thepossibility, the
substantiality of the infinite) and its concept rest on the natura naturans
(the Father).*12
What I have said earlier about the spirit of Spinozism allows me to
[43] dispense with further elaborations here.
You know as well as I how common these same representations have
been among men from the mistiest past, more or less confusedly, under
many a different pictorial shape.—"Language is undoubtedly subordi-
nated to the concepts here, just as one concept is subordinated to
another."50
Several people can testify that Lessing often and emphatically referred
to the hen kai pan as the sum-concept of his theology and philosophy.
He spoke it and wrote it, whenever the occasion presented itself, as his
definitive motto. That is why it stands in Gleim's garden house, written
in Lessing's own hand,* 51 under a motto of mine.
Yet many other things pertaining to this point might be learned from
the Marchese Lucchesini.52 He visited Wolfenbiittel not long before me,
[44] and Lessing had uncommon praises for him, as having a very clear
mind.
*12. I beg the reader not to dwell on this overly compressed commentary,
which is rendered extremely obscure by the compression. The issue will become
clear enough in the third letter.
* "Written in Lessing's own hand" was dropped in the second edition. See the explan-
atory note immediately following.
2OO The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
What I have recounted is not one tenth of what I could have related,
if my memory had served me well enough in point of form and expres-
sion. Just for this reason I have let Lessing speak, in what I have related,
as sparingly as possible. When people talk with one another for entire
days, and of so many very different things, the detail is bound to escape
one. Add to this that, once I knew quite decisively that Lessing did not be-
lieve in a cause of things distinct from the world, or that Lessing was a Spinozist,
what he said afterwards on the subject, in this way or that, did not make
deeper impression on me than other things. It did not occur to me to
want to preserve his words; and that Lessing was a Spinozist appeared to
me quite understandable. Had he asserted the contrary, which is what I
anxiously wanted to hear, then I would very [45] likely still be able to
give an account of every significant word.
With this I should have absolved myself of a large part of what you, my
most excellent Sir, have requested, and I now only have to make brief
mention of some particular questions.
These particular questions, my most excellent Sir, rather took me
aback I must confess, for they suppose an ignorance on my part (not
to say something worse) that might perhaps be there but you had no
external cause to suspect or to be so quick in making your suspicion
manifest.
You ask whether Lessing has said in so many words, "I hold Spinoza's
system to be true and well grounded?" and which one? Did he mean the
one presented in Spinoza's Tractatus Theologicus Politicus or in his
Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae, or the one that Ludovicus Mayer pub-
lished after Spinoza's death in his name?
[46] Anyone who knows anything of Spinoza knows the history of
Spinoza's demonstration of Descartes's doctrine as well; so he knows
that this doctrine has nothing to do with Spinozism.*13
I know nothing of a system of Spinoza that Ludovicus Mayer is alleged
to have published after his death. What you must mean by this is the Op.
*ig. That is, inasmuch as these Princ. Phil. Cart, contain propositions that do
not accord with the system expounded in the Tract. Th. Pol. and in the Ethics—
which is the only sense in which one can be opposed to the other. See the Preface
to the Princ. Ph. Cart., the letter of Spinoza to Heinr. Oldenburg, Op. Posth.,
p. 422; and the letter to W. Bleyenberg, ibid., p. 518.
Posth. itself—or perhaps only the Preface: but then Lessing would have
been making fun of me in having me believe that the exposition of
Spinozism contained there was his credo.—But that would be a bit too
much!—Hence, it must be the Op. Posth. itself. But if so, [47] I cannot
then understand how you could oppose the Tract. Theo. Pol to it in any
way. Spinoza's posthumous writings fully agree with what the Tract. Theo.
Pol. contains of his system. Moreover, Spinoza himself explicitly referred
to it, to the end of his days, and in more than one place.
You ask further whether "Lessing had taken the system in the way that
it was misunderstood by Bayle, or as others have better explained it."
Between understanding and not misunderstanding there is a differ-
ence. Bayle did not misunderstand Spinoza's system so far as its conclu-
sions are concerned; all one can say is that his understanding did not go
far enough back, that he failed to penetrate to the system's foundations as
intended by the author. If Bayle misunderstood Spinoza, as your objec-
tion implies, then, by the same standard, Leibniz misunderstood him
even worse. Compare, if you please, Bayle's exposition in the first lines of
the remark N with [48] what Leibniz says about Spinoza's doctrine in
§§31, Prcgf. Theod., 173, 374, 393, Theod.53—But if Leibniz and Bayle did
not misunderstand Spinoza's system, then those54 whose intention was
to explain it better have actually misunderstood it, or falsified it. These
last are not friends of mine, and I guarantee also that they were not
Lessing's.
Lessing did not address me with: "Dear brother, the much decried
Spinoza might well . . . , etc."
Do not take it to heart that my complaints to you are so blunt and dry,
even a bit harsh, my dear and noble Mendelssohn. Towards a man whom
I revere as much as you, this tone was the only proper one.
I am, etc.
[49] In spite of the somewhat too strident conclusion of the letter, the
venerable man to whom it was addressed received it very kindly indeed,
and even thought that he ought to ask my forgiveness. Immediately after
receiving it, he conveyed these benevolent intentions to me through our
common friend, together with a very flattering judgment of me and my
essay.55 He wished to reply to my letter after he had gone through it
again in a more leisurely way, with all the attention that was needed; and
he begged for further clarification on one thing and another in my essay
before he went to work with his piece on Lessing's character. He said
that the use he would make of the conversation recorded through me

would then depend on me and my friend, and another man equally dear
to all of us, who had also been Lessing's friend.56 As for himself, his own
view was that it should not be suppressed, for it was both necessary and
useful to give fair warning to all lovers of speculation, and [50] to show
them by striking examples to what danger they exposed themselves when-
ever they indulged in speculation without any guidance. "As for those
outside philosophy," wrote our venerable friend, "let them rejoice or
grieve; we stand unmoved. We shall not factionalize, we shall not recruit
or proselytize, for indeed, by soliciting and trying to form a party we
would be traitors to the flag to which we are sworn."
Seven months went by without my hearing anything at all from
Mendelssohn.57 Since during this time fate was dealing me some very
hard blows,58 I did not think about this matter much, and my corre-
spondence, which I have never carried on energetically, came to a com-
plete standstill. What occurred in the meantime is that a judgment on
Spinoza by my friend Hemsterhuis enticed me to bring Spinoza into bat-
tle against the Aristee. I sketched a dialogue on these lines in June of the
year '84; but from week to week I kept on postponing turning it into a
[51] letter to send to Hemsterhuis.
This was just when a letter reached me from my friend, with the news
that Mendelssohn had resolved to put aside the proposed essay on
Lessing's character for the moment, in order to have a go at the
Spinozists or, as he preferred to call them, the All-Oners* this summer,
if health and leisure allowed. My friend congratulated me for having
occasioned so useful a work through my essay, for surely it was most
urgently necessary that the dazzling errors of our times should be
dissipated once and for all through the irresistible light of pure reason,
held high by so firm a hand.59
Full of joy over Mendelssohn's decision, I replied by return post; I
stopped working on my letter to Hemsterhuis, and banished every
thought about the whole affair from my head.
[52] At the end of August I journeyed to Hofgeismar, to restore my
much weakened health, and regain myjoie de vivrein company of two of
the loveliest and greatest human beings, the Princess von Gallitzin and
the Minister von Fiirstenberg.6o There I was surprised by a letter of
Mendelssohn; it came with some comments directed against the philos-
ophy contained in my letter to him.61 The packet had arrived at
* All Einern
Diisseldorf right after my departure; it went unopened through the

hands of our common friend, who provided it with an envelope.
In this letter Mendelssohn reiterated the excuses that our friend had
already conveyed to me, and revealed his plan to write against Spinozism
to me in the following words: "Since for the moment I have set aside my
project to write about Lessing, and wish instead to sketch out something
on Spinozism first, you see how important it must be for me to grasp
your thoughts correctly, and to gain proper insight into the [53]
grounds with which you try to defend the system of this man of wisdom.
I am taking the liberty therefore of laying out my thoughts and reserva-
tions before you in the enclosed essay.* Like a knight you have thrown
down your gauntlet; I am picking it up; so let us now fight our metaphys-
ical duel according to the rules of chivalry under the eyes of the lady
whom we both revere. . . . Etc.
Here is my reply.62
Hofgeismar, Sept. 5, 1784

To Herr Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin.
My bad health, which has been worsening for some months, has
driven me to the waters here; and it will probably drive me farther away
yet. Amid the vapours of the mineral waters that [54] oppress me both
inside and out, I am quite unable to reply straight away to your esteemed
letter of August the first (which reached Diisseldorf only on the twen-
tyseventh). A happy coincidence, however, still allows me to offer you a
kind of satisfaction on the battlefield. The Princess von Gallitzin, who is
also making use of the springs and the baths here, has with her the copy
of a letter concerning the philosophy of Spinoza that I wrote to
Hemsterhuis some time ago. I have had another copy made from that
one, and I enclose it here. What I have to say to the most important
points in your comments is to be found in my letter in a context that
sheds more light on the whole, and will remedy many a mis-
understanding. . . .
As soon as I return home and have some leisure, I shall re-read my re-
port to you on Lessing, and compare my statements with your com-
ments, and make up for anything that [55] the essay which is here sent
to you leaves unresolved. That I chivalrously threw down my glove, of this
I am not in the least aware. If I happened to drop it, and you want to con-
* Jacob! reproduces them in full in the second edition. For a translation, see pp. 35off.
below.
sider it as having been thrown and pick it up, well and good. I shall not
turn my back, but shall defend myself as vigorously as I can. What I have
stood and shall stand for, however, is not Spinoza and his system; it is
rather the dictum of Pascal: La nature confond les Pyrrhoniens, & la raison
les Dogmatistes.63 I told you loudly and clearly what I am and who. The
fact that you regard me as someone else is not due to any sand that I
might have kicked in your eyes. The battle and its outcome will show that
I am not availing myself of any illicit art, and that nothing could be fur-
ther from my thoughts than hiding myself. I recommend myself to
Heaven, our lady, and the noble disposition of my opponent.
[56] ] SUPPLEMENT
TO THE P R E C E D I N G LETTER
Copy of a Letter to M. Hemsterhuis in the Hague64

It is two months now since I threatened you with a reply to the article
"Spinoza" enclosed in your letter of April 26.6s I shall now finally give
myself satisfaction in the matter.
You say that you cannot think of this famous man without [57] reprov-
ing him for not having lived thirty years later. For then he would have
seen with his own eyes, because of the advances of physics itself, that ge-
ometry lends itself for immediate application only to things physical; fur-
ther, that he confused the formula-method of geometry with its spirit, and
that if he had applied the latter to metaphysics he would have produced
things more worthy of his stupendous genius.
Perhaps I possess too little of the [58] geometrical spirit myself to pre-
sume to defend Spinoza on this score. But even if he so far lacked that
spirit as to confuse it with the formula-method of the geometers, still, it
is a spirit that is at any rate an easily dispensable thing, since even with-
out it Spinoza possessed a most correct sense, a most exquisite judgment,
and an accuracy, a strength, and a depth of understanding that are not
easy to surpass. These advantages have not prevented him from erring,
and admittedly he erred in letting himself be enticed [59] into using the
formula-method of geometry in metaphysics. But his system did not in-
vent that method, whose origin is on the contrary very ancient, lost in the
traditions from which Pythagoras, Plato, and other philosophers have al-
ready drawn. What distinguishes Spinoza's philosophy from all the

other, what constitutes its soul, is that it maintains and applies with the
strictest rigour the well known principle, gigni de nihilo nihil, in nihilum
nilpotest reverti* If Spinoza [60] has denied a beginning to any action
whatever, and has considered the system of final causes the greatest de-
lirium of the human understanding, he has done so only as a conse-
quence of that principle, not because of a geometry applied immediately
to non-physical reality.
Here, more or less, is how I conceive the concatenation of Spinoza's
ideas. Let's suppose that he is speaking to us in person, and that he has
just finished [61] reading the Aristee,*14 a circumstance that we shall
however ignore. Spinoza: Being is not an attribute; ^ it is not anything de-
rived from some sort of power; it is what lies at the ground of every at-
tribute, quality, * and force—it is that which we designate with the word
"substance." [62] Nothing can be presupposed by it, and it must be pre-
supposed by everything.
Of the various expressions of being, there are some that flow directly
from its essence. Of this sort are the absolute and real continuum of ex-
tension, and that of thought.
Thought, which is merely an attribute, a quality of substance, cannot
in any sense be the cause of the latter. It is dependent on that in which
it has its being; it is its expression and [63] deed; it is impossible that it
should at the same time be what makes substance act.
Concepts (that is, thought in so far as it is determined in a certain way)
are sorted by their content; but this content, or what corresponds to it,
does not produce thought.
The content of the concepts, or what corresponds to it, is what we call
the "object" of the concept.
[64] In every concept therefore there is the following:
( i ) Something absolute and original which constitutes thought inde-
pendently of its object.
*14- Aristee ou de la Divinite, Paris, 1779. The other two works in what follows
are by the same author, M. Hemsterhuis, Lettre sur I'homme & ses rapports, Paris,
1772; and Sophyle ou de la philosophic, Paris, 1778.
* From nothing, nothing is generated; into nothing, nothing returns.

t Eigenschaft: This is the term that Jacobi regularly uses for Spinoza's attributus. I nor-
mally translate it as "property" because this is what Eigenschaft means. Here I am conform-
ing to the French text, which has attribut.
% Beschaffenheit; French: qualite
(2) Something secondary or transitory* which manifests a relation,

and is the result of this relation.
These two pertain to each other necessarily, and it is just as impossible
for [65] thought (considered simply and solely in its essence) to pro-
duce the concept or the representation of an object, as it is for an object,
or an intermediary cause, or any alteration whatever, to set thought in
motion where there is none.
The will is posterior to thought, because it presupposes self-feeling. +
It is posterior to conception because it requires the feeling of a relation.
Hence it is not immediately conjoined with substance, nor even with
[66] thought; it is only a remote effect of relations, and can never be an
original source, or a pure cause.
Let us check Spinoza's attack with a sally, and see whether we cannot
fill his trenches, destroy his fortifications, and explode his mines in his
own face.
Fire all together! Poor old Spinoza, you are just a dreamer! Let's cut
it short, and come to the facts.
[67] "Do you agree that any action whatever must have some
direction?"
Sp.: No. On the contrary, it seems to me evident that every original
action can have only itself as object; and hence it has no direction, since
what one calls "direction" is never anything but the result produced by
certain relations.
"But is there a cause why everything [68] that is or that appears to be,
whether essence, modus, or whatever, either is or appears to be as it does
and not otherwise?"
Sp.: Undoubtedly.
"So a direction has a why, a cause. And this why is not in the direction,
for otherwise it would have been before it was."
Sp.: To be sure.
[69] "It follows that the why is in the agent, and it has its ground there.
But now, you cannot proceed from cause to cause in infinitum, for there
is a determinate instant when the agent imparts direction. Hence you
will find the first cause either in the efficacy of the agent, which is its ap-
* Variibergehendes; French: phenomenal

t Selbst-Gefuhl; French: conscience d'etre
titude for willing,* or in a modification of the agent. But the latter has
its why, and, after you have gone from cause to cause, you finally come
to determinate efficacy, [70] or to the will of some agent: hence direc-
tion has will as its first cause. But we cannot conceive of any determinate
efficacy, of a will that imparts direction, without an understanding that
foresees, without self-feeling. The first cause of all effects is therefore the
action of a rational will which is infinitely great and infinitely powerful.
I say, infinitely, because from cause to cause we must necessarily come
to that point."*15
Sp.: I have proven to you that the will, [71] like directed movement, is
only a derived being diat has its origin in relation. Just as the cause of
the movement's direction cannot be in the direction itself, (for other-
wise it would have been before it was), so too, for that very reason, the
cause of the will's direction cannot be in the direction itself, for other-
wise the latter would have been before it was. Your will, which deter-
mines the faculty to will, is exactly an effect that brings about its cause.
You grant me (for you have [72] yourself remarked on it) that the will
is not only intrinsic to thought, but to the idea as well. Considered in its
essence, however, thought is nothing but the being thatfeels itself. The idea
is being with a feeling of itself, + inasmuch as it is determinate, individual,
and in relation with other individual singular things. The will is nothing
but self-feeling being, inasmuch as it is determinate, and acts as an indi-
vidual being. . . .
"Hold on, my dear Spinoza; you are losing yourself in your fancies
again. What leads you [73] astray is your failure to distinguish two things
which are quite different and even opposite in kind; efficacy and iner-
tia.*16 There is as much movement in the physical world as there is rest.
A part that is in movement communicates its movement to another part,
that is at rest, and receives rest from it in return. Whatever their origin,
action and reaction balance one another. So the sum of all effects in the
world is equal to the [74] sum of all counter-effects. The one cancels out
the other, and this brings us to perfect rest and genuine inertia.*17
Inertia (vis inertice) in a thing is really just the force by which it is what
*15- Aristee, pp. 81—82.

*i6. Aristee, p. 64.
*i7- Aristee, p. 112.
* Fdhigkeit zu wollen; French: velleite

t I'idee est le sentiment de I'etre
it is; the thing reacts only through this force and in proportion to it. So
reaction and inertia are the same. Whatever makes us aware of the iner-
tia, makes us at the same time aware of a movement that either overpow-
ers [75] the inertia or is cancelled out by it; aware, that is, of a radically
different kind offeree, which we call activity.*18 So the world divides into
two parts. One part, being completely inert and passive, offers us the
most perfect image of inactivity and rest; the other, being alive and life-
giving, takes over the dead parts of nature so as to bind them together
and force them to live and act, precisely through the force of their own
inactivity.*19 This activity, this [76] energy, this primordial force in a
being, is the faculty of being able to act upon the things that lie in one's
sphere. This activity is directed in all possible directions, and this is what
its freedom consists in; it is an indeterminate force that constitutes the
aptitude to will, or the faculty of being able to will."*20
Sp.: I have let you speak as you liked. Now here is my answer. For one
thing, I have no comprehension of a primary force other than the force
by which [77] something is what it is—of a faculty, or an ability to be able
to act upon what lies within the sphere of the being thus endowed with
this ability to be able. I do not comprehend an activity directed in all pos-
sible directions; or "an indeterminate force that exhales its force and its
energy in all directions, just as a spice seems to exhale its odour."66 In
my opinion this talk offers shadow figures instead of concepts, and does
not say anything [78] intelligible. What sort of thing is passivity, or a
being that only has force to suffer? And what is an activity that commu-
nicates itself to this passivity, and becomes an entirely foreign cause of
action in it—an activity that even contradicts the very being of this pas-
sive thing which reacts through its inactivity? Can a force sunder itself
from its origin? can it give up a portion of itself, and can this portion
exist apart, or, stronger still, become the quality of some other thing,
even of an entirely heterogeneous one?—"But we see this [79] happen-
ing!" you will say.—And I reply: We also see that the sun turns around
the earth. Let us leave the appearances aside, and strive to cognize things
as they are instead.*21 Truth cannot come from the outside; it is in us.*22
*i8. Aristee, pp. 74, 115.

*ig. Aristee, p. 81.
*2O. Aristee, p. 123.
*2i. Aristee, p. 52.
*22. Lettre s. I'homme & c., p. 51- ! 1
But few heads are made for perfect abstraction, that is, for an attention
directed solely upon the inner being. We don't want to tax our own too
much this time. Let us leave your theory of a particular world aside, and
[80] take only a brief look at your explication of it. Here are your results
in a nut-shell. The efficient cause determines the course of things from
its own self; hence this cause is intelligent, and its activity* lies in its will.
I ask you then: is this cause intelligent because it has willed to be intel-
ligent, or is it so independently of its will? You must of course reply that
it is intelligent independently of its will. But indeterminate thought is
empty, and every thought or representation is indeterminate. [81] So I
ask you again: What has brought representation into the thought of your
creator who is one and only, with no externality, or whose externality, if
it is not pure nothingness, is his own creation—what has made the
thought of this creator represent objects—that is to say, individual, deter-
minate, and temporally successive beings? Has he created his concepts,
has he determined them, before they were, through his faculty of being
able to have concepts? And the aptitude to will, this creator's will that is
neither the origin nor the result of [82] his understanding but is none
the less intelligent for all that—the will that comes I know not whence,
and goes I know not whither—what is it, pray? how is it? and what does
it want? In brief, to sum up everything in one question: Does your cre-
ator owe its being to thinking and willing, or its thinking and willing to
its being? Perhaps you'll reply that this question is laughable, and that
in God thought, will, and being, are one and the same thing. I quite
agree with you, with only this difference, that [83] what you call "will"
is in my terms the "ever efficient power," and I hold it to be that and
nothing else. So we agree. But in that case, don't keep on talking about
a will that directs action, or an understanding that foresees all, and to
which the first cause is subject too—for to talk of these things is the
height of absurdity in any case.
"Don't get excited, dear Spinoza; instead [84] let us quickly see where
all this has led us. I want to deal with your propositions the way you have
dealt with mine, and simply ask you: How do you begin to act in accord-
ance with your will, if your will is nothing but a consequence of your ac-
tivity and a mediated activity to boot, as you tell me. I presuppose that
you grant me the fact without any demonstration. For to request a dem-
onstration of man's faculty to will is to request [85] a demonstration of
* French: energie
his existence. One who does not feel his being whenever he receives rep-
resentations from outside things, and does not have an awareness of his
faculty to will* whenever he acts or desires, is something other than a
man, and it is impossible to decide anything about his being."*23
Sp.: As for my being, decide what you will about it. But this much I defi-
nitely know, namely that I possess no faculty to will, even though I do
have my particular volitions and [86] my individual desires, as much as
anyone else. Your faculty to will is a mere ens rationis that relates to this
or that particular volition in the same way as "animality" relates to your
dog or horse, or "humanity" to you and me. It is because of these meta-
physical and imaginary beings that you fall into all your errors. You
dream up aptitudes to act or not to act according to a certain I know not
what, which is a nothingat all. Through these aptitudes that you [87] call
capacities to be capable, etc., you contrive to conjure up something out
of nothingness, without our even being aware of it, and while you clev-
erly avoid the scandalous word, you excite the admiration of the soph-
ists, and only irritate the true researcher. Of all these capacities and
capacities to be capable, there is not one that is not repugnant to exis-
tence. The being that is determinate being is determined in the same
way in all its effects. There is no force that does not work, and that is not
effective at every instant. [88] Forces act according to the degree of their
reality, without any interruption ever.
"I pray you, Spinoza, answer my question!"
Sp.: Do you think that I am going to beg it? Here's my reply. I only act
according to my will whenever it so happens that my actions correspond
to it; but it is not my will that makes me act. Our opinion to the contrary
derives from the fact that we know very well what we want and [89] de-
sire, but we do not know what makes us want and desire that. Because
of this ignorance we believe that we produce our volition through the
will itself, and we often go so far as to attribute even our desires to it.
"I don't quite understand you. You know that there are three systems
concerning what determines the will: one, which is called the 'indiffer-
ence or equilibrium system' but one should rather call the 'system of
freedom'; another, the 'choice of the best or moral necessity system';
and [90] the third, the 'physical necessity or fatalism system'. For which
do you declare yourself?"
*23- Lettre s. I'homme & c., p. 60. 12
* "Faculty to will" (Vermogen zu wollen) is the French velleite.

Sp.: For none of the three. The second, however, seems to me the worst.
"I am for the first. But why do you hold the second to be the worst?"
Sp.: Because it presupposes final causes, and this doctrine is sheer
nonsense.
[91] "I will abandon the 'choice of the best' or 'moral necessity' to
your mercy, since it does away with freedom. But so far as final causes
are concerned, I claim for my part that it is sheer nonsense to reject
them."
Sp.: You cannot leave the one at my mercy without the other as well. You
concede that the nature of every individual thing has the preservation of
that same individual thing for its object; that every thing strives to pre-
serve its being; and that this very striving is [92] what we call its "nature."
You will further concede that the individual does not seek to preserve it-
self for any reason that it knows, or for any particular purpose, but that
it seeks to preserve itself only in order to preserve itself, and because its na-
ture, or the force that makes it what it is, so requires. We call this striving
"natural impulse" and, so far it is accompanied by feeling, "desire"; so
that desire is nothing but the striving of the individual thing after what
[93] can serve for the preservation of its being, accompanied by the feel-
ing of this striving. What corresponds to the desire of the individual thing,
it calls "good"; and what is opposed to it, "evil." So our awareness of good
and evil originates from desire, or from impulse conjoined to conscious-
ness, and it is a palpable absurdity to suppose the opposite, and derive
the cause from its effect. As for the will, it too is nothing but impulse or
desire, but only so far as they concern the soul alone; or in other words,
so far as they [94] are simply representations, or are located in the thinking
being. The will is nothing but the understanding applied to desire. In ob-
serving the various modifications in the tendency or desire of an individ-
ual thing due to the composition of the thing's being and its relations
to other individuals, the understanding (which is nothing but the soul
itself, so far as the latter has clear and distinct concepts) decides on
whether the said modifications are in harmony or not with the particular
nature of the individual thing, so far as the understanding itself is in a
position to perceive it. But the understanding's activity, which [95] con-
sists only in affirmation or negation, does not determine the action of
the individual thing any more than its other decisions or judgments, be
they what they may, determine the nature of things.
"What you say is not altogether free of obscurity. But this much is clear
at any rate: you deny all freedom; you are a fatalist, even though you
have earlier denied this."
[96] Sp.: I am far from denying all freedom, and I know that man has
received his share of it. But this freedom does not consist in a chimerical
faculty of being able to will, for willing cannot occur except in an actually
present, determinate, will. To ascribe any such faculty to a being is the
same as ascribing to it a faculty of being able to be, in virtue of which it
is then up to it to procure actual existence for itself. Man's freedom is
the [97] very essence of man; that is, it is the degree of his actual power
or of the force with which man is what he is. In so far as he acts solely
according to the laws of his being, he acts with complete freedom.
Hence God, who acts and can act only on the basis of what he is, and is
only through Himself, possesses absolute freedom. That is truly my view
about this subject. As regards fatalism, I disavow it only to the extent that
it has been made to rest on materialism, or on the absurd [98] opinion
that thought is only a modification of extension, like fire, and light, etc.;
whereas it is just as impossible for thought to derive from extension, as
for extension, from thought. The two are entirely different beings, even
though together they constitute only one thing, of which they are the
properties. Thought, as I have already said, is being that feels itself:
hence whatever comes to pass in extension must equally come to pass in
thought; and every genuine individual is animated in proportion to its man-
ifold [99] and unity, or according to the degree of force by which it is
what it is. In the individual thing thought is necessarily conjoined with
representations, since it is impossible that the individual should feel its
being if it does not have the feeling of its relations.
"What you accept in fatalism is sufficient for me, for no more is
needed to establish that St. Peter's Church in Rome built itself; that
[100] Newton's discoveries were made by his body; and that the soul
only had to look on through it all. It follows, moreover, that each and
every thing can only be produced by another individual thing, and this
in turn by another, and so on to infinity. Yet you need at the same time
a first cause and a determinate instant at which it acts. Remember now
my arguments of a little while ago. Will you please respond finally to the
crucial point that I made?"
Sp.: I will do that as soon as [101] I have explained my view about
St. Peter's Church, and the discoveries of Newton. The Church of
St. Peter in Rome did not build itself; everything that is contained in the
entire universe of bodily extension has contributed to it. And as for
Newton's discoveries, they concern only the power of thought. . . .
"Good! But the modified thought that you call soul is nothing but the
idea or the concept of body, or nothing but the [102] body itself seen
from the side of thought. Newton's soul has its character from Newton's
body. Hence it is his body, though it had no thought, that did the discov-
eries that are observed, conceived, sensed or thought, by Newton's soul."
Sp.: Though you give the matter a somewhat distorted look, I shall let
you have your conclusions, provided you are willing to keep in mind that
nothing less than the whole [103] universe comes into play in order to
give Newton's body its character at every moment, and that the soul at-
tains the concept of its body only through the concept of what gives the
body its character. This important comment will not prevent the imag-
ination from rebelling against the truth that I am claiming. Tell a man
who is not a geometer that a bounded square is equal to an infinite
space. After you have given your proof, he will remain perplexed, but
will eventually shake himself [104] free of bewilderment through deep
reflection.*24 It would not be impossible to reconcile even the imagina-
tion in some degree with my doctrine, provided that one approaches the
task in the right way, and shows the gradual advance that leads from the
savage's impulse, harking back to the tree or the cave that once sheltered
him, to the construction of a St. Peter's Church. Reflect upon the orga-
nization of political bodies, complicated as they are, and discover what
made them a totality. The more one reflects upon this and delves into
it more and more deeply, [105] the more will one perceive only blind
impulses, and the whole manner of operation of a machine—but of
course a machine in which, as in first order* mechanisms, the forces ar-
range themselves according to their needs and the degree of their
energy—where all the springs have the feeling of their action and com-
municate it to each other through reciprocal striving, in a necessarily in-
finite progression. The same goes for languages: the totality of their
structure seems a miracle, yet [106] none of them came to be through
the help of grammar. When we look carefully, we find that in all things
action precedes reflection, and that reflection is only the continuation of
action. In brief, we know what we do, and no more.
Now for your main proposition. You claim that one cannot proceed
from cause to cause in infinity, but that there must, at some determinate
point, be a beginning of action on the side of a first and pure cause.
[107] I maintain, on the contrary, that one cannot proceed from cause
to cause otherwise than to infinity; that is to say, that one cannot suppose
*24- Sophyle, p. 68.
* von der ersten Hand - de la premiere main: literally, "first hand"

an absolute, and pure, beginning of an action, without supposing that

nothingness produces something. This truth, which only needs to be dis-
played in order to be grasped, is at the same time capable of the strictest
demonstration. Hence the first cause is not a cause to which one can
climb through the so-called intermediary causes: it is totally immanent,
and equally effective at every [108] point of extension and duration.
This first cause, that we call "God" or "nature," acts in virtue of the same
ground in virtue of which it is; and since it is impossible that there
should be a ground or a purpose to its being, so it is equally impossible
that there should be a ground or a purpose to its actions.
At this point I leave Spinoza, impatient to throw myself into the arms
of that sublime genius [109] who said that the occasional occurrence in
the soul of even one aspiration for the better, for the future and the per-
fect, is a better proof of the Divinity than any geometric proof.*25 For
some time my attention has been directed with full force in this direc-
tion, which can be called the standpoint of faith. You know what Plato
wrote to Dion's friends: "For regarding divine things, there is no way of
putting the subject into words [no] like other studies. Acquaintance
with it must come rather after a long period of attendance to instruction
in the subject itself and of close companionship with it, when, suddenly,
like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark, it is generated in the soul and at
once becomes self-sustaining."67 You say almost the same in the
Aristee*26 namely, "that the conviction of the feeling from which all
other convictions are derived, is born within the very essence, and can-
not be communicated." But must not the feeling that lies at the ground
of this conviction [in] be found in all men, and should it not be pos-
sible to liberate it to some extent in those who appear to be destitute of
it, by working to remove the hindrances that inhibit its effective action?
It occurred to me, as I reflected upon this subject, that the issue of a cer-
tainty that yet lacks sufficient foundation may be so dealt with as to lead
us to new principles. I don't want to [112] abuse your patience by detail-
ing my reflections on the subject. It was not in order to instruct you, but
rather to receive instruction from you, that I took up my pen. Grant me,
I beg, the teaching that I desire, and supply me with grounds that are
*25- Aristee, p. 168.

*26.. Aristee, pp. 167, 170.
sound enough to counter Spinoza's arguments against the personality

and understanding of a first cause, against free will and final causes. I
have never been able to gain the advantage over them through pure
metaphysics. Yet it is necessary to uncover their weakness, and to be able
to demonstrate it. Without that [113] it would be useless to bring down
Spinoza's theory, so far as there is anything positive in it. His disciples
would not surrender; instead they would entrench themselves in the re-
maining ruins of the collapsed system, and answer us by saying that we
rather accept patent absurdity than the merely inconceivable, and that
that is not the way to do philosophy.
I sent the letter with the supplement to our lady unsealed, for her fur-
ther disposition.68
In his memoranda Mendelssohn had complained that here and there
I [114] had upset the idea ofSpinozism that he had formed in his mind; that
many passages in my letter were simply unintelligible to him; that he
failed to see how others fitted into my system; dial he could see himself
being led around in a circle, and that he doubted equally whether, at the
bottom of my heart, I was committed to atheism, or to Christianity.
In my judgment all the other complaints followed from the first one;
and so long as we did not agree about what Spinozism was, we could not
do battle on the real issue, whether for or against it. I believed for my
part that I had made an important contribution to the determination of
the issue by sending him my letter to Hemsterhuis. Nevertheless, I firmly
intended to explain myself to Mendelssohn even further, had not a co-
incidence of obstacles delayed the execution of my resolve.
After [115] I had heard not a word from Mendelssohn all winter long,
my friend sent me in February the copy of a letter that she had received
from him in which he said that he did not actually know whether it was
he who owed a letter to me, or I who owed him one.69 When I sent him
my letter to Hemsterhuis, I had promised a reply specially for him as
well. Had I forgotten him since then? Since he had not forgotten me,
but always held me vividly in remembrance, he was hoping to oblige me
with a manuscript of perhaps twenty sheets or more. . . . He could not say
how soon this manuscript would be in a fit condition to be laid before
me. . . . But in the meantime he wished to know whether I would permit
him to make public use of my philosophical letters at some point. "At the
moment," Mendelssohn wrote, "my work is indeed not concerned with
Spinozism alone, but is rather a kind of revision of the common proofs of

God's existence. But subsequently I shall also go into the particular
grounds of the Spinozistic system, and it [116] would be highly conve-
nient to me then, and of great use to many readers, if I could avail myself
of Herrjacobi's lively exposition, and have him speak for Spinoza. I wish
I could have an answer on this as soon as possible, since I must plan my
exposition accordingly."
I wrote that very instant to Mendelssohn granting him the free use of
my letters, and promised to send the special reply for which he was still
waiting the following month without fail.
Immediately thereafter I was afflicted by a severe illness, from which
I only began to recover at the very end of March. I reported the delay
to my friend, so that she might pass the news on to Mendelssohn, and
at the same time assure him that I was now actually at work.
I completed my essay on the twenty-first of April.70 It is printed here
without the introduction, since [117] that just gives the reasons why I
found it expedient to respond to Mendelssohn's comments only with a
new exposition of Spinoza's system, and so make the justification of my
concept of this system the main point.*2"7
To
Hen Moses Mendelssohn
concerning
His Memoranda Sent to Me^1
[ . . . . ] So the longer and the more deeply I ponder about it, the more
I realize that if we are to get anywhere, or [i 17] at least to make contact
instead of moving further apart, we must above all else be clear about the
principal issue, the doctrine of Spinoza itself. That is what I thought after
my first reading of your comments, and for this reason I regarded a copy
of my letter to Hemsterhuis as the best reply for the time being. That is
what I still think, so I shall now again try an exposition of Spinoza's
doctrine.
*27- For the most part the citations to be found at the bottom of the text are
there because of this justification. If explanation had been my object, I would
have had to choose quite different texts.
i. At the ground of every becoming there must lie a being that has not
itself become; at the ground of every coming-to-be, something that has
not come-to-be; at the ground of anything alterable, an unalterable and
eternal thing.
ii. Becoming can as little have come-to-be or begun as Being; or, if that
which subsists in itself (the eternally unalterable, that which persists in
the impermanent) had ever been by itself, without the impermanent,
it would never have produced a becoming, either within itself or out-
side, for these would both [119] presuppose a coming-to-be from
nothingness.
in. From all eternity, therefore, the impermanent has been with the per-
manent, the temporal with the eternal, the finite with the infinite, and
whosoever assumes a beginning of the finite, also assumes a coming-
to-be from nothingness.*28
i v. If the finite was with the eternal from all eternity, it cannot be outside
it, for if it were outside [ 120] it, it would either be another being that
subsists on its own, or be produced by the subsisting thing from nothing,
v. If it were produced by the subsisting thing from nothing, so too would
the force or determination, in virtue of which it was produced by the in-
finite thing from nothingness, have come from nothingness; for in the in-
finite, eternal, permanent thing, everything is infinitely, permanently,
and eternally actual. An action first initiated by the infinite being could
not have begun otherwise than from all eternity, and its determination
could not have derived from anywhere except from nothingness.*29
[121] vi. Hence the finite is in the infinite, so that the sum of all finite
things, equally containing within itself the whole of eternity at every mo-
ment, past and future, [123] is one and the same as the infinite thing
itself.
*28. "Anyone wishing to determine all the motions of matter up to the pres-
ent by reducing them and their duration to a certain number and time, would
be doing the same as trying to deprive corporeal substance, which we cannot con-
ceive except as existent, of its modifications (movement and rest, which are the
equally eternal and essential modi of extension, and the a priori of all individual
corporeal configurations), ' 3 and to bring about that it should not have the na-
ture that it has." Ep. xxix; Op. Posth., p. 469.
*2Q. Ethics, i, P. 28. . . j Op. Posth., pp. 25 & 26.'4
t Here Jacobi cites the demonstration and scholion in full.

vu. This sum is not an absurd combination of finite things, together

constituting an infinite, but a whole in the strictest sense, whose parts
can only be thought within it and according to it.*3°
[124] vni. What is prior in a thing by nature, is not on that account
prior in the order of time. [125] According to nature, corporeal exten-
sion is prior to any of its modes, although it can never exist without this
determinate mode or that, that is, it cannot be prior to them in the order
*30. The following passages from Kant, which are entirely in the spirit of
Spinoza, might serve for explanation: ". . . We can represent to ourselves only
one space; and if we speak of diverse spaces, we mean thereby only parts of one
and the same unique space. Secondly, these parts cannot precede the one all-em-
bracing space, as being, as it were, constituents out of which it can be composed;
on the contrary, they can be thought only as in it. Space is essentially one; the
manifold in it, and therefore the general concept of spaces, depends solely on
[the introduction of] limitations. . . ." Critique of Pure R,, [A] 25; "The infinitude
of time signifies nothing more than that every determinate magnitude of time
is possible only through limitations of one single time that underlies it. The orig-
inal representation, time, must therefore be given as unlimited. But when an ob-
ject is so given that its parts, and every quantity of it, can be determinately
represented only through limitation, the whole representation cannot be given
through concepts, since they contain only partial representations (since in their
case the partial representations come first); on the contrary, such concepts must
themselves rest on immediate intuition." Critique of Pure R., [A] 32.
I want to give the following propositions of Spinoza as accompaniment to
these words of Kant. . . .* l5
I will also surrender to the temptation of copying still another passage from
Spinoza's Cogitata Metaphysica, [126] which contributes a lot to the elucidation
of what just preceded, especially the last two sentences, and also throws a new
light on the whole subject.^ "[. . . .] For it is one thing to inquire into the nature
of things, and another to inquire into the modes by which things are perceived
by us. Indeed, if these things are confounded, we shall be able to understand nei-
ther the modes of perceiving, nor nature itself.'"6
Later on I shall refer to Spinoza's own proofs that his infinite substance is not
composed of parts, but is absolutely indivisible, and "one" in the strictest sense.
* Here Jacobi cites extensively from De Intell. Emend., Opp. Posth., pp. 390-91.
t Here Jacobi cites extensively from Spinoza's Renati Des Cartes Principiorum Philosophies
Pars I et II. More Geometrico demonstrates . . . Accesserunt Ejusdem Cantata Metaphysica etc.
(Amsterdam: Johannes Riewertsz, 1663), pp. 94-96.
of time outside the understanding. [126] So too thought is prior to any

of its representations according to nature; [127] yet it cannot be actual
except in some determinate mode or other, that is, in the order of time,
with this representation or that.
ix. The following example may [128] explain the matter better, and
lead us to a clear conception of it.
Let us assume that all modes of extension can be exhaustively reduced
to the so called four elements, water, earth, air, and fire. Now corporeal
extension can be thought in conjunction with water, without extension
being fire; in conjunction with fire, without being earth; in conjunction
with earth, without being air, etc. But none of these modes can be
thought for itself without the presupposition of corporeal extension,
which is accordingly the first by nature in each of these elements, the
truly real, the substantial, the natura naturans.
x. The first—not in things extended alone, not in things of thought
alone, but what is first in these as well as in those, and likewise in all
things—the primal being,* the actuality that is unalterably present every-
where and cannot itself be a property, [129] but in which, on the con-
trary, everything else is only a property it possesses—this unique and
infinite being of all beings Spinoza calls "God," or substance.
XL This God therefore does not belong to any species of things; it is not
a separate, individual, different, thing.*31 Nor can any of the determina-
tions that [131] distinguish individual things pertain to it—not a partic-
ular thought or consciousness of its own, any more than a particular
extension, figure, or colour of its own, or anything we may care to men-
tion which is not just primal material, pure matter, universal substance,
xn. Determinatio est negatio, sen determinatio ad rem juxta suum esse non
*3i. "!" " [ . . . . ] All that needed be noted here is that God can be called one
in so far as we separate him from other beings. But in so far as we conceive that
there cannot be more than one of the same nature, he is called unique. Indeed,
if we wished to examine the matter more accurately, we could perhaps show that
God is only very improperly called one and unique. . . ."* (Ep. L, Op. Posth.,
P- 55?[ff-])
* Ursein
t Here Jacobi cites extensively from Cogitata Metaphysica, Part i, ch. 6, Curley's tr., Vol. i,
pp. 311-12. I am only entering the key sentences.
t Jacobi then cites most of Spinoza's letter tojarigjellis, 2 June 1674; Elwes's tr., Vol. n.
PP- 369-70-
pertinet* *32 Individual things therefore, so far as they only exist in a cer-
tain determinate mode, are non-entia; the indeterminate infinite being
is the one single true ens reale, hoc est, est omne esse, & prater quod nullum
datur esse.^ *33
xiii. To clarify the matter further, [132] and allow the impending dif-
ficult issue of God's understanding to display itself for us in its full light
and cast off every ambiguity, let us try to seize by some hanging tail the
veil of terminology in which Spinoza saw fit to wrap his system, and lift
it right off.
xiv. According to Spinoza, an infinite extension and an infinite thought
are properties of God. The two infinities together make up just one in-
divisible essence,*34 so that it makes no difference under which of the
two we consider God; for the order and connection of concepts is one
and the same as the order and connection of things, and everything that
results from the infinite nature of God formaliter, must also result from
it objective, and vice versa.*35
[133] xv. Invividual, alterable, corporeal, things are modi of movement
and rest in the infinite extension.*^
xvi. Movement and rest are also immediate modi of infinite [134]
extension,*37 and are just as infinite, unalterable, and eternal as ex-
tension is. *38 These two modi together constitute the essential form of
all possible corporeal configurations and forces; they are the a priori
of these.
*32. Ep. L, Op. Posth., p. 558.17

*33. Delntell. Emend., Op. Posth., p. 381.l8
*34. Eth., Part i, p. 10.
*35. Eth., Part n, p. 7: "The order and connection of ideas is the same as the
order and connection of things."* Op. Posth., p. 46.
*36. "Bodies are distinguished from one another by reason of motion and
rest, quickness and slowness, not by reason of substance." Eth., Part n.
Lemma i.19
*37. Ep. LXVI, Op. Posth., p. 593.
*38. Eth., Part i, Props 21,22,23. Rest and movement are opposed to one an-
other, and neither of these determinations can have been produced by the
* "Determination is negation, i.e. determination does not pertain to a thing according

to its being."
t "This is the real being; it is the all of being, and apart from it there is no being."
: Jacobi proceeds to quote the text of the corollary in full; Ehves's tr., Vol. 11, p. 86.
xvn. Connected with these two immediate modi of infinite extension

are two immediate modi of the infinite and absolute thought: will and un-
derstanding.*39 These modes of thought [135] contain objectively what
the modes of extension contain formally; and they are, in each case,
prior to all individual things, in the order of extended as well as thinking
nature.
xvin. Infinite, absolute, thought is prior to infinite will and understand-
ing, and only this thought pertains to natura naturans, just as the infinite
will and understanding pertain to natura naturata.*40
xix. Natura naturans, i.e. God [136] considered as free cause, or the infinite
substance, apart from its affects and considered in itself, that is, considered
in its truth, does not therefore have either will or understanding, whether
infinite or finite.*41
[137] xx. How these things can have being in one another simultane-
ously, yet can be prior to or after one another according to nature, needs
no further explanation in the light of what has been said about this
already.
xxi. It has been shown clearly enough by now that outside individual
corporeal things there cannot be yet another particular infinite move-
ment and rest, together with a particular infinite extension; any more
other. God must therefore be the immediate cause of them, just as he is the im-
mediate cause of extension and of himself. Ep. LXX., Op. Posth., p. 596. Ep.,
LXXIII, Op. Posth., p. 598.
*3g. Eth., Part i, Coroll. 2, P. 30. "Hence it follows, secondly, that will and in-
tellect stand in the same relation to the nature of God as do motion and
rest. . . ."20
*40. Eth., Part I, p. 29, Schol.: "By natura naturans we should understand that
which is in itself, and is conceived through itself, or such attributes of substance
as express the eternal and infinite essence, that is, God, inasmuch as he is considered
as free cause. . . . By natura naturata I understand all that which follows from the
necessity of God's nature, that is, all the modes of God's attributes, inasmuch as
they are considered as things which are in God, and without which God can nei-
ther be nor be conceived." Op. Posth., p. 27. 21
*4i. Eth., Part i, P. 31: "Intellect in act, whether finite or infinite, as also will,
desire, love etc., should be referred to natura naturata and not to natura
naturans."* Op. Posth., pp. 27-28.
* Jacobi cites the proof and the scholion in full; Elwes's tr., Vol. 11, pp. 107-08.
than, according to Spinoza's principles, there can be outside thinking

finite things yet another particular infinite will and understanding, to-
gether with a particular infinite absolute thought,
xxn. But that not the shadow of a [138] doubt, not the possibility of a
further recourse, be left lingering, let us also take a look at Spinoza's
doctrine concerning finite understanding. I presuppose my letter to
Hemsterhuis throughout, but here in particular. In that letter I was able
to be a lot clearer on several issues, since I only had to present the con-
tent of the doctrine.
xxni. Finite understanding, or the modificatum modificatione* of the in-
finite absolute thought, originates from the concept of an actually pres-
ent individual thing.*42
[139] xxiv. The individual thing can no more be the cause of its con-
cept than the [140] concept can be the cause of the individual thing; or
*42. Eth., Part n, Props. 11 & 13.2a

What Spinoza demonstrates about the human understanding must also hold,
according to his doctrine, about any other finite understanding. On this topic
one should consult the scholion of the just cited i gth Proposition of the second
part of the Ethics (which is important in more than one respect).
It is apparent that the different nature of the objects of the concepts does not
cause any essential change with respect to the understanding itself; and [ 139]
among the infinite properties ascribed by Spinoza to infinite substance, none be-
long to thinking nature, apart from the infinite thought itself and its modes. They
must all be so related to thinking nature, therefore, exactly as corporeal exten-
sion relates to it, that is, when considered on their own, they must be seen as mera
ideata, and their individual things can only be objects of concepts—and if it is a
case of immediate concepts, then the objects are only the bodies of concepts.
Therefore I shall not further concern myself with those other properties about
which we know nothing at all, except that there must be something of the sort;
instead I shall stick to the one and only object of the soul, the body. For that mat-
ter, the soul-body relation can be a very important topic for discussion, but in-
stead of embarking on it, I shall only remark here that Spinoza's doctrine of the
infinite properties of God, together with the fact that we know absolutely [140]
nothing apart from our body and what can be derived from the concept of it, is
an excellent indication of the true meaning of Spinoza's system. (See Ep. LXVI
and the passages cited in it). 23
* i.e. a second-order modification, or a mode conditioned by another mode

thought can no more derive from extension, than extension from

thought. The two of them, extension and thought, are totally different
beings, yet are only in one thing; that is, they are one and the same
thing, unum & idem, simply seen under different properties,
xxv. Absolute thought is the pure, immediate, absolute consciousness
in universal being, being kat'exokhen, or substance. 43
[141] xxvi. Since among the properties of substance we have, apart
from thought, only the single representation of corporeal extension, we
shall stick with just these two, and say that, since consciousness is indivis-
ibly conjoined with extension, whatever occurs in extension must also
occur in consciousness.
[142] xxvu. We call consciousness of a thing the "concept" of it, and
this concept can only be an immediate one.
xxvin. An immediate concept, considered in and for itself alone, is
without representation.*
xxix. Representations arise from mediated concepts, and require medi-
ated objects, that is, where there are representations, there must also be
several individual things that refer to one another; with something
"inner" there must also be something "outer."
xxx. The immediate or direct concept of an actually present individual
thing is called the spirit, the soul, (mens), of that thing; the individual
*43> The expression, le sentiment de I'etre, which the French language put at my
disposal in the Letter to Hemsterhuis, was purer and better; for the word "con-
sciousness" appears to imply something of "representation" and "reflection," and
this has no place here. The following passage from Kant might clarify the matter
a bit more.
[141] "There can be in us no modes of knowledge, no connection or unity of
one mode of knowledge with another, without that unity of consciousness which
precedes all data of intuitions, and by relation to which representations of objects
is alone possible. This pure original unchangeable consciousness I shall name
transcendental apperception. That it deserves this name is clear from the fact that
even the purest objective unity, namely, that of the a priori concepts (space and
time), is only possible through relation of the intuitions to such unity of con-
sciousness. The numerical unity of this apperception is thus the a priori ground
of all concepts, just as the manifold of space and time is the a priori ground of
the intuitions of sensibility." Critique of Pure R., [A] 107.
* In the second edition Jacobi adds: "—is a feeling!"
thing itself, as the immediate or direct object of such a concept, is called

the "body."*44
[143] xxxi. The soul feels anything else of which it is aware of outside
the body within this body itself, and the soul becomes aware of all that
only through the concept of the modifications which the body receives
from outside (and in no other way). Hence, that from which the body
cannot receive modifications, of that the soul cannot have the least
awareness.*45
xxxn. On the other hand, the soul cannot become aware of its
body either—it does not know that the body is there, nor is it cognizant
of itself in any way—[144] except through the modifications which the
body receives from the things outside it, and through the concepts of
these.*46 For the body is an individual thing determined in such a way
that it attains to being only after, with, and among other individual
things, and it remains in being only after, with, and among them; its
inwardness cannot subsist therefore without its outwardness, that is,
without a manifold relation to other outside things, and without a
manifold relation of these things to it. Without a perpetual alteration of
modifications, the body can neither exist, nor be thought as being
actually there.
[145] xxxin. The immediate concept o/the immediate concept of the
body constitutes the consciousness of the soul, and this consciousness is
united with the soul in the same way as the soul is united with the body.
To wit: consciousness of the soul expresses a certain determinate form
*44- "The object of the idea [143] constituting the human mind is the body,
or a certain mode of extension actually existing, & nothing else." Eth., Part n,
p. i3.24—On the distinction between a direct and an indirect concept, or a me-
diated and immediate one, we should consult the scholion of prop. 17, in the sec-
ond part of the Ethics. *5
*45- " . . . the images of things are affects of the human body, or modes in
which the human body is affected by external causes." Schol. P. 32, Eth.,
Part in. 26 Here too the scholium of the iyth prop, (cited above) should be con-
sulted (with the 2nd corollary of the i6th prop.)
*46. "The human mind does not know the human body, nor does it know that
it exists, except through the ideas of the modes by which the body is affected."
Eth., Part n, P. ig. 27
"The mind does not know itself, except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the
affects of the body." [Ibid.] P. 33.a8
of a concept, just as the concept itself expresses a certain determinate

form of an individual thing. (Eth., Part n, prop, xxi, and its schol.) But
the individual thing, its concept, and the concept of this concept, are en-
tirely one and the same thing (unum & idem), which is only being viewed
under different attributes and modifications. (Ibid., prop. XXI, schol).
xxxiv. Since the soul is nothing but the immediate concept of the
body, and is one and the same thing as the body, the excellence of the
soul also cannot be anything but the excellence of its body.*47 The [146]
capacities of the understanding are nothing but the capacities of the
body in the order of [147] representation, or objectively; likewise the
decisions of the will are only the determinations of the body. *4§ So the
essence of the soul is nothing but the essence of its body objective (in
objective representation).*49
xxxv. Every individual thing presupposes other individual things, ad in-
finitum, and [148] none of them can originate from the infinite directly.
(Eth., Part i, prop, xxvin). But since the order and the combination
of the concepts is the same as the order and the combination of things,
so too the concept of an individual thing cannot originate from God di-
*47- There is no point that Spinoza makes in more ways or more exhaustively
than this one. [146] I will only refer to the scholion of Prop. 13, and Prop. 14 in
the and Part of the Ethics; and to the most remarkable schol. of the 2nd prop.,
in the grd Part, and to Prop. 11 together with its scholion; then in the demonstra-
tion of Prop. 28, notice the words: "But the mind's striving, or its power of
thought, is equal to, and simultaneous with, the striving of the body, or its power
of action . . ." And then also the following words in the explication of the general
definition of "affects": [. . . .].* Op. Posth., p. 160.29
*48. In the scholion of Prop. 2 of Part in of the Ethics (cited previously), we
read: "All these considerations clearly show that a mind's decision, just like an
appetite of the mind, and a determination of the body, are simultaneous, or
rather, are one and the same thing, which we call decisionwhen considered under
and explained through the attribute of thought, and determination when consid-
ered under the attribute of extension, and deduced from the laws of motion and
rest. This will appear more clearly in what follows." Op. Posth., p. 100.
*4Q. "The mind does not conceive anything under the form of eternity, except in so
far as it conceives its own body under the form of eternity." Eth., Part v, p. 31,
demonstr.30
* Here Jacob! cites Spinoza's text in full.

rectly,*50 but [149] must attain existence in the same way as any individ-
ual corporeal thing, and cannot exist in any way except together with a
determinate corporeal thing.
xxxvi. Individual things originate from the infinite mediately; that is,
they are produced by God in virtue of the immediate affections, or
modes, of his being. These, however, are just as eternal and infinite as
God: He is their cause in the same way as He is the cause of himself.
Individual things therefore originate (immediately) from God only eter-
nally and infinitely, not in a transitive, finite, and transitory way; that is
only how they originate from one another, by mutual generation and de-
struction, without thereby any the less persisting in their eternal being,
xxxvu. The same applies to the concepts of individual things; that is to
say, they are [ 150] not produced by God, nor do they exist in the infinite
understanding in any way other than as corporeal configurations are
present in the infinite extension all at once, and always equally actual,
through the intermediary of infinite motion and rest.*51
[151] xxxvin. In so far as God is infinite, therefore, there cannot be
in him the concept of any actually present, individual, and thoroughly
determinate thing; there is such a concept in him, however, (and he pro-
duces it) in that [152] an individual thing comes-to-be in him, and its
concept with it; that is to say, this concept exists at the same time as the
*5O. Once more I must insist, since it is of the utmost importance in Spinoza's
system, that outside absolute thought, which has absolute priority in the concept
and is without any representation, every other thought must refer to the imme-
diate concept of an actually present individual thing and its constituent parts,
and can only be given in it, so that it is absolutely impossible that there can be
any sort of concept of individual things before they are actually present.
Individual things have however existed from all eternity, and God has never
existed prior to them in any other way save that in which he still exists prior to
them now, and will exist prior to them in that way for all eternity, namely simpl)
by nature.
*5i. Eth., Part n, P. 8: "The ideas of particular things, or of non-existent
modes, must be comprehended within the infinite idea of God, in the same way
as the formal essences of particular things or modes are contained in the attri-
butes of God."* Op. Posth., p. 47.31
* Jacobi then cites in full the demonstration, corollary, and scholion.
individual thing only once, and outside this one time it is not in God, ei-
ther together with the individual thing, or before it, or after.*52
[153] xxxix. All individual things mutually presuppose one another,
and refer to one another, so that none of them can either be or be
thought of without the rest, or the rest without it; that is to say, together
they constitute an indestructible whole; or more correctly, and properly
speaking: they exist together in one absolutely indivisible and infinite thing, and
in no other way. 53
[154] XL. The absolutely indivisible essence, in which the bodies exist
together, is the infinite and absolute extension.
[155] XLi. The absolutely indivisible essence, in which all concepts exist
together, is the infinite and absolute thought.
*52. Eth., Partu, P. 9: "The idea of an actually existing singular thing is caused
by God, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he is considered as affected
by another idea of an actually existing thing, of which he is the cause, in so far
as he is affected by a third idea, and so on to infinity."* Op. Posth., pp. 47ff.32
*53_ "If one part of matter were to be annihilated, the whole of extension
would disappear at the same time." Op. Posth., p. 404.33
[154] Concerning this important point one must consult the 12th and 13th
proposition in the irst Part of the Ethics, but especially the scholion of the 15th
proposition. Also, the remarkable letter de infinite to L. Mayer, Op. Posth., p. 465;
the no less remarkable one to Oldenburg de toto &parte, ibid., p. 439. And so too
the 39th, 4Oth, and 4151 Letter to an Unknown, Op. Posth., pp. 519-27.
It is hard to understand how anyone could have objected to Spinoza that he
had produced the unrestricted out of the sum of restricted things, and that his
infinite substance is only an absurd aggregate of finite things, so that the empty
unity of substance is a mere abstraction.34 I say that it is hard to understand how
anyone could have accused him of anything of this kind, since his system pro-
ceeds from the very opposite position, and this opposite position is its true mov-
ing principle. Among philosophers, moreover, no one has taken as much care
as he did [155] not to take or give for real what is in fact only a modus cogitandi,
or a mere ens rationis. "Totum parte prius esse necesse esf^ was already a universal
principle of Aristotle which this king of thinkers certainly knew how to apply to
the figurative whole of a communal entity (Politics, Lib. i, cap. 2 [12533.20]).
Spinoza adheres to this sublime and fruitful principle throughout.
* Jacob! then cites in full the demonstration, corollary, and demonstration of the
corollary.
t It is necessary that the whole be prior to the part.
XLII. Both of these belong to the essence of God, and are compre-
hended in it. Hence God can no more be called an extended corporeal
thing in a distinctive sense, than He can be called a thinking one. Rather
He is the same substance, extended and thinking at the same time. Or
in other words again, none of God's attributes has some particular dif-
ferentiated reale as its foundation, so that they could be considered
things existing outside one another, each with its own [156] being.
Rather, they all are only reifications,* or substantial, essential, expres-
sions of one and the same real thing—namely that transcendental being
which can only be simply and uniquely one, and in which all things must
necessarily compenetrate and become absolutely One.
XLIII. The infinite concept of God, therefore, of his essence as well as
of all that necessarily follows from his essence, is only one single, indivis-
ible, concept.*54
XLIV. This concept, since it is one and indivisible, must be found in the
whole just as much as it is in each part; or, the concept of each and every
body, or of an individual thing, whatever it may be, must [157] contain
the infinite essence of God within itself, completely and perfectly. *55
With this my exposition is at an end. I believe that with it, and with my
letter to Hemsterhuis, I have adequately replied to all the essential
points in your essay, and in conclusion I want now to take up a couple
of places that concern me personally, and [158] which I cannot pass
over in silence like so many other ones.
You say: "I pass over the many witty notions with which our friend
*54. Eth., Part n, Props. 3 & 4, to be compared with the 45th, 46th, and 47th
proposition of this same Part n, and with the 3001 and 3151 of Part i.
*55. Eth., Part n, 45, 46, 47, and the respective scholions; to be compared with
the 3rd and 4th prop, of this same Part, with the 3001 and 3151 of the first part.
It is necessary to recall here the proof, which Spinoza so often reiterates, that
the essence of a thing does not include number, and that a plurality of things,
inasmuch as they have something in common with one another, cannot be con-
sidered as plurality, but only as parts of one single thing.
He built his inspired and truly sublime theory of true representations, of uni-
versal and complete concepts, of certainty, and of human understanding in gen-
eral, upon precisely this basis.
* Realitdten
Lessing entertained you in what follows, and of which it is difficult to say

whether they were intended as play or philosophy. . . . Everything that
you have him say on p. 24, 25 of your manuscript*56 is of this sort: his
ideas about the economy of the world-soul, or about Leibniz's entele-
chies which are supposedly a mere effect of die body; his dabbling in
weather making, his infinite boredom, and similar thoughts which, like
fireworks, crackle and then fizzle out.
My letter states: Lessing said about the world-soul tfiat, granted that
there was one, "die soul of this Whole would be only an effect, like any
other soul in all conceivable systems."72 I added at the bottom, as a note
from me, not as words [159] of Lessing: "According to Leibniz's system
too.—The entelechy only becomes spirit dirough the body (or the con-
cept of body)"—which is somediing quite different from saying that
Leibniz's entelechies are merely the effect of the body.
To accompany this note I wrote the following words of Leibniz in my

writing pad:
[2.] A monad, in itself and at any given moment, could not be distinguished from
another except by its internal qualities and actions, and these cannot be anything
else than its perceptions (which is to say, the representations within the simple of a com-
position, or of what is external to it), and its appetitions (which is to say, its tenden-
cies to pass from one perception to another) which are the principles of change.
For the simplicity of substance does not at all prevent multiplicity of modifica-
tions, which must be found together in this same simple substance, and must
consist in the variety of relations to things that are external.
And then also:
[4.] Each monad with a [160] particular body makes up a living substance. Thus
there is not only life everywhere, accompanying members and organs, but there
is also an infinity of degrees among monads, some dominating more or less over
others. But when the monad has organs so adjusted that by their means there is
depth and distinctness in the impressions that it receives, and hence in the percep-
tions that represent these impressions (as, for example, when by means of the shape
of the humours of the eyes, the rays of light are concentrated and act with more
force), this may lead to feeling,* which is to say, to a perception accompanied by
memory, namely, one that echoes for a long time so as to make itself heard upon occasion.
And such a living being is called "animal, " as its monad is called a "soul. "And when this
*tj6. P. 33 of this writing.
* sentiment
soul is elevated to reason, it is something more sublime and is reckoned among spirits,
as will soon be explained. (Principes de la nature & de la grace fondes en Raison,
Nos. [161] 2 & 4.73
And next to that I put a reference to the Theodicy, §124, and to the Letter
to Wagner, de vi activa corporis, de animd, de animd brutorum.'74
Afterwards I struck out the entire quotation as being superfluous. For
it occurred to me that the foundation of my claim was all too obvious
everywhere in Leibniz, and also that the simple incisive form that I had
given to it could, after some reflection at least, hinder the recognition
of the fact.
And you go on pontificating:
I shall pass over too the noble retreat under the banner of faith which you pro-
pose for your own part. It is totally in the spirit of your religion, which imposes
upon you the duty to suppress doubt through faith. The Christian philosopher
can afford the pastime of teasing the student of nature; of confronting him with
puzzles which, like will-o'-the-wisps, lure him now to one corner, and now to the
other, [162] but always slip away even from his most secure grasp. My religion
knows no duty to resolve doubts of this kind otherwise than through reason; it
commands no faith in eternal truths. I have one more ground, therefore, to seek
conviction.
My dear Mendelssohn, we are all born in the faith, and we must re-
main in the faith, just as we are all born in society, and must remain in
society:75 Totumparteprius esse necesse est.* ?6—How can we strive for cer-
tainty unless we are already acquainted with certainty in advance, and
how can we be acquainted with it except through something that we
already discern with certainty? This leads to the concept of an immedi-
ate certainty, which not only needs no proof, but excludes all proofs ab-
solutely, and is simply and solely the representation itself agreeing with the
thing being represented.^ Conviction by proofs is certainty at second hand.
Proofs are only indications of similarity to a thing [163] of which we are
certain. The conviction that they generate originates in comparison, and
can never be quite secure and perfect.77 But if every assent to truth not
derived from rational grounds is faith, then conviction based on rational
grounds must itself derive from faith, and must receive its force from
faith alone.*
* Latin quote dropped in 1819.
t 1819 ed. adds: "(hence has its ground within itself)."
t Footnote of 1819: "On the simple authority of reason, of which faith is the principle."
Through faith we know that we have a body, and that there are other
bodies and other thinking beings outside us. A veritable and wondrous
revelation! For in fact we only sense our body, as constituted in this way
or that; but in thus feeling it, we become aware not only of its alterations,
but of something else as well, totally different from it, which is neither
mere sensation nor thought; we become aware of other actual things, and,
of that with the very same certainty with which we become aware of our-
selves, for without the Thou, the /is impossible. We obtain all [164] rep-
resentations, therefore, simply through modifications that we acquire; there
is no other way to real cognition, for whenever reason gives birth to ob-
jects, they are all just chimeras.
Thus we have a revelation of nature that not only commands, but
impels, each and every man to believe, and to accept eternal truths
through faith.* ?8
The religion of the Christians teaches another faith—but does not
command it. It is a faith that has as its object, not eternal truths, but the
finite, accidental nature of man. The religion of the Christians instructs
man how to take on qualities through which he can make progress in his
existence and propel himself to a higher life—and with this life to a
higher consciousness, in this consciousness to a higher cognition.
Whoever accepts this promise and faithfully walks the way to its fulfil-
ment, he has the faith that brings blessedness. Therefore the sublime
teacher of this faith, in whom all its promises [165] were already ful-
filled, could with truth say: I am the way, the truth and the life: whoever
accepts the will which is in me, he will experience that my faith is true,
that it is from God.79
This therefore is the spirit of my religion: Man becomes aware of God
through a godly life, and there is a peace of God which is higher than
all reason; in this peace there is the enjoyment and the intuition of an
inconceivable love.
Love is life; it is life itself; and only the type of love differentiates be-
tween the types of living natures. He, the Living One, can only manifest
Himself in one who is alive; and only through quickened love can He
give Himself in knowledge to one who is alive. This is how the voice of
one preaching in the wilderness cries out, too: "In order to do away with
the infinite disproportion between man and God, man must [166] partake
of a divine nature, and the Divinity take on flesh and blood."80
The second edition refers here to Wizenmann's Resultate, pp. 173-77.

Reason that has fallen into poverty and has become speculative,* or in
other words, degenerate reason, can neither commend nor tolerate this
practical path. It has neither hand nor foot for digging, yet it is too
proud to beg.81 Hence it must drag itself here and there, looking for a
truth that left when the contemplative understanding left, for religion
and its goods—just as morality must do, looking for virtuous inclinations
that have disappeared; and laws must also, looking for the fallen public
spirit and the better customs; pedagogy. . . . Let me interrupt here, that
I be not swept off my feet by the flood coming my way.
The spirit of truth be with you and with me.
Diisseldorf, April 21, 1785.
Since I had already made Mendelssohn wait so long, I sent my parcel

[167] directly to Berlin this time. That same evening I set out on a jour-
ney, and so my friend (who already owed me two letters) was left
uninformed.
On the twenty-sixth of May I received a letter from her, in which she
passed on to me the following comments from Mendelssohn's response
to the news that I had been confined to bed the whole of March: "I was
just on the point of conveying to our mutual friend the request that he
should not hurry to reply to my comments. I have decided to have the
first part of my pamphlet printed after the Leipzig Fair.82 In it I deal prin-
cipally with pantheism, but still make no mention of our correspondence.
I am holding that back until the second part, and that will be delayed for
a long time yet. Jacobi should read this first part of my essay before he
makes any response to my comments. Please extend my greetings to my
amiable adversary for me."83
[168] It was now exactly a month since I had sent my latest essay—and
more than three months since I had promised to deliver it to him with-
out delay. Thus the news, which should have spared me my effort, came
somewhat too late, although I myself had not been too quick.
In the enclosure, in a letter addressed particularly to Mendelssohn,84
I had expressed the opinion that it would be most useful at the present
juncture if Spinoza's system were openly displayed in its true form, ac-
cording to the necessity that held its parts together. I wrote: "A spectre of this
system has been making the rounds in Germany for quite some time un-
* The third edition has: "which has become mere understanding."

der all sort of shapes, and it is treated by both the superstitious and the
infidel with equal reverence. . . . Perhaps we shall live to see a battle over
the corpse of Spinoza, just like the one between the Archangel and Satan
over the corpse of Moses. . . .8s More about all this when I [169] have
your reply, and shall know whether you can be reconciled with me over
the doctrine of Spinoza."
I was still hoping for an answer from Mendelssohn. After waiting for
three months in vain, I was gradually moved to take the matter into my
own hands; I became ever more inclined to publish, through the letters
here printed, the kind of exposition of Spinozism which, in my opinion,
was needed at this present juncture.
I looked forward to the forthcoming work on pantheism by our es-
teemed Mendelssohn with all the more eagerness, since I knew the im-
mediate occasion of its writing; and I felt that this knowledge would
cause me to read it with more single-minded attention, and likely allow
me to grasp its whole content more quickly and with greater profundity.
I had, therefore, reason to hope that, by sharing my knowledge of the
occasion, I should [ 170] make the same advantage available to a wider
readership.
But of course, my own essay would have won extra attention if it had
appeared at the same time as Mendelssohn's, to which it bore such a
close relation. I might therefore even succeed in stirring the serious
heads of my fatherland into a motion which, for my own instruction, I
dearly wished to witness soon.86
So I set about reviewing my papers, and extracted the following brief
propositions from them, in order to present a final summary statement
of my positions in the clearest terms.
i.
Spinozism is atheism.*57
[i? 1 ] ii-
The philosophy of the cabbala, or so much of it as is available to re-
search, and in accordance with its best commentators, von Helmont the youn-
*57- I am far from charging all Spinozists with denying God. But precisely for
this reason the demonstration that, when properly understood, Spinoza's doc-
trine does not admit any kind of [ 171 ] religion does not seem superfluous to me.
A certain Spinozistic froth is on the contrary quite compatible with all species of
superstition and enthusiasm; one can blow the most beautiful bubbles with it.
The committed atheist should not hide behind this froth; the rest must not be
deceived by it.
ger*58 and Wachter,*59 is, as philosophy, nothing but undeveloped or newly

confused Spinozism.
in.
The Leibnizian-Wolffian philosophy is no less fatalistic than the
Spinozist philosophy and leads the persistent researcher back to the
principles of the latter.
[172] iv.
Every avenue of demonstration ends up in fatalism.
v.
We can only demonstrate similarities. Every proof presupposes some-
thing already proven, the principle of which is Revelation.
VI.
Faith is the element of all human cognition and activity.*60
[173] A friend of mine had written to me at the beginning of June of

the work which Mendelssohn was busying himself about.8? According
to reports coming to him from Berlin, it would carry the title, Matutine
*58. The younger [Franciscus Mercurius] von Helmont is at least the editor
of the work published in Amsterdam in the year 1690 under the title of Opuscula
Philosophica, quibus continentur Principia Philosophiae Antiquissimce & Recentissimce;
AcPhilosophia VulgarisRefutata [auctorej. Gironnet] &c. [(Amstelodami, i6go)]. 35
*5Q. Elucidarius Cabalisticus, sive Reconditce Hebrcearum Philosophies Brevis &
Succincta Recensio. Epitomatore Job. Georgio Wachtero. Romae [in fact, Halle],
1706.
*6o. "Who can prove that this line here or that line there in a historical or po-
etic portrayal belongs to the author who affixed his name to the portrayal, or
whose authorship is stylistically undeniable? Who can prove that a letter received
from a known or unknown hand was written by a single one?—But this will be
[ 173] confirmed to you by your feeling, your intuitive sense, or something in you
that still has no name in our philosophies or theologies. It is nameless, but is at
every moment and in all men, it is a thousand times more effective and quick
than all the philosophies and theologies in the world—And this something, that
directs you at every instant, drives you on or pulls you back, warns and cautions,
and determines you in the most delicate yet most powerful of ways —. . . . This
nameless, all-effective something is" (the sense of truth, the element and princi-
ple of faith). Lavater.36
Thoughts on God and Creation, or, Concerning the Being and Attributes of
God.88
From the same friend I now received news that Mendelssohn's
Matutine Thoughts had already left the presses.89
[ 174] Upon hearing this I put my papers aside again, until I could see
the essay of my illustrious opponent, since mine could now no longer be
published simultaneously with it. I made arrangements to obtain it as
quickly as possible.
Meanwhile a letter came from Mendelssohn, unsealed under an
empty cover of our mutual friend.90—It was not the reply that I had so
long looked forward to; not a syllable relating to that, but only a request
that I would forgive him for leaving both of my two important essays,
the French one for Hemsterhuis and the German one for him, still
unanswered. Our common friend, and a third friend besides,91 were wit-
nesses to the fact that he had not been idle in our controversy, given his
present debility, and if a certain **** 92 did not totally reject his work,
the catalogue of the next book-fair would corroborate their witness. He did not
count on winning me over to his opinion with his essay. [175] He could
still less flatter himself with any hope of doing so, since he had to admit
that so many passages in my essays, as well as in the writings of Spinoza
himself, were totally unintelligible to him. He hoped however to define the
status controversies in the essay that would soon be submitted to my judgment, and
thereby to inaugurate the controversy in due form. It would at least come to public
attention why so many things struck him as totally unintelligible, and es-
caped his grasp all the more, the more I endeavoured to give him explanations.
The real motive for Mendelssohn's letter was to ask me for a copy of
his comments in reply to my first letter, since he had misplaced his own
transcript. Fortunately a copy was available, and I had the satisfaction of
sending it on to Mendelssohn the very hour in which I had received his
letter.
There was no need now to ponder [176] at length what I had to do.
Since Mendelssohn had altered his plan to convey his work to me in
manuscript form, and had suddenly given it to the printers93—since
even the title of the work had only been made known to me by hearsay,
and I was to have confirmation of it only from the Fair Catalogue—and
since Mendelssohn had now decided to define a status controversy in this
very essay—however great my trust in the probity and noble character of
my great opponent was and will continue to be, I could not leave it up
to him alone, quite one-sidedly, to "inaugurate the controversy, and to
bring to the public attention why was it that so many things (in my
essays) were totally unintelligible to him, and escaped his grasp all the
more the more I endeavoured to give him explanations."94
Even less could I permit the definition of a status controversies in which
the role of advocatum diaboli somehow fell [177] to me, if the full occa-
sion of the controversy that was to be inaugurated was not being made
known at the same time. It was of the highest importance to me that the
spirit in which I had taken up the cause of Spinoza should be accurately
perceived, and that the issue was purely and solely one of speculative phi-
losophy against speculative philosophy, or more correctly, pure meta-
physics against pure metaphysics. And this in the authentic, not just the
proverbial, sense of infugam vacui* 95
I return now to the propositions set out above, about which I still have
to remark that I do not in any way intend to advance them as theses, or
to defend them against every possible attack. Seldom too in the king-
dom of truth is much gained through battle. Here too, diligence in the
things that are one's own, and a freehearted, honourable exchange, are
the most productive and best. What's the point of malign zeal against a
failure of knowledge?—Instead of just exposing it, [178] this lack that
annoys you, and punishing it with contempt, help to remedy it with your
gift! By giving, you will show yourself to be the one who has more, and
prove yourself to the one who lacks. Truth is clarity; it refers everywhere
to actuality, tofacta. Just as it is impossible to make objects somehow vis-
ible to a blind man through art, as long as the man is blind; so too it is
impossible for a seeing man not to see them, when there is light, and to
distinguish them from himself. But we expect of error that it see itself,
that it know itself, as if it were the truth; and we stand in fear of it, as if
it were also as strong as the truth. Can the darkness possibly penetrate
the light and extinguish its rays? It is the light that on the contrary pen-
etrates the darkness and shows it for what it is by partly illuminating it.
And just as day dawns only with the sun, so too night falls only with the
sun's demise.
Everyone can of course make his abode as dark as the night even at
midday, and then bring light again into the narrow confines of his dark-
ness. But this light is nothing [ 179] like that of heaven. An accident, per-
haps even the hand that wants to cradle it, will kill the fragile flame. And
* in flight before a void

even if this flame were to survive in spite of its faltering, it will undoubt-
edly make the eye sick in the long run.
Wherever a putrid soil extends over vast regions, the heavy and cold
vapours that emanate from it obscure the sun. And the soil degenerates
even more, therefore, and becomes an ever more intimate part of the
gloomy poisonous atmosphere. Here and there a rocket or some heavy
projectile may perhaps break up the heavy cloud for a while, disperse the
mist, and alter its form. But it cannot clear it away; it cannot destroy it.
If there is an improvement of the soil first, however, the cloud will dis-
appear by itself.
This present essay will be followed by dialogues96 in which I shall fur-

ther explore many points that here remain unexplored. But above all, I
shall develop my own principles more extensively, and [180] confront
them from several sides. I shall retain as my leading theme those
words of Pascal, "L« nature confond ks pyrrhoniens, & la raison confond
les dogmatistes.—Nous avons impuissance a prouver, invincible a tout les
Dogmatistes.—Nous avons une idee de la verite, invincible a tout le pyrrho-
nisme."* *Gl Thus I claim and shall further claim: We do not create or
instruct ourselves; we are in no way a priori, nor can we know or do
anything a priori, or experience anything without. . . . experience. We find
ourselves situated on this earth, and as our actions become there, so too
becomes our cognition; as our moral character turns out to be, so too
does our insight into all things related to it. As the heart, so too the
mind; and as the mind, so too the heart.97 Man cannot artificially con-
trive through reason to be wise, virtuous, or pious: he must be moved to
it, and yet move himself; he must be organically disposed for it, yet so dis-
pose himself. [181] So far no philosophy has been capable of altering this
powerful economy. It is high time that we started to adapt ourselves to
it obligingly, and gave up wanting to invent spectacles that enable us to
see without eyes—and even betterl
*6i. Pensees de Pascal, Art. xxi. 37
* Nature confounds the Pyrrhonists, and reason the dogmatists.—We have an incapac-
ity of proof that no dogmatism can overcome. We have an idea of truth that no Pyrrhonism
can overcome.
As Sperchis and Bulls were going from Sparta to Susa voluntarily, wit-
tingly to their death, they came to Hydarnes, a Persian and the prefect
over the peoples that lived in the coastal regions of Asia. He offered
them gifts, and gave them hospitality, and tried to persuade them to be-
come friends of his King and be just as grand and happy as he. 'Your
counsel," the two men said, "befits your experience, but not ours. Had you
tasted the happiness that we have enjoyed, you would advise us to sacri-
fice our possessions and our life for it."*62
No doubt Hydarnes laughed at these fanatics, and who, among our
contemporaries, would not laugh with him? But suppose [182] that we
and Hydarnes are wrong, and that those men from Sparta were not fa-
natics, would they not have to be in possession of a truth that we lack?
And would we not stop laughing at them, were we to find this very truth
within us?
Sperchis and Bulis did not say to Hydarnis, 'You are a fool, a man of
weak spirit"; they admitted rather that he was wise in his measure, under-
standing, and good. Also they did not try to teach them their truth; on
the contrary, they explained why this could not be done.
Nor did they become much more intelligible when they stood before
Xerxes, in whose presence they refused to prostrate themselves, but who
did not want to have them put to death but would rather have persuaded
them to become his friends, just as happy as himself. "How could we live
here," the two men said, "and forsake our land, our laws, and such men
as we voluntarily undertook this long journey in order to die for?"*63
[183] Sperchis and Bulis probably had less facility in thought and rea-
soning than the Persian prefect. They did not appeal to their under-
standing, to their fine judgment, but only to things, and their desire for
them. Nor did they boast of any virtue; they only professed their heart's
sentiment,* their affection. + They had no philosophy, or rather, their
philosophy was just history.
*6a. Herodotus, Book vri, chapter 129.38

*63- "Comment pourrions nous vivre icy, en [183] abandonnant nostre pais,
noz loix; & de les hommes, que pour eulx nous auons volontairement entrepris
un si loin tain voyage?" Plutarque, in the Diets Notables des Lacedamoniens, tr.
d'Amiot, Paris, 1574.
* Sinn
t Affect
And can living philosophy ever be anything but history? As are the ob-
jects, so too are the representations; as the representations, so the de-
sires and passions; as the desires and passions, so too the actions; as the
actions, so the principles and the whole of knowledge. What caused the
swift and universal reception of the doctrine of a Helvetius, or a
Diderot?98 [184] Nothing but the fact that the doctrine really captured
within itself the truth of the century. What it said proceeded from the
heart, and had to return to the heart.—"Why is it," Epictectus asked,
"that the fools have you in their power, and push you around any way
they want to? Why are they stronger than you? Because, however dismal
and unworthy their prattle may be, they always speak from their actual
concepts and principles; whereas, the beautiful things that you have to
offer always come from the lips only: so your speeches have neither force
nor life, and it is only with a yawn that one listens to your exhortations,
and the same applies to the small-minded virtue that you are constantly
prattling about at every cross-road. That is why it comes to pass that the
fools are your masters. For what proceeds from the heart, and what one
attends to as a principle, that has a force that is unconquerable. . . .
Whereas what you manage to concoct in the schools will melt away again
each day like wax in the sun."*64
[185] Philosophy cannot create its matter; the latter is always there,
in contemporary history, or the history of the past. Our philosophizing
from past history will be but incompetent, if this history contains expe-
riences which we cannot repeat. Our judgment is reliable only when it
is directed to things that lie before us. Every age can observe what lies
before it; it can analyze it, compare its parts, order them, bring them
back to the simplest principles, render the correctness of these ever
clearer and more relevant, and their strength more effective. And just as
every age has its own truth, the content of which is like the content of
experience, so too it has its own living philosophy that displays in progress
the age's dominant pattern of conduct.
It follows therefore that one ought not to derive the actions of men
from their philosophy, but rather their philosophy from their actions;
that their history does not [186] originate from their way of thinking,
but rather, their way of thinking from their history. It would be wrong,
for instance, to explain the corruption of the mores of the Romans at the
time of the fall of the Republic by appeal to the encroaching irreligiosity
*64. Epictetus, The Discourses, tr. J. G. SchultheB, vol. in, Speech 16.
of the time; for, on the contrary, the origin of the corruption ought to
be sought in the encroaching irreligiosity instead. In exactly the same
way, the sexual lassitude and orgiastic feasting of the contemporaries of
an Ovid or a Petronius, a Catullus or a Martial, is not to be charged to
these poets, but rather these poets ought to be charged to that general
lassitude. In saying this, I do not mean to deny that poets and philoso-
phers powerfully reinforce the spirit of their time, if they are permeated
by it. Human history comes to be through men, and then some of them
contribute to its advance more, some less.
So if the philosophy of an age, its thought style, is to be improved upon,
its history, its ways of acting, its life style, must be improved on first, and
[187] this cannot happen at will. This much seems to have been clear to
many, and to have led some worthy men to the thought that, since noth-
ing could be done with the old, they should take our children in hand,
and build a better race from them. This was not at all an easy matter, and
had this special difficulty besides, that we fathers could not countenance
our children being directed along another path than the one we held as
the best. The more sophisticated among those worthy men were therefore
forced to entice us by the promise (which they came to believe earnestly)
that our children ought indeed to be brought up in the right practical
way, i.e. for the need of the age. And this really meant, according to the senti-
ment and taste of the age. But if the sentiment and taste of an age are ex-
clusively directed to the comfortable life and the means thereto (riches,
preeminence, and power), and if it is not possible to go after these ob-
jects with the whole of one's soul without thereby [188] cramping the
best properties of human nature to such an extent that one ceases to be
aware of them, then, if pursued in a truly rational way, this practical ed-
ucation comes down to this: that our progeny become duly skilled and
ready in becoming ever worse.*65 [189] Thus, instead of the peace of
*65- "The day's outcome is decided. Pull out the arrow from my wound, and
let me bleed!" Epaminondas said.39
"In what situation, or by what instruction, is this wonderful character to be
formed? Is it found in the nurseries of affectation, pertness, and vanity, from
which fashion is propagated, and the genteel is announced? in great and opulent
cities, where men vie with one another in equipage, dress, and the reputation of
fortune? Is it within the admired precincts of a court, where we may learn to
smile without being pleased, to caress without affection, to wound with the secret
weapons of envy and jealousy, and to rest our personal importance on circum-
stances which we cannot always with honour command? No: but in a situation
God, which is only a chimera, [190] a real peace of the devil, or at least the
preconditions for it, would descend upon earth.
But these are words that still dismay us. We want rectitude, patriotism,
love of mankind, fear of the Lord—and what not else? Above all things,
however, we want the comfortable life, and perfect skill in the service of van-
ity; we want. . . . to become rich without falling into temptation, in brief,
to give the lie to the saying: No man can [191] serve two masters; and, Where
your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
But this saying won't let the lie be given to it. And since I feel this in
the innermost recesses of my heart, I am crushed as I witness nowadays
a total lack of direction in the ways of the good; the refusal to give coun-
tenance to the noble and great, to give encouragement and sensuous at-
traction to it, whereas whatever is attractive and chaste in it is being
actively debased. . . . And just then my children come frolicking before
me. . . . I am so moved, that I could often cry out: What is to become of
you, you poor things!
"Muse, evoke before me the youth to whom the vengeful l camels give their pelts
for clothing;100 who dips his quill in wild honey, so that his eyes may become
more alert; whose demonstrations are more akin to the flight of the grasshopper
than to the slow track of the blindworm down the road; who prefers the baptism
where the great sentiments of the heart are awakened; where the characters of
men, not their situations and fortunes, are the principal distinction; where the
anxieties of interest, or vanity, perish in the blaze of more vigorous emotions;
and where the human soul, having felt and recognized its objects, like an animal
who has tasted the blood of its prey, cannot descend to pursuits that leave its tal-
ents and its force unemployed.
"Proper occasions alone operating on a raised and a happy disposition, may
produce this admirable effect, whilst mere instruction may always find mankind
at a loss to comprehend its meaning, or insensible to its dictates. The case, how-
ever, is not desperate, till we have formed our system of politics, as well as man-
ners; till we have sold our freedom for titles, equipage, and distinctions; till we
see no merit but prosperity and power, no disgrace but poverty and neglect.
What charm of instruction can cure the mind that is tainted with this disorder?
What syren voice can awaken a desire of freedom, that is held to be meanness,
and a want of ambition? or what persuasion can turn the grimace of politeness
into real sentiments of humanity and candour?" Ferguson's History of Civil
Society, P. i. Sect. 6.4°
of the proselyte to the service of the Levite. . . . Evoke before me the youth who
can [192] afford to chide our scribes who have the key to knowledge, but are unable
to enter into it and stand in the way of those want to get in; the youth who hisses
at those doctors of secular wisdom who whisper in the ear: there is no palingen-
esis,101 nor is there genius, or spirit (as your Helvetius has written in large
octavo)102—yes, the youth whose boldness strives to equal that of the King in
Judea who crushed the serpent of iron that Moses had yet elevated on orders from
the highest. 103
"Behold!. . . . And then a voice:
"The salt of erudition is a good thing; but if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall
it be salted . . . P104
"Reason is holy, right, and good; we gain nothing from it, however, save the recog-
nition of sinful non-knowledge. And when this non-knowledge reaches an epidemic state,
then it takes upon itself the rights of worldly wisdom. As one among them, the very prophet
of this wisdom, [ 193] has said: Les sages d'une nation sontfous de lafolie commune.1C>5
"But the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there too is freedom."lo6
Providence will justify to each its ways. It will let the knowledge (now
almonst extinct under delusion and obscurantism) that God's image in
man is the only source of any insight into the truth, and so too of all love
of the good—it will let that knowledge shine forth once more in all its
brightness. And after the wreckage of so many human forms, it will dis-
play the last and best form, the one that is beyond destruction.
The Spirit is in Men,

And the breath of the Almighty makes them wise.
If from time immemorial all the nations have been pervaded by the
conviction that religion is the one and only means by which [194] to help the
ailing nature of man', and if all the men of wisdom since the most remote
of times, when there was yet no rational wisdom but only traditional pos-
itive teaching out of which all philosophy has apparently originated, ac-
cording to its own testimony; if all men of wisdom, I say, have taught with
one voice that the knowledge which only has earthly things for objects is not
worthy of its name; if all have said that man can only come to the knowledge that
is above this world through a disposition that is above this world, that God an-
nounces himself to our hearts but hides himself from those who seek him by the un-
derstanding alone, that for the soul God's laws are like wings with which to propel
itself above its present situation; if this is so, is it then a wonder that wherever '
human nature sinks low, the knowledge of God sinks low likewise, and
in the animal it finally disappears entirely, whereas, wherever this very

nature rises higher, the love of the creator becomes all the more percepti-
ble to the feeling, until it becomes totally impossible for man to doubt
the pervasive presence in him of his God—[195] more impossible by far
than for an earthly subject to doubt the reality of his lord, though he
might never have seen him or come close to his distant residence?
God's wisdom does not descend upon an evil soul, nor does it dwell in the en-
slaved body of one who is subject to vice. The spirit of discipline flees from deceit,
and shuns evil thoughts; it will be found by those who do not tempt it; it appears
to those who seek after it in simplicity of heart. In God's wisdom there is an intel-
ligible spirit, holy, innate, manifold, nimble, honest, untarnished, open, inviola-
ble, penetrating, quick, benevolent, human, firm, steadfast, sure: it can do all,
and it oversees all, it encompasses all pure and intelligible spirits, and is the finest
of all. Wisdom is nimbler than any movement; it reaches out to all things and en-
compasses them all because of its [196] purity: for it is the breath of God's power,
a pure emanation of the splendour of the Almighty, the resplendence of eternal
light, an untarnished mirror of divine action and reflection of his goodness. This
wisdom is capable of all things all by itself, it remains within itself yet makes all
things anew, it rises up here and there in holy souls, and raises the friends of God
and his prophets.
The idea of a virtuous being originates in the enjoyment of virtue; the
idea of a free being, in the enjoyment of freedom; the idea of a living
being, in the enjoyment of life; the idea of one like unto God, and of God
himself, in the enjoyment of what is divine.*66
[197]* Try to grow in a virtue perfecdy, that is, to exercise it purely and
incessantly. Either you desist in the attempt, or you'll become aware of
God in yourself, just as you are aware of yourself. The first will happen
if your resolve is all that you bring to the task. For man is so imperfect
and weak that he can neither find his law nor keep it. His law of the day
*66. t "I cannot blame Saunderson if he does not have a visual concept of the
sun, since he cannot see it; but if he wants to deny the sun for this reason, or to
establish how far the relation to the sun of one who has sight is true or false,
would he not be going too far? As a spokesman of those who have sight he would
perhaps be the least reliable precisely when he is engaged in the subtlest reason-
ing." Letters concerning the Study of Theology, No. i3- 41
* This paragraph and the one immediately following are omitted in the second edition.
t This note is omitted in the second edition.
is his resolve of the day, and his resolve of the day is his day's desire
which can neither arouse his will nor secure it.
He must obey and trust, keep to the word and to the faith. He must
not aggrandize his conceit, and put it on a throne: this is his first virtue,
and must also be his last.
Just as living philosophy, or a people's mode of thinking, proceeds
from a people's history or mode of life, so too this history or mode of life
arises from a people's origin, from preceding institutions and laws. All
history leads up to instruction and [198] laws, and the history of all
human culture begins from them.
Not from laws of reason or moving exhortations, but from instructions,
exposition, model, discipline, aid; from counsel and deed, service and command.
If the first men were produced like mushrooms from the earth, or like
worms from slime—without foramen ovale, and without umbilical cord—
not much more perfect than they are now born from their mother's
body, then something must have looked after them. Was it chance? if not
chance, then what?
All men say with one accord that one God looked after them, even be-
fore they existed.
All constitutions derive from a higher Being; they were all theocratic
in origin. The first indispensable need, both for the individual men and
for society too, is a God.
[199] Complete submission to a superior authority; strict, holy,
obedience—this has been the spirit of every age that has brought forth
an abundance of great deeds, great sentiments, great men. The holiest
temple of the Spartans was dedicated to Fear.
Where firm faith in a higher authority gave way, and personal conceit
got the upper hand, there every virtue sank low, vice broke through,
sense, culture, and understanding were corrupted.
And in no people did this faith give way until they let themselves be
seduced by passion which has no law, and binds the spirit in chains. And
thus each partook of the tree of knowledge, and knew what was good, and
what evil.*617
*67. * In Sophocles's tragedy, Oedipus the King, the chorus sings at the end of
the second act:
"May my portion still and always be to win that [prize, namely] reverent purity
from all words and deeds concerning which laws are established for us,/ [laws]
* This note is omitted in the second edition.

"Be not like the horse and the mule that lack understanding," the old Luther
says. "They are like animals governed by the senses that only follow what
they feel: where they don't feel or touch, they don't go. Horse and mule
are not made to [201] comprehend things inaccessible to the senses;
hence they are also not moved by them to love or sorrow. So too those
men who won't do, or allow, or suffer, anything beyond what they can
measure or conceive: they have no mastery of God's understanding.
They do with reason what the horses do with the senses: both do not ven-
ture past what they can sense."
And Herder glosses: ". . . Laudable commands of reason—where to
every scoundrel is afterwards given to do with them what he wills, and,
like an earth worm, to follow the wetness of its own slime: and there's what all
the heroics of selfishness amount to."*68
Look at your children, or the children of your friend. They obey au-
thority, without comprehending the father's mind. If they are obstinate
and do not obey, they will never interiorize it; they will never truly know
the father himself. If they are docile, [202] the father's mind, his inner
life, will gradually be transferred to them; their understanding will
awaken, and they will know the father. No pedagogical art, no instruc-
tion, would have been capable of bringing them to that point, if their liv-
ing knowledge had not grown first out of their very life. In all things man's
understanding comes only at second hand. Discipline must prepare in-
struction, obedience knowledge.
The more comprehensive, penetrating, and sublime a command is,
the more it relates to the inner nature of man and his improvement, to
understanding and will, virtue and knowledge. The less can man discern
lofty-footed, begotten in the heavenly regions of the sky, whose father is Olympus
alone, nor did any mortal nature of men engender them, nor shall oblivion ever
lay them to sleep;/ divinity is great in them, and does not grow old.
"Arrogance begets the tyrant. Arrogance, if it be surfeited to no good end with
many things neither proper nor profitable,/ after climbing the topmost ram-
parts plunges to the most miserable straits, where no service of the foot can serve.
But that struggle which is advantageous for the city, I pray the god never to end./
The god I will not cease to hold as our defender.
"But if a man walks haughtily in deed or in word, with no fear of judgment,
and not/ reverencing statues of gods, may an evil portion destroy him, because
of his ill-fated self-indulgence, etc. . . ." 42
*68. The Oldest Document [of the Human Race], Vol. 2, pp. 26-27.43
the command's inner good before obeying it, the less capable is his rea-
son to accept it, the more does he need authority and faith.
The command of the Lord gives wisdom,

His mouth Knowledge and Understanding.
107
Surely there is a vein for the silver,
and a place for gold where they fine it.
Iron is taken out of the earth,
and brass is molten out of the stone. [ . . . . ]
[203] But where shall wisdom be found?
and where is the place of understanding? [ . . . . ]
Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living,
and kept close from the fowls of the air.
Destruction and death say,
We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.
God understandeth the way thereof,
and he knoweth the place thereof.
For he looketh to the ends of the earth,
and seeth under the whole heaven;
To make the weight for the winds;
and he weigheth the waters by measure.
When he made a decree for the rain,
and a way for the lighting of the thunder:
Then did he see it, and declare it;
he prepared it, yea, and searched it out.
And unto man he said, Behold the fear of the Lord,
that is wisdom;
and to depart from evil is understanding.
[204] But who is the Lord, the fear of whom is wisdom, and from
whose commands come light and life?
Is he the first, the best, and can we only grope after him blindly?
Blindly, if you are blind! But are you really so? And what has robbed
you of all light? What induced you to replace the teaching of your fathers
with your own conceit? Was it in order to come closer to the eye of the
invisible, or to remove yourself from it? Did it happen to please the
truth, or the lie? could the Spirit reach to you, or was it the flesh, the will,
and evil desire?
I won't want to force myself on you, and extract a confession that
would allow me to say to you: Return to the place where, as you well
know, your will became impure; where you transgressed the law to which
you were subject, from disobedience, not from conscience; where you let
go the faith that was in you; breached your word and your trust—Turn
back, wash yourself pure, turn again to the light from [205] which you
once turned away—or to another light that will shine in the same place.
Only be faithful from now on; and keep to the faith that you have
accepted, whatever its name: just renounce the conceit of your will, for
this conceit will leave you without the law, like cattle, without light or
right.* lo8
I say, I don't want to impose on you in this way. But accept this other
proposal instead.
You serve something invisible, or want to do service to it. Let it be
honourl
Whoever does homage to honour, swears by the altar of the Unknown
God. He promises to obey a Being who sees into the heart: for the service
of honour consists in this, that we are as we appear; that we do not ar-
bitrarily or secretly transgress any law; in the brief, steadfast word,
TRUTH!
Go forth therefore, and obey your [206] Unknown God, faithfully and
wholly. Appear in all things as you are, and be in all things as you appear.
But take care that you don't let any spite slip by, for your God sees into
your heart; that's his essence, his power. And if He does not soon an-
nounce his name to you then; if you do not soon experience who the
Lord is, the fear of whom is wisdom, and from whose laws flow light and
life, then, call me an impostor before the whole world, a fool, a fanatic—
what you will!
"We have a friend in us—a delicate sanctuary in our soul, where God's voice
and intention has long since resounded, sharp and clear. The ancients called it
the daimon, the good genius of man, whom they revered with so much youthful
love, and obeyed with so much respect. This is what the Christ meant by the clear
eye that is the light of life and enlightens the entire body.*69 David asks for it in
*6g. I cannot refrain from inserting a very [207] plain commentary on this
saying, from an excellent recently published work: "The light of the body is the
eye.44 This is not said in a physical sense, yet meaningfully. The eye receives the
* From "what induced you. . . ." to "without light or right" is omitted in the second
edition.
prayer, [207] as the Spirit of Life that leads him on the straight and level path,
etc.109 Let's call it conscience, inner sense, [208] reason, the logos in us, or what you
will. It is enough that it speaks loud and clear, especially in youth, before the wild
voices from inside and out, the roar of passions, and the chatter of a sophistic
unreason, gradually silences it or falsifies it altogether. Woe to him, in whom it
is made silent and false in this way! Woe especially to the young man and the
child! He will gradually lose his God in the world; he will wander like a lost sheep,
void of sound moral sense, without feeling the theion (the divinity) in even one
thing of life, whether in himself or others. [209] We have only as much of God
and his providence as we can cognize of them both living in the individual and the
universal. The more we can see actively (without fanaticism or coldness of heart)
how and why He acts with us, the more He is ours, and ours alone. Let the wind-
bag and the doubter say what he wills against this: experience overrides empty talk and
doubt"*?0
Let us say it again: man's understanding does not have its life, and its
light, in its self, nor is the will formed through it. On the contrary, man's
understanding is formed through his will, which is like a spark from the
eternal and pure light, and a force from the Almighty. Whoever walks in
light for the entire body—the light which the body uses in all its doings.—If your
eye is innocent, then your whole body is serene.—Innocent, healthy, uncor-
rupted: then the whole body has sufficient serenity.—If however your eye be-
comes bad (bad, unhealthy, corrupt), then your whole body will be in
darkness—(the hands do not know what they reach to; the feet, where they are
going).—But now, if the light that is in you is darkness (said very unphilosoph-
ically, yet with unmistakable meaning: If the member that ought to receive light
for the entire body becomes corrupt, and ceases to receive light)—how great will
the darkness then be!—(in what total darkness you will then sit, no amount of
light being of any help to you!).
[208] "The clear meaning of this passage, therefore, is as follows: Man has in
his soul a sense which is to the whole man what the eye is to the body; a sense
which, when healthy, receives secure light for moving and working, but when it
is corrupt it plunges man into total darkness, and renders him quite incapable
of walking straight or acting straight." Philosophical Lectures on the So-called New
Testament, vol. i (Leipzig, 1785).45
*7o. [Herder] Letters concerning the Study of Theology [Letter #31], Part in,
pp. 89-90 [2nd ed., p. 91].
this light and acts by this power, will walk in purity from light to light;
he will experience his origin and his destination.
[210] It is a universal revelation, or a lie of nature, that all that hap-
pens, every alteration [210] and movement, stems from a will, that the
power for it must derive from a will. If there is a case where the voxpopuli,
vox del holds true, this is it. Thus the crude savage errs less than the
learned sophist. For however often he confuses the outer with the inner,
form with matter, appearance with essence, he knows them both none
the less, and so he does not err in substance. The learned sophist on the
other hand who only acknowledges the externality of things, and takes
the appearance for the thing itself, and the thing to be the reflection—he
is the one who errs in substance.
I do not know the nature of the will, of a self-determining cause, its
inner possibility and its laws. For I do not exist through my own self. But
I feel such a power as the inmost life of my being; through it I have in-
timations of my origin, and through its exercise I learn what flesh and
blood alone could not reveal to me. I find that everything [211] in nature and
Scripture refers to this exercise; all promises and all threats are con-
nected with it—with the purification and contamination of the heart.—
Experience and history teach me, moreover, that man's action depends
less upon his thought, than his thought upon his action; that his con-
cepts are directed according to his actions, and in a way only imitate
them; that the way to knowledge is therefore a mysterious one—not the
way of the syllogism—and much less the way of mechanism.
God spoke—and so it was—and all was good. "This action," says the
worthy Jerusalem, "could not have been made truer and clearer to our
reason. For the one and only ground [of the origin of things] on which
reason can find rest is this: the Almighty willed, and so it was. This is at the
same time the limit of all philosophy, where Newton too stood in awe.
And the philosopher who regards it as below his dignity to abide by this
divine will, but abandons himself [212] to an infinite progression from
cause to cause beyond it, and to his own building of worlds, such a one
will stray into eternal darkness, where he will ultimately lose track even
of the Creator."110
This is the Majesty of the Lord, the Countenance of God, to which mortal
eye cannot reach. But in his goodness He descends to us, and through
his grace the Eternal One becomes a presence to man, and He speaks
to him—to whom He gave breath from his mouth—through man's feeling
for his own life, his own bliss. . . . I fall silent, I fall prostrate glowing with
thanks and delight.—In shame lest I could still be asking for a better way
to knowledge and peace. . . . If anyone knows of one, let him show it to

me!—Oh, would that I were strong and quick to run that way, the one
royal way of God's love, and God's BLISS!
Allow me in conclusion—at the risk that I be called one of yours, and

[213] be chided for being a loyal man—allow me, honest Lavater, to bless
and seal my work with a word from your pious and angelically pure* lips.
"/ came into the world that I may bear witness to the truth. Behold in that your mis-
sion, you man! you alone, though a creature of earth, are royal and capable of
truth! Every mortal sees a portion of the truth that is the source of joy for all, and
sees it in a particular way, as no other mortal can see it. To each the universe ap-
pears through a medium which is one's own. To give testimony to how things are
present to us, to our point of view, means to think and to act royally. This is man's
mission and man's worth! Through this honest testimony you will exercise the
greatest influence on humanity; you will have the greatest power to attract those
who are most similar to you and to unite them—and to sunder from you those
who are most dissimilar, to set them at a distance from you, and make them
united in opposition to you and all those who are like you—and thereby you will
powerfully promote the unknown goal [214] of creation and providence—the
great, the first and last, end—the highest possible union of all things unifiable. . . .l11
"He who sees everything as it presents itself to him, who does not want to see
anything except as it thus presents itself; he who lets truth, or anything that ap-
pears good to him, work upon him freely without reacting to it either noisily or
quietly, publicly or in private, immediately or through an intermediary; he who
behaves towards truth in a merely passive way—who does not resist it either of-
fensively or defensively; he who only wills what truth wills—who wills the truth,
the true nature of things, and its relation to us—the truth which is the reason of
all reason, illumining all; he who does not deny it even before hearing it, because
of obstinacy or self-love, because of precipitousness, sloth, ambition, servility—
who never judges before mature, patient, dispassionate reflection, and even after
judgment still retains an open and attentive ear, and docile heart, for every
exhortation—he who [215] rejoices in the truth, wherever and whenever, by
whomsoever and through whomsoever, it may be found—who does not let him-
self be touched by the error on the lips of his bosom friend—who eagerly draws
out the truth from the lips of his mortal enemy and presses it to his heart—who
* Engelreinen. In the second edition this is changed to "righteous."

everywhere holds conviction in high esteem, and never acts, judges, or speaks
without reflection—Such a one is the honest and righteous man, an honour to
mankind—he is of the Truth. Christ would call him a Son of the Truth."112
David Hume on Faith
or
Idealism and Realism
A Dialogue
by
Be sober of head and mistrustful of friends; hinges are these

on which wisdom depends.
Epicharm. Fragm. Troch.1
Breslau, at Gottl. Lowe's, 1787.
NOTE: This translation is made from the first edition of 1787, which differs in several
places from the second edition of 1815. Some of the differences are purely stylistic, and
these I have ignored. I have annotated all the rest, and in some cases I have entered the
text of 1815. The text is complete except for the occasional footnote (as indicated) in
which I have only referred to sources that Jacobi instead cites in full. Pagination in square
brackets refers to the first edition; in curly brackets, to the 1815 edition.
[ii] Nature confounds the Pyrrhonists, and reason the dogmatists.—We have an
incapacity of proof that no dogmatism can overcome. We have an idea of truth
that no Pyrrhonism can overcome.
Pascal2
[iii] P R E F A T O R Y NOTE*
The following Dialogue falls into three parts, each of which was origi-
nally intended to be published separately, the first under the title of
David Hume on Faith; the second under the title of Idealism and Realism;
and the third under that of Leibniz, or concerning Reason. Events however
interfered with this plan, and the three Dialogues were contracted into
one.
The title of the second section could justifiably cover the content of
the third as well. The "Or" under the heading of the first section cannot
however be totally justified, and I [iv] apologize for it.
The unusual use that I made of the word "faith" in the Letters concern-
ing Spinoza refers to a need that is not mine, but a philosophy's that
claims that rational knowledge does not deal just in relations, but ex-
tends to the very existence of things and their properties—so much so that
knowledge of actual existence through reason would have an apodeictic cer-
tainty not ever to be ascribed to sensory knowledge. According to this
philosophy there is a twofold knowledge of actual existence, one certain
and the other uncertain. This [v] latter, [as] I said [in the Letters concern-
ing Spinoza}, should be called "faith." For the assumption was that every
cognition that does not originate in rational sources is "faith."
My philosophy does not hold any such duality in the knowledge of ac-
tual existence. It claims but a single knowledge through sensation, and
* This Prefatory Note is missing in the 1815 edition but is replaced by a long Preface
that is intended also as an introduction to Jacobi's collected philosophical works. A trans-
lation of this Preface is included in the present volume.
it restricts reason, considered by itself, to the mere faculty of perceiving

relations clearly, i.e. to the power of formulating the principle of identity and
of judging in conformity to it. With this claim, however, I am forced to admit
that only the assertion of identical propositions is apodeictic and carries
absolute certainty, and that any assertion of the existence of a thing in
itself, outside my representation, can never be of this kind or [vi] carry
absolute certainty with it. So an idealist, basing himself on this distinc-
tion, can compel me to concede that my conviction about the existence
of real things outside me is only a matter of faith. But then, as a realist
I am forced to say that all knowledge derives exclusively from faith, for
things must be given to me before I am in a position to enquire about
relations.
The development of this point constitutes the content of the following
Dialogue. I dedicate it, not without some inner satisfaction, to every up-
right friend of truth. To those, however, who love other things more
than the truth, I commit it with my most unequivocal disavowal of their
love.
Two more considerations might not be superfluous here.
[vii] i. Just as in the Dialogue that follows I declare myself for "realism"
and against "idealism," so too did I clearly enough (so I believe) express
myself regarding these two theses in the Letters concerning Spinoza, on
pp. 162—64 and 180—81. In spite of this I was later suspected of leaning
toward transcendental idealism. This suspicion flies in the face of every
appearance, and can only be based on the respect and amazement with
which I spoke of Kant in my defence against Mendelssohn. People have
relied on the passage from the Critique of Pure Reason that I interpolated
in my defence, without paying the least attention to the comment that
[viii] I immediately attached to it, and to another which I added right
after. The cautious tone of my statement might however have drawn a
better response than I have experienced from the side of transcendental
idealists who sufficiently understood me.
ii. In the Supplement to this Dialogue, "On Transcendental
Idealism," I have everywhere used the very words of the author in the ex-
position of Kant's doctrine, as anyone will discover by a perusal of the
pages referred to, even where no particular indication is made through
quotation marks. But since it is not impossible that someone will never-
theless say that I have not understood Transcendental Idealism, I [ix]
propose the following for careful consideration. Such an objection has
its place only on condition that it is also shown how Transcendental
Idealism can be understood otherwise than I have portrayed it, or else
David Hume on Faith 257
the objector will run into an insoluble conflict with himself and forfeit
all claims. My whole essay is calculated on this either/or.
Diisseldorf, March 28, 1787
Speak not of all these shining qualities:

The mind's preeminence is to be free,
And freedom shews itself in openness and truth.
Otway3
[i] It is said in ethics, "As many sentiments as there are heads"; the contrary is
actually true; nothing is as common as heads, and nothing as rare as counsel.
Diderot4
Be sober of head and mistrustful of friends; hinges are these on which wisdom
depends.5
He: Still in dressing gown! Are you sick?
I: A bit of a chill. I stayed in bed until noon, and I couldn't eat, so I have
just been sitting.
He: What's that jolly book you have there?
/.•Jolly book? Why do you say that?
He: The way you looked when I came in.
[2] 1:1 was reading some reflections about faith.
He: You mean in the May issue of the Berlin Monthly"?
I: Are they so jolly? Have a look at my book! It is Hume's Enquiries.6
He: It's against faith, then.
/: No it is for faith. Have you read Hume recently?
He: Not the Enquiries, for many years.
/: Not for many years? You have been bothering yourself with the
Kantian philosophy, yet, after all that Kant says in the Preface to the
Prolegomena7 you did not [3] immediately grab your copy of Hume and
read it from beginning to end again? It's unforgivable.
He: You know how it has been for me with Kant. Surely the whole history
of a philosophical system does not belong to its concept. There would
be no end in that case.
/: No beginning, you mean.
He: I understand why you smile. But let's leave it be, while you tell me
about Hume as a teacher of faith instead. Or give me the volume to take
home. *I swapped the translations after I learned English, but afterwards
I have always postponed getting myself the original.
* From here until the end of p. 5, the text in the 1815 edition differs.
/: Well, I am glad to hear it. I have long held [4] my tongue so as not
to betray my secret too soon, and now I have let it slip out, I don't know
how.
He: It is a strange secret surely, if it is printed in a book.
/: But that's just the beauty of it all—that it is there in a printed book,
one that has been translated into several languages, and is very famous.
Yet it is a secret none the less.—And what about my Sextus Empiricus?
He: I am very sorry. I was not at home both times that you sent for it. But
my servant must have delivered it by now.
/: If he had brought it, I could have made use of it.
[5] He: May I ask why are you so impatient to consult it?
/: . . . A passage about "orienting oneself'8—or about "faith": suit
yourself.
He: In Sextus Empiricus?
/: Nowhere else.9 Something like it in Aristotle suddenly reminded me
of the passage.
He: This is all news to me!
7: ... News some two thousand years old!
But surely you don't mean to keep the news and the secret to yourself
forever! [6] When will the new edition of the Letters Concerning the
Doctrine of Spinoza be published with all of its appendices?10
/: Not before the next Jubilate Fair anyway.11
He: And it should have appeared already at the last one.
/; Well, I wanted to let it come out then—and I almost did, but without
the appendices.
He: There you are! Back to the maxim of Seneca that I have often heard
you quoting: Quae ego scio, populus non probat; quae probat, ego nescio.* ia
I was once very much tempted to write in your Seneca, right where you
have the "N.B.," our German proverb, He who is too clever is a dope. It is
certainly not without reason that you have been criticized for having too
often left out the necessary intermediary concepts. Ab hoste consiliuml^ 13
"Too much sharpness does not cut." [7] If you won't follow good advice,
at least follow a successful example. It's all right to make arbitrary connec-
tions, you see, provided that one makes them extensively enough, and
providing above all, that one takes care that the connecting ties finally
fall into the proper order. For the love of symmetry it is necessary to
* The things I know people do not accept; those they do accept I do not know.
t Learn from your enemy!
bring up the invisible ties as well. So why this annoying stinginess with
the volume?
/: You are right. The force of your advice is irresistible.
He: It's the truth, if you would only take it to heart. So the fault is all
yours of course if someone puts a wax nose on you.
//You mean, because I do not hide mine behind a nose made of papier-
mache, in the proper style of a masquerade.
He: Just let your own nose be seen properly. [8] Surely you cannot find
it so very difficult to remove every ambiguity from the propositions that
were the main objects of attack.
I: It is actually an easy matter—so easy. . . .
He: . . . . that you loathe doing it.
/: Well, it's a useless task. Just think of that youthful fable of Lessing,
where an unhappy creature longs for eyes, and just as soon as it gets
them, it cries out: "These can't be eyes!"*1
He: Say what you like—but anyone who understands himself, can also
manage to make himself understood by others, provided that he does
not lose patience, [9] even if all the learned reviews and journals con-
spire to hold back the truth at the bar of officious justice.
/: The moment P. Claudius let the sacred hens, which did not want to
eat, drink, he lost the battle.*2
He: Fair enough. But no one is suggesting that you should lay hands [ 10]
on the sacred hens in full view of a people who fix so devout an eye on
their auspicious eating or non-eating like no other civilized people in
Europe. Follow your own way without bothering over these superstitions,
and let the dead bury their own dead.14
* i. Lessing's Selected Writings (Berlin, 1784) vol. 11, p. 94; (older edition, 1770)
vol. I, p. 125.'
*2. Cicero, de Natura Deorum (Concerning the Nature of the Gods), Book n, §g.2
A friend to whom I had shown this dialogue in manuscript form added to this
quotation the following passage from the Oration for fiosdus Amerinus [xx.56]
"Food for the geese is contracted for at the public expense, and dogs are main-
tained in the Capitol, to give notice if thieves come. But they cannot distinguish
thieves. Accordingly they give notice if any one comes by night to the Capitol;
and because that is a suspicious thing, although they are but beasts, yet they of-
tenest err on that side which is the more prudent one. But if the dogs barked by
day also, when any one came to pay honour to the gods, I imagine their legs
would be broken for being active then also, when there was no suspicion."3
7: My dear fellow, I carry forty-three years on my shoulders, and fate has

buffeted me on all sides with heavy blows. Many might surpass me in gifts
of the mind, but I am sure that only a few surpass my steadfastness and
zeal in the pursuit of insight and truth. I have delved into the most re-
nowned sources of truth indefatigably, and the not so renowned ones as
well;*3 [i i] and I have explored the source of some of them to the point
where they get lost in invisible veins. For a long time I was aware of other
explorers close by, and not a few of them were among the best minds of
my age. I had occasion, indeed I was compelled, to put my forces to the
test repeatedly, and to let them be put to the test. It would be some sort
of miracle therefore if, like an inexperienced youth, or a self-absorbed
pedant, or in some other foolish fashion, I were to presume more about
myself than I ought. But by the same token it would not be right either,
[12] that I should be deceived into lowering myself too much, that I
should take myself for less than others who, with only a portion of my
miserable knowledge, already think they know so much—who only want
to convert me to errors that I have long since repudiated—and to do it
on the strength of their own even more obvious sophistries. But that is what
was expected of me. I was supposed to accept compliantly as natural,
proper, and perfectly fair, that like a steed that is for sale I be ridden to
market by some rascally half-blind Philistine, to be inspected in the
mouth by every passer-by, and examined for every possible defect, while
impish urchins pluck hair from my tail and prick my back with
needles.—Maybe it's nothing but my not being used to it, that it is a bit
more than I care to bear.—You shake your head?
He: Less pride, or less sensitivity!—-Just name one worthy man [13] who
did not have to accept a similar fate.* That wind-bag from Halle, the ir-
*3. "Another error, that hath also some affinity with the former, is a conceit
that of former opinions or sects, after variety and examination, the best hath still
prevailed and suppressed the rest; so as if a man should begin the labour of a new
search, he were but like to light upon somewhat formerly rejected, and by rejec-
tion brought into oblivion: as if the multitude, or the wisest for the multitude's
sake, were not ready to give passage rather to that which is popular and super-
ficial than to that which is substantial and profound; for the truth is, that time
seemeth to be of the nature of a river or stream, which carrieth down to us that
which is light and blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is weighty and
solid. "4
* From here until "Just name me oner is missing in the 1815 edition.
ascible Ludwig, who comes to mind simply because of a local connec-

tion, called Jerome Gundling none other than a "bagatellist"! *4 I just
picked one example in a thousand! Give yourself eight full days to think
of another upright man, some profound writer, whom a better fate befell
than the thousands out of which I picked my Gundling. Just name me onel
And has any come to grief because of it?
[14] /: Oh, I am not afraid of grief at all. Danger stimulates. What I hate
is the malaise, the disgust that follows upon having to summon contempt
from the bottom of one's soul—having to spit in the presence of men be-
cause they have impudently done violence to their own feeling of what
is right and true and have yielded, unscrupulously, to the lie.*5 Why
should I embitter the few days that I may still have left, to live in this way?
He: Because a man does not leave what he has begun unfinished.
/: Good. But so that we do not lose ourselves in words, what exactly is it
that I should finish? Where should I start again?
He: With all this outcry about [15] your teaching blind faith and degrad-
ing reason, how can you ask that?
/: What is blind faith? Is it anything but assent based on outward appear-
ances, without reason or genuine insight?—Anything that causes you to
hesitate?
He: No, there is no reason to object to your definition.
I: Good. And you say that I am suspected of having taught a faith of that
sort. Right?
*4- *Cf. Putter's German Public Law Literature, Part i. No better fate than
Gundling's befell the excellent Herman Conring, the man who has still rendered
the greatest service to German Constitutional Law. He looked for the basis of
German law and the Constitution of our Fatherland in their proper sources, in
history and in the old laws. And for this he had to let himself be chided by
Chancellor Tabor as a "barbarian" who set aside the light of Roman jurispru-
dence in order to stumble again in darkness in the company of our brute, igno-
rant, forefathers. Yet Gripenkerl knew how to understand our Conring
otherwise. Cf. Putter, ibid., and Heinec., Preface to the Corp. J. Germ.5
*5> "In truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are men, and hold together, only
by our word. If we recognized the horror and the gravity of lying, we would per-
secute it with fire more justly than other crimes." Essais de Montaigne, Book i.
Ch. ix. p. 79. See also: D. Mus. 1787. Jan. S. 4Q.6
* This note is omitted in the 1815 edition.

He: Yes, indeed. But why are you asking me these questions for heaven's
sake? I sent you the Preliminary Exposition of Jesuitism15 a couple of days
ago. Do you have it at hand?
/: It is right there.
[16] He: Well look, here on p. 173, it says explicitly "that you recom-
mend an unconditionally blind faith, and in so doing snatch away the
strongest support of Protestantism, namely, the unrestricted spirit of re-
search and the use of reason . . . "
I: Read, rather: " . . . he snatches away the strongest support of the secret ultra-
Jesuitism, namely, the unrestricted spirit of distortion, and the use of mental res-
ervation, word twisting and hot air. . . . "
He: " . . . and hence you subject the rights of reason and religion to the
maxims of human authority." In the note to this passage it says even more
clearly "that your theory of faith and revelation promotes Catholicism,
and [17] denigrates the use of rational enquiry in the justification of the
trudi of religion . . . and that you want to induce acceptance of a. human au-
thority through a cunning modification of the current use of words." Have
you had enough?
/: Quite enough. But now, take what I wrote and show me what there
could excuse any such accusation, I will not say justify. Is there anything
on the basis of which it could even be sneaked in with some sort of rational
justification? Except for the mere word "faith," you won't find a thing.
And the man who put that accusation in writing, found nothing except
the mere word. But he found things in my book that he did not like, and
being confident of the political clout of his party, he thought nothing of
fabricating a quite baseless charge against me; even though he was
clearly [18] and distinctly conscious that it was a fabrication. And to
make things that much more venomous, he added yet another accusa-
tion, just by using an empty "therefore."—Is this true, or is it not?
He: Of course it is.
/: So it is true then, that there is not the slightest, not the remotest
ground in my book for the accusation that I teach blind faith; and it is
true too, that I am suspected of this teaching by the general public all
the same. And how can I even begin to defend myself against the charge
of blind faith before a public that believes so blindly? One only needs to
bring up the same false charge against me on the spot, and the suspicion
sticks.
He: Not so fast, my friend. Let's go back to that definition of blind faith
which you gave earlier. [19] Perhaps your opponents would say that it
restricts the concept of blind faith too much. Any assent, any affirma-
tion, that does not rest on rational grounds, could and would have to be
called blind faith.
/: Would my opponents really want to say that?
He: Why not?
/: You are right. Why not?—Well then answer me this: do you believe
that I am now sitting in front of you, and talking to you?
He: I don't just believe that; I know it.
/: How do you know it?
He: Because I have a sensation of it.
[20] /: Is that so? You have a sensation of me sitting in front of you and
speaking with you. That is all quite unintelligible to me. What on earth
do you mean? That I, who am now sitting here talking to you, am a sen-
sation to you?
He: You are not my sensation, but you are the external cause of my sen-
sation. The sensation, connected with that cause, gives me the represen-
tation that I call "you."
/: Well then, do you have a sensation of the cause as a cause? Do you be-
come aware of a sensation, and in this sensation of another sensation
through which you sense that this sensation is the cause of that sensa-
tion, and together they make up a representation—one that contains
something that you call the object? Is this what happens? Go over that
again, please; I do not understand any of it. And then tell me simply this:
[21] How do you know that the sensation of a cause qua cause, is the sen-
sation of an external cause, of an actual object outside your sensation, a
thing in itself?*
He: I know it in consequence of the sensible evidence. The certainty that
I have of it is an immediate one, like the certainty of my own existence.
/.'You're pulling my leg! A philosopher of the Kantian school, one who
is only an empirical realist,*6 could say all that, of course, but not a genuine
realist, such as you pretend to be. The validity of sense-evidence is precisely
what is in question. That things appear to us as outside us is not, of course,
in need of proof. [22] But that they are not mere appearances in us all
the same, mere determinations of our own self, and hence absolutely
nothing as representations of something outside us; that, as representations,
they rather refer to really external beings present on their own, and are
taken from them—all of this is not only open to doubt; it has also been
*6. See the Appendix on "Transcendental Idealism."

* "a thing in itself is omitted in the 1815 edition.
shown repeatedly that the doubt cannot be eliminated on grounds that

are rational in the strict sense. So your supposed immediate certainty
about external objects is therefore, on the analogy of my faith, a blind
certainty.
He: But don't you say yourself, in your third letter to Mendelssohn, "that
we become aware of other actual things [. . .] with the same certainty with
which we become aware of ourselves"'?16
I: That was after I had just said [23] that in a strict philosophical sense
this knowledge is only a faith, since whatever is not capable of strict proof
can only be believed, and there is no other word in the language for this
distinction. Of course we do not talk like that in everyday life. But then,
in everyday life, there is never any question of the distinction that we are
pointing out here; it belongs rather to philosophy where this distinction
is of the greatest importance in the investigation of human reason
and its functions (provincia sua]—and how we settle it has crucial
consequences. That was the issue between Mendelssohn and me.
Mendelssohn had saddled me, without the slightest cause,17 with Christian
motives which were in fact neither Christian nor mine, and against them
he set his own, which he presented as Jewish, when he said: "My religion
knows of no duty to remove doubts of this sort otherwise than through
reason; [24] it commands no faith in eternal truths. I have one more
ground, therefore, for seeking conviction."18—It was easy to detect in this
sarcastic sally the accusation that I was trying to save myself by the back
door. But since I did not want to counter it with a refutation that would
have involved me in questions in which I did not want to get involved,
I just gave the following answer: "If every assent to truth not derived from
rational grounds is faith," (since this opposition between rational cognition
and faith had been adduced by Mendelssohn himself), "then conviction based
on rational grounds must itself derive from faith and receive its force
from faith alone."19—I was expressing myself in this way in a private com-
munication with a famous philosopher for whom I had to assume that the
premises on which I was taking my stand would be known and their truth
accepted. [25] Fairness would have required that when this private com-
munication became a public record without any revision, it must still be
read and judged as a private communication (a communication meant
to go only from the desk of one scholar to the desk of another, and
not intended for the public at large at all) and that the context of what
was being said would not be ignored. In that case, because of the extension
that Mendelssohn had given to the concept of eternal truths, my statement
would. . . .
He: My dear man, I am afraid we are straying too far afield and we shall
lose our way. We must beware of that mistake.
You say: Whatever is incapable of strict proof can only be believed, and
language has no other word except faith to designate this difference in
the way that we assent to truth. [26] But as you also maintain, this dis-
tinction has long been accepted by many of us. How is it, then, that it has
been possible to avoid the one word for it that our language has? For the
use that you make of the word is unheard of. It is nowhere found with
that meaning.
/: Nowhere? Just turn to the review of Reid's Essays on the Intellectual
Powers of Man, in the April issue of the Universal Journal of Literature for
this year (1786). You will find it used with precisely my meaning there.20
And you will find the same everywhere these things are philosophized
about. I repeat: language has no other word.*7
He: Did you say in the Universal Journal of Literature?
[27] //Read there, on p. 182: "He (Reid) distinguishes Conception. . . .
from Perception, which is perhaps best rendered as Empfindung, for accord-
ing to his definition it is the representation of a thing bound up with the
belief in its outer object."21
He: It makes me laugh to see how you can come up with an authoritative
statement at once from the very journal that has levelled the most severe
reproaches against you for the use of this very word.
I: I have excerpted the most striking of these reproaches and collected
them together. They are here in my copy of Hume. Should we read out
the page together then?
He: Gladly.
[28] /: Universal Journal of Literature, #36 and #i25: 2 2 "We do not believe
that we have a body and that there are other bodies and other intelligent
beings outside us. Rather, we have a sensation of our self; we sense our
body and that of others outside us, and we infer the presence of intelli-
gent beings outside us. Logic and common sense have drawn a distinc-
tion between faith and sensation from time immemorial. To neglect
it now means to bring unnecessary confusion to one of the primary
concepts of the theory of reason. Also to call what others call "sensation,"
or "sense-conviction," "faith" is an arbitrary distortion of the common
use of words; it is playing with words in order to give the impression that
*7. Mendelssohn makes use of it too. Cf. Morgenstunden, ist ed., p. 106.7
one has said something new. But kenodoxia* is even worse than
paradoxia.^ One should say familiar things with familiar words, and not
recoin the accepted currency on one's own authority. [29] One should
not raise pointless if not blinding dust,23 and cause misunderstanding by
arousing the suspicion that one is surreptitiously trying to reduce every-
thing to faith in the positive dogmas of religion."—Anything important
that I might have left out?
He: Nothing important. But I miss the insistence of the repetitions, even
though their stress is fairly compensated, so it seems to me, by the tight
sequence of judgments. I am curious to know how your reasons will be
received when you come out with them.
/: My reasons! I have something better, and not so easily countered or
so simply ignored as reasonings. I have an Authority.*^1 [30] The bitter re-
proaches that I have just read out must all be unloaded onto the shoul-
ders of my good David Hume here. I leave it to him to cope with logic
and understanding, and to find his way back to the first rules of the use
of reason. And I leave it to him to repel the charges of kenodoxia, of play-
ing with words, of being a wind-bag, of raising blinding or pointless dust,
but most of all the suspicion that his intention is to reduce unnoticed all
things to faith in the positive dogmas of religion. For there is not one of these
issues that does not touch him directly, since he not only made use of
the word "faith" in the same [31] sense as I did, but also deliberately in-
sisted on it in order to confirm that it is the proper word for what is
meant; the only one that can appropriately be so used.*9
*8. Descartes, wishing to dedicate his Writing on Man [de homine] to the
Sorbonne, wrote to Father Mersenne: "I must [ 150] at all costs try to support my-
self on authority, for truth has little value by itself." That the Sorbonne did not
have in Descartes's own eyes any authority, need not be mentioned. Here are his
own words: "I confess to you that I was led by the quibblings of some [Fr.
Bourdin] to resolve from now on to arm myself with the authority of others as
much as I can, for, with all the great, to do truth alone is left in the cold." Ep.,
p. ii. Ep. 43.8
*g. I have been particularly reproached for making what is said to be an ut-
terly unheard of claim, namely that with respect to our own body too we can only
have faith in its being. This charge is astonishing in the extreme, for the same
claim can be found in Descartes and in a multitude of other philosophers after
* i.e. vacuous opinions.
t i.e. erroneous opinions.
[32] He: Well, your secret is out. Just make a clean breast of it.
[33] /: Without much coaxing, after already betraying so much.
First, by way of preparation, consider this passage here in the sec-
tion on the Academic or Sceptic Philosophy:*10
[34] It seems evident, that men are carried, by a natural instinct or preposses-
sion, to repose faith in their senses: and that, without any reasoning, or even
him. In his Dilucid. Phil, §243, Bilfinger says: "I know that people laugh if some-
one requires them to prove that this body is their body. And they would be right to
laugh if the questioner were to be put in doubt too. For an idea of that type is so com-
mon and clear to every man that nobody can be deceived about it. But it belongs
to the philosopher to know distinctly what others know clearly, i.e. to be able to enu-
merate the criteria by which men recognize their body. Whence do you know that
this body is your body? Nobody would want the philosopher to reply with [32] the
children: I just know it!"9 Then, in §§247 and 248, he proves—irrefutably, it
seems to me—that we cannot doubt the actual existence of the things that ap-
pear to us outside our body without doubting the existence of our own body as
well. The learned and commendable editor of the Jena Literary Journal,* the Herr
Prof. [C. G.] Schiitz [1747-1832], begins his Metaphysics10 (Lemgo, 1776) with
these words (§§22 and 23): "The human soul is certain of its being in that it is
certain of its representations. No-one has ever doubted their own existence. A
doubt can however arise as to whether what we call 'body' exists outside the soul.
This is not the place to enquire into this doubt, & c. . . ." There is a highly re-
markable passage about this question (which I am sorry not to be able to insert
here in toto) in Buffon's Natural History (Vol. n, pp. 432ff; first edition in quarto).
I have torn the following lines [33] out of the middle (p. 434): "Yet we can BE-
LIEVE that there is something outside us without being certain of it, whereas we
are assured of the real existence of everything that is in us. So the existence of
our soul is certain; that of our body appears however doubtful the moment we come
to think that matter may well be but a mode of our soul, one of its way of seeing."
There, even Buffon only believes that he has a body.' *
*io. Since I am not satisfied with the current translation of Hume, and one
might doubt the exactness of mine, I shall add throughout the English text. I am
using the London edition of 1770, in small octavo of the Enquiry concerning
Human Understanding. Sect, xn.t 12
* Jenaer Litteraturzeitung
t I am entering Hume's original English in the body of Jacobi's text, and shall only ad-
vert to Jacobi's German translation when it exhibits some peculiarity.
before the use of reason, we always [35] suppose an external universe, which
depends not on our perception,* but would exist, though we and every sensible
creature were absent or annihilated. Even the animal creation are governed by
a like opinion, and preserve this belief of external objects, in all their thoughts,
designs, and actions. . . . This very table, which we see white, and which we feel
hard, is believed to exist, independent of our perception,^ and to be something
external to our mind, which perceives it.
Now, let's turn to the passages of real importance. You remember

Hume's famous doubt about the reliability of the inferences that we nor-
mally draw from a necessary combination of cause and effect.24
[36] He: If I remember correctly, his reasoning is in brief this. Sense ap-
pearances reveal nothing to us about the internal powers of things.
When Adam cast his eyes for the first time on a transparent lake, he
could not know that he would suffocate if he were to throw himself into
it; nor could he know that one body would have the power to nourish
him, whereas another would not. Nor would we ever dare to decide on
the basis of singular perceptions, whenever we see one appearance fol-
low upon another for the first time, that the first is a cause and the sec-
ond an effect of it. This link is only established in the imagination in
virtue of the repeated appearance of the same succession. And how of-
ten does it happen that the link is suddenly broken by a startling new dis-
covery after having held for hundreds of years? This is proof enough that
what we perceive in the succession is only the order and not the connecting
bond. Even with respect to the [37] movements of our own body we only
know by experience which of them result from a certain determination
of our will and which do not. I can rise from my chair whenever I want
to, but I do not fall asleep, or feel hunger and thirst, at will. In both cases
equally, however, the true medius terminus* of the success or failure is un-
known to us. And to return now to the point at issue, this middle term
is missing here just as much everywhere else [in appearances].
The bond that connects appearances, their very holding together, since it
is never shown in intuition, can even less be found by means of inferences
of reason. For propositions that are universal in a merely relative sense
only express an indeterminate sum of preceding singular perceptions,
and those that are universal absolutely express only relations of con-
cepts, i.e. the element of identity in them. In this latter case the eternal
* Wahrnehmen
t Empfindung
I middle term
medius terminus is indeed the incontrovertible proposition idem est idem.*

[38] But thefacit^ of a direct and simple esse* can never be derived from
that.
/.- Exactly! Listen now.
. . . . Nothing is freer than the imagination of man; and though it cannot exceed
the original stock of ideas, furnished by the internal and external sense, it has
unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating and dividing these ideas,
to all the varieties of fiction and vision. § It can feign a train of events, with all the
[39] appearances of actuality, ascribe to them a particular time and place, con-
ceive them as existent, and paint them out to itself with every circumstance, that
belongs to any historical fact, in which it believes with the greatest certainty.
Wherein, therefore, consists the difference between such a fiction and belief?"
It lies not merely in any particular idea, which is annexed to such a conception
as commands our assent, and which is wanting to every known fiction. For as the
mind* has authority [40] over all its ideas, it could voluntarily annex this partic-
ular representation with any fiction and consequently be able to believe whatever
it pleases, contrary to what we find by daily experience. We can in our conception
join the head of a man to the body of a horse; but it is not in our power to believe
that such an animal has ever really existed.
It follows, therefore, that all the difference between fiction and belief lies in
some [41 ] sentiment or feeling, which is annexed to the latter, not to the former,
and which depends not on our will, nor can be commanded at pleasure. It must
be excited by nature, like all other sentiments; and must arise from the particular
situation, in which the mind is placed at any particular juncture. Whenever any
object is presented to the memory or the senses, it immediately, by the force of
custom, carries the imagination to [42] conceive that object that is usually con-
joined to it; and this conception is attended with a feeling or sentiment, different
from the loose reveries of the fancy. In this consists the whole nature of belief.
For as there is no matter of fact that we believe so firmly, that we cannot conceive
the contrary, there would be no difference between the conception assented to,
and that which is rejected, were it not for some sentiment, which [43] distin-
guishes the one from the other. If I see a billiard-ball moving towards another,
* the same is the same

t Facit ("it does") is the third person singular of the present indicative offacere, "to do"
or "to make." Factum (or "fact" in English) is also a form offacere (the past participle, i.e.
"what has been done or made").
I to be
§ Jacobi has Wahn, "illusion."
ii Jacobi has the word Glaube, which in German means "faith," with all the religious con-
notations that the English word carries.
# Jacobi has Seek, "soul."
on a smooth table, I can easily conceive it to stop upon contact. This conception
implies no contradiction; but still it feels very differently from that conception,
by which I represent to myself the impulse, and the communication of motion
from one ball to another.
Were we to attempt a definition of this sentiment, we should, perhaps, find it
a very difficult, if not an impossible task; [44] in the same manner as if we should
endeavour to define the feeling of cold or passion of anger, to a creature who
never had an experience of these sentiments. B E L I E F is the true and proper
name of this feeling; and no one is ever at a loss to know the meaning of that
term; because every man is every moment conscious of the sentiment repre-
sented by it. It may not, however, be improper to attempt a description of this sen-
timent; in hopes we may, by that means, arrive at some analogies, which may
afford a more [45] perfect explication of it. I say, then, that belief is nothing but
a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the
imagination alone is ever able to attain. This variety of terms, which may seem
so unphilosophical, is intended only to express that act of the mind, which ren-
ders realities, or what is taken as such, more present to us than fictions, causes
them to weigh more in the thought, and gives them a [46] superior influence
on the passions and imagination. Provided we agree about the thing, it is need-
less to dispute about the terms. The imagination has the command over all its
ideas, and can join and mix and vary them, in all the ways possible. It may con-
ceive fictitious objects with all the circumstances of place and time. It may set
them, in a manner, before our eyes, in their true colours, just as they might have
existed. But as it is impossible that this faculty of imagination can [47] ever, of
itself, reach belief, it is evident, that belief consists not in the peculiar nature or
order of ideas, but in the manner of their conception,* and in their feeling to the
mind. I confess, that it is impossible perfectly to explain this feeling or manner
of conception. We may make use of words, which express something near it. But
its true and proper name, as we observed before, is belief; which is a term, that
every one sufficiently understands in common life. And in philosophy we can
[48] go no farther than assert that belief is something felt by the mind, which dis-
tinguishes the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination. It gives
them more weight and influence; makes them appear of greater importance, re-
inforces them in the mind; and renders them the governing principles of our actions. 11
Now, what do you say to this lecture?

He: What everybody would have to say. Not [49] only is your same use
of the word "faith" to be found there for everyone to see, but also your
*n. Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Sect, v [Part ii].
* Jacobi has Wahrnehmung, "perception."

thesis that faith is the element of all cognition and action. It appears in-
deed that Hume includes even more than you do under that thesis, and
extends its application further.
/: True. I will give you the book later on, to take home and read the
whole section carefully, and the two following ones, at leisure. That word
of despair, "faith," occurs again and again; and you will find that without
faith, we cannot cross the threshold, sit at table, or go to bed.
He: Now, what's still missing is the ability to justify the use of the word
"revelation" in the perception of things outside us, by appeal to Hume
or some other famous man of equal authority.
[50] /: But is there need of a special example or testimony for something
that the general use of language warrants? We ordinarily say in German
that objects reveal themselves to us through the senses; and the same
form of expression is to be found in French, English, Latin, and several
other languages as well. We cannot expect to find it in Hume with the
special emphasis that I have put on it, among other reasons because he
leaves it everywhere undecided whether we actually perceive things out-
side us or merely perceive them as outside us. Thus, he says in the passage
that I have just read to you: ". . . the real, or what is taken for such." And
in keeping with his whole mode of thinking he must be more inclined
in speculative philosophy toward sceptical idealism than toward realism.
The committed realist, on the other hand, unquestionably accepts exter-
nal things on the testimony of the senses.* In keeping with this certainty
he declines any other conviction; [51] his only thought is that all con-
cepts, even those that we call a priori, must have derived from this fun-
damental experience. What name, I ask, should such a committed realist
give to the means through which he partakes of the certainty of external
objects qua things existing independently of his representation of them?
He has nothing to support his judgment except the fact itself—nothing
but that the things actually stand in front of him. Can he express himself
in this regard with a more apt word than "revelation"? Isn't it here,
rather, that the root of the word, the source of its use, is to be sought?
He: It seems so, indeed.
/: It follows automatically that this revelation deserves to be called a true
miracle. For the moment that the reasons behind the claim that the con-
* In the 1815 edition, the following lines read: "He takes this certainty as an original
conviction, and can only conclude that all employment of the understanding must find the
ground for our cognition of the external world in this fundamental experience. What
name, I ask, should. . . ."
tent of our consciousness cannot be anything but the mere [52] deter-
minations of our own self have been duly explicated, idealism appears
in its full strength as alone compatible with speculative reason. And if a
realist remains a realist despite this, and holds on to his faith that (say)
this thing here which we call the table is not a mere sensation, a being
that is to be found only in us, but is rather a being external to us, one
that is independent of our representation, and only perceived by us—if
this is so, then I can press him hard for a more suitable descriptive word
for the revelation of which he boasts when he asserts that something out-
side him is being presented to his consciousness. For we have absolutely
no proof*12 of the existence of any such thing outside us except its ex-
istence itself, and that we can become aware of it must be for us simply
inconceivable. Yet, as we have said, we claim [53] to be aware of it all the
same; and we do this with the full conviction that there actually are
things outside us—that our representations and concepts conform to
them just as we have them before us, and not, contrariwise, that the
things which we only suppose to be before us conform to our represen-
tations and concepts.—I ask: what is this conviction founded on? On
nothing in fact, unless it is founded precisely on a revelation to which we
cannot give any other name than that of "true miracle."
He: But at least, not one which is immediate. Right?
I: It is immediate so far as we are concerned, since we have no cognition
of its proper intermediary. But for this reason, either to deny that it does
none the less occur through some natural intermediary or, like the ideal-
ists, to reject the fact itself because it is contrary to reason—neither way
accords with the spirit of true [54] philosophy in my view. Too often we
link inferences derived from very remote and incomplete experiences to
others that are of a most intimate nature, and thoughtlessly build on in-
ferences of this kind. Leibniz was right, to be sure, when he said: Men seek
what they already know, and know not what they seek. *13
He: I agree with you completely. And now a passage of Hume occurs to
me in which he too speaks of revelation in connection with sense repre-
sentations. Don't you remember it at all?
/: You must be referring to a passage in that same section from which I
*12. * Critique of Pure Reason, [A] 368.

*ig. Nouv. Essais, p. 138.13
* The footnote is omitted in the 1815 edition.

274 77^ Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
first read to you. It does not really concern the point we are now discuss-
ing. Here it is. See for yourself.
[55] He: Right.
. . . . To have recourse* to the veracity of the Supreme Being in order to prove

the veracity of our senses is surely making a very unexpected circuit. If his veracity
were at all concerned in this matter, our senses would be entirely infallible, be-
cause it is not possible that he can ever deceive. Not to mention that, if the ex-
ternal world be once called in question, we shall be at a loss to find arguments
by which we may prove the existence of that Being or of any of his attributes.*14
The passage is certainly not relevant in the way I thought. But it is rel-
evant in another, for it calls attention to the enormous difficulty in this
whole issue of determining the extent to which rational beings are jus-
tified in believing the testimony of [56] our senses or not. That they of-
ten deceive us is quite obvious, and if one considers how often they do
it, one can easily forgive the suspicion that our whole world of the senses,
and our understanding which totally refers to it, are nothing but an op-
tical illusion. Bonnet is still the one whom I find the most satisfactory in
this regard, with his list of limitations in Part x v of his Analytical Essay.25
/: What Bonnet says there is really very well considered. But even more
thoroughly considered, and more profound, although still not sufficient,
is the passage that you must remember in the Sophyk of my friend
Hemsterhuis. *6
According to the Sophyk, our representations of objects are the result
of the connections that obtain between us and the objects [on the one hand] and
all that separates us from them [on the other]. [57] For instance, light, our
eyes, and the nerve pathway stand between us and the visible objects.
Let's take now (say) the number 4 as object; the number 3 as the sum
total of all that stands between us and the object; and the number 12 as
the representation of the object. Now, 12 would indeed not equal 4 ( 1 2
not = 4). But if the number 4 were not 4, 4 multiplied by 3 would not
be 12. The representation that = 1 2 , therefore, is neither the pure rep-
resentation of the number 4 which stands for the object; nor of the num-
ber 3 which stands for the sum total of all that is to be found between
it and me; nor, again, of the operation of bringing [the two] together
*i4- Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Sect, xn [Part i].

* In the 1815 edition Jacob! glosses here: "(like Descartes)."
and taking [them] as such. It is rather the representation of 12.

Consider a ball for instance. The external object together with all that
stands between it and me (the total impression and its reception in me)
yield the representation that I [58] call "ball." Consider now a column.
The external object together with all that stands between it and me yield
the representation that I call "column." However, since what stands be-
tween me and the ball is the same as what stands between me and the
column, I must conclude that the distinction I perceive between the ball
and the column is one to be found in the objects themselves.—You re-
alize how rich in consequences this remark must be.
Following this line, Hemsterhuis shows that there must be a true anal-
ogy between things and our representations of them, and that given
within the relationships of our representations are the exact relation-
ships of the things themselves. Experience confirms this too—for other-
wise an artistic invention, of which the realization must be sought in
accordance with a mere ideal, would hardly ever succeed in fitting into
reality.
He: This way of presenting things is in fact very attractive. Tell me. Does
not Hemsterhuis [59] also claim that our conviction about the actual ex-
istence (or the existence in itself)* of things outside us is an immediate
one?
/: Well, he at least tries to originate it from the understanding, though
only in passing.
He: I know that Bonnet does try—and he even produces the "I""*"
through an operation of the understanding, with the help of the
imagination.
/: Oh well, everyone travels that route—Who doesn't? But if the realist
enters it, he falls inevitably into the idealist's trap.
He: Just help me get out of the trap that I feel I have fallen into at this
moment. I thought that I had understood, why our [60] conviction that
the objects of our representation exist on their own can only be an imme-
diate one. But now it seems to me to rest on an inference once more. I
produce one part of my representations arbitrarily;—and these I can
join together as I please. Here I have the sense of being active. But there
is a multitude of other representations that I do not produce at will, and
I cannot join them up just as I like. And there I feel passive. The com-
* "(or the existence in itself)" is omitted in the 1815 edition.

t Instead of "produces the I," the 1815 edition has "lets the I arise." See Bonnet, Essai
analytique, ch. xv, §244; ch. ix, §113; ch. xxiv, §§704-13.
parison of these two [types of] representations, those that have arbitrary
origin and connection and those that do not, leads me to the conclusion
that the second type must have a cause outside me, and hence to my con-
cept of, and conviction about, objects that are actually present outside
me, independently of my representations.
/: But is that how it happens in fact? So, here is this table, there that
chess-board with its pieces in place, and your humble servant [61] speak-
ing to you. Do we become things in themselves* for you, from representations,
only through an inference? Is it only in retrospect, through a concept
that you add to us, that we manage to be+ something external to you,
and not as mere determinations of your own self?—Why not?*
Representation, as mere representation, can and must indeed come ahead!
It is everywhere the first. Actuality, or being, is added as predicate only
later. Since our soul is a power of representation, it must start by produc-
ing a representation just as representation. Things first proceed from
the Orphic ovum of intelligibility (i.e. from the principium contradictionis)
without the dispensable circumstance of reality. Possibility is. . . , 27
He: Look here, you are losing your patience.
I: True. I have difficulty keeping calm when I come to this point. [62]
It is as if I saw people walking on their heads while they shout at the top
of their voices: "Hop! Hop!" And, "Hop away from the heretic who,
scornful of the head, remains standing on his feet!"
He: You know that on this score I think like you, and that I find it highly
absurd to have matter arise from form—to add the real to the ideal, the
actual to the possible, the thing to its concept, as a merely surplus deter-
mination. But is it just as absurd to think that we derive our conviction
about the actual existence of the objects outside us because their repre-
sentations are given to us without any doings of ours; and because we
could never be capable of shutting them out while our senses are in a
waking state; in short, because we feel passive in regard to them?
/: Our consciousness arises also without any contribution of ours. We are
incapable of shutting it out too; [63] and we feel no less passive with
respect to it than we feel in respect of the representations that we call
* Instead of "things in themselves" the 1815 edition has "actual objects."

t Instead of "manage to be" the 1815 edition reads: "it comes about that you regard us
as."
t From here until "But is it just as absurd to think that we derive" on p. 62 is omitted
in the 1815 edition, where the text resumes with "He: Certainly not. But isn't it equally true
that we derive. . . ."
"representations of external things." So where does the distinguishing

characteristic of the passive state in the two cases lie?*15
He: I see the light!—The object contributes just as much to the percep-
tion of the consciousness as the consciousness does to the [64] percep-
tion of the object. I experience that I am, and that there is something
outside me, in one and the same indivisible moment; and at that mo-
ment my soul is no more passive with respect to the object than it is to-
wards itself. There is no representation, no inference, that mediates this
twofold revelation. There is nothing in the soul that enters between the
perception of the actuality outside it and the actuality in it. There are no
representations yet; they make their appearance only later on in reflec-
tion, as shadows of the things that were formerly present. And, we can
always refer them back to the real from which they were taken, and
which they presuppose; indeed, we must refer them back to it every time
we want to know whether they are true.
/.•You've got it! But strain your whole attention once more, I pray you,
and collect your being at the point of a simple perception, so that you
might become once and for all aware (and be unshakingly convinced,
[65] for your whole life) that the /and the Thou, the internal conscious-
ness and the external object, must be present both at once in the soul
even in the most primordial and simple of perceptions—the two in one
flash, in the same indivisible instant, without before or after, without any
operation of the understanding—indeed, without the remotest begin-
ning of the generation of the concept of cause and effect in the
understanding.
He: Yes, my friend; I have grasped this now, and in such a way that I shall
*15. * "Life is the principle of perception."^ "The representation internally of

what is external, in simple form of what is composite, in unified form of what is
manifold, effectively constitutes perception." "SENSATION is perception that involves
something distinct and is associated with attention and memory." Leibniz, Opp.
n, Part i, pp. 227, 232.
Representations of external things without any sensation or consciousness are
not impossible according to Leibniz's doctrine. It is however impossible, also ac-
cording to his teaching, to have sensation and consciousness without representa-
tion of external things.
* This footnote is omitted in the 1815 edition. Jacobi cites in Latin.

t principium perceptivum
never again have any doubt about it. It's just as if I had awakened in the
middle of the day from a deep dream.
But now you must help me if you can, to wake from yet another dream.
I can quite well see that we do not experience anything in our simple
perception of external things that could lead us to the concept of cause
and effect. So [66] how do we get to this concept? A lot has already been
written on this subject, and a lot more is still being written on it now.
Mendelssohn, in his Matutine Hours,28 bases the concept of cause and ef-
fect on the perception of the constant and immediate following of some-
thing upon something else, i.e. on experience and induction. When it
is properly analyzed, this amounts to the mere expectation of similar in-
stances; and this expectation is just a customary association in the imag-
ination. And so Hume would win the point.
My question is: Are we forced to concede this victory? An invincible
feeling has so far prevented me from surrendering, even though in all
the connections between what precedes and what follows I perceive
nothing more in the world except the constancy of the sequence. Help
me out of this awkward mess, unless you are in the same boat yourself.
[67] /: No, I am not, but I was once. And I will tell you truthfully how
I got out of it.
If I go back a bit further than you might think necessary, take comfort
in the fact that our attention does need a bit of a rest, and that it will
make for a better progress on our part, even a speedier one, if we do not
begrudge it.—* But let me first take a look into the hall, to see whether
anybody is around. For I won't be able to give an account of myself with-
out talking about myself, and you know how easily modest people take
violent offense and, rather than rushing forward with one millstone, they
bring ten instead, because none is too insignificant.^
He: I don't like to hear you joke this way, for it proves that you don't [68]
after all ignore wretched claptrap, and I would rather see you risk any-
thing but the pluck that has made you always so open, so carefree.
/: Fear not! But your warning is a good one, and I won't forget it. Listen
now to my faithful account, and let anyone listen who cares to.
It has been a fact about me, for as long as I remember, that I could
not make do with a concept unless its object, whether external or inter-
nal, were not made graphically present to me through sensation or
through feeling. For me objective truth and actuality were one, just like
* From here until "It has been a fact about me" on p. 68 is omitted in the 1815 edition.
clear representation of the actual and cognition. I was blind to, obsti-
nately set against, any demonstration that could not be verified in this
way, proposition by proposition, or any definition that could not be in-
tuitively checked against its object, i.e. that was not established geneti-
cally. Thus, as long as [69] the mathematical point, the mathematical
line and surface, were defined for me ahead o/"body," and not, rather,
after it, and in reverse order (i.e. the surface as the extremity of the body,
its end or limit; the line, as the extremity of the surface; and the point,
as the extremity of the line), for so long, I took them to be mere fancies
of the mind, or, as Voltaire says "comme de mauvaises plaisanteries."* Nor
did I understand the essence of circle before I grasped how it arises from
the movement of a line, one end of which is at rest and the other in
movement.*16
He: And what about the nature of the body itself?
/: Leave that for later. For the moment I am only telling my story.
This philosophical idiosyncrasy of mine quickly became the cause of
all sorts of unpleasant [70] encounters for me. I was continually being
accused of stupidity, and quite often of being frivolous, or obstinate and
antagonistic. But neither invectives nor the worst rudeness could heal
me of my affliction. They only succeeded in giving me a very bad opinion
of my mental abilities (which was all the more depressing for me because
it was conjoined with the most ardent desire for philosophical insights).
My destiny took a turn for the better when I moved to Geneva. My
mathematics teacher, the venerable old Durand,30 advised me to study
algebra with Le Sage,31 and introduced me to him.
Le Sage soon took me over, and I cleaved to him with the deepest rev-
erence and with affectionate trust.
One morning, when I dared after the lesson hour to ask advice from
that admirable man for some scientific purpose, he enquired in more
detail about [71] the way I apportioned my lessons, and the use of my
time in general. He was surprised to hear that I was taking no instruction
in philosophy, but was only pursuing it by myself. I assured him that I was
of such a slow and dull mind that I could not keep up even with the clear-
est teacher; that I would lose track of the context, and hence waste my
*i6. + Cf. Simson's Euclid, note to the first Definition,' 4 and Spinoza. Op.
posth.,l$ p. 387, p. 589.
* like bad jokes
t Jacobi's footnote added in the 1815 edition.tion
time.—" Vous etes malinl"* said Le Sage laughing. I turned red like a beet,
and stammered a string of protestations to the effect that I had spoken
in earnest. I assured him that I was by nature the most untalented man
ever born, and that only through obstinate diligence had I somewhat
overcome my own dullness. I was generous with illustrations and exam-
ples to bolster the truth of my claim, and to make it completely obvious
that I was wholly lacking in the right dispositions, sharpness of mind,
imagination, everything. Le Sage put various questions to me which I an-
swered with the candour of a child. [72] Thereupon he clasped my hand
in both his, and pressed it with a motion that I still feel.
During the evening of the same day, I heard someone coming up my
winding stairs to the fourth floor, and with a soft rap at my door there
came the words, "Est il permis?"^ in a familiar voice. I jumped up, and
there stood Le Sage in front of me.
He: My heart beats faster at the thought of how you must have felt. It was
only in the olden days that phenomena of that sort happened just like
that; they belong to the time of the patriarchs and of innocence, when
the heavenly beings still visited the abodes of mortals.
/: Imagine a youth, fiery yet equally weak-hearted, shy and diffident
about himself, but full of enthusiasm for the higher values of the
spirit. . . .
[73] That evening a new chapter of my life began. Le Sage showed me
with various examples that the questions I had believed to be simply be-
yond my power of comprehension were for the most part either empty
words or errors. He exhorted me to pursue my way in good cheer, and
if need be to take courage from his words alone, if I couldn't get it from
anywhere else. I expressed the wish to have a private course of instruc-
tion with him on S'Gravesande's Introductio ad Philosophiam,^2 with no
more than two or three other students. He promised to see to it imme-
diately (and in fact he did so). Through my kind patron I soon estab-
lished some very advantageous connections, and in the meantime I was
being guided and watched over by him as if I were his natural son—this
in a way that at the time went unnoticed by me, because with his gracious
familiarity he knew how to hide paternal care behind the expressions
and exchanges of an almost brotherly intimacy.
And so passed for me two of the happiest, [74] and certainly most
fruitful years of my life.
* You're being coy!

t May I come in?
I had enrolled in the medical faculty, and I had made overtures to my

father to be sent to Glasgow, when suddenly my prospects were clouded
over, and the designs of my patron and friend were brought to naught.
My return to Germany coincided exactly with the announcement by
the Berlin Academy of "Evidence in the Metaphysical Science" as the
theme [for its essay competition].33 No question could have attracted
my attention more. I awaited the publication of the essays anxiously. The
moment finally arrived, and it turned out to be astounding for me on
two counts.
The piece that got the prize did not fulfil the expectations that the
name of the author, at the time already a well known philosopher, had
aroused in me.34 And my surprise was all the greater because in the sec-
ond essay, which had only received honourable mention, I found adum-
brations [75] and disclosures that could not have suited my needs
better.35 This essay helped me develop in full the ideas in which the
cause of my much rebuked obduracy lay hidden, the whole secret of my
idiosyncrasy.
As for the winning essay, what particularly struck me was to see how ex-
tensively the proof of God's existence from its idea was elaborated in it,
and with what assurance its validity was asserted. The state of mind that
I fell into when I read this section was most peculiar.
He: How so? Was it because you still were little acquainted with this proof
and its execution?
/: Oh, I knew them both. But since the proof had struck me as equally
subreptitious in all its forms, and myjudgment had only been reinforced
at every re-examination, [76] this belated disturbance in my state of ac-
quiescence came to me as a total surprise.
He: So, the proof did carry more weight with you this time.
/: Not so. I only felt the necessity of studying it exhaustively now, in order
to be able to expose its mistake, and render the force that it had for
others intelligible to me as well.
He: I don't quite understand you.
/: You will soon. Whenever I run across claims that to me appear un-
grounded and mistaken, but which are made by someone of intellectual
stature, and in a way that itself proves that the question has been given
mature consideration—i.e. that it has been gone over repeatedly and
from different points of view—my policy has always been this: [77] I
know that my opposing opinion is based on just as mature a reflection
as mine; but that does not allow me to conclude that, since truths cannot
contradict one another and I have shown my view to be true, therefore
the assertion that contradicts it must be simply an error. No, something

quite different is needed to set my mind at rest. It comes down to
this: that I must make out how the opposing claim is, not absurd, but ra-
tional. I have to discover the ground of the mistake, to see how it could
happen to a serious mind, and be able to get inside the mind of the
thinker who made the error, to make it along with him, and so have a
sympathy for his conviction. Until I have managed this, I cannot per-
suade myself that I have truly comprehended the man with whom I am
in conflict. I prefer to throw doubt upon myself, as is only fair; to assume
stupidity on my own part, and presume greater understanding and the
support of a quantity [78] of reasons on the other. I have never diverged
from this practice, and I hope to abide by it to the end of my life.—So
I think that you will easily understand the state of mind I found myself
in as I read the critical passages of Mendelssohn's essay.
He: Absolutely. There you saw, still standing, the ancient proof that
Descartes had refurbished one hundred years earlier, that Leibniz had
accepted after a more serious testing, and on which first rate thinkers
still rely with full confidence. You might well have begun to falter at the
prospect of acting by your principles in a situation like that.
I: Oh, I took the bull by the horns straight away. I began (as I usually do)
by tirelessly retracing its historical threads. And it is at this time that I be-
came more closely acquainted with the writings of Spinoza. I had read
in [79] Leibniz that Spinozism is exaggerated Cartesianism.^ Spinoza's
Principles of Cartesian Philosophy was known to me, and I remembered
from the Metaphysical Thoughts appended to it what a totally different ap-
plication the proof of God's existence from the concept receives there
from its application in Descartes. I did not possess the Op. Posth., but for-
tunately I found the Ethics at a friend's house among the writings of
Wolff, in a translation that had been prefaced to Wolffs refutation of
it.37 It's here that the Cartesian proof shone forth for me in its full
light,* and all that I was looking for I found all at once. My joy was only
disturbed by the consideration that instead of coming to meet man,
truth appears to flee from him, and often leaves the sharpest of minds
the farthest behind. For what can be clearer and more distinct, what
more obvious, than the truth of the following propositions?
Being is not a property, but [80] what carries all properties. These
* From here up to "Once I was clear about the Cartesian proof on p. 83 is omitted in
the 1815 edition.
properties are (/being; they only are with respect to it; they are its mod-
ifications, its expressions.
Hence, since all things can only be thought as compositions* of one
fundamental reality, or Absolute Being, it is an absurdity to posit their
possibility first, and to speak of this possibility as if it were something ab-
solute that could subsist on its own, or at least be thought so to subsist;
it is an absurdity of the first order to want to derive reality from these
compositions, instead of deriving them from it.
The concept of God is put together from the representations of com-
positions. If it is to be established that there is a God, it must be estab-
lished that these compositions are to be found in being. And if the concept
of God is formed in the manner of Spinoza (in such a way that the high-
est Being is nothing but Reality itself, and his works nothing but the com-
positions of this [81] Reality), then the Cartesian demonstration of
God's existence is right enough: the concept of God is at the same time
the unshakable proof of his necessary existence. But if the concept of
God is construed from Deistic representations, i.e. if God is not only the
highest Being, but a Being external to all beings, then neither can the in-
trinsic truth of his concept be made out from the concept itself, nor can
the connection of this concept with the necessary Being ever be realized,
even if one were to reverse the true order of things provisionally, and let
matter arise from form, reality (or the subject) from its predicates, the
thing itself from its compositions.
He: I find all of this uncommonly clear. Your remark, however, that in-
stead to coming to meet man, truth seems to flee from him, is not cor-
rect in my view. In my opinion truth not only comes out to meet man,
but [82] forces itself on him. But if he distrusts its lesson and turns away
from it, then there is no voice that can force him to listen to it. But nei-
ther does truth fall silent or abandon its post. If, in his digression away
from truth, he still looks for it, then his wandering becomes circular, i.e.
at the end he finds himself back at the place where he abandoned it. But
if in this movement away from it he never looks for it, then he loses it
forever.—In other words, it takes man a great deal of harsh effort and
work to come to the point where he no longer trusts his senses, or the
natural combination of their representations in the understanding, and
the common inferences naturally drawn from them by reason. Once he
has burrowed his way into the darkness below the surface above where
there was light, everything depends on the direction he happens to have
* bBeschaffenheiten
taken. If this is at an angle, then even the last glimmer of light soon dis-
appears from him. He will go on for all eternity digging himself under
the surface in thousands of circles. But if his direction is perpendicular,
[83] and his forces do not abandon him, he will eventually hit the nu-
cleus. He will learn how to understand the external from the internal,
the appearance from the essential.—I speak what I have a premonition
of, not what I have experienced myself.
/: How much I love you because of this premonition, which is so entirely
like mine, as you shall soon hear.
Let us press on.
Once I was clear about the Cartesian proof, I collected my reflections
on the subject in a small essay that must still be found among my man-
uscripts. I showed it to a very discerning man who had studied metaphys-
ics zealously with Wolff and Meier,38 and was therefore a competent
judge. Imagine now my vexation. Neither my essay nor all the explana-
tions that I added orally could shake him from his faith in the Cartesian
proof. And I had the same experience [84] with another learned man,
a student of Daries,39 philosophically very sensitive, who lived in a neigh-
bouring city. The failure of both these attempts lay heavily upon my
mind, and I mentally plotted ways to make my point clearer still. This was
the moment when the i8th Part of the Letters on Literature,^0 which con-
tains the judgment on Kant's The Only Possible Ground of Proof for a
Demonstration of God's Existence,41 came to my attention. The condescending
tone in which this writing of Kant was there spoken of did not recom-
mend it much, but that did not prevent me from becoming fully ab-
sorbed in it. The propositions, and the passages extracted, said
enough.*17 My desire to possess Kant's essay itself [85] was so intense
that, just [86] to be sure, I sent for it to two different places at once.
*i7. * Letters Concerning the Most Recent Literature, Part xviii, pp. 6gff.16
"Existence is not a predicate or determination of a thing, but is rather the ab-
solute positing of the [85] thing. It is distinguished from every other predicate
by the fact that the latter, as predicate, is always posited in relation to some other
thing.—Existence cannot therefore be considered as a relation to a thing. It is
rather the thing itself; it is the subject to which all the properties designated
through the name of the thing refer.—Hence one ought not to say, "God is an
existing thing"; but conversely, "A certain existing thing is God"; or again,"All
* This footnote of Jacobi's is omitted in the 1815 edition, probably because it was no
longer topical.
Nor did I regret my impatience. Even the first consideration, "On

Existence in General," betrayed to me the same man to whom I was so
much indebted for his essay On Evidence,42 [87] the one that had re-
ceived honourable mention. As I read on, myjoy grew to the point where
my heart began to palpitate violently. And before reaching my goal, at
the end of the third Consideration, I had to pause several times in order
to compose myself again in attention.
He: You remind me of Malebranche, who experienced similar palpita-
tions as he stumbled on Descartes's Essay on Man. In this regard
Fontenelle remarks aptly, "Invisible and useless truth is unaccustomed to
find such loyalty and warmth among men, and often the most common
objects of their passions must content themselves with less."*18
[88] /.-You do me too much honour altogether with that comparison.
There was in this case too much of a personal interest at stake. I could
relate other instances which would perhaps redound more to my own
the properties comprehended under the name of 'God' accrue to Him."

[pp. 71-73].
"Inner possibility always presupposes existence. If there is no material for
thought, no datum, there cannot be any inner possibility for thought either. If all
existence were removed, nothing would be posited absolutely, and nothing
would therefore be given either. There would be no material at hand for an ob-
ject of thought, and hence all inner possibility would be removed.—Inner pos-
sibility [86] must therefore presuppose some existence, and an intrinsically
possible thing has, quoad materiam* its real ground in the existence of the very
thing." [p. 78f.].
"Since everything possible presupposes something actual through which the
material for the objects of thought is given, there must be a certain actuality, of
which the removal would also remove all inner possibility. But that, whose re-
moval eradicates all possibility, is absolutely necessary. Something absolutely nec-
essary therefore exists." [p. 8af]
"Whatever holds the ultimate ground of an inner possibility, must hold it for
all possibilities in general. So this ground cannot be distributed among different
substances." [p. 83]
*i8. "L'invisible et inutile verite n'est pas accoutume a trouver tant de sen-
sibilite parmi les hommes, et les objets les plus ordinaires de leurs passions se
tiendroient heureux d'y en trouver autant." Oeuvres de Fontenelle, vol. v, p. 430.1?
* with respect to matter
honour.* My joy was too much mixed with personal interest. I could
however recount an instance to you, somewhat more to my credit, in
which I found myself in a similar situation as regards a book, the content
of which made a ridiculous contrast with my interests. It was a Doctrine
ofReasonl The rational teaching of Reimarus.
He: So your reaction was solely due to the book?
/: So far as it could derive from that alone. I must surely have had some-
thing to do with it too. I had read and studied the best doctrines of rea-
son, and even put one together myself. [89] None, however, not even
the one produced by me, agreed in the course of its development, in the
determination of one concept through another, with my individual way
of sensing and thinking, as did Reimarus's.*19
* 19. In the past year I have been exhorted a couple of times by modest schol-
ars to be reminded, in my presumptuousness, of the first principle of logic.
(Concerning modesty and presumptuousness, cf. Anti-Goze, iv, p. 14). l8 I shall
reciprocate this humanitarian act with one of my own, by interpolating here a few
paragraphs from the Introduction to the doctrine of reason of the excellent
Reimarus. Inculcating it by repetition cannot but be very useful.
"#21. Since experience teaches that we do not have so clear and distinct a rep-
resentation of each and everything as is required for insight into their identity
or contradiction, it follows that our reason has limitations. Everything, of which
we have the clarity and distinctness [of representation] required for comparison,
falls within the limits of reason, and has a place before its judgment seat. But
where we do not have the clarity and distinctness necessary to comparison, the
matter lies outside the limits of our reason. We lack a proper concept of it, and
are incapable of passing judgment on it.
"#25. Whereas the right use of reason depends on the limitations of the re-
quired clarity and distinctness, its misuse consists in the application of the rules
of identity and contradiction to cases that go beyond the limits of the required
clarity and distinctness.
"We therefore misuse reason whenever, without the sufficient clarity and dis-
tinctness [of representation], we maintain something as necessary with respect
to the first rule; as impossible, with respect to the second; as [91] possible, with
respect to the third; as certain, with respect to the fourth; and as probable, with
respect to the fifth. But just as the right use of reason leads to reason, so is its mis-
use the source of all error.
* From here up to "From what I said to you earlier" on p. 92 is omitted in the 1815
edition.
[go] He: You mean, you saw yourself in a mirror that improved on
you. . . .
[91] 7 : . . . . or made me realize that the figure [92] I was looking at was
my own in a mirror? Just trust your own judgment, if you can, and listen
now my reply to your question regarding cause and effect.
From what I said to you earlier about my method of philosophizing
(when I only wanted to make it vivid for you), you can easily conclude
that none could be worse for making speedy progress. I needed weeks
where others only need hours; months, where they require days; and
years, where they need months. This slow progression has the advantage,
however, that whatever small advance [93] one makes is a real one, and
one does not suffer the disappointment of discovering oneself lost just
when one is ready to leave off, and of going astray another ten or twenty
times when one retraces one's steps. But, on the other hand, there is a
disadvantage too. For it is torture to the point of desperation to halt at
every difficult place until decisive signs of the right way are uncovered.
I came to one such spot when, on the basis of the possibility of devel-
oping a [193] clear representation out of a confused one, I was asked to
grasp the possibility of the coming to be in time of an actual thing. I was
supposed to derive the principium GENERATIONS s out of the principium
COMPOSITIONS. If I grasped the principle of sufficient reason
correctly—so my books said—I ought to be in a position to see the ne-
cessity of the combination in time of cause and effect clearly, or the
source of real procession.
"#26. But nobody can knowingly think something without the rules of reason
or against them. Yet, since all errors arise from the fact that we think of some-
thing without, or against, the rules of reason, all error must arise from the igno-
rance on our part of our lack of clarity and distinctness required to insight, i.e.
from ignorance of our limitations of reason.
"This ignorance of the limitations of our reason is partly brought about by the
very limitations of reason, for it is not through any malice of ours, so to speak,
that more is required for insight. But it is in part also induced [92] on the un-
derstanding through haste, by the strong likes and dislikes of the will. For when
we are too eager to learn, or are prejudiced in favour of the truth or falsity of
something, we are not inclined to enquire whether we have the required knowl-
edge for it. "J. A. H. Reimarus, Vernunftkhre [The Doctrine of Reason] (3rd ed.;
Hamburg, 1766), pp. 15, 20-21.
The principle of ground43 is easy [94] to explain and demonstrate. It

says nothing more than the totum parte prius esse necesse est* of Aristotle44
which, in turn, says no more in the present context than idem est idem.
Three lines enclosing a space are the ground, the principium essendi (or
compositions), of the three angles of a triangle. But the triangle does not
exist before the three angles; on the contrary, they are both present at
once, in the same indivisible moment. And this is how it is wherever we
see a combination of ground and result. We are only conscious of a man-
ifold within a representation. But since this occurs in succession, and
takes a certain time, [94] we confuse the coming to be of the concept
with the coming to be of the thing itself, and we then come to believe
that we can explain the actual succession of things just as we can explain
the ideal succession of the determinations of our concepts, through the
necessity of their combination [95] in one representation.—I don't
know whether I have made myself clear enough.
He: I believe that I understand you.
/; But you must not believe. Be sober of head and mistrustful of friends.45
I'll try to be clearer still.
Imagine a circle, and then raise your representation to a clear con-
cept. If the concept is determined exactly, and does not contain any-
thing non-essential, the whole which is being represented will then have
an ideal unity, and, since the parts are combined together with necessity,
they will derive from it. But now, if we are speaking of the necessary com-
bination of a succession, and believe that we are thus representing what
does the combining itself in time, we never truly have anything in thought
except just the kind of relationship that obtains in the circle. [96] And
within this relationship all the parts are in effect already united into a
whole, and they are present at once. We omit the succession, the objective
becoming—as if it were self-explanatory how it occurs visibly before our
eyes. But in fact, it is precisely this, namely the medium of the occur-
rence, the ground of the event, the interior element of time, in brief, the
principium GENERATIONS, that should really have been explained.—
Are you sure, now, that you understand me?
He: I will let you decide about that for yourself, by repeating your prin-
cipal claims.
From the concept of a space enclosed by three lines there follows the
concept of three angles to be found in it. In the concept, i.e. subjectively,
the triangle truly precedes the three angles temporally too. But in na-
* The whole is necessarily prior to its parts.

ture, or objectively, the triangle and the three angles are simultaneous.
And the same goes for cause and effect in the [97] concept of reason. They
are everywhere simultaneous, and the one is in the other. This concept
of reason is taken from the relation of predicate to subject, or of parts
to a whole. It contains nothing at all of a producing, or coming to be,
which is objective, or outside the concept.
I: Very good.—But will this not force us to assume that everything is si-
multaneous in nature, and that what we call succession is only an
appearance?
He: You have already proposed this paradoxical thesis in your first Letter
to Mendelssohn. *20 But it seems to me that it can neither [98] be a thesis
of Spinoza, nor be seriously meant by you.
/: This utter paradox does not belong to Spinoza, and as for me, I only
assert it as a consequence. I have been defending it against many a phi-
losopher for the past fifteen years or more; and none of them have been
able in the end to show me wrong. But Mendelssohn was the first to con-
cede it as harmless.
He: If I am not mistaken, he only faulted you for having written "illusion"
rather than "appearance."
/: That's right.*21 But, I still [99] don't understand why an appearance
that contains nothing objective, and yet parades itself as something
objective, why an empty appearance of this sort should not be called an
"illusion." The objective construction of it would indeed, qua objective,
be a typical delusion, not an appearance.
He: And I don't understand how the objective appearance of sequence
can be supposed to be only a subjective way of intuiting the manifold in
*2O. "Fundamentally, what we call consequence or duration are mere illu-

sion ; for since a real effect is contemporaneous* with the totality of its real cause, and
is distinguished from it only in representation, consequence and duration must
in truth only be a certain way [98] of intuiting the manifold in the infinite." p. 17
[of the first edition].
*21. In the Memoranda: "What you say about 'consequence' and 'duration' in
this connection has my full [99] assent, except that I would not say that they are
mere 'illusion'. They are necessary determinations of restricted thought, and
hence 'appearances' that can nonetheless be distinguished from mere 'illusion'"
[p. 84 of the second edition].
* zugleich
2 go The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
the infinite. If you now cut the apple that you have just peeled, we'll get
to see the seeds. And if you plant one of them in the earth next spring,
then after a few months [100] a stalk will shoot up from it. Well, what
I should like to know is how this sequence of appearances in the actual
world can be conceived as a way of intuiting the manifold in the infinite.
Surely the objective sequence that I perceive in things is something quite
other than the succession of the acts of perception in me. And quite apart
from this obvious difference, what makes succession in thought one whit more
intelligible than succession in other appearances'? If the objects were all simul-
taneous, that is, if they stood before the thinking being in unalterable
[199] relations all at once, then they would also constitute only owe un-
alterable representation in him.
/:You are meeting me half-way. [101] What cannot be conceived, there-
fore, is succession itself; far from explaining it to us, the principle of suffi-
cient reason could tempt us to deny the reality of all succession. For if
nothing else is obtained with the principium GENERATIONS than with
the principium COMPOSITIONS, then every effect must be thought of as
being objectively simultaneous with its cause. And if the effect is a cause
in its turn, then its immediate consequence must again be simultaneous
with it, and so on ad infinitum. So we simply cannot attain to a concept
that would explain the appearance of sequence, of time, or of flux on
these lines. For to want to shove in some hybrid of being and nothing
between cause A and effect B would be tantamount (in my view) to
making the absurd into the vehicle of the understanding.
He: You are adding to my confusion, rather than helping me out of it.
For if the concept [102] of cause and effect and the representation of
succession are two entirely different things, then the concept can no
more be developed from the representation than the representation can
be explained from the concept. But then I see the concept of cause and
effect totally vanish in front of me, as the principium fiendi, or generationis,
and there is no option left to me except to wonder how these words
could ever have entered the language.
/: Well, they certainly would never have entered the language of beings
who were only capable of intuition and judgment. But is that the sort of
beings that we are? Surely, my dear fellow, we can also actl
Whenever we start looking for the original meanings of words, we
quite often find a light that illumines concepts that have become very ob-
scure. The non-speculative man was talking long before the philoso-
phers [103] began their discussion, and before some philosophers
gradually managed to turn the use of language up side down. These phi-
losophers wanted things to conform to words, just as the words previ-

ously had to conform to things. But in this present case we have an even
shorter way to the answer. We can track the original constitution of the
concept itself without pursuing the history of the words, for we have
clear and unequivocal information about it. We know for instance, that
ancient peoples, or the uncivilized tribes of today, did not, or do not now
have, such concepts of cause and effect as those that arose among more
cultured peoples before or since. They see living beings everywhere, and
they know of no power that is not self-determining. For them every cause
is a living, self-manifesting, freely acting, personal power of this kind;
and every effect is an act. And without the living experience of such a
power in us, a power of which we are continuously conscious, which we
use in so many arbitrary ways, and which we can even let go of, without
diminishing it—[104] without this basic experience we should not have
the slightest idea of cause and effect.
He: But I take it that you have not forgotten what Hume says about this
basic experience.46
I: I have not forgotten that any more than I have forgotten the proofs
in my letters to Mendelssohn and Hemsterhuis47 which establish that
the faculty of thought is always a spectator, and cannot ever be a source
of external actions.
He: Yes but what you say in your letters, and what Hume says, are not one
and the same thing. Let's stick to Hume.
I: Well then, what does Hume say?
[105] He: The main point is this: We know only from experience,
hence only after the act, that one movement of our limbs or another fol-
lows after one representation or another, or that the two are bound to-
gether. It does not occur to us to speed up the motion of our heart—or
slow it down—by an action of our will, or to alter the colour of our face,
any more than it occurs to us to change the direction of the wind, or to
give a mountain a different shape by such an action. We are not even in
a position to attempt to apply what we call our will-power, for we do not
even know where to look for this power, or where to take it once we have
tracked it down. Let anyone who wants to dance the way that a Vestris48
can just try it. And even where the will has the act in control, we still do
not know how it got that control; [106] and if we try to trace our way
back to the act, moment by moment, we run into the deepest obscurities.
For nobody will say that, through his will, he moves his hand or foot (let
us say) immediately. The will must have first set the muscles and nerves in
motion together with a multitude of solid or liquid parts; and this at least
it did without knowing what it was doing.—After we have considered this

sort of thing, (and we could quite easily multiply or enlarge the list) how
can we still claim to be conscious of a power that brings acts forth, and
derive the cognition of a cause from it?* 22
/: Hume has no brief against you. It really is the very marrow of his ob-
jections that came out of your mouth, in a few words. But these objec-
tions are hardly even an oblique attack upon my assertions. As you know,
Hume himself grants in [107] the same essay that we only derive the rep-
resentation of power from the feeling of our own power, and specifically,
from the feeling of its use in overcoming an obstacle.*2^ He concedes,
therefore, that we have the feeling of a power, and that we perceive the
results of its application. But he does not take this to be a complete ex-
perience of cause and effect, since we have no sensation of HOW the
power brings about this result. His doubts are* after the manner of the
idealists, and are closely connected with these. In the same manner I can
of course doubt that it is I who (in virtue of what appears to me to be
a power in me) stretch out my hand, move my foot, follow the thread of
our present dialogue and control it from my side, since I have no possi-
ble insight either into the nature of what I take to be the cause of what
happens, or into its connection with the result. [108] I can doubt this
just as much as I can doubt that I perceive anything outside me. If it's in
you to be disturbed by such doubts, then there is nothing that I can say
to you. But I think that your faith triumphs over them just as easily as
mine.
You noted earlier that Spinoza's doctrine on this point is really quite
different from Hume's scepticism, and you were perfectly correct about
that. For although the representations only accompany actions according
to Spinoza, still the two implicate one another; they are inseparably
joined together in one and the same indivisible being and conscious-
ness. Certainly, the will is not prior to the action and is not its efficient
cause. But neither is the action prior to the will, and it is not its efficient
cause. On the contrary, the same individual wills and acts simultane-
ously, in the same indivisible moment. He wills and acts in accordance
with the constitution of his particular nature, and in conformity with the
*22. Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Set. vm.

*2g. Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, the same Sect., p. 99, note c.
* The 1815 edition reads: "in the spirit of the universal or twin idealism (Universal- oder
Zwillings-Idealismus) that he was the first to introduce."
requirements and relations of this nature. [109] And he displays all of

this for his viewing in his consciousness, with more or less obscurity, or
clarity. However much the individual may be determined from the out-
side, he can still be determined only as the result of the laws of his own
nature, and to this extent he determines himself. He must be something
absolutely on its own, for otherwise he could never be something for an-
other, and receive this or that accidental determination. He must be
able to be effective on his own, since otherwise no effect could occur or
be sustained through him—nor, for that matter, could it even make its
appearance in him. This last point is acknowledged in all systems
equally, the idealistic ones excepted.*
He: You have acquitted yourself with valour, and I must sue for peace. It's
striking how our consciousness exhibits moments of activity and passivity,
of action and reaction, that clearly involve one another. And these moments
presuppose a principle which is real, determined within [no] itself, and
independently active. Hence the concept of cause and effect does cer-
tainly rest on a fact whose validity cannot be denied if one does not want
to fall into the void of idealism.—All the same, this does not establish
that the concept of causality pertains absolutely to the concept of the
possibility of things in general. When you derive it from experience you
must, of course, forgo its absolute universality or necessity.
I: It depends on what you understand by the absolute necessity of a con-
cept. Suppose that the object of a concept is given in all singular things
as an absolutely universal predicate, in such a way that the representa-
tion of this predicate is common to all finite beings endowed with rea-
son, and must lie at the base of every experience of theirs, [in] If this
is enough for you to call the concept necessary, then I believe that I can
establish for you that the concept of cause and effect is a necessary one,
a principle; and that the law of causal connection is a fundamental law
governing the whole field of nature.
He: If you could do that. . . .
I: Let me try it out on you.
You know (for we have agreed on this) that for our human conscious-
ness (and let me add right away: for the consciousness of each and every
finite being) it is necessary that besides the thing that does the sensing,
there is also a real thing which is sensed. We must distinguish ourselves from
something. Hence, two actual things outside one another, or "duality."
* The last sentence is omitted in the 1815 edition.

2 94 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
Wherever two created beings (the one outside the other) stand in
such a relation to one another that the one has an effect in the other,
there we have an extended being.
[112] Thus along with the consciousness of man, and of each and
every finite nature, there is posited an extended being—not just ideally,
but in actuality.
It follows that wherever there are things outside one another that have
an effect on one another, there must also be an extended being in ac-
tuality. It follows therefore that the representation of an extended being
must be common to all finite sensible natures and is an objectively true
representation.
Will you grant me these four theses?
He: In full, and with no little joy.
/: Let us go on from there then.
We feel that the manifold of our being is joined together in a pure
unity which we call our "I."
[113] The [element of] indivisibility in a being is what determines its
individuality, i.e. it makes the being into an actual whole. Now, those
beings whose manifold we see to be joined together inseparably in a
unity, and which we can distinguish solely according to this unity
(whether we now accept that the principle of their unity has conscious-
ness or not)—these beings we call individuals. The organic natures all
belong to this category.—We cannot take apart or divide a tree or plant
as such; that is, we cannot take their organic being apart, the principle of their
particular manifold or unity.
Human art cannot produce individuals, or any real whole, for it can only
put things together, and hence the whole arises from the parts instead of the
parts arising from the whole. Moreover, the unity that it does produce is
only an ideal one. It does not lie in the thing produced, but outside it,
in the intention and [114] the concept of the artist. The soul of a thing
of this sort is an alien soul.*24
*24- "Everything that we call an organ is a totality that we have either modi-
fied, or brought together from parts, in order that it answer to a determinate pur-
pose, a proposed end, which is not this totality but its use or effect. A file is made
for filing; a pendulum for keeping track of the hours; a poem for pleasing or in-
structing. Thus every work of men, of a limited being, is a means for producing
a determinate effect—not a substance. In the mechanism of animals and plants
man has caught a glimpse of means for bringing about the generation and
growth of individuals. He believes he has detected a certain analogy between
these means and the works of his own industry, and thus has called these means
In corporeal extension we generally perceive something analogous to

individuality, for extended being cannot ever be divided as such but
everywhere exhibits the same kind of unity that inseparably joins to-
gether a multiplicity within itself.
If, besides the immanent activity by which each preserves itself in
[117] being, the individuals also have the faculty for external action,
then, in order for an effect to follow, they must come into contact (ei-
ther immediate or mediate) with other beings.
An absolutely penetrable being is a non-entity.
A relatively penetrable being cannot, in so far as it is penetrable by
some other being, either touch this being or be touched by it.
The immediate consequence of impenetrability at contact we call
"resistance."
So wherever there is contact there is mutual impenetrability; and
hence there is resistance also—action and reaction.
'organs'—as is indeed fair to do, in some sense. Yet there remains this notable
difference, namely that the work of man is a thing only with respect to a certain
determinate effect, whereas the work of nature is a thing for its own sake—for
the sake of its being independently of the effects. [115] When through abstrac-
tion you remove from the clock the faculty of measuring time, the clock ceases
to be a whole but [becomes] a confused heap of heterogeneous parts, whereas
a tree is always tree, however much you abstract from the effects that it might pro-
duce externally. Nature produces substances for the sake of their being; man,
only means to modify effects." [Hemsterhuis] Aristee ou de la divinite, p. 56. '9
Leibniz says exactly the same thing in various places. I insert the following pas-
sages, principally in order to introduce what will be said on the subject later on
in the Dialogue.
"The unity of a clock that you mention is according to me totally other than
the unity of an animal. The latter can be a substance endowed of true unity, such
as we call the T in us, whereas a clock is nothing but an assemblage." Leibniz,
Opp., Vol. 11, Parti, p. 68.
[116] "By means of the soul or the form, there is a true unity corresponding to
what we call the T in us. This is not the case either in the mechanical products
of art, or in the simple mass of matter, however articulated [organizee] the latter
might be. We cannot consider these except as an army or a herd, or as a clock
made up of springs and wheels." Ibid., Vol. n, Part i.
"A true substance, such as an animal, is composed of an immaterial soul, and
of an organic body; and it is the composite of these two that we call unum perse."
Ibid., Vol. 11, Part i, p. 215.
Resistance in space, action and reaction, is the source of succession and

of time (which is the representation of succession).
[118] Hence wherever there are individual and self-revelatory* beings as-
sociated together, there must also be (infallibly) the concepts of exten-
sion, cause and effect, and succession. So the concepts of these objects
must be present as necessary concepts, in all finite beings endowed with
thought. And this is what I had to prove.—If you are not satisfied with
my deduction, tell me why.
He: Oh, I have nothing to say against it. For where several individual
things are bound together, action and reaction must be there, and so to
succession of determinations, for otherwise there wouldn't be several in-
dividual things but only a single one. And conversely, if there only were
just one thing, there wouldn't be any action and reaction, or any succes-
sion of determinations.
7: Right. So it would seem that we have shown the concepts of [i 19] re-
ality, substance or individuality, corporeal extension, succession, and
cause and effect, to be concepts that must be common to all finite, self-
revelatory, beings; and we have shown also that these concepts have their
concept-independent object in the things in themselves—consequently
they have a true, objective, meaning.
Concepts of this kind however—the kind that must be given in toto in
every experience and with such a degree of primacy that, unless they were ob-
jective, no concept could have an object, and, without them as concepts,
no cognition would be possible at all—these concepts have always in the
past been called universal and necessary in an absolute sense; and the
judgments and inferences derived from them have been called cognitions
a priori.
So we don't need to make these fundamental concepts and judgments into
mere pre-judgments of the [ 120] understanding, whereby they become independ-
ent of experience. For in that case they would be prejudices from which we
have to be cured by coming to recognize that they do not refer to any-
thing that pertains to the objects in themselves—or, in other words, they
have no truly objective meaning. We don't need to do this, I say, because
these fundamental concepts and judgments lose none of their universal-
ity (or of their necessity) by being derived from what must be the com-
mon foundation of all experiences. On the contrary, if they can be
derived from the essence and the association of individual things in gen-
eral, then they gain a far higher degree of unconditional universality. As
* sich selbst offenbare

mere prejudices of the human understanding, they would be valid only for
men and for the sensibility that is proper to humans; so they would be
valid only under conditions which would, in my judgment, deprive them
of all value.*25
He: I agree with you wholeheartedly about this. Suppose [121] that our
senses taught us nothing of the properties of things—none of their mu-
tual relations and connections, and not even the fact that they actually
exist outside us. Suppose further, that our understanding only relates to
a sensibility of this sort—one that exhibits nothing of the things themselves
and, objectively speaking, is absolutely empty—only to provide entirely
subjective intuitions, according to totally subjective forms, according to
totally subjective rules. Suppose all this, and then tell me what kind of
life this sensibility and this understanding would afford me. What
would it be, at bottom, but the life of an oyster? I am all there is, and out-
side me there is, strictly speaking, nothing. Yet the "I," this all that I am,
is in the end also nothing but the empty illusion of something. It is the form
of a form, just as much of a ghost as the other appearances that I call
things, a ghost like the whole of nature, its order and its laws.—And
[122] this is the system that is to be exalted with the loud voice of choirs
arrayed in full strength, as if it were the long awaited salvation of the
world! A system that strikes at the very root of any claim to the knowl-
edge of the truth, and leaves us only a blind faith in the most important
objects—a faith quite devoid of cognition, the like of which never has
been asked of man till now? The glory of laying all doubts to rest in this
way, is like the glory of death that puts an end to all the misery in our
lives.
*25- * It was the Ethics of Spinoza that supplied me with this deduction (or
rather with the seminal ideas for it) (see {216} Op. Posth., pp. 74-81).20 I am set-
ting it forth here in opposition to Kant's deduction of the categories that derives
the same concepts and judgments from a pure, ready-made, understanding. This
understanding simply applies to nature the mechanics of a thought grounded al-
ready in the understanding alone. It just plays a conceptual game that in no way
satisfies the understanding of the common man, but exposes it to ridicule instead
(as we can see in Hume). Compare Schulze's Principles of General Logic, with the
review of Schulze's work in The Gottingen Erudite Notices, #142 (i8o2); 2 1 also the
essay On the Attempt by Criticism to Reduce Reason to Understanding in Reinhold's
Contributions, fascicule in. 2 2
* Footnote added in 1815

/: Now, don't get so excited! The system you are decrying would hardly
have any disciples if it were taught in the way you understand it.
He: Can you say that I have not understood it right? I owe my under-
standing of it for the most part to you.
[123] /: Good. But just because you have understood transcendental
idealism right, as I believe you have, you should now look on calmly as
it works itself out, and rejoice with good cheer at all the good that the
critique of pure reason must of necessity bring about.
He: The critique of something that does not exist?
/: Things that do not exist are the ones that need criticism the most.* For
language would have no word for something that simply is not Each word
* From here up to "Remember the passages in Leibniz" on p. 125, the 1815 edition
reads:
What I mean is that it's impossible for a totally unfounded thought to arise in a human
soul, and language would not even have a word for it. Every word refers to a concept; and
every concept refers originally to a (219) perception obtained through the inner or the
outer sense. The pure concepts, or as Hamann called them somewhere, these virginal
children of speculation, are not exempted from this law. They must have a father some-
where, just as they have a mother, and they have come into existence in a natural way, just
like the concepts of individual things and their names which were proper names before they
became common nouns.
He: Are you saying that you could actually exhibit pure reason for me—I mean, in man?
I: Whyever not, since you are a human being? Just follow my instructions. Empty your
mind of all material content. Nothing should remain in it that comes from experience
alone, or that pertains to it alone. Give all that back to sensibility, all of it together. Cut your-
self off entirely from it, so as to make ready for the moment of trial. {220}
He: Let's dare it!—And now what?
/: How can you ask?—If you have truly eradicated all material content from your con-
sciousness it is impossible that at that very moment a self-contained power, one that brings
forth effects from itself alone—or in other words pure reason itself—does not reveal itself to
you irresistibly.
He: Indeed it would. But shouldn't it be possible to prove that this pure reason is neces-
sarily present everywhere, provided only that spontaneity is accompanied by conscious-
ness? Only, in the creatures we call "animals" it dwells under some other body and acquires
different tendencies, applications, and forms, according to the different properties of
these bodies and of the means of support that they need—quite different tendencies and
forms in my setter here, for instance, than in your loaches there.
/: I can grant you that much, without {221} any cost to me.
Here the following footnote is entered in the 1815 edition:
(221) From here on, until the end of the Dialogue, the error of not distinguishing be-
tween reason and understanding mentioned in the Preface becomes more and more dis-
refers to a concept; every concept to perception, i.e. to actual things and

their relations. The purest concepts, or as Hamann said somewhere, the
children virginally begotten by speculation, are not excepted.49 They must
be admitted to have a father, just as they have a mother, and to have
come into existence in a way just as natural as the concepts of individual
things and their nomina propria.
[ 124] He: So you are in a position actually to display for me the pure rea-
son that we have. I would like for once to have it right before me.
/: And why not, since you are a rational being yourself? Just empty out
your consciousness of all facts, of anything actually objective. You'll then
cernible. In agreement with philosophers new and old since Aristotle, the author had ac-
cepted that reason and understanding are in truth just the simple faculty of reflection
under two different names, i.e. the spontaneous power of representation as manifested in
the fashioning of concepts (and concepts of concepts, judgments and inferences). As long
as this was the case, there remained for him no word for the faculty of immediate
certainty—i.e. for that faculty of revelation that he now calls reason—except "sense." Like the
words reason and understanding, sensation and feeling, the word"sense"carries an ambigu-
ity that can never quite be dispelled in use. Not for a moment did the author worry, how-
ever, that when he expressed himself in this way anyone would accuse him of making every
cognition of one piece equivalent with every other, and of originating the life of spirit en-
tirely from the senses too, like the philosophers of the Lockean school. The agreement of
his fundamental insights with those of such a decided (and universally acknowledged) anti-
sensualist as Leibniz, which is strikingly evident in this second part of the Dialogue, ought
to have averted the danger of any such interpretation (as in fact it did). For his own part,
however, the author was not satisfied, for in the last analysis Leibniz still played the same
game as Locke. The intention of both was to reduce reason to understanding, Locke by
sensualizing (in Kant's apt expression) [Critique of Pure Reason, A 271 /B 327] the concepts
of the understanding; Leibniz, by intellectualizing sensations. Hence the author's own doc-
trine remained undisplayed in the Dialogue. Deep in his soul, the system of his convictions
was already exactly the same (222) then as it is today, but it still had to be brought to the
perfection of a philosophy that is communicable to others as well. And being shocked by
the loud outcry raised in the schools against what he had said in his work concerning the
doctrine of Spinoza, he was more inclined to turn in on himself than to expose himself fur-
ther. Hence the unsatisfactory outcome of the dialogue which is only interrupted rather
than concluded. In so far as the whole is concerned, I refer back to what I have said about
it in the Preface. Whoever reads this Preface with any attention at all, provided that he reads
it to the end, will have no trouble with any of the claims in the Dialogue itself, and will be
able to decide by himself, without hesitation, how much of it I still hold as true today and
to what extent; and how much (or how far) I now retract it as inadmissibly false.
Jacobi's reference is to the Preface of the 1815 edition that was also intended as an in-
troduction to the philosophical writings in the Werke (see Vol. 11, pp. 1-123, especially
pp. 11-17, and our translation in this volume, pp. 537ff.).
be left with just your pure reason, and you'll be able to question it with-
out witnesses about all its secrets.
He: But you can make that request of my dog as well. The animal is not
without conscious connections; hence, also not without the original fac-
ulty for them. And as for any difference in the application of this faculty
due to the mechanism of the dog's organs, since the issue here is pure
reason alone, there cannot [125] be any question about it. The same
pure reason would therefore dwell in my dog as in me.
/: That does not follow as simply as that. But I can grant it to you, without
losing anything thereby.*26
[125] Remember the passages in Leibniz that I cited in my [ 127] last let-
ter to Mendelssohn.50 Read Sulzers's analysis of the concept of reason.51
*26. * I would not like to be misunderstood on such an important issue as this

for even a moment, and for this reason I now anticipate a point that will be de-
veloped clearly enough in the rest of the Dialogue, namely that absolutely pure
reason presupposes an absolutely pure personality, such as belongs to God alone,
and not to any created being. A pure reason that is not absolutely pure, however,
is a fiction, or a mere abstraction. Degrees of approximation have no place here,
for the distinction is absolute. It implies opposition, just as does the distinction
between finite and infinite, composite and simple, creature and creator. Created
beings are all composite, mutually dependent on one another in their existence.
"It is otherwise with God," our [ 126] Leibniz says, "for since He is sufficient onto
Himself, He is the cause of matter and of everything else. He is not therefore the
soul of the world," like the "I" of the organic body, "but the author. For it is nat-
ural for creatures to have matter, nor could they be otherwise unless God furnishes a
gift of matter through a miracle. . . . Although God may therefore deprive substance
of secondary matter through His power, He cannot deprive it of primary matter,
for He would then make something entirely pure, such as He alone is." (Opp.,
Vol. ii, Part i, pp. 275 & 276) *3 See also ibid., p. 44.24
To some extent, this also agrees with Kant, who proceeds from the necessity of
a reference of thought to intuition. There is a striking similarity between his a
priori form of intuition and the materiaprimapassiva of Leibniz, as well as between
his a priori form of thought, or the spontaneity of the concept, and Leibniz's ma-
teria prima activa. Sensations themselves, or the actual appearances, are the ma-
teria secunda.—[127] With reference to this, Leibniz's Letters to Des Bosses are
especially to be read. (Opp., Tome n, Part i, pp. 265-323).
* This footnote is replaced by a different one in the 1815 edition; see above, editorial
footnote to p. 298.
Or even better, enter into yourself and search deep there—search

deeper and deeper—for what we call reason. You will find that you ei-
ther hold the principle of reason to be one with the principle of life, or
must make reason into a mere accident of a certain organized whole.52
As for me, I hold the principle of reason to be one with the principle of
life; I do not believe in any inner or absolute principle of irrationality. 27
*27- "Life is a principle of perception."25 "Perception is nothing but [223]

the internal representation of an external change. Hence, since the original en-
telechies are dispersed in matter (as can easily be shown from the fact that the
principles of motion are dispersed in it) it follows that the souls too are dispersed
everywhere in matter, functioning in the manner of organs; and further, that the
bodies of beasts also are endowed with organic souls."26 "Sensation is a perception
that includes something distinct and is conjoined to attention and memory. The
confused aggregate of many small perceptions lacking in anything outstanding
that would excite the attention induces stupor instead. This is not to say that the
soul or its power of sensation is of no use even if its exercise is at the moment
suspended, for the mass can in time evolve anew and be made suitable to percep-
tion. The stupor would then cease in the measure that more distinct perceptions
are born, as the body too becomes more perfect and ordered." (Leibniz, Opp.,
Vol. 11, Part i, pp. 227 and 232) "It has been held that confused thoughts differ
from distinct ones toto genere, whereas they are in fact only less distinct and less
developed because of their multiplicity. As a result, certain movements rightly
called involuntary have been attributed to bodies so completely that it has been
held that there is nothing in the souls corresponding to them and, conversely,
that certain abstract thoughts are not at all represented in the body. But one view
is just as mistaken as the other, as is usually the case with distinctions of this sort.
This happens because one only attends to what is most apparent." (Ibid., p. 87) 27
"Nature is everywhere organic and ordained to certain ends by a most wise au-
thor, and nothing in it ought to be deemed unpolished, although to our [224]
senses it appears at times to be only a brute mass. In this way, we avoid all the dif-
ficulties that the nature of a soul entirely separated from all matter would give
rise to: (a) a soul and an animal before birth or after death differ from a soul or
an animal living in the present life by their relation to things, and in their degree
of perfection, not generically according to their entire being. And the same ap-
plies to the guardian spirits. I think that they are minds endowed with a body es-
pecially penetrating and disposed to action, which they can perhaps change at
will, so that they do not even deserve the name of animal. Thus all the things in
nature are analogical; the subtle can easily be apprehended from the gross, for both are
We attribute a higher degree of reason to one man over [128] some

other [129] in the exact measure that he manifests [130] the power of
representation in a higher measure. [131] But this power manifests itself
only in reaction; and it corresponds exactly to the capacity to accept
more or less complete impressions from the objects; or again, man's
spontaneity is like his receptivity. I refer you here once more to Sulzer's
analysis of the concept of reason—especially with respect to this last
point.53
He: I know this treatise, and among other things I recall that Sulzer
makes the extent of reason depend on the degree of taste, and locates
its true ground in [132] the attention caused by the distinctness of rep-
resentations.54 But this distinctness of representations, which is a cause
of attention, must of necessity have the perfection of the impressions for
its cause. And this really means that reason, as the distinguishing charac-
teristic of man vis-a-vis animals, is only the characteristic of man's partic-
ular sensibility.
/: Sulzer makes this claim explicitly also.55 But where, since the time of
Aristotle, is the philosophy to be found whose principles do not yield this
same result? Where is there a philosophy that does not also expound it
constituted in the same fashion. God alone is substance truly separated from matter.
For He is pure act, endowed with none of the passive power which constitutes matter
wherever found. In truth, every created substance has an antitype by which it hap-
pens naturally that each is kept outside the other, and penetration is thus ex-
cluded." (Opp., Vol. n, Part i, p. 228) s 8 The (a) above refers to the following
note: "It can be objected with some truth against the immortality of the soul, in
the systems of Leibniz and Christian Wolff, that the soul is the substance representing
this world according to the position of its organic body in it. Remove the body which is the
image of the world being represented, and you remove the representation. But without the
representation there is no spirituality, no immortality. But who would not understand
that this objection can easily be removed by claiming, with Leibniz, that finite
spirits are never without bodies?" (Ibid.)2g "If I am correct, there would actually
be in the human semen (and in that of any animal) innumerable sensible souls,
but only those would have rationality, though still implicit, whose organic body is
ordained to become at some time human; and this could already be discerned by one who
was sufficiently perspicacious." (Ibid., p. 288).3° "Hence I declare that the souls
which are doubtless latent in seminal animalcules [225] from the beginning of
things are not rational as long as they are not ordained to human life through concep-
tion.'" (Ibid., p. 229). 3 '
in some form or other as a doctrine, and does not fashion its favourite
hypotheses in accordance with this doctrine? But then, more often than
not, we let this reason, that has sprung from the senses, wondrously
beget a miraculous youth, one who is supposedly equipped with his own
special talents and powers for raising us far above the sphere of our sen-
sations. I hope that I am not blaspheming against something which you
too worship!
[133] He: You can rest easy about that. You must have noticed that when-
ever I want to express what is most eminent about a man, I speak of his
sense.* One never has more understanding than one has sense.
I: The common use of language which, whenever philosophy tries to
make a laughing-stock of it, usually turns out to be the wiser one, teaches
us the same lesson, especially in our German tongue of which Leibniz
said, ignorat inepta.^ 56 We derive from Sinn ("sense") the most charac-
teristic forms of understanding as well as of the lack of it.57 Unsinn (or
"nonsense"), which is the extreme lack of understanding, is its opposite.
Then come Schwachsinn ("feeblemindedness" or "dullness of sense"),
Stumpfsinn ("insensitivity"), Leichtsinn ("frivolity"), and their opposites,
Scharfsinn ("sharpness of sense") and Tiefsinn ("profundity of sense").
He: You forget Wahnsinn, "madness" or "being out of one's senses," a
word, whose meaning strikes upon me quite forcefully at this moment.
[ 134] We say that a man is out of his senses when he takes his images
to be sensations or actual things. And thus we deny that he is rational,
because his representations, which he takes to be things, lack the thing,
or the sensible truth—because he regards something as actual which is not.
It follows that, with respect to all created beings, their rational cognition
would have to be tested, ultimately, against their sensible one; the for-
mer must borrow its validity from the latter.
I: It seems to me that whoever has doubts about this only needs to think
of his dreams. Whenever we dream, we are in some state of madness.
The principle of all cognition, of all feeling of truth, of every correct
combination, the perception of the actual, abandons us, and the moment it
forsakes us, or ceases to dominate, we can make things (i.e. the represen-
tations that we take as things, [135] as happens in dreams) rhyme in the
wildest fashion. For we can never make objective sense out of things ex-
cept according to the objective determinations of the order in which
* Sinn
t is innocent of anything unsuited
they appear to us, and the objective order in which they appear to us in
a dream is mainly the result of merely subjective determinations. But since
we normally consider what appears to us objectively as actual—or again,
we believe what we see and cannot do otherwise—we are bound to believe the
most absurd things in the dreaming state, because here actual being
does not exclude the co-presence of the merely represented. Reason sub-
mits itself everywhere to appearances; it goes along with illusion just as
it does with truth; with the soul it dreams, with the body it wakes.
He: But whence comes the certainty, when we are awake, that we are
not dreaming? How can being awake be reliably distinguished from
dreaming, and dreaming from being awake?
[136] /: Being awake is not distinguishable from dreaming, but dream-
ing is quite distinguishable from being awake.
He: What do you mean by this play on words?
/: You recall that for every distinction two things at least are required.
He: I begin to understand you. You mean to say: in the waking state
we have a clear representation of this state and of the dreaming state
too; in dream, on the contrary, we have. . . . No, that's not how it
goes.
/: You do not know what you are more likely to have in a dream, a rep-
resentation of being awake or one of dreaming. Right?
[137] He: That's it. When we dream we believe we are awake; so in
dreams we have a representation of being awake. And we often ask our-
selves in a dream whether we are not dreaming; so we have a represen-
tation of dreaming in the dream itself. But now, the representation of
being awake in the dream is a false one, and the representation of
dreaming in the dream itself certainly deserves no better name. Unravel
this for me, if you can.
/: That's an arduous task. Let us look for the beginning of the thread.
Do you still remember what you said only a hour ago that you could
never in your life forget?
He: By all means.
I: Do you really? What you believed that you would never [138] be able
to forget or doubt was this: the cognition of the actual outside us is given
directly through the presentation of the actual itself, without any other
means of cognition entering in between. Further: all of the mere represen-
tations of objects outside us are only copies of the immediately perceived
actual things, and they can be traced back to actual things as their
sources at any time. Wasn't this what you said that you had fully grasped?
He: And I say it again now.
/: Let's try again then. The representations of objects outside us are all
copies of the actual things immediately perceived by us,*28 or are com-
posed of parts [139] derived from them. In brief, they are beings that
merely imitate the actual things and cannot in any way exist without them.
Isn't that so?
He: Yes, it is.
/: But we are also agreed, I think, about something else. These imitations
can be distinguished from actual beings only by comparison with the ac-
tual itself.
He: Right.
/. Then there must be something in the perception of the actual which
is not in the mere representations, for otherwise the two could not be
distinguished. But the distinction concerns directly the actual, and noth-
ing else. Hence the actual itself, the objectivity, can never be made present in
the mere representation.
[140] He: How so? Representations are only copies of actual things; they
are put together only from their parts; yet we are not to suppose that
they can ever present the actual?
/.-1 am saying that representations can never make the actual present as
such. They only contain the properties of actual things, not the actual it-
self. The actual can no more be presented outside its actual perception
than consciousness can be presented outside consciousness, life outside life, or
truth outside truth. The perception of the actual and the feeling of truth,
consciousness and life, are one and the same thing. Sleep is the brother
of death, and the dream is only the shadow of life. Whoever has never
been awake, could never dream, and it is impossible that there should be orig-
inal dreams, or an original illusion. [141] This truth seems to me to be of
the greatest importance, and for this reason I entreated you so urgently
just now to hold firm to the ground of your knowledge of it, which is the
ground of the knowledge of certainty itself and the only source of it.
He: Honestly, it is only now that I feel what good cause you had for urg-
ing this on me so emphatically, and how difficult it is to awake com-
pletely from a long and deep dream. We bring the awakening itself into
the dream and we dream again; then we have to make even greater ef-
forts to return to our full senses.
*28. * I pray you not to forget what "immediate" means here. See above,
pp. 56-65.
* Note omitted in the 1815 edition.
/: So, my friend, in spite of what the philosophical devotees of magnet-

ism*29 may claim for their [142] manipulations, and for the divinatory
sleep induced by them, we prefer for our part to rub the sleep from our
eyes completely and to open them as wide as we can instead of restricting
them artificially; we prefer to improve on being awake rather than on
dreaming, and we will not let ourselves be deranged at any price. He who
ceases to perceive the things themselves because of his representations
and the representations of his representations begins to dream. The
combinations of these representations, the concepts that take shape
from them, then become ever more subjective and proportionately
poorer in objective content. It is indeed a great advantage of our nature
that we are capable of receiving from things the sort of impressions that
display their manifold distinctly; hence of conceiving the inner word, the
concept, for which we then create an outer being with a sound from our
mouth and breathe the fleeting soul into it.58 But these words begotten
of finite seed are not like the [143] words of He Who /s,59 and their life
is not like the life of the spirit that calls being forth from nothingness.
The moment we lose track of this infinite distinction, we remove
ourselves from the source of all truth; we forsake God, Nature, and
ourselves. And how easy it is to lose track of the distinction! For our
concepts, borrowed from nature as they are, are at first formed, ad-
vanced, combined, and ordered more or less according to the subjective
determinations of attention. Afterwards, from our heightened facility in
abstraction and in the replacement of things and their relations with ar-
bitrary signs there emanates such a dazzling clarity that the things them-
selves are obscured by it, and in the end they are no longer discerned.
Nothing can more closely resemble a dream than the state in which man
then finds himself. For even in dreams we are not altogether without the
sensation of the actual. But the more lively representations prevail over
these weaker impressions, and truth is swallowed up in illusion.
[ 144] He: I wish that this comparison could some day be developed by
a great mind as it deserves to be. One notable distinction between com-
mon and philosophical dream must not be forgotten however. Namely,
that from the common dream one does, at last, awaken by oneself—
whereas, with the philosophical dream, we only slide deeper and deeper
into it, until we finally rise to the perfection of a most wondrous
somnambulism.
*2Q. I leave medical magnetism alone, without deciding either for or against
it, since intelligent, learned, and honourable men assert that they have seen it,
whereas I have not.
/: Very good! Imagine a sleepwalker who has climbed up to the highest

point of a tower and is now dreaming, not that he stands on top of the
tower and is being sustained by it, but that the tower is suspended from
him, and the earth from the tower, and that he holds the whole thing
hanging. . . . Oh Leibniz, Leibniz!
[145] He: Why this sudden exclamation? Invocation it certainly cannot
be.
/: And why could it not be invocation? I don't know of any thinker more
awake and alert than our Leibniz.
He: Yet also none who dreamed so profoundly? If you deny this of the in-
ventor of the pre-established harmony and of the monads, I would truly
not know what to think of your panegyric on being awake.
/: The pre-established harmony rests on a ground which seems very solid
to me, and on which I build with Leibniz. The monads too, or the sub-
stantial forms together with the innate ideas, stand in no small respect in
my eyes. Why are you staring at me?
[146] He: I cannot believe that you are making fun of me. But surely you
cannot be serious when you speak of black and white as a single colour!
First you derive the property of reason from that of sensibility, and make
the perfection of the organized whole determine the possible perfection
of cognition; and now you deny with Leibniz any physical influence of
the body on the soul, and let the soul spin all of its representations out
of its self.
I: You would not be reproaching me with uttering contradictions if you
had studied Leibniz's philosophy in Leibniz himself. For this great man
does indeed teach explicitly, and without wearying of repetition, that all
created spirits are necessarily united to an organic body. I recall very
clearly one passage among others, in the Nouveaux Essais sur [147] I'en-
tendement humain, (p. 171) where it is said:
. . . . The senses give the material for reflection, and we could not even think our
own thought if we did not think something else, namely the particulars that the senses sup-
ply to us. And I am convinced that created souls and spirits can no more dispense
with sensible instruments and sensible representations than they can make use
of their understanding without availing themselves of arbitrary signs.60
The very same Leibniz even says in the Theodicy (§124),
. . . . How could a rational being think if there were no movement, no matter,

no senses? If this being only had distinct representations, (i.e. if it cognized every-
thing at once, immediately and completely) then it would be God; its insight
would have no limits. [. . .] As soon as an admixture of confused representations
is present, however, the senses are there too, and so is matter. [. . .] For this rea-
son there is no rational creature according to my [148] philosophy without some
sort of organic body, nor is there any created spirit separated from all matter.*
You will find the same claim repeated everywhere in Leibniz, since it ac-
cords most accurately with all of his principles.*30
[149] He: But this same Leibniz also says just as [150] explicitly that he
would be badly [151] misunderstood if one were to believe that he as-
signs to each and every soul a particular portion of matter, a certain
mass, which would belong to it as its own, and be intended for its service.
He says explicitly that even if there were no souls, the bodies would still
behave [152] as they do now, and conversely, that if there were no
bodies, the souls would still behave as they do at present, i.e. produce the
same representations and determinations of will.*31
*3O. Among the most striking passages are those cited in the third letter to
Mendelssohn from the Principles of Nature and Grace as founded on Reason, §§2, 4.
t I publish them here again, in German, together with a few others.*
"[. . . .] Just as an infinite multitude of angles can be constructed at a centre or point
with lines coming together therein, even though the centre or point is quite simple." §2
tP- 32].
". . . . Every simple substance or monad constituting the centre of a composite
substance (such as an animal) and the principle of its unity is surrounded by a
mass composed of infinitely many other monads that make up the body proper
to this centre-monad. The monad represents the things outside it in accordance with the
Affects of this body, [uniting them] as in [150] a kind of centre." §3.
[ . . . . ] " . . . . The human spermatic animalcules are not rational but only be-
come so when conception gives these animals the determination of human
, M C*/"* 32
nature, go-
In a Letter to Des Maizeaux ([8 July 1711] Opp., Vol. 11, Part 11, p. 66.) Leibniz
says: "I believe that the souls of men pre-existed, not as rational but merely as sen-
sitive souls that have attained their higher grade of reason only when the man
whom a soul is to quicken was conceived."
More passages will follow below.
*3i. Principles of Philosophy, §§74, 84.
* I am translating from Jacobi's German translation of the Latin, which is accurate ex-
cept for the omission of a few words (as indicated by the square brackets) and the gloss
added in round brackets.
t From here to the end, the footnote is dropped in the 1815 edition.
: For the texts from §§2 and 4, see the footnote to p. 159 of the Spinoza Letters.
/: You are joining two propositions that do not belong together. The
only point of the first one is to emphasize that every substance is both sense
and object to every other, and that there is no special matter for the
organs of intuition. Every single form is determined through the form
of the whole, and what we call "sense" is nothing but the mode of the re-
lationship of one substance to another in the great "All."*32 [153] Soul,
sense, and object; desire, pleasure, and the means of pleasure, are indi-
visibly united at every point of creation. For this reason, an entelechy
united to a body constitutes, also according to Leibniz, a unumperse, and
not merely a unum per accident.*^ If any part of matter did not belong
to an organic structure, there would be a part of the world without con-
nection to the rest. Every part of matter, even the smallest one, is there-
fore an articulated part of it. And matter is not only infinitely divisible; it
is actually divided in infinitum.*^4
[154] *The composition of each individual organic structure deter-
mines the composition of each individual soul, for each soul first repre-
sents its body (which is expressed in if) and the world exclusively in
*32. "Substantial unities are nothing but different concentrations of the uni-
verse represented from the points of view that distinguish them." Leibniz, Opp.,
Vol. u, p. 75.33
*33- Letter to Mr. Remond de Montmort [November 4, 1715], §3 (Opp.,
Vol. n, p. 215). New Essays [Book in, ch. vi, §24.], p. 278. Especially the Letter
to Des Bosses ([4 February 1706] Opp., Vol. n, Part, i, p. 265).
*34- Principles of Philosophy, §68. Reflections concerning the Principles of Life and
Plastic Natures. Opp., Vol. n. Part i, p. 39. At the end (p. 44) Leibniz says: "Only
God is above all matter, for He is its author. Creatures, however, if free or [ 154]
freed of matter, would be at the same time cut off from the universal bond, like deserters
from the general order." On p. 275 (ibid.),34 where he talks about angels he
says:"To remove these (intelligences) from bodies and place is to remove them
from the universal bond and order of the world constituted by temporal and
local relations."— On the same page, just above, where he talks about the twofold
way in which angels can be united with bodies, Leibniz says:"It must however be
admitted that both ways of being united to a body is so that the entelechies have no
reason."
* From here until the end of p. 155, the 1815 edition reads: "{242} Just as for Spinoza,
so also for Leibniz, every soul represents its own body first, i.e. immediately, and the world
only in accordance with the property and the constitution of this body." Jacobi proceeds
to cite, in Latin, the same text of Leibniz as in the 1789 edition.
accordance with this body. "The monads are not limited objectively,"
Leibniz says, "but through the modification of objective cognition. Everything
tends towards the infinite confusedly, but acquires limit and [155] dis-
tinction through the degree of distinctness of perceptions."*^
[156] I believe that I can now go on to your second proposition.
[157] He: I'm waiting for you right there!
[158] /: And there I shall be glad to face you.
Earlier we agreed on something that all systems [159] (the idealistic
ones excepted) equally accept, namely that however much an individual
may be externally determined, it can only be determined according to
the laws of its own nature—and therefore that to this extent it must de-
termine itself. We have asserted together, that any such individual would
have to be something by itself and on its own account,* for otherwise it
could never be something with reference to something else,^ and so be
the recipient of this or that accidental property. It must be capable of
*35. Ibid., §62.35

The following passages, also taken from the Principles of Philosophy, may throw
even more light on the subject. * It is hardly understandable how Kant (Critique,
[A] 276) could blame Leibniz "for having left to the senses nothing but the de-
spicable business of confusing and distorting the representations of the under-
standing." On just the same basis, one could claim that Leibniz also left to the
whole universe nothing but the despicable business of confusing and distorting the
representations of the understanding.—This charge (hardly intelligible to me)
reminds me of another that I simply cannot explain. [158] According to Herr
Kant (TheBerlin Monthly, October 1786, p. 323, note) in Spinozism one allegedly
"speaks of thoughts that themselves think, and hence of an accident that yet
exists at the same time on its own as subject." (But is this the Spinozism such as
the Ethics teaches or I portray? And what business has any other Spinozism
here?)—If ever there was a man far from allowing any such nonsense in him, this
man was Spinoza.
With judgments of this sort, how will one deal with the likes of us?
On the other hand, it is comforting for those like us to read such judgments
being passed even on men of the calibre of Leibniz and Spinoza.36
* an und fur sich selbst

t fur ein anderes
t Here Jacob! cites in full §§24, 25, 62, 64, 85. (Op., Vol. II, Part I, pp. 23-30). From
here to the end, the footnote is dropped in the 1815 edition.
having effects by itself and on its own account, for otherwise no effect
could arise through it, or be furthered by it, or even appear in it.
So tell me whether you still stand by this opinion or not.
He: I am holding fast to it; you can count on that.
I: But then you will also admit without hesitation (and might have prob-
ably already granted to me) that the [160] objects we perceive outside
us cannot elicit our perceiving itself, that is, the inner activity of sensing,
representing, and thinking; but that our soul, or the power of thinking
in us, must qua soul produce every representation and every concept by
itself alone.
He: I admit that without hesitation. The external object can no more
produce a determination of thought, as such, than it can produce the
thinking itself, or the thinking nature. The absurdity of the opposite po-
sition is really not sufficiently brought out when one asks, with Spinoza,
whether the soul is only a lifeless tablet;61 or, with Leibniz, whether it
has windows or other openings through which things make their way
in.62
*I: It follows, [161] under the same limitation, that all the modifications
or alterations of a thinking being (whatever their names) must be
grounded exclusively in it. Imagination, memory, understanding, as ex-
clusive properties of a thinking being, must also be caused or produced
through it and in it alone.
He: Indisputably so.
/: Furthermore, the thinking being, as such, does not have any property
in common with the bodily being as such. It is impossible that the deter-
mination of one ever be the determination of the other as well.—Do you
grant this?
He: Wait a moment, that I may reflect on it.
[162] /: Take as long as you wish.
He: If I grant your last proposition, you will go on to conclude that the
two beings cannot acquire any composition from one another; hence,
that they also do not act upon one another. So the harmonia prcetabilita
is essentially correct.
* From here up to "I don't understand what you can have against this" on p. 162, the
1815 edition reads instead:
7: And further: The thinking being does not have, as such, any property in common with
the corporeal one, as [245] corporeal. It is therefore impossible. . . .
He:. . . that they interpenetrate, you want to say; that they exchange determinations o
a mutual basis, give to one another and take from one another. Hence. . . .
/: I don't understand what you can have against this, seeing that the
same line of thought, and the same result, appeared so conclusive and
so obvious to you in the Letters concerning Spinoza.
He: But there was a huge difference in that case, it seems to me. In
Spinoza, corporeal extension and thought are only different properties
of one and the same essence; in Leibniz, on the contrary, they are two
quite different [163] things that have tumbled into an unfathomable
kind of harmony.
/: There is certainly a distinction between the ways that Spinoza and
Leibniz represent the union of thinking and corporeally extended
being. But I believe that on closer inspection you will find that it is to the
advantage, not of Spinoza, but of our Leibniz.*36 According to him,
thinking and corporeal being are not at all those two totally different
things which, as you put it, have tumbled into an incomprehensible kind
of harmony (the words that Leibniz generally uses are conformitas and
consensus). So far as created being is concerned, they are just as perfectly
indivisible for him as they were for Spinoza.
[164] He: But just reconcile this with the distinct claim that I have al-
ready put to you, namely that even if there were no souls, the bodies
would still act as they do now; and conversely, even if there were no
bodies, the souls would still act as they do now.63
//You forget the P E R I M P O S S I B I L E which Leibniz was careful to add to
that claim. He often indulged in metaphysical fictions of this sort, as he
has repeatedly called them himself. In the first public lecture on his sys-
tem, he even declared on this very point, "that the perceptions, or the
representations of external things, originate in the soul on the strength
of its own laws, as in a special world, and as if nothing were present except God
and the soul."64 And read the elucidations [165] that he adds, especially
those directed against Bayle; read the Letter to Wagner, the Reflection
concerning the Soul of Irrational Animals (Commentatio de Anima Brutorum);
and the very remarkable Letter to Des Bosses.*37 But [166] I have no in-
*g6. [Leibniz's] distinction [from Spinoza] and [his] preeminence lie in the
concept of forma substantialis, which is the true nucleus from which Leibniz's sys-
tem grew. More about this elsewhere.*
*37. To give a bit more incentive to those readers less disposed to look up
texts, I insert here a couple of short passages from the letter to Des Bosses and
a couple more from Leibniz's second reply to Bayle. "I have already pointed out
in the preceding letters that the soul issues into actions of the body not by willing
* The 1815 edition, adds: "See Letters concerning Spinoza, 2nd ed., Supplement vi."
tention of getting myself involved in an argument about all this with

some [167] philosophical sorehead. Leibniz tried to adapt his ideas to
so many minds and systems; he tried so often as it were to interpolate
truth into error [168]; in general, whether he was under pressure or
it, that is, inasmuch as it is spiritual or free, but as the prime entelechy of the body
and, to this extent, not without conforming to mechanical laws. In my program-
matic statements in French dealing with the system of pre-established harmony
I did indeed consider the soul only as substance, and not at the same time as the
entelechy of a body, since [to consider it as such] did not pertain to the matter
at hand, to wit, the explanation of the agreement between body and mind; nor
did the Cartesians wish anything else." ([Letter to De Bosses] Opp., Vol. n, Part i,
p. 269). "I have earlier established that a composite substance, or the thing con-
stituted by a chain of monads, since it is not a genuine modification of monads,
nor something that exists in them as subjects, [166] (and certainly one and the
same modification could not inhere in several subjects) is dependent upon the
monads. This dependence is not a logical one (such, that is, that could not be
removed from the monads even supernaturally), but natural only, that is, it must
occur in a composite substance unless God wants otherwise." (Ibid., p.300) "A
composite substance does not consist of monads or their subordination formally,
and thus it is simply an aggregate or a being per acddens." (Ibid., 320) "Whatever
ambition or some other passion makes the soul of Caesar do, is also represented
in Caesar's body; and all the movements of these passions derive from impres-
sions of objects conjoined to internal movements; and the body is so constituted
that the soul never comes to a decision which the movements of the body would
not conform to; even the most abstract reasonings have their play there through
the instrumentality of marks that represent them to the imagination. In a word,
everything happens in the body as regards the details of phenomena as if the evil
doctrine of those who, in the manner of Epicurus or Hobbes, believe that the
soul is [167] material were true; or as if man himself were nothing but body or
an automaton. These people have extended what the Cartesians grant with re-
spect to all other animals to include man too, demonstrating in effect that noth-
ing is done by man with his full reason which is not in his body as a play of images,
of passions and movements. To want to prove the contrary is to debase oneself, and, by
dinging to this bias, only to pave the way for the triumph of error." (Ibid., pp. 83—84)37
"The ground of the alteration of thoughts within the soul is the same as the
ground of the alteration of the things within the universe that the thoughts rep-
resent. The mechanical grounds that unfold in the bodies are brought together
and, so to speak, concentrated within the souls or entelechies, and there is where
they find their source as well. (Ibid., p. 86).s8
not, he was so full of considerations for all sort of things, that in the pres-
ent state of his writings it is easy to misunderstand him, even with the
best intentions out of prejudice or shortsightedness. But it is easier
still—infinitely easier—to set him at odds with himself wantonly. Let
everyone use these priceless remains as he sees fit. But you. . . . You read
the pieces I mentioned to you. Then we shall talk some more.
He: I agree both to the reading later and the postponement now. There
is, however, one thing that you must still tell me today. What understand-
ing of the innate ideas and the monads do you favour? I have a quotation
in petto* that I would dearly like to put to you.
/: Let's begin with the monads, so you'll get to your point all the more
quickly.
We must take our start from propositions [169] that we have already
agreed about once today, so that we shall presumably agree on them at
once the second time.
If I gather four or five different things together here on this table and
unite them into one representation either according to number or
through other relationships, then my representation is one of a totality
or a whole. There is nothing outside me, however, that corresponds to
this whole or totality which is a whole or totality in itself. The unity of my
representation is not a truly objective unity, but is merely ideal.
He: Quite right. But it must not be forgotten that the data required for
this unity, not only as regards its matter but as regards the form as well, are
actually present outside me, and that to this extent the whole or totality
is also actually objective. [ 170] You would not have the representation of
five things if only four isolated ones were out there. And if the five stood
in some other order, you could not truthfully associate them with the
same image with which you associate them now. If I am not mistaken,
Leibniz called things of this sort semimentalia65 precisely for this reason,
and compared them to the rainbow.
/: Right. And your comment is of the greatest importance in several dif-
ferent respects. It establishes the true distinction between the idealist
and the philosophical realist. The issue here, however, is not the data for
an appearance, but what it is in a thing that holds it together, or in other
words, the element of combination that binds it into a real, perfectly objec-
tive, unity. And would you not grant me without hesitation that the iso-
lated bodies are not intrinsically combined in our case, either by the
Literally: "in my breast"

number five or by any other form, and that outside the representation,
therefore, they do not constitute a whole on their own'?
[171] He: I do.
I: The same applies to all artifacts, however admirably their manifold has
been joined together in one purposive structure. The form that consti-
tutes their unity dwells in the soul of the artist who invented them, or of
the knower who passes judgment on them—not in the unity itself. In it-
self this unity is without essential cohesion, like a lump of the coarsest
matter.
He: Perfectly right. We can attribute an inner unity, i.e. one which is truly
objective and real, only to organic beings.
/: So, if we wanted to change the five objects here on the table into an
actual whole, into a unumperse, would we not have to be able to fashion
an organic body out of them?
[172] He: That's right.
/: But would we ever be in a position to produce this organic form
through a mere fashioning, even assuming that we had at our disposal all
the physical powers for a limitless and arbitrary division of matter, and
for setting the resulting parts in motion against one another just as ar-
bitrarily and infinitely? Could an aggregate result from this that would
constitute an essence, a compositum substantiate, a unum per se"?
He: It's impossible.
/: So, in order to think the possibility of an organic being, is it not nec-
essary to think first what constitutes its unity, i.e. to think the whole before
its parts'?
[173] He: Undoubtedly. And here am I quite ready to let some such
thought work upon me through your intervention.
/: It has already had its effect on you long ago, without any effort of
mine. For you are yourself a compositum substantiate, and you would cer-
tainly have never come to the feeling of your being without having first
sensed what constitutes your unity. Surely you did not come from the pe-
riphery towards the centre, but from the centre to the periphery.
He: I did not move either from the periphery to the centre nor from the
centre to the periphery. Rather, the whole circle that I am was there all
at once. This is what you teach, too.
/: Let's not stop at this point to remove a misunderstanding that is of
hardly any consequence, and for present purposes of no consequence at
all. It suffices that your body [ 174] is put together out of an infinite mul-
titude of parts which it takes up and gives back again, so that not one of
them can belong to it essentially. Yet you feel that these parts belong to
it by means of an invisible form that acts like a whirlpool in a current. You

feel the multitude of parts only according to this form, and you feel the
form in a single, unalterable, indivisible, point which you call your "I."
Could this point be, perhaps, only a mathematical one? Or a physical
one?
He: So, a perfect non-entity.
I: Yet our "I" must be something, if it has to escape the truth of what we
have just established, namely, that a truly objective unity can never arise
out of a multiplicity. This something, which couldn't possibly be some-
thing not real, [175] Leibniz calls the substantial form of organic being,
the vinculum compositionis essentiak, or the monad.66 And to this extent I
agree with the doctrine of the monads wholeheartedly.
He: You surprise me. But please, go on and tell me what sort of represen-
tation do you have of this substantial form of organic being?
/: I believe that I have already told you about that. Strictly speaking I can-
not make a representation of it at all, for the peculiarity of its being is
that it remains distinct from every sensation and representation. It is what I
properly call "myself," and I have the most perfect conviction of its real-
ity, the most intimate consciousness of it, since it is the very source of my
consciousness and the subject of all its alterations. [176] The soul must
be able to distinguish itself from itself, become external to itself, in order
to have a representation of itself.*38 Certainly we have the most intimate
consciousness of what we call our "life." But who can grasp it in a
representation?
He: True.
[171 sic] I: And our soul is nothing else but a certain determinate form
of life. I know of nothing more perverse than to make life into a property
of things, when things are on the contrary only properties of life, only
different expressions of it. For the parts in a manifold can penetrate one an-
other and become one only in a living being. All being ceases where unity, real
individuality, ceases. And whenever we represent something to ourselves
*38. "[§2. . . .] We know our existence by intuition [ . . . . ] and that of other

things by sensation. . . . [§3. . . .] The immediate apperception of our existence
and of our thoughts furnishes us with the truths a posteriori, or of fact, i.e. the first
experiences, as the identical propositions contain the first truths a priori, or of rea-
son, i.e. the first lights. Both are incapable of proof, and may be called immedi-
ate; the former, because between the understanding and its object there is a [relation of]
immediacy. . . ." New Essays [Book iv], Ch. ix, §3-39
as individual that is not individual, we are extending our own unity to an

aggregate. In any such case, it is not the concretum, but only its data, that
are truly outside us.
He: In other words, you are in full agreement with Leibniz on this point
too, that there is not and cannot be in nature anything truly actual ex-
cept organic being. And you claim that every created or [172 sic] finite
substance must necessarily be composed of body and soul, for the two
are connected to each other in such a way that neither can, in the natural
order of things, subsist without the other.
/.- And I make that claim in concert with Leibniz too. According to him,
matter in the strict sense (materia secunda or mass, as he calls it) is the
mingling of the effects of the infinite. *39 The things that are truly actual, [ 173
sic] being all of them composed of soul and body, i.e. organic beings, are
to be found in this matter. But not every portion of this matter is an or-
ganic being.
He: It is impossible not be awed by the splendour and grandeur of this
system.
7:1 take it that I no longer need to give you a long explanation of why
I am in favour of innate ideas. I need only remind you of how we dealt
with the absolutely universal concepts earlier,67 and tell you that my in-
nate ideas are precisely these concepts. Our earlier treatment should now
be doubly clear to you, since my postulates have now been raised to the
status of principles with all due procedure.
Let us recapitulate and sum up:
Every singular created being is connected with an infinite multitude
of other [ 174 sic] singular beings, all of which are connected in turn with
this one. And the present situation of each and every one of them is de-
termined at each moment, and determined quite exactly, through its
connection with all the rest. All truly actual things are individuals or sin-
*39- "[• • • •] The mixture of effects of the [surrounding] infinite [. . . .]" New
Essays, [Preface] p. 12. "[. . . .] Matter is but a mass of an infinite number of
beings. [ . . . . ] ! grant perception to all these infinite beings, each one of which
is like an animal endowed with soul (or of some [active] analogous principle
which constitutes its true unity), together with what is needed to this being in
order to be passive and endowed with an organic body. Now these beings have
received their nature, active as well as passive (i.e. what they have of immaterial
and material), from a general and supreme cause. . . ." Ibid., [Bk iv, ch. x, §10]
p. 407.
gular things, and, as such, they are living beings (principia perceptiva et
activa) that are external to one another.
Hence, when an individual is posited, the concepts of unity and mul-
tiplicity, of action and passion, of extension and succession, must at the
same time be posited in him necessarily. In other words, these concepts
are innate in each individual; they are created in him.
These concepts are distinguished from all others in that their objects
are given immediately, and in all things equally and completely. So their ob-
jects are never simply present to us in representation but [175 sic] are
always present in actuality also. And no disarrangement (of whatever kind)
can ever withdraw them (even just for a moment) from immediate percep-
tion or from their necessary union in the concept. Even the most complete
state of derangement is not capable of extirpating the understanding at
its root.
He: I have nothing to object against your innate ideas, when they are un-
derstood in this way. It is clear that we attain to the consciousness of our
consciousness, to the feeling of ourselves, in no other way except by dis-
tinguishing ourselves from something outside us. This something is a
manifold, an infinite; and we are ourselves included in its concept. The
concepts of the "one," the "many," and the "all," must therefore be given
already, together with their basic properties and relations, in every con-
sciousness, even the weakest one, and they must remain essentially the
same throughout all the possible changes of the individual. [176 sic]
Their distinctness, however, depends on the distinctness of conscious-
ness, that is, on the degree to which we distinguish ourselves, intensively
and extensively, from the things that exist outside us.
/: Could we not also use this measure in order to determine everywhere,
and with certainty, the degree of reason and life that one species of crea-
tures enjoys vis-a-vis another?
He: I think we could.
Life and consciousness are one. A higher degree of consciousness de-
pends upon the greater number* of the perceptions united in conscious-
ness. Every perception expresses something external and something
internal at the same time, and it expresses the two in their relation to
one another. So every perception is, as such, already a concept. As the
action, so the reaction. And if the capacity to accept impressions is so
The 1815 edition adds: "and quality."

perfect and so varied* that the properties of imagination and [177]

memory, to which personality is connected, grow out of it, then what we
call reason develops.*40
A rational being is therefore distinguished from an irrational one by
a higher degree of consciousness, and hence of life. And this degree will
increase in an understanding in proportion as the power to distinguish
oneself from other things (intensively and extensively) also increases.
God is the being who is most perfectly distinct from all things: He must
possess the highest personality, and He alone possesses a totally pure
reason.
I: It is not possible [178] to have a low esteem of reason, therefore, un-
less one hates oneself and one's own life. But how can we best go about
promoting reason in ourselves more and more? Wouldn't the wisest
course of action be for us to get to reason immediately, so as to
strengthen and enlarge its powers progressively? Wouldn't be best, in
short, to keep on trying to make reason properly rational? What do you
think?
He: My opinion is that the hereditary flaw of mankind, its primordial
cancer, is that it ignores the kernel in favour of the husk, the real thing
for mere show, the essence for the form. Religion has everywhere degen-
erated into ceremonies and superstition; civil union into political ma-
chinery; philosophy into prattle; art into industry. And why should not
reason too degenerate into the mere use of its forms and methods?
[179] /: The various names for it that are now in vogue, testify that peo-
ple do at least have the intention of making use of it in all sorts of ways,
for all these names are derived from one use or other that we make of
reason. It seems to me that what I hear most often, and the loudest, is
that reason is a "torch." Apparently, this is what it has evolved into from
the weak light that it was. And what is said about this torch, is that it shall
everywhere be carried forward—which was not the case as long as reason
was only a light. I must confess that, for myself, I have not yet seen this
*40. t See above, p. 150 & 151, the footnote. The "I" and the "Thou" are dis-
tinguished in the first perception at the same time. But the "I" becomes more dis-
tinct in equal measure as the "Thou" does.—There arise concept, word, person.
* From here to the end of the paragraph, the 1815 edition reads: "and so varied, that
an articulated echo is heard within consciousness, then above sensation there rises the
word; what we call reason appears, and what we call person."
t Note omitted in the 1815 edition
reason that has become a torch. My own reason is an eye and no torch. And
unless I am much deceived, we have always meant the power of seeing
by the word "light," at least when we still had only a light in our reason.
I cannot help being a bit suspicious of torches. A torch is often brought
in so that a single [ 180] object may be seen clearly; and especially so that
as a result of its being clearly seen, everything else around it may become
all the darker.*41
He: I can solve the riddle about the torch for you. It is not just a matter
of empty boasting. The torch in question is still the one that experience
once carried to reason, where truth received the torch from the hand of
experience. And they said: "The torch does not belong to experience."
And those who, from behind, then tore the torch away from experience
shouted loudly that it belonged to them, and that wherever they carried it,
there reason and truth prevailed, [181] and falsehood everywhere else.
The rumour has it, however, that the torch did not want to remain
alight, no matter how much one tamped it and waved it in the wind.
I: Oh, that it would return into the hands of experience, and that the an-
cient procession to reason and truth would start anew! Surely the keen
and serious observer cannot fail to notice that all our cognition is based
on positivity, and the moment we abandon the latter, we end up in
dreams and empty fictions. As we have seen, even the concepts and prop-
ositions that we call a priori are taken, positively and immediately, from
the actuality that presents itself to us. What is even more extraordinary
is that our relatively universal concepts and propositions are also posi-
tively and immediately taken from the actuality that presents itself to us.
The a priori concepts are based upon a confused representation of the
"all," their object being present to us always and everywhere, even in the
smallest [182] part of creation; the others are based on a confused rep-
resentation of a "few," and their objects are not always present to us, and
when they are, it is only in this or that particular thing. Hence, the ab-
solutely universal concepts, as well as those that are only relatively univer-
sal, cannot lead us beyond what we actually sense, or have sensed in
ourselves or outside us. It is in the more complete perception, and the higher
degree of consciousness bound up with it, that the essence of the supe-
*4i. The blessed Leibniz used to characterize the spirit of the century with
the analogy of crabs that are occasionally found with one claw immensely big, and
the other wretchedly small. Obviously he would have preferred an in-between
crab, with two equal claws.
riority enjoyed by our nature that we call reason lies. All the functions of
reason evolve out of it automatically. As soon as a manifold of represen-
tations, united in one consciousness, is posited, it is thereby at once
posited that these same representations must affect consciousness in
their likenesses and differences. Otherwise consciousness would indeed
be a dead mirror—not a consciousness, not a self-concentrating life.
Hence, we have no need, apart from the [183] original activity of per-
ception, of special activities of distinguishing and comparing, with which
nothing at all can be thought. And I explain "reflection," "deliberation,"
and all their effects in the same way—in terms of the constant forward
movement (if I may put it this way) of the active principle in us against
(but not contrary to) the passive one, in conformity with the received im-
pressions and their relationships. With every repetition of the consensus
of these impressions and relationships in respect of the same object, the
representation must receive new determinations and expand, some-
times more subjectively, and at other times more objectively. In this way,
both the discovery of important truths and the origin of ludicrous error
become equally comprehensible.
If we consider reason from the side of spontaneity alone, without tak-
ing into consideration how this spontaneity manifests itself only as a re-
action, then we fail to grasp it at its foundation, and we shall never know
just what it is that we get from it. If we characterize it as the power [ 184]
to detect relationships, then the capacity to receive more complete im-
pressions from objects is already presupposed. In abstraction from this
capacity, the simple power to understand relationships would never en-
rich our cognition by discovering even one still unperceived "same" or
"not same."
An acute and comprehensive sense that penetrates deep and is always
at work—that is the noble gift that makes us the rational creatures that
we are, and the measure by which the superiority of one mind over an-
other is determined (I take the word "sense" in the full extent of its
meaning, as faculty of perception in general). The purest and richest
reason is what follows from the purest and richest sensation. Any self-
observant researcher must have learned, from his own experience, that
it is not the power of distinguishing and comparing, of judging and in-
ferring, that he exerts in his research in order to make his representa-
tion as distinct as possible but simply and solely the power of his sense.
[185] He holds his intuitions firm with all his might; he senses, and then
he senses some more; and by sense he brings the intuition ever closer to
the eye of the mind. And, as a luminous point suddenly stands out, the
soul pauses momentarily in order to absorb it passively. It passively re-

ceives every judgment that arises in it. It is only in arbitrary intuition, i.e.
when it examines something, that it is active.
He: But then one could indeed say that, in a certain way, the whole of
reason comes to man from the outside, so to speak.
/: What is there that can't be said "in a certain way"? But if reason pre-
supposes a living principle that holds a world together in an indivisible
point and, starting from this point, it can react to the infinite, then I
don't see why one cannot say, even if only "in a certain way," that reason
comes to man from the outside. The business of sense is to accept and
deliver impressions. [186] Deliver them to whom? Where does the accu-
mulation of impressions occur? And what would we do with a mere ac-
cumulation of this kind? "Multiplicity" and "relation" are living concepts
that presuppose a living being capable of actively assimilating the man-
ifold into its unity. But even the darkest sensation expresses a relation-
ship. And therefore one must say, not only about the cognitions that we
call a priori, but about all cognitions in general, that they are not given
through the senses but can only be produced through the living and ac-
tive faculty of the soul. Sensibility is only an empty word if we are to un-
derstand by it something other than a means of separation and union at
once—whereby the substantial element to be divided and bound to-
gether is already presupposed. And as this means, it is the instrument of
the almighty love, or (please forgive, allow me a daring expression) the
secret laying on of the hand of the creator. Only by this means can the bless-
ing of [187] life, the blessing of an existence that externalizes itself and
thereby enjoys itself, be bestowed upon a multitude of beings, and a
world be called forth out of nothing. A shiver goes down my spine when-
ever I think of this; every time it is as if I received my soul directly from
the hand of the creator at that instant.
He: You remind me of the venerable ancient book, in which it is written:
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."68 The
receptacle, the body, must be fashioned first, and it was fashioned only in
order to be receptacle.
I: Men's modes of representation differ, and not everyone sees the same
in things. In my own view of the being composed throughout of body
and soul, and the life that is thus [ 188] endlessly replicated through sep-
aration and combination, the liberal hand of an all-supplying Giver is so
far visible that we can actually touch it (so I would say). What we call mat-
ter borders on nothing because of its unsubstantial divisibility in infini-
turn. What is a body? an organic body? It is all nothing, a non-entity, and

without a hint of substantial permanence, unless we think of form
through substance, and first posit a kingdom of spirits; it is nothing unless
we start from the absolutely simple nature of life. So every system, even
the smallest, of which there can be millions contained in one mite, re-
quires a spirit that unifies it, moves it, and holds it together—a Lord and
King of Life. And what about the system of all systems, the All of being?
Could nothingness move it and hold it together? Must it not be unified?
And if it is unified, then it must be unified by something, and the only
thing that is truly something is the spirit. But the spirit that makes the All
[189] into a One, and binds the heap of being into a whole, cannot pos-
sibly be a spirit that is only a soul. The source of life needs no vessel. It is
not like drops that need a vessel to catch them one by one and hold
them. CREATOR is this spirit. And that is his creation: to have instilled
souls, founded finite life, and prepared immortality.
He: It is as obvious to me as it is to you that the limited life we see every-
where (realized as it is through an infinite manifold of forms) points di-
rectly to an unlimited absolute life, to an author of the manifold who
fashions it freely through separation. *And it is at the same time appar-
ent why we have no concept of this Being of all beings, and why, if we
wish to enquire into His nature, we must find that it is impossible on the
basis of our mode of representation. For we would have to become depend-
ent to the last limit of our [190] existence, and by the same token we
would become and remain incapable (absolutely incapable) of forming
the slightest representation of a totally independent nature, of a thor-
oughgoing pure activity. According to the oldest testimonies, and so too
according to the most profound philosophy, our finite being must begin
with the body and be constantly supported by it. Hence our reason must
begin with sense-impression, and be constantly supported by it. Our nat-
ural cognition can never rise above the result of the relations of finite to
finite, relations that flow into one another, back and forth without end.
* From here to the end of the paragraph, the 1815 edition reads: "To want to compre-
hend this transcendent being, however, to see its nature, to explain it, would mean to seek
a God who would make God come to be for us. How foolish! We are amazed, and even quite
terrified, because to us finite and hence necessarily restricted beings, conditioned both in
being and action—to us who are essentially imperfect—a totally perfect being, one that exists
solely in itself, appears to be an impossibility. Where is the Creator who is not bound to appear
so to His creation?"
How foolish therefore to be surprised that we are only creatures, or in-

deed to be frightened by it.
/: The pretensions and desires of men are odd enough. They would like
to see with eyes alone, without light; and better still, they would like to
see without eyes. Only then, they think, would one see properly, truly, and
naturally. [191] Where this kind of view prevails, that considers the un-
natural as natural, and the natural as unnatural, there is what is called
"philosophy." I remember this question being raised once in a company
of people of different backgrounds: "How could the human race have
propagated itself without the occurrence of original sin?" A wise man
quickly responded:"Oh, by means of a rational discourse no doubt!"* 69
He: That's splendid! But what would come of our rational discourses in
your opinion, if we were to find ourselves, just as we are, in a world that
resembled the legendary land of plenty by the absence of all rules?
/: History provides most of the answer to this question for you. You will
find a multitude of different world-manifestations in it; and you will see
that the manifestations of reason have always conformed exactly to those
of the world. [192] ^The Byzantine scholars have not lacked in thought,
meaning, or language, century after century. Yet, how rational they have
been is well known.
He: So we must accept that at any given time the composition of human
reason is determined by the way of the world, and never by reason on its
own. In every epoch and in every place, therefore, men have precisely as
much insight and reason as God allows them to have at that time and
place, even though in their opinion they are always and everywhere
capable of as much insight and rationality as they like. 42
*42. * "Reason was formed in the course of time. Whatever has educated, taught,
and advanced the human race, has also formed reason. A child develops his rea-
son [193] only through education. Reason owes what it has become, therefore,
to all the things that have educated the human race, and it would be a game to
separate the one from the other and treat reason as a self-subsisting abstraction
where it is a nothingness. . . . So little could the human race come to be without
* Instead of "a wise man," the 1815 edition has "Goethe." In a footnote, reference is
made to Werke, i, p. 403.
t From here up to "If we could play the master in nature" on p. 194 is omitted in the
1815 edition.
[193] / : . . . . And of as much irrationality as, [194] they like! If we could

play the master in nature, even in a limited fashion, or if we could work
upon the whole of society the way that we do in our homes or in single
states, then the senseless world of which you have just spoken and its cor-
relate the senseless reason, would have been here long ago. But an un-
changing objective reason constantly forces our subjective reason back on
course—at least enough to keep it from capsizing totally. Here and
there, now and then, there seems to have been an attempt on the part
of men to meet force with force. And it was in this attempt, so it seems,
that they left that course themselves.
He: Supposing that this is our own case, it offers a peculiar contrast to
the philosophical Gospel which proclaims that we are well on the way to
being governed by reason alone and to inaugurating the Golden Age.
[195] I: I would not know. *Some comparison at least is not altogether
impossible. Let's briefly consider the matter.
creation; progress so little without divine aid; or know what it knows without di-
vine education.1" Herder
If this passage still does not suffice to determine the meaning of the statements
above, allow me to refer to my work on Spinoza, pp. 183—go.40—One can pos-
sess a great deal of mathematics and physics, an immensity of external informa-
tion, yet have very little of genuine reason. Genuine reason has to do with the
soul itself, inasmuch as the latter becomes an object of desire or aversion through
self-determination. A pure self-determination is however [194] impossible to com-
posite beings, but must be occasioned by a given object.
* From here to the end of p. 197, the 1815 edition reads:
But let's be clear about (278) the essential point, and you'll find that, to some extent at
least, it is conceivable and acceptable.
Is human reason anything else than the human soul itself, in so far as it rises in concepts
above its singular sensations and perceptions, and determines itself in its acts and omis-
sions according to the representation of laws? But as for the soul, it is what voices the "I"
in us distinctly, by distinguishing it from the Thou (the not-I). And since this very "I" is also
reason, then every "I" that in its concepts, judgments, and determinations of the will, agrees
with itself, must also agree with its reason. We must say that the "I" is then governed by its
reason alone or (what comes to the same thing) it is governed by itself. The possibility of
reason being in such a state of complete autarchy, depends on the restrictions that the "f'
is willing to accept, in order to attain to it. These restrictions, which may well be likened
to mutilations, can be so constituted that the "I" now considers itself capable of finding the
right way to the only remaining goals it has retained and of attaining its end simply by turning
always {279) back upon itself, i.e. solely through its thus restricted reason, without the inter-
The eye of the human soul, or human reason, is not, like the physical
eye, merely a part that can be separated. For the soul does not have parts
outside parts. Hence the eye of the human soul, or human reason, is the
human soul itself inasmuch as the latter has distinct concepts. What in man ex-
presses the "I" distinctly, that is called his reason, and is his reason. And if
the "I" agrees in its actions with itself, it also agrees with its reason.—So,
if the "I" acts coherently, but only according to its drives and the laws of
its possible coherence, it then governs itself, i.e. it is governed by its rea-
son exclusively. The possibility or impossibility of such self-governance
depends [196] on the objects for which the soul strives. Now, these striv-
ings can be so restricted that the soul would be in position to attain its
goals by means of its reason alone, i.e. through its own self inasmuch as
it (the soul) has distinct concepts. And if this state of restriction is the
Golden Age, then it might indeed be achieved.
He: Would it not be a main condition for this self-governing eye, how-
ever, that it rule itself far away from divine things and a world to come?
/: Of course! But this too is self-evident. The more and the longer the
self-governing eye exerts itself to learn about God and another world,
vention of any other illumination and power. Hence the Golden Age announced by those
prophets could still come to pass, and could usher in new forms of association—as perfected,
unalterable, and^rro, as those o f . . . ants and bees! We have already a certain prefiguration
of this condition of things in China, and European philosophers have already several times
advertised it as such.
He: You have made your point admirably, and I comprehend it fully now. Everything on
earth must be levelled; whatever stands out pertains to evil.
/: The temples and altars—not only the visible ones but the invisible ones as well—must
gradually sink down and finally disappear altogether. Only then will the Golden Age have
truly been inaugurated—when {280} there is no question of God or of things divine any
more. In order for them even to come in question again at least, new prophets would have
to arise, to work their miracles and instill wonder over all the land.
He: But our friends of the Golden Age are more likely to go mad than to turn into believers.
Men of this sort—I mean, the precursors of the age of true and unalloyed gold, the like of
which we meet now often enough—men of this sort, who generally think very clearly within
their own narrow sphere, and can do so easily, stubbornly insist on taking the limits of their
imagination for the limits of possibility, and the laws of their imagination for the absolute laws
of nature and reason. Any reasoning that contradicts their experience (or what they call their
experience) must give way to it, and any experience that contradicts their reasoning (and
which they would therefore dismiss) would have to yield to that reasoning. Whatever does
not conform to their restricted mode of representation, is not; it cannotbe, {281} it is not
to be thought in principle. They would sooner deny their sense than their pre-conceived
opinions. And in fact, if they would deny them, they would be giving up the one understand-
ing that they do have.
the clearer it sees at the end that it sees nothing, and ceases to direct
itself toward an empty place. Miracles, new positive revelations, must
intervene at least.70
[197] He: Yet there are men who it is more likely would go mad than
turn into believers. Such men, who generally think very clearly in their
own narrow sphere and can do so easily, stubbornly insist on taking the
limits of their imagination for the limits of possibility; the composition of
their imagination for the true light of nature; and the laws of their imag-
ination/or the absolute laws of reason. Any reasoning that contradicts their
experience must give way to the experience, and any experience that
contradicts their reasoning must do the same before the reasoning.
Whatever does not conform to their restricted mode of representation,
is nothing; it cannot be; it is not thinkable in principle. They would
sooner deny their sense than their imagination. And in fact, they would
be giving up the one understanding that they do have and go mad.
//Yesterday I was visited by ** of ***, [198] who is still inconsolable over
the loss of his truly precious wife. You know that he is a committed
atheist, and is quite convinced that with death everything is over for
man. He repeated on this occasion what I had heard him say several
times already: that the testimonies about facts to the contrary, or even
his own experience of such facts, would sooner make a fool of him than
change his conviction. So I asked him in conscience whether, supposing
that his dead wife were to appear to him in a form clearly her own, while
he was fully awake, but in such a manner that the appearance would not
shock him, and she were to say to him: "Be consoled. I live, happier than
here on earth, and we shall meet again"—whether he would not then
believe in a life after death.
He: Very likely he protested that even then he would not believe, and
showed you [199] in all sorts of ways how overwhelmingly probable it
would be that the appearance he had witnessed could be explained in
terms of his imagination, his present frame of mind, and so on.
/.- So he did. I finally conceded his point so far as all other men were con-
cerned, myself included. But I would not concede it in regard to him. I
assured him that if he had been completely awake and not frightened by
the beloved appearance, and had retained his presence of mind in full,
then nobody could persuade him that the appearance was only a dream.
And from that moment on he would also have gained the certainty of his
continued existence after death.
He: Whether it would have helped him to the end of his life is another
question still. But, anyone who reflects on the case you are assuming
must feel the truth of the claim that you are staking on it. [200] This
shows once more, in a striking manner, the pre-eminence of immediate
intuition over inference. Inferences can never discover the existence of
anything. So they must always presuppose that a consciousness of the truth
is already available, to which they constantly appeal. It is not usual, how-
ever, for the dead to appear. And God does not give himself in sensation.
So does our philosophy finally lead perhaps to the conclusion that those
who do not admit any positive revelation must relinquish faith in God
and in life after death as soon as they come back to their right senses?
For in the end all faith must be supported by facts, by one's own expe-
rience or somebody else's. And every experience is made up only of
sensations.
/: If God did not let himself be sensed, or in any way experienced, then
you would be right. For besides the sensations and the representations,
our entire cognition consists only of concepts, judgments, and infer-
ences. And we have seen that these, i.e. the whole fabric of our thinking,
not only can but must be referred back to the [201] most perfect sensation
and its progression,*43 in other words, to the progression of conscious-
ness. It must be referred back to it if we do not want to lose confidence
in our own reason. So, what we cannot sense* of God in this way, we
cannot experience of him, or become aware of, in any other way. For,
to repeat, it is only with the understanding and with reason that we
experience, and become aware; and never through the understanding or
through reason, as if these were particular powers.^ Considered just by them-
selves, according to their mere power to perceive relations, understand-
ing and reason are entia rationis; their function, like their content, a
nothing. In actuality [202] they are instead the perfection itself of sensation,
the nobler life, the highest existence that we know. The perfection of sensa-
*43- I insist once more, ad nauseam, that I do not allow the concept of an ex-
clusively passive faculty, but only as a modification of an active principle. "In true
philosophy an incomplete substance is a monster." Leibniz, Opp., vol. n, P. i,
p. 276.41
* Empfinden
t The 1815 edition reads here: "of independent revelation. When they are sundered
from the faculty of revelation, which is the sense or the faculty of perception in general, they
are without content and function, mere thought-entities or imaginary beings. In actuality
and in truth, therefore, unless they are a more perfect sensation itself, they are not the no-
bler life, the highest expression of {285} power that we know."
tion* determines the perfection of consciousness with all its modifications.

As the receptivity is, so is the spontaneity; as the sense, so the under-
standing. The degree of our faculty for distinguishing ourselves from ex-
ternal things, extensively and intensively, is the degree of our
personality, that is, the degree of elevation of our spirit. Along with this ex-
quisite property of reason, we receive the intimation of God, the intima-
tion of HE WHO IS, of a being who has its life in its self. Freedom breathes
upon the soul from there, and the fields of immortality become visible.
He: Your last words have stirred a whole ocean of sensations and
thoughts in me, my friend. . . .
[203] /: It's getting late. It's time for us to take our leave. But so that our
conversation may not end on a note that is either too solemn or too fa-
miliar, just listen to a couple of passages from a book that I picked up
yesterday to while away the time, and which once did me more good on
a day of sickness than I had experienced in many days of the best health.
He: Let me see, before I hear! Leonard and Gertrude.'71 It rings a bell.
I: It's odd that neither of us had heard enough about it not to have read
it long ago. It is certainly not because of what the author might lack or
what his book does or does not have that made it not entirely to my liking.
But come! Let's not forget the book itself in our talking about it!^
[204] It's deeds that instruct man, and deeds that console him. Away with
words!72
All that one might teach a man will only make him useful, or make of him a
man on whom or on whose skill one can build, because his own knowledge and
his skill are built on the toil of his time of apprenticeship. And where that is miss-
ing, all the skills and sciences of man are like the froth on the sea which, from
a distance, often looks like a boulder surging up from the depths, but which dis-
appears as soon as it's struck by wind and waves.73
To describe the night, or paint the sombre colours of its shadows, does not
help seeing. It's only when you kindle the light that you can show what the night
was, and it is only when you remove the cataracts that you can show what blind-
ness was.74
This is so true that to lead men away from error [205] one must blot out in
them the spirit of error, not just contradict the words of the fool.75
We lay our own inwardness to waste if we try to escape from the shadows in
which God has enveloped us.
* Empfindung
t Jacobi's footnote, omitted in the 1815 edition: "The following passages are found in
the third part passim, pp. 78, 292, 306, 408."
33° The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
God has made the night just as he has made the day; why will you not rest in
God's night until he shows you his sun which will never, in all eternity, call forth
dreams from behind the clouds where God has hidden them?
It is only through men that God is for man the God of men.
Man knows God only in so far as he knows man, that is, himself. And he hon-
ours God only to the extent that he honours himself, that is, in so far as he deals
with himself and with his neighbours in accordance with the purest and best
instincts that lie in him.
So a man too can raise another to the doctrine of religion, not through images and
words, but only through his deed.
[206] For it is in vain that you say to the poor: "There is a God," or to the or-
phan: "You have a Father in Heaven"; no man can teach another to know God
with images and words.
But if you help the poor man, so that he can live as a man, then you show him
God. And if you bring up the orphan as if he had a father, then you teach him
to know the Father in Heaven who is the one who shaped your heart in such a
way that you had to bring him up so.76
He: Splendid! Splendid! But there has just come to mind, I know not
how, an essay by Asmus in which there is talk of "feet heavy with gout,"
and of other feet "which the cloak hides.'"1'1 His last words, which made a
great impression on me, are:
"Ointment to the feet, man from Sinope!"78
[207]] SUPPLEMENT
[209] On Transcendental Idealism
* 79 It is my opinion that the Transcendental or Critical Idealism on

which Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is constructed is not treated with suf-
* This prefatory note is added in the 1815 edition:
|2gi}The following essay refers throughout to the first edition of the Cr. of Pure Reason
which was still the only one available at the time. The second edition of Kant's work was
published just a few months after the essay, augmented by that "Refutation of Idealism"
which I discuss at length in the Introduction to this second volume of my writings. In the
Preface to this second edition (B. xxxviiff.) Kant informs his readers of the improvements
in presentation that he has attempted in the new edition, but he does not conceal the fact
that the improvement was not without a certain loss for the reader, since he had to leave out
many things, or convey them in shortened form, in order to make room for a more comprehensible pres-
entation. I, for one, find this loss a highly significant one, and it is my earnest hope that the
readers who are serious about philosophy and its history will be encouraged by this essay
to compare the first edition of the Cr. of Pure Reason with the second, improved, one. (The
subsequent editions are only a line by line reprint of the second). I recommend for special
consideration the section in the first edition on A iO5ff., "The Synthesis of Recognition in
the Concept." Since the first edition has already become very scarce, care should be taken
that at least the few specimens still held in public collections, as well as the larger private
ones, do not eventually disappear. The advantage afforded by studying the systems of great
thinkers in their earliest (292) presentation is in general not sufficiently recognized.
Hamann once told me that the perceptive Christian Jacob Kraus never tired of thanking
him for having made him acquainted with Hume's first philosophical work, The Treatise on
Human Nature (1739). For it was only in this work that the true light regarding the later
Enquiries dawned on him.
See note 79 to the main text.

ficient care by some of the supporters of Kantian philosophy—or, to

speak my mind openly as I prefer, these supporters seem, in general, to
be so much afraid of the charge of idealism, that they prefer to induce
a misunderstanding rather than expose themselves openly to a charge
that might frighten others away. Now, in itself, there is nothing repre-
hensible in this—for normally one must first subdue the prejudices of
men before one can yoke them, and it is in general so difficult to attract
attention that, if a universally accepted opinion happens to stand in the
way, we might as well give up any hope of succeeding. In the present
case, however, the nature of the issue is such that the least misunder-
standing [210] spoils the whole lesson, and it is no longer possible to un-
derstand what is being expected of one. A reproach of this kind can
hardly be laid at the door of the Critique of Pure Reason itself. It declares
itself decidedly enough, and, after the few pages of the "Transcendental
Aesthetics," one need only read the critique of the fourth paralogism of
the "Transcendental Doctrine of the Soul" ([A] 367—380) to know what
to make of transcendental idealism everywhere.
The transcendental idealist, on the other hand, (Kant says in the section just re-
ferred to, [A] 370), may be an empirical realist or, as he is called, a dualist; that
is, he may admit the existence of matter without going outside his mere self-
consciousness, or assuming anything more than the certainty of his representa-
tions, that is, the cogito, ergo sum. For he considers this matter and even its inner
possibility to be appearance merely; and appearance, if separated from our sen-
sibility, is nothing. Matter is with him, therefore, only a species of representations
(intuition), which are called external, not as standing in relation to objects in
themselves external, but because they relate perceptions to the space in which all
things are external to one another, while yet the space itself is in us.
From the start, we have declared ourselves in favour of this transcendental
idealism. . . .
[A 372]. . . . For if we regard outer appearances as representations produced
in us by their objects, and if these objects be things existing in themselves outside
us, it is indeed impossible to see how we can come to know the existence of the
objects otherwise than by inference from the effect to the cause; and this being
so, it must always remain doubtful whether the cause in question be in us or out-
side us. We can indeed admit that something, which may be (in the transcenden-
tal sense) outside us, is the cause of our outer intuitions, but this is not the object
of which we are thinking in the representations of matter and of corporeal
things; for these are merely appearances, that is, mere kinds of representation,
which are never to be met with save in us, and the reality of which depends on
immediate consciousness, just as does the consciousness of my own thoughts.
The transcendental object is equally unknown in respect to inner and outer in-
tuition. But it is not of this that we are here speaking, but of the empirical object,
which is called an external object if it is represented in space, and an inner object
if it is represented only in its time-relations. Neither space not time, however, is to
be found save in us.
The expression "outside us" is thus unavoidably ambiguous in meaning, some-
thing signifying what as thing in itself exists apart from us, and sometimes what be-
longs solely to outer appearance. In order, therefore, to make this concept, in the
latter sense—the sense in which the psychological question as to the reality of
our outer intuition has to be understood—quite unambiguous, we shall distin-
guish empirically external objects from those which may be said to be external in
the transcendental sense, by explicitly entitling the former "things which are to be
found in space."
[A 374, note]. . . . [But] there is nothing in space save what is represented in
it. For space is itself nothing but representation, and whatever is in it must there-
fore be contained in the representation. Nothing whatsoever is in space, save in
so far as it is actually represented in it. It is a proposition which must indeed
sound strange, that a thing can exist only in the representation of it, but in this
case the objection falls, inasmuch as the things with which we are here concerned
are not things in themselves, but appearances only, that is, representations.
[A 378]. . . . [These idealist objections] drive us by main force to view all our
perceptions, whether we call them inner or outer, as a consciousness only of what
is dependent on our sensibility. They also compel us to view the outer objects of
these perceptions not as things in themselves, but only as representations, of
which, as of every other representation, we can become immediately conscious,
and which are entitled outer because they depend on what we call "outer sense,"
whose intuition is space. Space itself, however, is nothing but an inner mode of
representation in which certain perceptions are connected with one an-
other. . . . [379] Neither the transcendental object which underlies outer appear-
ances nor that which underlies inner intuition, is in itself either matter or a
thinking being, but a ground (to us unknown) of the appearances which supply
to us the empirical concept of the former as well as of the latter mode of
existence.
From the "Transcendental Aesthetics," to [215] which I referred first,

I only want to cite the following passages concerning the transcendental
ideality of time.
[A 36] Against this theory, which admits the empirical reality of time, but denies
its absolute and transcendental reality, I have heard men of intelligence so unan-
imously voicing an objection, that I must suppose it to occur spontaneously to
every reader to whom this way of thinking is unfamiliar. The objection is this.
Alterations are real, this being proved by change of our own representations—
even if all outer appearances, together with their alterations, be denied. Now al-
terations are possible only in time, and time is therefore something real. There
is no difficulty in meeting this objection. I grant the whole argument. Certainly
time is something real, namely, the real form of inner intuition. It has therefore
subjective reality in respect of inner experience; that is, I really have the repre-
sentation of time and of my determinations in it. Time is therefore to be re-
garded as real, not indeed as object but as the mode of representation of myself
as object. If without this condition of sensibility I could intuit myself, or be intu-
ited by another being, the very same determinations which we now represent to
ourselves as alterations would yield knowledge into which the representation of
time, and therefore also of alteration, would in no way enter. . . .8o [A 36 note] I can
indeed say that my representations follow one another; but this is only to say that
we are conscious of them as in a time-sequence, that is, in conformity with the
form of inner sense. . . .
So what we realists call actual objects or things independent of our

representations are for the transcendental idealist only internal beings
which exhibit nothing at all of a thing that may perhaps be there outside us, or
to which [217] the appearance may refer. Rather, these internal beings are merely
subjective determinations of the mind, entirely void of anything truly objective.
". . . Representations," nothing but representations, are [these objects] *44
which, in the manner in which they are represented, as external beings,
or as series of alterations, have no independent existence outside our
thoughts." [A 491] "[They]," i.e. these objects that are only appearances,
that display nothing, absolutely nothing, objective, but everywhere only
themselves, "are the mere play of our representations, and in the end re-
duce to determinations of inner sense." [A 101]
[218] Hence:
[Also] the order and regularity in the appearances, which we entitle nature, we
ourselves introduce. We could never find them in appearances, had we not our-
selves, or the nature of our mind, originally set them there. . . . [A 125]. . . .
Although we learn many laws through experience, they are only special determi-
nations of still higher laws, and the highest of these, under which the others all
stand, issue a priori from the understanding itself. They are not borrowed from
experience; on the contrary, they have to confer upon appearances their con-
formity to law, and so to make experience possible. Thus the understanding is
something more than a power of formulating rules through comparison of ap-
*44_ For this reason Kant calls the idealists who are not, merely empirical realists,
dreaming idealists—because they take the objects, which are mere representations, to
be things in themselves.
pearances; it is itself the lawgiver of nature. Save through it, nature, that is, syn-
thetic unity of the manifold of appearances, according to rules, would not exist
at all (for appearances, as such, cannot exist outside us—[219] they exist only
in our sensibility). . . . 45
[220] I trust that these brief excerpts suffice to prove that the Kantian
philosopher goes right against the spirit of his system whenever he says
that the objects produce impressions on the senses through which they
arouse sensations, and that in this way they bring about representations.
For according to the Kantian hypothesis, the empirical object, which is
always only appearance, cannot exist outside us and be something more
than a representation. On the contrary, according to this same hypoth-
esis we know not the least of the transcendental object. Whenever objects
are being considered, that is not what we are discussing. At best this con-
cept is a problematic one based on the entirely subjective form of our thought
which pertains only to the sensibility proper to us. Experience does not yield
it, nor can experience yield it in any way—for whatever is not an appear-
ance can never be an object of experience, and appearance, or [221] the
fact that some affection of the sense or other is in me, does not establish
any reference on the part of representations of this sort to an object of
any kind. It is the understanding that adds the object to the appearance
by combining the manifold of the latter into one consciousness. We say
that we cognize the object only when we have produced a synthetic unity in the
manifold of intuition, and the concept of this unity is the representation of the ob-
ject = x. This = x, however, is not the transcendental object. For about the
latter we never know anything. And it is only assumed as intelligible
*45. One must be careful not to mistake this Kantian claim with that other
one which Leibniz has so many times amplified and which is so beautifully and
intelligibly presented in Mendelssohn's Phaedon, namely that order, harmony, or
any agreement of a manifold, can only be found as such, not in things, but in a
thinking being who takes the manifold and holds it united in one representation.
For according to this latter claim, the order, and agreement, that I perceive is by
no means merely subjective. Rather, their conditions lie outside me in the object,
and I am necessitated by the constitution of the object to combine its parts in this
way and no other. In this case, therefore, the object is the law-giver for the un-
derstanding also with respect to the concept that the latter constructs in con-
formity to it. The concept is given through the object in all its parts and relations;
only the conceiving as such lies in me alone.42
cause of appearance in general simply in order that we may have some-

thing corresponding to sensibility understood as receptivity. *46
However much it may be contrary to the spirit of Kantian philosophy
[222] to say of the objects that they make impressions on the senses and
that in this way they bring about representations, still it is not possible
to see how even the Kantian philosophy could find entry into itself with-
out this presupposition and manage some statement of its hypothesis.
For even the word "sensibility" is without any meaning, unless we under-
stand by it a distinct real intermediary between one real thing and an-
other, an actual means from something to something else; and it would
be meaningless, too, if the concepts of "outside one another" and "being
combined," of "action" and "passion," of "causality" and "dependence,"
were not already contained in the concept of it as real and objective deter-
minations. In fact, they are contained in such a way that the absolute uni-
versality and necessity of these concepts must equally be given as a prior
presupposition. I must admit that I was held up not a little by this diffi-
culty in my study of the Kantian philosophy, so much so that for several
years running I had to start from the beginning over and over again with
the Critique [223] of Pure Reason, because I was incessantly going astray
on this point, viz. that without that presupposition I could not enter into
the system, but with it I could not stay within it.
It is plainly impossible to stay within the system with that presupposi-
tion, since the presupposition is based on the conviction of the objective
validity of our perception of objects outside us as things in themselves,
not merely subjective appearances; and it rests equally on the conviction
of the objective validity of our representations of the necessary connections
of these objects to one another and of their essential relations as objectively
real determinations. But these are assertions which cannot in any way be
reconciled with Kantian philosophy, since the whole intention of the
latter is to prove that the objects (as well as their relations) are merely
subjective beings, mere determinations of our own self, [224] with
absolutely no existence outside us. For even if it can be conceded, under
Kant's view, that a transcendental somewhat might correspond to these
merely subjective beings, which are only determinations of our own being,
as their cause, where this cause is, and what kind of connection it has with
its effect, remains hidden in the deepest obscurity. We have already seen,
moreover, that we cannot attain to any experience of this transcendental
something, or become in the least aware of it, either from near or from
far, but that all the objects of our experience are mere appearances, the
*46. Critique of Pure Reason, pp. [A] 246, 3, 254, 115 [in fact, 105], 494.
matter and real content of which is nothing but our own sensation
through and through. With respect to the particular determinations of
this sensation, (its source I mean) or, to speak the language of Kantian
philosophy, the manner in which we are affected by objects, we are in the most
complete ignorance. And as for the [225] inner elaboration or digestion
of this matter through which it receives its form, so that the sensations in
us become objects for us—this rests on a spontaneity of our being, the
principle of which is once more totally unknown, and all that we know
about it is that its primitive manifestation is that of a blind faculty which
combines forwards and backwards and which we call imagination. But
since the concepts that originate in this way, together with the judg-
ments and propositions that grow out of them, have no validity except
with reference to our sensations, our whole cognition is nothing but the
consciousness of the combinations of determinations of our own self.
And from these we cannot pass by inference to anything else at all. Our
universal representations, concepts and principles express only the es-
sential form to which every particular representation and every particu-
lar judgment must conform because of the constitution of our nature,
in order to be capable of being assumed and joined together into one
universal or transcendental [226] consciousness, and in this way obtain
a relative truth or a relative objective validity. But if we abstract from the
human form, these laws of our intuition and thought are without any
meaning or validity, and do not yield the slightest information about the
laws of nature in itself. Neither the principle of sufficient reason, nor
even the proposition that nothing can come from nothing, apply to
things in themselves. In brief, our entire cognition contains nothing,
nothing whatsoever, that could have any truly objective meaning at all.
I ask: How is it possible to reconcile the presupposition of objects that
produce impressions on our senses, and in this way arouse representa-
tions, with an hypothesis intent on abolishing all the grounds by which
the presupposition could be supported? Consider what we showed right
at the beginning of this essay, viz. that according to the Kantian system
space and all the things in it are in us and nowhere else; [227] that all
alterations, even those of our own inner state, which we believe we are
immediately aware of through the sequence of our thoughts, are only
modes of representations, and are not proof of any objective alteration,
or of any succession of things either inside us or outside us. Consider the
fact that all the principles of the understanding only express subjective
conditions which are laws of our thought and not laws of nature in itself
at all; on the contrary, they are without any truly objective content and
use. Consider these points properly, and decide whether it is possible to
maintain along with them the presupposition of objects that produce im-
pressions on our senses and by so doing bring about representations.
You will find it impossible unless you give an alien meaning to every
word, and a totally mystical sense to the whole complex. For according
to the common use of language, we must mean by "object" a thing that
[228] would be present outside us in a transcendental sense. And how could
we come by any such thing in Kantian philosophy? Perhaps because in
the representations that we call appearances we feel passive? But to feel
passive and to suffer is only one half of a condition that cannot be thought
on the basis of this half alone. It would be explicitly required in this case,
too, that it is not possible to think the condition by this half alone. So
we would have a sensation of cause and effect understood transcenden-
tally, and we would be able to infer [the existence of] things outside us
in a transcendental sense in virtue of it, as well as their necessary connec-
tions with one another. But since the whole of transcendental idealism
would collapse as a result, and would be left with no application or rea-
son for being, whoever professes it must disavow that presupposition.
For it must not even be probable to him that there be things present out-
side us in a transcendental sense, or that they have connections with us
which we would be [ 2 2 9 ] in a position of perceiving in any way at all. If he were
ever to find this even just probable, if he were but to believe it at a dis-
tance, then he would have to go out of transcendental idealism, and land
himself in truly unspeakable contradictions. The transcendental idealist
must have the courage, therefore, to assert the strongest idealism that
was ever professed, and not be afraid of the objection of speculative ego-
ism, for it is impossible for him to pretend to stay within his system if he
tries to repel from himself even just this last objection.
If Kantian philosophy were to distance itself even by a hairsbreadth
from the transcendental ignorance that transcendental idealism pro-
fesses, it would not only lose every point of support at that very moment
but be forced also to renounce what it alleges to be to be its main advan-
tage completely—namely, that it sets reason at rest. For this presumption
has no other base than [230] the absolute and unqualified ignorance thai
is claimed by transcendental idealism. But this ignorance would lose all
of its power if even a single conjecture were to rise above it and win from
it even the slightest advantage.
Be sober of head and mistrustful of friends; hinges are these on which

wisdom depends.81
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza
in Letters
to
Moses Mendelssohn
[Excerpts]
Breslau: Lowe, 1789

Second edition
{vii. Preface}
{xxvij Concerning Man's Freedom
FIRST SECTION
Man does not have Freedom
i. The possibility of the existence of all things known to us is supported

by, and refers to, the coexistence of other individual things. We are not
in a position to form the representation of a being that subsists com-
pletely on its own.
n. The results of the manifold relations of existence to coexistence are
expressed in living creatures through sensations.
in. We call "desire" or "repulsion" the inner mechanistic behaviour of
a living nature as conditioned by its sensations; or, the sensed relation
of the inner conditions of a living nature's existence and persistence to
the {xxvii} outer conditions of this very being, or also, only the sensed re-
lation of the inner conditions among themselves, is mechanistically con-
nected with a movement which we call "desire" or "repulsion."
iv. What lies at the foundation of all the various desires of a living na-
ture, we call its original natural "impulse"; this constitutes the very being
of the thing. Its business is to preserve and augment the faculty of exist-
ing of the particular nature of which it is the impulse,
v. We could call this original natural impulse "desire a priori." The mass
of individual desires are only so many occasional applications and mod-
ifications of this unalterable universal one.
vi. A desire can be said to be absolutely a priori if it pertains to each in-
dividual being without distinction of genus, species, and gender, {xxvii}
inasmuch as they all equally strive simply to preserve themselves in
existence.
vn. A completely indeterminate faculty is a non-thing. Every determina-

tion, however, presupposes something already determined; it is the re-
sult of a law, and its fulfilment. Hence a priori desire, whether of the
primary or the secondary species, also presupposes a priori laws,
vin. The original impulse of rational being, like the impulse of any
other being, consists in an unceasing striving to preserve and augment
the faculty of existing of the particular nature which it determines,
ix. The existence of rational natures is said to be "personal," as distinct
from all other natures. This personal existence consists in the conscious-
ness that a particular being has of its identity, and results from a higher
degree of consciousness in general.*
{xxix} x. The natural impulse of a rational being, or rational desire, is
therefore necessarily directed to the enhancement of the degree of per-
sonality, i.e. the degree of living existence itself.
XL Rational desire in general, or the impulse of the rational being as such,
we call "will."
xii. The existence of each and every finite being is a successive one. Its
personality rests on memory and reflection; its limited but distinct cog-
nition, on concepts, hence on abstraction and on verbal, written, or
other signs.
X I I L The law of the will is to act according to concepts of conformity
and contextuality, i.e. according to principles; the will is the faculty of prac-
tical principles.
xiv. Whenever a rational being does not act in conformity with its prin-
ciples, {xxx} it does not act according to its will—it acts, not in accord-
ance with a rational desire, but an irrational one.
xv. Through the satisfaction of each and every irrational desire, the
identity of a rational being is disrupted; hence its personality, which is
grounded in rational existence, is injured, and the quantity of living ex-
istence is thereby diminished in the same measure,
xvi. The degree of living existence that produces the person is only a
type and mode of living existence in general, not a special existence or
essence. Therefore the person attributes to itself not only those actions
that result in it in accordance to principles but also those that are the ef-
fects of irrational desires and blind inclinations too.
xvii. Whenever a man has transgressed his principles, being blinded by
* In the third edition of 1819 Jacobi adds: "a kind that comes with the power to
discern."
an irrational desire, {xxxi} he is later wont to say, when he feels the evil
consequences of his actions: "It serves me right." For he is conscious of
the identity of his being, and hence he must look upon himself as the
author of the unpleasant situation in which he finds himself, and he
must experience a most embarrassing discord within himself,
xvin. So far as it is built upon one fundamental impulse alone, the whole sys-
tem of practical reason is grounded upon this experience,
xix. If man had only one desire, he would not have any concept of right
and wrong at all. But he has several desires, and he cannot satisfy all of
them in equal measure; on the contrary, there are thousands of cases
where the possibility of satisfying one of them, removes the possibility of
satisfying the others. However, if all these different desires are only mod-
ifications of a single original desire, then this last provides the principle
according to which the {xxxii} different desires can be weighed against
one another, and the relation determined according to which they can
be satisfied without the person running into contradiction and enmity
with itself.
xx. An inner [measure or] right of this kind is built up in each man
mechanistically, by virtue of the identity of his personality. External
right, which men freely concede to one another, and establish without
coercion whenever they enter into a civil union, is always just a copy of
the inner right, publicly established among the individual members. I
appeal here to the history of all peoples of whom we have any detailed
information at all.
xxi. The greater perfection to which inner right attains according to cir-
cumstances follows only as the continuation and elaboration of the very
same mechanism that brought about the lesser perfection. All principles
rest on desires and experience, {xxxiii} and to the extent that they are ac-
tually complied with, they presuppose an activity already determined
from elsewhere. They can never be the beginning or the first cause of an
action. The aptitude and readiness to cultivate effective principles, or to
accept them practically, is proportionate to the capacity to receive rep-
resentations; to the faculty to change these representations into con-
cepts; to the vivacity and energy of thought; and to the degree of rational
existence.
xxn. The beginning (or the a priori) of principles in general is the orig-
inal desire of a rational being to preserve its own particular existence, i.e.
the person, and to subjugate anything that would injure its identity.
xxiii. From this very impulse there flows a natural love and obligation
to justice towards others. A rational being cannot distinguish itself qua
rational being (abstractly) from another rational being. The /and Man
are {xxxiv} one; the He and Man are one; therefore the He and I are one. The
Love of the person therefore limits the love of the individuum, and neces-
sitates my not holding myself in high regard. But in order to avoid ex-
tending this last condition theoretically to the point where the individual
might be totally destroyed, leaving us with a mere personified nothingness,
more precise determinations are required. These have already been al-
luded to in the preceding, but is not our purpose to discuss them further
here. It suffices for us that, along this way, we have attained to a clear in-
sight into the origin of the moral laws that we call apodeictic laws of prac-
tical reason; and that we are now able to conclude that, even when
developed to its highest form, simple impulse conjoined with reason ex-
hibits unqualified mechanism alone and no freedom, although an ap-
pearance of freedom arises because of the often conflicting interests of
the individuum and the person, and the varying fortunes of a mastery
to which the person can lay claim only when conjoined with clear
consciousness.
{XXXV} SECOND SECTION
Man has Freedom
xxiv. It is undeniable that the existence of all finite things rests on co-
existence, and that we are not in a position to form the representation
of a being that subsists completely on its own. It is equally undeniable
however, that we are even less in a position to form the representation
of an absolutely dependent being. Such a being would have to be en-
tirely passive. Yet it could not be passive, since anything that is not already
something cannot simply be determined to be something; in what has no
property, none can be generated simply through relations; indeed, not
even a relation is possible with respect to it.
xxv. But if a completely mediated existence or being is not conceivable
but is a non-thing, then a completely mediated, i.e. wholly mechanistic,
action, is equally a non-thing: hence mechanism is in itself only some-
thing accidental, and it {xxxvi} must everywhere have a purely autonomous
activity at its foundation.
xxvi. Since we recognize that in its existence, and consequently also in
its action and passion, every finite thing is necessarily supported by other
finite things to which it relates, we must equally recognize the subjuga-
tion of each and every individual being to mechanistic laws. For, to the
extent that its being and action is mediated, to that extent it must abso-
lutely rest on the laws of mechanics.*
xxvu. The cognition of what mediates the existence of things means
"distinct cognition"; whatever does not allow mediation, cannot be dis-
tinctly known by us.
xxvin. Absolutely autonomous activity excludes mediation; it is impos-
sible that we should somehow cognize its inner being distinctly,
xxix. Hence the possibility {xxxvii} of absolutely autonomous activity
cannot be known; its actuality can be known, however, for it is immedi-
ately displayed in consciousness, and is demonstrated by the deed.
xxx. This autonomous activity is called "freedom" inasmuch as it can be
opposed to, and can prevail over, the mechanism which constitutes the
sensible existence of an individual being.
xxxi. Among living beings we only know man to be endowed with the
degree of self-conscious autonomous activity that brings the impetus and
the calling to free actions with it.
xxxn. So freedom does not consist in some absurd faculty to make de-
cisions without grounds; even less does it consist in the choice of the
most useful, or the choice of rational desires. For any such choice, even
if it comes about according to the most abstract concepts, always still is
a mere mechanistic event. On the contrary, this freedom consists {xxx-
viii} essentially in the independence of the will from desires.
xxxni. Will is purely autonomous activity elevated to the degree of con-
sciousness that we call "reason."
xxxiv. The independence and inner omnipotence of the will, or the
possibility that intellectual being can have dominion over sensible real-
ity, is de facto granted by all men.
xxxv. We know that the philosophers of antiquity, especially the Stoics,
did not allow any comparison between things of desire and those of
honour. The objects of desire, they said, can be measured against the
sensation of the pleasing, and the concepts of what is beneficial can be
measured against one another, and one desire can be sacrificed to an-
other. The principle of desire, however, falls outside any relation to the
principle of honour which has {xxxix} one object alone, viz. the perfection
of human nature per se, autonomous activity, freedom. Therefore all trans-
gressions were alike to them, and the question was always just this: from
which of the two incommensurable principles (which could never possibly
* In the third edition of 1819 Jacobi adds: "Every action is to some extent the action
of something else."
come into real collision with one another) did the action proceed? They
would quite rightly only allow a man to be called free who lived just the
life of his soul and determined himself according to the laws of his na-
ture, hence only obeyed himself and always acted on his own. On the other
hand, they saw mere slaves in those who, determined by the things of de-
sire, lived in accordance with the law of these things, and subjugated
themselves to such things so that they were unceasingly altered by them,
and moved to act as suited their desires.
xxxvi. However much our enlightened age may have arisen above reli-
gious fantasies, or the mysticism of an Epictetus1 or an Antoninus,2 we
have not yet advanced so far in the distinctness and {xl} profundity of our
ideas as to have cut ourselves loose from all feeling of honour. But as
long as a spark of this feeling still dwells in man, there is an irrefutable
witness to freedom, an invincible faith in the inner allmight of the will,
alive in him. He can deny this faith with his lips, but the faith abides in
his conscience, and bursts forth unexpectedly sometimes, as in the
Mahomet of the poet, where the prophet, withdrawn into himself with his
mind in turmoil, utters the dreadful words:
There is remorse after all!3
xxxvii. But this faith cannot be totally denied, not even with the lips.
For who would want to be known as one who is not always capable of re-
sisting temptation to a shameful deed but must hesitate instead, weigh
advantages and disadvantages and think of degree or magnitude"? And that
is how we judge other men too. For if we see someone give the pleasant
precedence over the {xli} useful; or choose crooked means to his ends;
or contradict himself in his wishes and aspirations, we only find that he
is acting irrationally, and foolishly. If he is remiss in the fulfilment of his
duties; if he defiles himself with vice; if he is unjust and given to violent
acts, we can hate him, loathe him, but reject him altogether we cannot.
But if he deliberately denies the feeling of honour; if he shows that he
can bear inner shame, or that he no longer feels self-contempt—then we
mercilessly reject him. He is filth under our feet.
xxxvin. Where do these unconditional judgments arise from? whence
come these limitless presumptions and demands, which are not re-
stricted just to actions but lay claim to feeling itself, and demand its exis-
tence apodeictically?
xxxix. Are we to suppose that the validity of these presumptions, these
demands, is based on some {xlii} formula, perhaps on the insight into the
right connection, the indisputable truth of the consequence, in the fol-

lowing proposition: "If A equals B, and C equals A, then B equals C"?
This is how Spinoza proved that man, so far as he is a rational being,
would rather give up his life, even if he has no faith in the immortality
of the soul, than save himself from death through a lie.*1 And in abstracto
Spinoza is right. It is just as impossible for a man of pure reason to lie or
to cheat, as for the three angles of a triangle not to equal two right
angles. But will a real being endowed with reason be so driven into a cor-
ner by the abstractum of his reason? Will he let himself be made such a total
prisoner through a mere play of words? Not for a moment! If honour is
to be trusted, and if a man can keep his word, then quite another spirit must
dwell in him than the spirit of syllogism.*2
{xliii} XL. I hold this other spirit to be the breath of God in the work of
clay.
XL i. This spirit gives proof of its existence first in the understanding, for
without it the understanding would be a miraculous mechanism that not
only enables the seeing man to be led by the blind, but also makes the
necessity of this arrangement demonstrable through inferences of rea-
son. Who controls the syllogism while it stipulates its premises? Only this
spirit, through its presence in the deeds of freedom, and in an indestruc-
tible consciousness. 3
x LI i. Just as this consciousness is the very conviction that the intelli-
gence is effective by its own strength; that it is the highest power, and in-
deed the only one truly known to us, so too it teaches us {xliv} to have
immediate faith in a first and supreme Intelligence, in an intelligent au-
thor and law giver of nature, in a God who is a Spirit.
XLIII. But this faith first reaches its full force and becomes religion,
when the faculty of pure love develops in man's heart.
XLIV. Pure Love? Is there such a love? How can it be proven, and where
is its object to be found?
XLV. If I answer, "The principle of pure love is the same as that of whose
existence, qua principle of honour, we already made certain," then the
reader may well believe that he has all the more right to insist that I must
expound the object of it.
*i. Eth., Part iv, prop. Ixxii.

*2. Man's reason, {xliii} abstracted from man himself and from every incen-
tive, is a mere ens rationis that can neither act nor react, neither think nor act. See
p. 423 of this work [i.e. Supplement vu].
*3- See pp. 28 & 29 of this work [pp. 19-20 of first edition].
XLVI. So my answer is this: the object of pure love is the same one that
Socrates beheld. It is the theion* in man; veneration of this {xlv} divine ele-
ment in him is what lies at the ground of every virtue, of all feeling of
honour.
XLvii. I cannot construct either this impulse, nor its object. To be able
to do that, I would have to know how substances are created, and how
a necessary being is possible. But the following will perhaps yet clarify my
conviction about its existence somewhat more.
XLVI 11. If the universe is not God, but a creation; if it is the effect of a
free intelligence; then the original tendency of each and every being
must be die expression of a divine will. This expression of God's will in
the creature is its original law, and the power to fulfil this law must also
be given in it necessarily. This law, which is the condition of the existence of
the being itself, its original impulse, its own will, cannot be compared to nat-
ural laws that are only the results of relations and rest everywhere upon
mediation, {xlvi} Every individual being, however, belongs to nature;
hence it is also subject to natural laws, and has a double tendency.
XLIX. The tendency towards the earthly is the sensible impulse or the
principle of desire; the tendency towards the eternal is the intellectual
impulse, the principle of pure love.
L. If anyone wants me to discuss this double tendency further; if he que-
ries the possibility of such a relation, and the theory of its terms, then I
shall quite properly decline any such investigation, since the object of a
theory of creation is to state the conditions of the unconditioned. It is
sufficient that the existence of this double tendency, and its relation,
should be demonstrated through action, and recognized by reason. Just
as all men attribute freedom to themselves, and set their honour only in the
possession of it, so they all attribute a faculty of pure love to themselves too,
and a {xlvii} feeling of its overwhelming energy upon which the possibility
of freedom rests. They all want to be lovers of virtue, not of the advan-
tages connected with it; and they all want to know of a beauty that is not
just a source of pleasure; a joy that is not mere titillation.
LI. We call the actions that actually proceed from this faculty "divine";
and their source, the dispositions to these actions, we call "godly dispo-
sitions." These actions are also accompanied by a joy which cannot be
compared to any other joy: this is the joy that God himself has in his existence.
LI i. Joy is pleasure in existence; just as everything that challenges exis-
tence brings pain and sadness with it. Joy's source is the source of life
* divine
and all activity. But if its affect only refers to a transitory existence, then
it is itself transitory: the soul of the animal. If its object {xlviii} is the un-
changing and eternal, then it is the very power of the Deity, and its
booty, immortality.
[The text of Mendelssohn's memoranda in reply tojacobi's account of
his meeting with Lessing appended to Mendelssohn's letter to Jacobi of
i August 1784, mentioned on p. 52 of the first edition, is reproduced in
the second edition of 1789 in its entirety, as follows:]
{78} Supplement
MEMORANDA
For the Attention of Herr Jacobi
You say:4 "With every coming-to-be within the infinite, no matter how
one dresses it up in images; with every change within the infinite, some-
thing out of nothing is posited." [And you believe that] "Spinoza therefore
rejected every transition from the infinite to the finite; in general all cau-
sae transitoriae, secundariae or remotae altogether; and instead of an ema-
nating En-soph he posited only an immanent one, an indwelling cause of
the world, eternally unalterable within itself {79}, one and the same,
taken together with all its consequences." Here, I come up against diffi-
culties that I cannot myself resolve. ( i ) If a series without beginning did
not seem impossible to Spinoza, then certainly the coming-to-be of
things by way of emanation does not necessarily imply a becoming out
of nothing. (2) Assume that for Spinoza these things are finite: then
their indwelling within the infinite is no more comprehensible (indeed,
in my opinion, it is even less so) than their emanation from it. If the in-
finite cannot effect anything finite, it can also not think anything finite.
Generally, Spinoza's system does not seem apt to the resolution of dif-
ficulties of this sort. Difficulties of this kind are bound to arise at the level
of thoughts, as well as with respect to their actual objects. What cannot
become objectively actual, cannot be thought subjectively either. The
very same difficulty that Spinoza encounters in letting the finite be ac-
tual apart from God, he must, I say, come upon again {80} when he trans-
poses the finite into the divine essence, and considers it as the thought
of the Divinity.
Subsequently you explain a passage of Spinoza that Lessing refers to
as what is most obscure in him—and Leibniz*4 found it equally so, and
did not quite understand. Your view is that the infinite cause, as you put
it, explicitly lacks both understanding and will since, in consequence of
its transcendental unity and thoroughgoing absolute infinity, it can have
no object of thought or volition. You further explain that your only in-
tention is to deny that the first cause, being of infinite nature, has indi-
vidual thoughts, or individual determinations of the will, and you give as
reason, that each and every individual concept must derive from another
individual concept, and must refer immediately to an actually present
object. Hence you only want to grant to the first cause {81} the inner and
universal primal material of the understanding and will. I must confess
that I can understand this explanation as little as I understand the words
of Spinoza himself. The first cause has thoughts, but no understanding.
It has thoughts, because according to Spinoza these are a principal prop-
erty of the one true substance. Yet it has no individual thoughts, it has
only their primal material. Which universal can be conceived without
the individual? Isn't any such universal even less intelligible than a form-
less matter, a primal material without a mould, a being that has only uni-
versal, but no particular, characteristics? You say: absolute infinity has no
object of thought. But is not this infinity its own object of thought? are
not its properties and modes the object of thought for it? And if it has
no object of thought, no understanding, how can thought be its attrib-
ute all the same? How can it be at the same time the one single thinking
substance? Moreover, its modes, or the contingent things, do actually
have individual determinations {82} of the will: so how is it that the sub-
stance itself only has the universal primal material of these determina-
tions? In Spinoza I can at least understand the half of this. He does put
free will simply in the aimless indeterminate choice of something per-
fectly indifferent. It seemed to him that it can belong to a mode of the
Divinity inasmuch as the latter represents a finite being, but he rightly
*4- Theod., §173.

352 The Main Philosophical Writings and the NovelAllwill
denies any such aimless arbitrary will to the Divinity itself, in so far as it
is an infinite being. In his opinion, the cognition of the good through
which a free choice is brought about belongs among the properties of
the understanding, and is to this extent of the most consummate neces-
sity; so all consequences, whether they proceed from the knowledge of
the true and false or from the knowledge of the good and evil, must be
equally necessary according to his theory. But since you, Sir, accept the
system of the determinists, and do not allow even to men any other
choice except one derived from the final practical consideration of all
motives and incentives, I don't see any reason why {83} you should deny
that the infinite cause has an eternally pre-determined choice of this
kind. Of course, since you deny true individuality to die infinite, from
this point of view no will, or freedom, can pertain to it either, since these
presuppose actual individual substantiality. But this is not the ground
that you anywhere propose; and this seems to me to be direcdy opposed
to Spinoza's system, as I shall later have occasion to elaborate further.
According to Spinoza's conception, whatever occurs in the visible
world is of the strictest necessity, since it is grounded so (and not other-
wise) in the divine essence and in the possible modifications of its prop-
erties. For Spinoza, what does not actually occur, is also not possible, not
thinkable. So if Spinoza had granted that only the principle of contradic-
tion establishes a limit to the inner possibility of things, as Leibniz, Bayle
and others maintain, it would indeed have followed, as Leibniz remarks
with reference to the cited passage, that all the romances of Scudery and
all the fabrications of Ariosto, {84} must be accepted as actual events.5
But Spinoza also held to be impossible that which does not contain con-
tradiction, yet is not grounded in the modes of God as necessary cause
of all things. Here you see the pathway by which Spinoza too would have
arrived at the ens perfectissimum, if he could only have gone along with the
determinists regarding the concept of freedom. Only according to the
system of the ens perfectissimum is it possible to comprehend why this
series of determinations, and no other, has been actualized within the di-
vine essence, or, to speak in the language of Spinoza, why no other has
been possible. What you say about "consequence" and "duration" in this
connection has my full assent, except that I would not say that they
are mere "illusion." They are necessary determinations of restricted
thought, and hence "appearances" that must nonetheless be distin-
guished from mere "illusion."
Your salto mortale is a healthy expedient {85} of nature. Whenever I
have been clambering along the way of speculation for any length of
time, through thorns and shrubs, I seek to orient myself by means of bon
sens, and look round at least for the way by which I can get back to it.
Since I cannot deny that intentions exist, to have intentions is one pos-
sible property of the spirit; and inasmuch as having intentions is not a
mere deficiency on the part of spirit, it must also pertain to some spirit
in the highest degree possible; hence there is, besides thought, yet a will
and a deed that can be properties of the infinite, and therefore must
exist.
The device proposed by Lessing at this point is entirely in keeping
with his whimsicality. It is one of those leaps of fancy with which he made
a show of surpassing himself, so to speak, and just for that reason never
quite moved from where he was. To wonder whether there might not be
something that not only transcends all concepts but lies completely out-
side the concept, this is what I call surpassing oneself. My credo is: what
I cannot think to be true, does not trouble me with doubt. {86} A ques-
tion that I cannot comprehend, I also cannot answer; for me it is as good
as no question at all. It has never occurred to me to want to climb onto
my own shoulders in order to have a less obstructed view.
In one of his comedies Lessing has someone who believes he is seeing
magic say: "This light is not really burning; it only seems to burn. It's not
shining; it only makes a show of shining."6 The first doubt has some
grounds; but the second contradicts itself. Whatever appears, must
actually be appearing. Qua phenomenon, each and every phenomenon
is supremely evident. Subjectively considered, all thoughts are quite
conclusively true. So the power to think is a truly primal power too, one
that cannot be grounded in a higher original power. It seems that you
do not put any special weight on this strange notion of our friend
Lessing either.
{87} But when you say on p. 21 that the one infinite substance of
Spinoza has no determinate and complete existence on its own apart
from individual things, you detach me at once from the whole concep-
tion that I had formed of Spinozism. So, according to this system, do in-
dividual things have their own determinate actual existence, and is their
ensemble a one as well, but without determinate complete existence?
How am I to understand this? i.e. How can I reconcile it with your other
utterances?
If Sp. thought of freedom as Leibniz did, as you remark in what fol-
lows, then Spinoza must also have conceded that, with respect to the
most perfect cause, the knowledge of good and evil cannot be without
consequence, any more than the knowledge of the true and false; that
the most perfect cause must be pleased therefore by the good, and dis-
pleased by evil, that is, it must have intentions, {88} and when it acts, it
must do so in accordance with intentions.
Here again is a place where the philosopher of the schools meets with
the Spinozist, and where the two clasp one another in brotherly
embrace.
On p. 26 I come across a passage that is absolutely unintelligible to
me. Thought, you say, is not the source of substance, but substance is the
source of thought. Hence a non-thinking something must be assumed
before thought as being first—a something that must be thought as prior
to everything, if not in its very possibility*5 then at least in representa-
tion, being, and inner nature. It appears here that our friend wants to
think something which is no thought at all; that he wants to perform a
leap {89} into the void, where reason cannot follow. You want to think
of something that precedes all thought, and is not therefore thinkable
even by the most perfect understanding of all.
In my opinion, the source of all these illusory concepts lies in your
holding extension and thought to be the sole matters and objects of
thought, and these only to the extent that they actually exist. I don't
know on what ground you can presuppose this as established. Cannot
thinking being be both material and object to itself? Don't we know how
we feel whenever we suffer pain, hunger, thirst, cold, or heat? whenever
we fear, hope, love, hate, etc.? Call these the thoughts, concepts, or sen-
timents and affects of the soul; it suffices that in all these affects the soul
has neither extension nor movement for its object. This is true even as
regards the sentiments of sense: what does sound, colour, or physical
taste, have in common with extension and movement? {90} I know very
well that Locke has accustomed philosophers to consider extension, im-
penetrability, and movement, as primary qualities, and to reduce to them
the appearances of the other senses (as secondary qualities). But what
ground has the Spinozist for accepting any of this? In the end, can there
not be a spirit who conceives extension and movement simply as possi-
ble, even though they are not really there? This must be all the more fea-
sible for Spinoza, for whom extension is a property of the one infinite
substance.
I pass over the many witty notions with which our friend Lessing sub-
sequently entertained you, and of which it is difficult to say whether they
*5. This is a mistake in writing or print. The first edition of my Letters, and
so my manuscript, reads "actuality."
are philosophy or play. When he was in the mood, Lessing was given to
coupling the most disparate of ideas, just to see to what products they
might give birth. From this random cast of ideas there resulted at times
some quite peculiar considerations, {91} which he knew how to make
good use of afterwards. For the most part, however, they were just fan-
cies, though entertaining enough at the coffee table. Everything that you
have him say on p. 33 is of this sort: his ideas about the economy of the
world-soul; or about Leibniz's entelechies which are supposedly a mere
effect of the body; his dabbling in weather making; his infinite bore-
dom; and his other extravagant ideas, the kind that shine brightly for a
moment, crackle and then fizzle out. I shall also leave untouched the
noble retreat under the banner of faith which you propose for your own
part. It is totally in the spirit of your religion which imposes on you the
duty of suppressing doubt through faith. The Christian philosopher can
afford the pastime of teasing the student of nature; of confronting him
with puzzles which, like will-o'-the-wisps, lure him now to one corner,
and now to the other, but always slip away even from his most assured
grasp. My religion {92} knows no duty to resolve doubts of this kind
otherwise than through reason; it commands no faith in eternal truths.
I have one more ground, therefore, to seek conviction.—I come to the
place, p. 41, where you yet again try to clarify the principle of actuality,
following Spinoza. "Spinoza's God," you say, "is the pure principle of the
actuality in everything actual, of being in everything existent; is thor-
oughly without individuality, and absolutely infinite. The unity of this
God rests on the identity of the indiscernible and hence does not ex-
clude a sort of plurality. However, considered merely in its transcendental
unity, the Divinity must do without any actuality whatever, for actuality
can only be found expressed in determinate individuals." If I understand
this rightly, only determinate individual beings are actually existing
things; {93} the infinite, on the other hand, or the principle of actuality,
is based only on the ensemble, the sum-concept, of all these individual-
ities. So it is a mere collectivum quid* and lacks all substantiality apart
from that of its constituent members. But now, every collectivum rests on
the thought that binds it together; for outside thoughts, or objectively
considered, every individual is an isolated thing on its own account; only
relation makes each of them a part of the whole, a member of the ensem-
ble. But relation is an operation of thought. You must help me, there-
fore, out of this muddle in which I find myself with respect to Spinozism.
* collective something
I ask, first of all, where this thought, this collectivism, the relation of the
individual to the whole, subsists. Not in the individual, for each individ-
ual subsists only for itself. If we were to deny this, we would not only have
a kind of plurality in the Divinity, but a truly innumerable multiplicity.
But neither does this thought subsist in a collection; for that claim would
lead to obvious absurdities. So if this {94} pan, this ensemble, is to have
truth, it must subsist in an actual, transcendental, unity that excludes all
plurality—but then we would have slid back, imperceptibly, into the well-
worn tracks of the philosophy of the schools.
Or again: Until now I have always believed that according to Spinoza
the one individual infinite alone has true substantiality and that the
manifold finite is a mere modification or thought of the infinite. You
seem to turn this around. You assign true substantiality to the individual,
so that in consequence the whole has to be a mere thought on the indi-
vidual's part. You drive me in a circle from which I cannot escape. For,
in other circumstances, you also seem to agree with me that according
to Spinoza only One Substance, transcendental and infinite, is possible,
and that the properties of this substance are infinite extension and infi-
nite thoughts.
For me, however, the greatest difficulty that I find in Spinoza's system
lies {95} in his wanting to derive the unrestricted from the ensemble of
the restricted.
How can degree be strengthened by addition? How can intensity be
strengthened through an increment of extension? Whereas in all other
systems the transition from the infinite to the finite is difficult to con-
ceive, in Spinoza's system, so it seems to me, the return from the finite
to the intensive infinite is simply impossible. We never achieve intensifi-
cation through mere increment, even if the addition proceeds to infin-
ity. If we attribute a quantity to degree, then this is an intensive quantity
that cannot be increased through the addition of like things. Clearly the
Spinozist must be confusing concepts here, and making multiplicity
count as inner intensity.
Wolff has already touched upon this objection briefly (in the second
Part of his Natural Theology).7 {96} But, as far as I know, no defender
of Spinoza has given any answer yet.
[The following is added to page 140 of the first edition, at the end of the
footnote that starts on p. 138:]
{190} It is my opinion that Spinoza's God has no other properties be-

sides the properties of infinite extension and infinite thought. If Spinoza
{191} ascribed infinite properties to God vaguely, even as regards their
number, he did so because he defined and demonstrated God's being
a priori, whereas it was impossible to demonstrate either the being of cer-
tain determinate properties or the non-being of others, both of which he
would have had to do if he did not assume infinite attributes, even ac-
cording to number. But now, only two properties of infinite essence were
to be found in the human understanding: extension and thought.
Thought, considered in itself, belongs as little to extension, according to
Spinoza, as extension, considered in itself, belongs to thought; rather,
the two of them are united simply and solely because they are the prop-
erties of one and the same indivisible essence. Moreover, it is impossible
that any property of substance be more universal, that is, more omni-
present, than any other. But if extension and thought are united for this
reason alone, and they are necessarily One Thing in every thing, then
the same must also apply to all other properties of substance, and their
entire summa must be contained in the content of each and every indi-
vidual thing. Spinoza himself drew this correct conclusion, {192} and re-
frained only from developing it in the way that we have just done (see
Ethics, Part n, props. 45, 46, 47).8 There was however an acute man in
London (he is, alas, anonymous) who put this together in Spinoza's own
lifetime. He asked our sage (Epist. Lxv) 9 whether the conciliation of his
358 The Main Philosophical Writings and theNovelAllwill
a priori and a posteriori did not necessitate the assertion that there are
just as many different worlds as there are different properties of God.
Spinoza sought a way out, and cited Schol. prop. 7, Part n,10 where he
had given the demonstration that there can only be one universe. (Epist.
LXVI) 11 That outstanding thinker turned then to this very Scholion, and
from it derived the proof that in the concept of every individual thing
there must be contained the concepts of all the different attributes.
Spinoza replied as in the first instance, and as briefly as possible.
I am convinced that Spinoza, who had suffered so many persecutions,
and was still exposed to new ones all the time, did not want to give him-
self away on this point. {193} That is how I explain his reply to another
unknown in Paris, who desired to know how Spinoza explained the
being of individual things otherwise than Descartes, for whom extended
being was set in motion through God. (Epist. Lxxi). 12 Spinoza replied
thus: (Epist. LXXII) 13 extended being was for him quite other than in
Descartes; perhaps he would explain himself on this subject more clearly
in the future, for he had not quite satisfied himself on this yet. Surely,
if Spinoza did not think that he had satisfied himself on this score,
he must not have thought to have satisfied himself on anything. See
Supplement vi and vn.
[The second edition of 1789 is augmented by eight supplements that
practically double the size of the first.]
{261} Supplement i
[Here Jacobi reproduces long excerpts from De la causa, principio e uno
(1584) of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), in German translation but
with samples from the Italian original as well. For an English text,
see Sidney Thomas Greenburg, The Infinite in Giordano Bruno, with a
Translation of His Dialogue, Concerning the Cause, Principle, and the One
(New York: King's Crown Press, 1950). Bruno was an Italian Renaissance
astrologer and alchemist who also dabbled in magic and advocated a re-
ligion of nature. His thought and practices were heavily influenced by
the philosophy associated with Hermetic literature. He was eventually
burned at the stake in Rome by order of the Inquisition, probably be-
cause of his claims to magical power.
One can think of two reasons why Jacobi gives him so much promi-
nence here. The first is that, in the dialogue from which the excerpts are
taken, Bruno portrays the world and its relation to God in a way that
strikingly prefigures Spinoza's picture in the Ethics. The second, and per-
haps more important, is that, in the dialogue, Bruno distinguishes be-
tween "principle" and "cause" on the basis of the different relation that
the two bear to an "effect." Whereas a cause remains outside its effect,
a principle is immanent to it and in a sense also dependent on it. The
effect of a principle is in turn a principle with respect to the effect's prin-
ciple, as is the case in the relation of "matter" to "form" and "form" to
"matter," where each term of the relation depends on the other for its
360 The Main Philosophical Writings and theNovelAllwill
function and together therefore constitute an indivisible whole. Once

this distinction between principle and cause is established, Bruno goes
on to show that the efficient cause of the world is its "soul" and hence
also its "formal principle." But from this it is only one step to the conclu-
sion that this formal principle is in turn dependent upon a "material"
one, or "potentiality" in general, and that together the two constitute a
"universe," i.e. a single self-contained totality.
Now the distinction between principle or "ground" on the one hand,
and "efficient cause" on the other, is one that Jacobi also makes, but only
to claim that the two belong to totally different levels of thought—the
first to logical reflection and the second to the perception of the real—
and that to identify the two is to confuse the requirements of reflection
with the requirements of actual existence. This confusion inexorably
leads to a monistic view of reality. The introduction of Bruno here was
very likely intended by Jacobi as an object lesson. Bruno makes his move
to the One by means of the very identification of formal principle with
efficient cause that Jacobi denounces. What is more (and in Jacobi's eyes
this point would constitute important evidence for his belief that all
metaphysics is ultimately monistic), Bruno backs up his own position
with ample references to the authorities of classical metaphysics, Plato,
Aristotle, and Democritus included. What Jacobi could not have ex-
pected, of course, is that by introducing Bruno to his contemporaries he
was in fact contributing one more source of inspiration for the tendency
to divinize nature already at work in the incipient Romantic movement
of the time. F. W. J. Schelling would entitle his most trenchant statement
of monism precisely Bruno, or On the Natural and Divine Principle of Things
(1802).14
Bruno is mentioned by Hamann in a letter to Jacobi of 1785.15 After
saying that Spinoza's causa sui is the equivalent of Wolffs sufficient
ground, Hamann mentions the fact that for years he has been trying, but
in vain, to locate Bruno's five Italian dialogues dela [sic] causa, principio
ed uno. And he goes on to say that he has always preferred the "principle
of the coincidence of opposites" to either the principle of contradiction
or that of sufficient reason, neither of which he had been able to stom-
ach since the academic days of his youth.]
{307} Supplement n
[Here Jacobi reproduces the text of a letter of Hemsterhuis to the
Princess Gallitzin, dated 7 September 1787, under the title of Diokks to
Dioteme, Concern ing A theism.16 Jacob! had tried to involve Hemsterhuis in

his correspondence with Mendelssohn as early as 3 February 1785, but
without success. He tried again in April of 1786, in the midst of the fu-
rore caused by the publication of his Spinoza Letters. This time he enlisted
the help of Princess Gallitzin, who only succeeded in extracting Lettre sur
Vatheisme from Hemsterhuis in 1787, after repeated solicitations. Even
then Jacobi was not satisfied but, again through the intermediary of
Princess Gallitzin, who obliged with hesitation, requested a number of
modifications and further elaborations. Hemsterhuis agreed to co-
operate, and also gave permission to have his letter published, declaring
however that he had no intention of intervening in quarrels between
philosophical systems.17
There is in fact nothing intrinsically polemical in the treatment of
the theme of atheism found in the letter, which rather reflects
Hemsterhuis's extreme dualistic view of man. God is to be found within
man's inner spirit, i.e. by abstracting from everything that has to do with
the external life of the senses. Atheism is the indirect consequence of
man's attempt to understand nature for theoretical and practical pur-
poses. This attempt leads him unwittingly to the production of concepts,
and systems of concepts which he then projects onto the things of nature
precisely for the sake of transforming them into entities amenable to the
grasp of his intelligence. Since these ideal constructions are his own
products, they partake of the life of spirit. But since they are now being
used in conjunction with nature, through them nature itself begins to ac-
quire for him the appearance of a spiritual life, until finally, granted
man's instinctual belief in God and his fear and admiration in the face
of the external world, it assumes divine character in his eyes. Atheism is
the result of the mistaken identification of the inert content of the ob-
jects of the senses with the ideal entities generated by man in response
to his own intellectual and practical needs. The difference between ear-
lier forms of materialistic atheism and the post-Cartesian type is due to
the more advanced state of the contemporary physical sciences, which
makes for a greater intellectualization of matter, and hence for an even
more compelling illusion that nature is alive and self-contained.
Hemsterhuis concludes by saying {326-27} that this latest "colossal off-
spring of our foolish pride will only be destroyed when men . . . will be-
come aware that matter is only a word. . . . " Little did Jacobi know at the
time that Fichte was to say the same thing hardly a decade later, and that
he was to do so precisely in order to meetjacobi's attack on reason head
on.] 18
{S2^} Supplement III

[In response to a comment made in the Allg. Lit. Zeitung, 11 (1788), in
a review by A. W. Rehberg (1757-1836, statesman, political writer, and
philosopher), Jacobi feels obliged to clarify his statement on p. 15 (p. 8,
ist ed.), "I was eight or nine years old when the depth of my childish
sense led me to certain remarkable 'views'. . . ." Rehberg's comment is
as follows: "Here, however, the Dialogue suddenly breaks off, precisely
where a definite clarification would have been most necessary. Is it then
any wonder if many a reader has confused the intimation of God here
being indicated with the author's peculiar visions of his early years . . .?"
(p. 112) Jacobi says:]
[ . . . . ] That extraordinary thing was a representation of endless duration,

quite independent of any religious concept. At the said age, while I was
pondering on eternity a parte ante, it suddenly came over me with such
clarity, and seized me with such violence, that I gave out a loud cry and
{329} fell into a kind of swoon. A movement in me, quite natural, forced
me to revive the same representation as soon as I came to myself, and the
result was a state of unspeakable despair. The thought of annihilation,
which had always been dreadful to me, now became even more dreadful,
nor could I bear the vision of an eternal forward duration any better.
[ . . . . ] ! gradually managed not be afflicted by this trial so often, and
finally managed to free myself from it altogether. . . . And this had been
my situation between roughly the ages of seventeen and twenty-one,
{330} when all at once the old appearance came upon me again. I rec-
ognized its characteristic dreadful shape, but was steadfast enough to
hold it in sight for a second look, and now I knew that it was\ It was, and
had enough objective being to afflict every human soul in which it ma-
terialized just as much as mine.
This representation has often seized me again since then, despite the
care that I constantly take to avoid it. I have reason to suspect that I can
arbitrarily evoke it in me any time I want; and I believe that it is in my
power, were I to do so repeatedly a few times, to take my life within min-
utes by this means. [ . . . . ]
[Jacobi goes on to report two comments made by the recently deceased

Hamann with reference to the lines immediately preceding the passage
quoted at the beginning, "I was still wearing my child-frock when I began
to worry about things of another world." These lines had obviously
caught Hamann's imagination, witness the fact that, as Jacobi reports, he
went back commenting on them at least ten times. What Jacobi does not
say is that the lines had somehow come to signify for Hamann all that he
held against Jacobi's position on faith. Hamann showed no sympathy for
his friend's youthful preoccupations. In the two reported comments he
calls Jacobi's "things of another world" entia rationis, figments of the
imagination that reflect our prejudices and mutilate the real world. The
first comment is to be found among the random papers from Miinster
(Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 4, Die Mappefrom Munster, p. 456); there Hamann
also says (but Jacobi does not report) that "our life's dawn is decked with
lightheartedness [Leichtsinn] and curiosity. A child busy with things of an-
other world loses heart [wird blodsinnig] for the elements of the visible
world here." The second comment is another version of the same
thought which Jacobi says Hamann sent to him from Munster on 7 May
1788, i.e. just before Hamann died.]
{335} Supplement iv
[Jacobi criticizes Herder's claim that Lessing knew that God was an in-
telligence but could not understand how he could be a person, since
"personality" is a human term.19 With reference to p. 27 of the second
edition (p. 17 of the first), Jacobi introduces a long quotation from the
first edition of Herder's God. See Johann Gottfried Herder, God: Some
Conversations, a translation with a critical introduction and notes by
Frederick H. Burkhardt (New York: Veritas Press, 1940) p. 138. He then
goes on to say:]
{337} [ . . . . ] Of an intelligence without personality I had no concept,

and I am convinced that Lessing did not presume to have one any more
than any man is in fact in the position of having one.
Unity of self-consciousness constitutes personality, and every being
that has consciousness of its identity is a person. Hence, if I can entertain
doubts about the stability of my consciousness as Kant claims, I can also
doubt the objectivity of my own personality (that is, the actual identity of
my subject); I cannot however entertain doubts about God's personality
and the abiding truth of it, the moment I ascribe consciousness to God.
We deny personality to animals, since to them we deny the distinct
cognition on which consciousness of identity rests. The principle of per-
sonality must however be attributed to every individual endowed with
consciousness, that is, to every living being.
{338} With every extra degree of consciousness that we ascribe to any
such individual, we bring it closer to personality. The degree that finally

raises it to "intelligence" also imparts the property of "person" to it fully.
So, unless we completely abandon the region of the intelligible and de-
cide to judge without making use of concepts at all, we must necessarily grant
to the supreme Intelligence the highest degree of personality as well.
Before Herder nobody that I know thought otherwise about this mat-
ter, and it really is quite astounding on his part to claim that Lessing
must have been exposed to something unheard of when he heard the
first cause of things being spoken of as a personal being.
The topic only deserves discussion because the non-personal God is an
absolute requirement of that poetical {339} philosophy which likes to wa-
ver midway between theism and Spinozism, and which has found many
followers amongst us. This philosophy proceeds from the true proposi-
tion that divine intellect cannot be human intellect, nor divine will,
human will. It then extends this true proposition to the point where the
root of all rational thought and action is obliterated; it wipes out the prin-
ciple of all intelligence, that is, of personal existence, without however at the
same time wishing to claim, with the consistency of Spinoza, that the su-
preme cause of all things cannot be an intelligence. What am I to under-
stand by an intelligence that possesses absolutely nothing of what I
normally think of as rational being?—I can understand absolutely noth-
ing by it, for through the removal of personal being, not only any simi-
larity but also any possible analogy is done away with. The result is that
there does not remain the slightest shadow or glimmer of a being, not
even what's required for a chimera, but only a {340} senseless word, a mere
empty sound. . . .
[Jacobi goes on to say that he intends to develop this criticism of Herder

further in the following supplement.]
{342} Supplement v
{349} [ • • • • ] The proposition from which Spinoza drew the conclusion
that God, or the natura {350} naturans, can have neither intellect nor
will, whether finite or infinite (which is a point well worthy of notice), is
as follows.
Actual thought, explicit consciousness, intellect, is a definite type, a mod-
ification (modificatione modificatum)* of absolute thought. Absolute
modified by a modification
thought itself, unmodified, (infinita cogitationis essentia)* is produced by

substance immediately; all its various species, however, are produced by
substance only through an intermediary, that is, these species can only im-
mediately derive from something finite; hence they must be included on
the side of created nature, not at all on the side of the uncreated one.
Now, Herder himself says in the cited passage (p. i3g), 20 where he ac-
cuses Lessing and Spinoza of having got stuck half-way: "Existence is
more eminent than any of its effects; it is the source of an enjoyment that
not only {351} surpasses individual concepts, but cannot even be mea-
sured against them: for the power of representation is only ONE of the powers
of existence, and many other powers obey it"
Suppose now that Lessing were to reply: "Friend, you have not quite
unravelled the tangle of Spinozistic ideas, for otherwise you would have
seen that what for you is God's power of representation (and is only one
of his powers, and like them originates from a primal ground of actuality)
cannot possibly be a power that directs. For according to the logic of your
own concepts (as you present them) the power of representation is noth-
ing but consciousness—consciousness of "what every concept presupposes, of
being or existence";*6 consciousness of what determines the law for all,
thought included, and will not be determined by it, hence cannot be sur-
passed by thought. What's all this talk about a blind {352} power? Does
thought implant eyes into your God? 21 Where does the light of these
eyes come from, the light without which not even the inner eye can see?
You make fun of Leibniz's anthropopathies and you won't allow the as-
cription of prearranged plans or intentions to God; you teach a necessity
which is not implanted through wisdom, but is nature*7 yet you go on
talking about a might that attains its precepts of order, regularity, and
harmony, only through thoughts;*8 and about thoughts through which
Nature is first excogitated, and which 'are the most perfectly and absolutely
infinite powers, since thought is, and has, all that pertains to infinite, self-
grounded, might'.*9 Truly I understand you not. For what else is the fun-
damental idea of Spinozism, except that {353} God is extended being as
such; that He is thinking being as such, the living and active being as
*6. Herder's God, pp. 138-39. [1787 ed.]

*7- Herder's God, p. 102.
*8. Herder's God, p. 102.
*g. Herder's God, p. 103.
* infinite essence of thought

such; and that therefore thought can no more be attributed to Him im-
mediately than corporeal movements, explicit consciousness, no more
than figure and colour? So if I want to speak of the pleasure of this su-
preme being, I must not only elevate it above every concept, but must
boldly expel it from every concept. My acute friend Mendelssohn was
right when he called this a 'surpassing oneself. It was a salto mortale, to
which I immediately responded with a salto mortale of my own, and thereby
I stood again next to the man with whom I was conversing."
I can't think what Herder could say to Lessing about this, I mean, how
he could give him a determinate, truly philosophical answer. The almost uni-
versal verdict on the Dialogues Concerning God of this talented author has
been that it redeems, not {354} Spinoza's doctrine but another one which
Spinoza ought to have taught, from the charge of atheism. But even then,
the composition of Herder's God and the purification of Spinoza's,
ought at least to be a possible composition and a possible purification,
and this does not seem to me to be the case. For I deny that there can
be an in-between system (such as could be conceived by us men) be-
tween the system of final causes and the system of purely efficient ones.
If intellect and will are not the first and highest powers, not the one and
all, then they are only subordinated powers that belong to created, not to
creating, nature. They are not original springs of movement but a clock-
work that can be taken apart, and its mechanism tracked down.*10
{355} Under "mechanism" I include every concatenation of purely
efficient causes. Such concatenation is eo ipso a necessary one, just as a
necessary concatenation, qua necessary, is by that very fact a mechanistic
one. *iJ 1i
* 10. "Because nothing more is evident from the Third Observation than that
all reality is either in the necessary being as a determination or else must be given
through that being as a ground, it would remain undecided up to this point
whether the properties of understanding and will are to be met with in it as in-
herent determinations or merely to be regarded as consequences of it in other
things. Were it the latter, despite the advantages that are obvious in this primor-
dial being owing to its sufficiency, unity, and the independence of its existence
as an eminent cause, its nature would remain far from what one must think if one
thinks of God. For surely without knowledge and purpose it would be only a
blind necessary ground of other things and even of other minds, distinguished
not at all from the eternal fate of some of the ancients except that it would be
described more comprehensibly." Kant's single possible Ground, p. 43. and 44. *
*n. Cf. Supplement vn.
{366} If we grant that representation and desire accompany a merely

mechanistic concatenation, and that they can be in and with it as part of
it, then every confluence of powers, every harmonious result, must bring
about a phenomenon, of which the representation will carry the concept
of an activity according to goals with it, the representation of an art, a
wisdom, a goodness, etc.*12
{357} A non-mechanistic concatenation is one according to aims or
pre-established goals. It does not exclude efficient causes, so it does not
rule out mechanism and necessity either; but there is this sole essential
distinction, namely that in this case the result of a {358} mechanism pre-
cedes the mechanism itself as a concept, and the mechanistic conjunction
is given through the concept rather than the concept being given in the
mechanism, as in the other case. This system is called the system of final
causes, or of rational freedom. The other system is that of merely effi-
cient causes, or of natural necessity. No third system is possible, unless
one wants to assume two primordial beings [. . . .].
[In the discussion that follows Jacobi disagrees with Herder's claim that
Spinoza assumed Descartes's empty notion of "extension" uncritically.
Spinoza's idea of extension implies a criticism of Descartes's idea, just as
much as Leibniz's does, and, like Leibniz's idea, it is directed against
Descartes's dualism. See following supplement.]
*i2. "Should it be proposed that inclined planes be arranged with different

slopes toward the horizon yet with such lengths that freely falling bodies reach
the bottom of each one in the same time, anyone who understood mechanical
laws at all would realize that a good many provisions are involved. Now the same
contrivance may be found in the circle itself with infinitely many changes of po-
sition and with the greatest accuracy in this case. Any chords that cut through the
vertical axis of the circle—whether from the highest or from the lowest point and
from whatever slope one likes—together have in common that free fall through
them occurs in the same time. I recall that a bright student for whom I had
proved this law, having understood everything well, was stirred by it no less than
by a miracle. And in fact one is surprised and justifiably marvels at the remark-
able unity of the manifold according to such productive rules in a thing as base
and seemingly so simple as a circle. But there is no miracle of nature which would
give more reason for astonishment, owing to the beauty or order which rules in
it. It must be then that this [astonishment] obtains because the cause [of such
extensive unity] is not so distinctly discerned, and wonder is a daughter of igno-
rance." Kant's only possible Ground, p. 52. Cf. Herder's God, pp. 119 & 120.2
{361} Supplement vi
Qacobi discusses Leibniz at length, showing that the "individuation" of
substance is the element that distinguishes Leibniz from Spinoza. But
Leibniz invoked "individuation" principally against the followers of
Descartes, and not particularly with Spinoza in mind. Actually, there is
at least one point in common between Leibniz and Spinoza, and that is
their rejection of dualism.]
{380} [. . . . ] Before Leibniz, and even more perfectly than he,

Spinoza had already done away with the need of a hypothesis to {381} ex-
plain the de facto concordances between the alterations of extended and
thinking substance, for he simply assumed that there is only one sub-
stance. Here, therefore, is a true similarity between the two philoso-
phers. They both considered soul and body as a unum per se which can indeed
be divided in representation, but never in actuality'.*13 The matter {382} de-
serves a closer look.
Spinoza quite early rejected the Cartesian concept that makes exten-
sion something not distinguishable from space, totally inactive, or
merely geometric.*14 {383} He instead laid at its basis a perpetually active
power and actual being, so that extension stood as a property of the di-
* 13. On this point I appeal here to what I have established from Leibniz's writ-
ings in my Dialogue Concerning Idealism and Realism (pp. 146—73 [of first edition);
more particularly I have in mind at this point the schema that our philosopher
offered to Des Bosses (Opp. n, Part i, p. 3i4). 3 According to Leibniz's teaching,
the finite monad by itself is still not a substance; on the contrary, the union with
a body is absolutely required for a finite substance. Were it possible for finite
monads to subsist and to act on their own, their finitude and {382} pure activity
would not stand in contradiction. Whoever has rightly comprehended the necessity
of the union of the active principle with the passive in Leibniz, and of the passive
with the active, will find his way in all of Leibniz's accommodations, without ever
straying from his meaning.
* 14. "Again, from extension as Descartes conceives it, that is, as an inert mass,
it is not merely difficult, as you say, but totally impossible to prove the existence
of bodies. For matter at rest, as it is in itself, will continue to be at rest, and will
not be set in motion except by a more powerful external cause. For this reason
I have not hesitated to say on a former occasion that Descartes's principles of nat-
ural things are without value, not to say absurd." Op. Posth., p. 596.4 Cf.
Supplement v, towards the end.
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza (iy8c>) 369
vine nature.*15 According to Spinoza, power in general is the living essence

of God Himself. In what is corporeal, it appears as movement; in what
thinks, as desire.*16 The life of an individual thing is the power through
which that thing persists in its being and actual existence.*17 Thus {384}
every individual thing has its own different life-power.*18 But since each
and every individual thing presupposes all other individual things, and
its nature and composition is thoroughly determined through its con-
nection with all the rest,*19 this very connection must be sought in the
decree of God in which it was predetermined.*20
These are only a few main points. In order to see how great, general,
and deep, die similarity between the two doctrines {385} actually is on this
point, one must pursue the two philosophers in the detailed implemen-
tation of their ways of thinking. But then, too, the similarity would be-
come so conspicuous, that it would hardly occur to anyone to want to
demonstrate it through laborious comparisons [. . . .].
[There follows a discussion on whether Leibniz borrowed his notion of

pre-established harmony from Spinoza.]
*i5- "With regard to your question as to whether the variety of things can be
demonstrated a priori solely from the concept of extension, I believe that I have
already shown clearly enough that this is impossible; and that, therefore, matter
was ill-defined by Descartes as extension but must be explicated instead through
an attribute that expresses eternal and infinite essence." (Op. Posth., p. 598).5
With this we must consider also what is said at the end of Letter LXII (ibid.,
P- 593)> 6 together with the passages that are there recommended for
consultation.
*i6. The whole Ethics. One can find references to particular passages to con-
sult in the demonstration of Proposition iv of Part iv.
*i7. Cogit. Metaph., Part n, ch. vi.
*i8. Definitions of the Affects, i & Explan. [After prop. LIX of Part in]. (Op.
Posth., p. 146). General Definition of Affects & Explan. (ibd., p. 159-60) [End of
Part in]. The Demonstration of prop, xxxix of Part, iv of the Ethics, together
with the Scholion.
*ig. See my Letter to Mendelssohn of April 19, 1785, Proposition x x x i x
where I cite the relevant passages in a note.
*20. Ethics, Parti, P. xxxni, together with the demonstr. and scholion; Prop,
xxxvi, append.
{398} Supplement vn
402} [ . . . . ] The principle of all cognition is living being; living being
proceeds from itself, it is progressive and productive. The stirring of a
worm, its sluggish pleasure or displeasure, could not arise without an
imagination holding [such stirrings] together according to the laws of
the worm's principle of life, and producing a representation of its state.
The more manifold the felt existence that a being generates in this way,
the more alive is such a being [ . . . . ]
{403} The faculty of abstraction and language arouses the need for a
more complete perception, a more manifold connection. A world of rea-
son thus arises, in which signs and words take the place of substances and
forces. We appropriate the universe by tearing it apart, and creating a
world of pictures, ideas, and words, which is proportionate to our powers,
but quite unlike the real one. We understand perfectly what we thus cre-
ate, to the extent that it is our creation. And whatever does not allow
being created in this way, we do not understand. Our philosophical un-
derstanding does not reach beyond its own creation. All understanding
comes about, however, by the fact that we posit distinctions, and then su-
persede them. Even the most developed human reason is not capable (ex-
plicite) of any other operation than this, and all the rest refer back to it.
{404} Perception, recognition, and conception, make up in ascending order the
complete range of our intellectual faculty [ . . . . ]
{408} [ . . . . ] Let me explain myself more clearly.
From the proposition, "Becoming cannot have become or have orig-
inated any more than Being or substance," Spinoza drew the correct con-
sequence that matter must have an eternal and infinite actuosity* of its
own, and that this actuosity must be an {409} immediate mode of sub-
stance. This immediate, eternal mode, that he believed to be expressed
by the relation of motion and rest in natura naturata, was for him the uni-
versal, eternal, unalterable form of individual things and of their unceas-
ing change. If this movement did not have a beginning, individual things
could not have begun either. Not only were these things eternal in ori-
gin, therefore; they also, according to reason, existed simultaneously, re-
gardless of their succession: for in the concept of reason itself, there is no
prior or posterior, but everything is necessary and simultaneous, and the
one and only consequence permitted in thought is that of dependence. So
the moment that Spinoza elevated the experiential concepts of move-
ment, of individual things, of generation and succession, into concepts
Actuositat
of reason, they were at once purified of everything empirical for him;

and, with the firm conviction that everything had to be considered only
secundum modum quo a rebus ceternis fuit,* he could regard the concepts of
{410} time, measure, and number, as one-sided representational views
abstracted from this modus, and hence as beings of the imagination to
which reason did not need to give any attention before it had first re-
formed them, and brought them back to the truth (vere consideratum).*21
The scholastics had prepared the way for him in these claims too.
Several of their masters had taken refuge in a creation from all eternity,
in order to avoid the unthinkable concept of creation in time which arises
whenever one wants to assume a beginning for the series of natural
events. As Spinoza concluded, from the fact that things move and alter
one another, that they must have moved and altered one another from
eternity; so those earlier masters concluded, from the fact that nature
was created, that the unalterable creator of it must have created it from
eternity.*22 {411} They had one more difficulty to overcome than did
Spinoza, however, for their God was no mere natura naturans, but a
being really distinct from nature who had produced it in its very sub-
stance. These difficulties did not prevent Leibniz from adhering to the
scholastics, and from declaring that a creation (even according to sub-
stance) without any beginning was intelligible.*23 {412} And he did not
lack followers on this question; and there still are many worthy {413} phi-
losophers amongst us who hold that the concept of an actual {414}
creation of actually individual and successive things from all eternity is
possible.
This somewhat more serious mistake comes about in the same way as
the less serious one into which Spinoza fell, by confusing the concept of
cause with the concept of ground, and so depriving the former of what is
peculiar to it, and reducing "cause" for speculative purposes to a merely
{415} logical entity. I have already elucidated this process elsewhere, and
have, as I believe, sufficiently established that, so far as the concept of
*2i. Op. Posth., Ep. xxix [to Lewis Meyer, pp. 465-70].
*22. See Cramer, Concerning Scholastic Theology, Continuation of Bossuet,
Part vn, pp. 404 and 404, 416-19.7
*23- [A long polemical note in which Jacobi defends Lessing's saying that, ac-
cording to Leibniz, God is in perpetual state of expansion and contraction. Cf.
above, pp. 22-23 °f tne first ecU]
* according to the way it came to be from things eternal
cause is distinguished from that of ground, it is a concept of experience

which we owe to the consciousness of our own causality and passivity,
and cannot be derived from the merely idealistic concept of ground any
more than it can be resolved into it.*24
A union of the two, such as we find in the principle of sufficient rea-
son, is not therefore inadmissible, as long as we never for a moment for-
get what specifically lies at the ground of each and which made of each
a possible concept. {416} The principle of sufficient reason says:
"Every thing dependent depends, on something"; that of causality: "Everything
that is done, must be done through something." In the first principle, the
"from something" is already implied in the word "dependent"; just as in
the second, the "through something" is already implied by the word
"done." Both of them are identical principles, so that they have universal
and apodictic validity.*25 But they are unified through the proposition:
"Everything conditional must have a condition," which is equally identi-
cal, and hence equally universal and necessary.
If one forgets the essential difference between the two concepts, and
what it rests on, then one may take the liberty of replacing one with the
other, and using them in this way. The result is that things come to be
without coming to be; that they change without changing; that they can
precede or follow one another without being before or after one
another.*26
{417} If one does not forget the essential difference between the two
concepts, one is ineluctably bound to time by the concept of cause,
*24- See my Dialogue Concerning Idealism and Realism, pp. 93—100 [of the first
ed.].
* Professor Flatt of Tubingen, an acute and learned philosopher, whom I
much admire, has offered several observations about my opinion in his
Fragmentary Contributions, in a manner that deserves my gratitude. I shall not here
expound my judgment concerning the principles of this philosopher, because I
mean to do it where I shall have particular occasion.8
*25- See pp. 179-80 [of the first edition] of this work, the footnote.
*26. This is the source of the causa sui. Once the apodeictic proposition,
"Everything must have a cause" has been granted, it is difficult to claim that {417}
"Not everything can have a cause." Hence the causa sui was discovered, with which
the effectus sui necessarily belongs.
* Omitted in the third edition. Obviously the note was eliminated because the implied
promise was not kept.
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza (ij8c>)) 373
through which the concept of an action is necessarily posited; for an

action which is not in time is a non-thing. Even with all its clever tricks,
idealism cannot help us out of the difficulty here; it only affords a brief
. *27
respite. '
After these explanations, it should no longer seem strange to hear me
claim that the actual existence of a temporal world made up of individ-
ual finite things producing and destroying one another in succession,
can in no way be conceptualized, which is to say, it is not naturally explica-
ble. For if I want to think of the series of these things as actually infinite,
I run up against the absurd concept of an eternal time, and no {418} math-
ematical construction can get rid of this difficulty. If I want the series to
have a beginning instead, I lack anything from which any such begin-
ning could be derived. Should I say that this beginning is the will of an
intelligence, I speak words devoid of sense. For just as the origin of the
concept of a thing prior to the existence of any of its parts (for instance,
the concept of an organic being prior to all organic beings) is no easier
to comprehend than the origin of an object independent of any con-
cept, so too in an eternal Intelligence subsisting in itself and for itself
alone, the alteration with which a time originates is just as perfectly incon-
ceivable as a self-originating movement in matter.
The incomprehensibility is equal on either route. But reason need not
despair* because of this incomprehensibility, for knowledge forces itself
upon it, so to speak; namely, the knowledge that the condition of {419}
the possibility of the existence of a temporal world lies outside the region of its
concepts, that is to say, outside that complex of conditioned beings
which is nature. So when reason searches for that condition, it is search-
ing for something extra-natural or supernatural within what is natural;
or again, it is trying to transform the natural into something supernatural
And since, by doing this, it acts outside its own purview, it cannot get a
single step closer to its goal, but is only able to uncover ever new condi-
tions for what is conditioned, conditions for natural laws and mecha-
nism.*28 In spite of this, {420} reason does not desist, and is not checked
*27- See the passages from the Dialogue Concerning Idealism and Realism, re-
peatedly cited in this Supplement vn.
*28. We comprehend a thing whenever we can derive it from its proximate
causes, or whenever we have insight into the order of its immediate conditions.
What we see or derive in this way presents us with a mechanistic context. For
* The third edition reads: "go astray."
{421} in its expectations, because it does know things that are uncondi-
tioned in their kind, and it is always advancing in this knowledge at various
levels. Its general occupation is the progressive making of combinations;
its speculative occupation is the making of combinations according to rec-
ognized laws of necessity, that is to say laws of identity, for reason has no
concept of any necessity except the one that it establishes itself by means
of its progressive and unrelenting process of separating and reuniting,
by alternately retaining and letting go and finally displaying this neces-
sity in identical propositions. But the essential indeterminacy of human
language and designation, and the mutability of sensible shapes, almost
universally allows these propositions to acquire an external appearance
of saying more than the mere quidquid est, illud est;* of expressing more
than a mere factum which was at some point perceived, observed, com-
pared, recognized, and joined to other concepts. Everything that reason
{422} can produce through division, combination, judgment, inference,
and reflection, is simply a natural thing. Reason too, as restricted being,
belongs among these things. The whole of nature, however, the sum-con-
instance, we comprehend a circle whenever we clearly know how to represent the

mechanics of its formation, or its physics; we comprehend the syllogistic formu-
las, whenever we have really cognized the laws to which the human understand-
ing is subject in judgment and inference, its physics, its {420} mechanics; or the
principle of sufficient reason, whenever we are clear about the becoming or con-
struction of a concept in general, about its physics and mechanics. The construction
of a concept as such is the a priori of every construction; and at the same time our
insight into its construction allows us to cognize with full certainty that it is not
possible for us to comprehend whatever we are not in a position to construct. For
this reason we have no concept of qualities as such, but only intuitions or feel-
ings. Even of our own existence, we have only a feeling and no concept. Concepts
proper we only have of figure, number, position, movement, and the forms of
thought. Whenever we say that we have researched a quality, we mean nothing
else by that, save that we have reduced it to figure, number, position, and move-
ment. We have resolved it into these, hence we have objectively annihilated the
quality. From this we can easily perceive, without further argument, what must
in each case be the outcome of the efforts on the part of reason+ to generate a
distinct concept of the possibility of the existence of our world.
* whatever is, is
t Third edition: the understanding
cept of all conditional beings, cannot reveal more to the searching un-
derstanding than what is contained in it, namely, manifold existence,
alterations, play of forms—never an actual beginning; never a real prin-
ciple of some objective existence.
But how does reason ever come upon a task which is impossible, that
is to say, irrational? Is it the fault of reason, or is it the fault of man? Does
reason misunderstand itself, or are we the victims of a misunderstanding
with respect to it?
To resolve this somewhat strange-sounding question, we must raise an-
other one that sounds just as strange; namely, Is man in possession of rea-
son, or is reason in possession of man'?
{423} If we understand by "reason" the soul of man only in so far as it
has distinct concepts,* passes judgments, and draws inferences with
them, and goes on building new concepts or ideas, then reason is a char-
acteristic of man which he acquires progressively, an instrument of
which he makes use. In this sense, reason belongs to him.
But if by "reason" we mean the principle of cognition in general, then
reason is the spirit of which the whole living nature of man is made up;
man consists of it. In this sense man is a form which reason has assumed.
I take the whole man, without dividing him, and discover that his con-
sciousness is composed of two original representations, that of the con-
ditional, and that of the unconditional. These two representations are
inseparably connected, yet in such a way that the representation of the
conditional presupposes the representation of the unconditional and
can only be given with the latter. Hence we do not first need to look for
the unconditional; {424} on the contrary, we have the same certainty
about its existence as we have about our own conditioned one, or indeed,
an even greater certainty.
Since our conditioned existence rests upon an infinity of mediations,
an immense field is thereby opened to our research, and we are already
forced to labour in it for the sake of our physical maintenance. All of our
investigations have as their object the discovery of what mediates the ex-
istence of things. Whenever we gain insight into the intermediary of a
thing, that is to say, when we have discovered its mechanism, we can, if
we are in control of the means, also produce the thing itself. Whatever
we can construct in this fashion, at least in representation, we can also
comprehend; and what we cannot so construct, we also cannot
comprehend.
* The third edition reads: "or is only understanding."

To want to discover the conditions of the unconditional; to want to in-

vents, possibility for what is absolutely necessary, and to construct it in order
to be able to comprehend it, seems on the face of it {425} an absurd un-
dertaking. Yet this is precisely what we undertake to do whenever we
strive to make nature into something that we can comprehend, that is,
reduce it to a purely natural existence, and uncover the mechanics of the
principle of mechanism. For if everything that is to come to be and exist
in a way that is comprehensible to us must do so under conditions, then,
as long as we can comprehend, we remain within a chain of conditional
conditions. Where this chain ceases, there we also cease to comprehend,
and the complex that we call nature ceases to exist too. The concept of the
possibility of the existence of nature would also have to be the concept of an
absolute beginning or origin of nature; it would have to be the concept of
the unconditional itself, so far as this unconditional is the unconditional con-
dition of nature, i.e. so far as it is what is not naturally connected, or what
is, for us, unconnected. Should the concept of what is thus unconditional
and unconnected, hence extra-natural, ever become possible, then the un-
conditional would {426} cease to be unconditional; it must itself receive
conditions; and the absolutely necessary must begin turning into a possibil-
ity, so as to allow construction.
Now, in consequence of all that we have said so far, the unconditional
must lie outside nature and outside every natural connection with it.
However, nature, or the sum-concept of the conditional, is grounded in
the unconditional and hence connected with it, therefore this uncondi-
tional must be called "the supernatural" and cannot be called anything
else.*29 From this supernatural source the natural, or the universe, can-
not proceed, or have proceeded, in any other way except supernaturally.
Moreover: since everything that lies outside the complex of the con-
ditional, or the naturally mediated, also lies outside the sphere of our dis-
tinct cognition, and cannot be understood {427} through concepts, the
supernatural cannot be apprehended by us in any way except as it is
given to us, namely, as fact—IT is!
This Supernatural, this Being of all beings, all tongues proclaim GOD.
The God of the universe cannot just be the architect of the universe; he
is the Creator whose unconditional power has made things also according to
their substance. Had He not made them also according to their substance,
there would have to have been two authors who must have somehow
*2Q. Cf. Jakob's Critical Principles for a Universal Metaphysics, §326. 9

(and nobody knows how) struck up an association. And this is an absurd-

ity which in our days needs no refutation (not because it is too great, but
because it is not in our way of thinking). Our resistance to a coming to
be of things even according to substance derives from the fact that we can-
not comprehend any becoming that does not happen naturally, that is,
in a conditional and mechanistic way.
{428} How I wish I were able to make these propositions and their con-
sequences just as comprehensible as they are evident to me. Not only
would we then see the irrationality of the demand for a demonstration of
God's existence, but through this insight we should also comprehend
why a first cause invested with our understanding and will (both of which
are grafted onto coexistence, i.e. on dependence and finitude) must ap-
pear to be an impossible, totally absurd, being. The more perfectly we
cognize the second point (starting from the first), the more distinctly we
can see the invalidity of the argument by which, since God cannot be a man,
or a corporeal being, individuality and intelligence also cannot belong to Him
either.
But regardless of our finitude and our slavery to nature we do possess,
or at least we appear to possess through the consciousness of our spon-
taneous activity in the exercise of our will, an analogue within us of the
supernatural, that is to say, of a {429} being who does not act mechanistically.
And since we are not in a position ever to arrive at an actual represen-
tation of the possibility of the beginning of any alteration whatever, unless
it is the effect of an inner resolution or of a self-determination, so the
naked instinct of reason has led all uncivilized peoples to regard as action
every alteration whose origin they witnessed, and to connect this action
with a living self-active being. They erred, in that they drew the connec-
tion immediately. But they erred far more forgivably and much less seri-
ously than we do when we seek to dissolve everything into mechanism
and, because our distinct representation of a thing does not reach be-
yond the representation of its mechanics, make to the principle of mech-
anism the absurd request that it too, if it is to be granted objectivity,
exhibit a mechanism. Yet there already is something non-mechanistic in
the possibility of a representation in general, and nobody is in a position to
represent the principle of life, the inner source of understanding and
{430} will, as the result of mechanistic connections, that is, as the simple
result of mediation. Even less can causality ingeneralbe conceived simply as
the result of mediation, or as resting upon mechanism. And since we do
not have the slightest intimation of causality, except immediately, through
the consciousness of our own causality, i.e. our life-principle, I don't see
378 The Main Philsophical Writings and the Novel allwill
how anyone can avoid assuming intelligence in general as the first and
single principle, as the true primordial Being—I mean, an intelligence
that is supremely real, and cannot be conceived in its turn under the
image of mechanism (see Supplements IV and V), but must be con-
ceived rather as a thoroughly independent, other-worldly and personal
Being [ . . . . ] .
Qacobi goes on to sum up what he has been saying.]
{435} Supplement vm
[A polemical note. Jacobi's claim, "Wie die Triebe, so der Sinn; and wie
der Sinn, so die Triebe," was the object of much derision. Jacobi tries to
defend himself. The claim can be translated loosely but faithfully to its
meaning as: "As the heart, so the mind; and as the mind, so the heart."
Triebis the equivalent of the scholastic conatus; it means "urge," "desire,"
"instinct," "drive." Sinn is the same as the English "sense" in such expres-
sions as "in the sense of." It means "meaning" or "understanding" but is
etymologically connected with "sense" as in "sensibility."]
Edward AllwilVs Collection of Letters
edited by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
with an Addition from Letters of His Own
Such is truth's effect—one repels it, but in repelling it one looks at it,
and is penetrated by it.
Garat le Jeune l
Volume i*
Konigsberg: at Friedrich Nicolovius'
1792
NOTE: This translation is based on the 1792 edition ofAllwill, which is substantially the
same as the edition of 1812 but not identical to it. I have noted the more important var-
iations but ignored those of a purely technical character. There were three other editions
of the work prior to 1792, in 1775,2 1776,3 and 17814 (reprinted 1783). The text of these
earlier editions is substantially different from that of 1792.1 have made no attempt to note
variations from these earlier editions. They can be found in Terpstra's critical edition of
the 1812 text.5
* Deleted in the 1812 edition, when it was clear that there would not be a second vol-
ume of letters
[ii] Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,
Yet grace must still look so.
Macbeth, Act iv, Scene 36
[iii] To
Privy Councillor SchloBer7
in Karlsruhe
[v] It is against every accepted practice to dedicate a book to someone be-

hind his back. However, since it is Your custom, as friend and in almost
every other respect as well, to comport Yourself outside commended
practice—indeed, You have made Yourself the burden that You are to the
Present Age behind its back—so even for this reason alone You are duty
bound to let my audacity pass as an innocent imitation.
But I can appeal to yet a stronger right—one which indeed runs con-
trary to anything merely dependent on current ethos and its accepted
practices [vi] but stands fast between You and me as a right of the gods.
It's not of today or yesterday; eternal
Is its life, and its origin is hidden.
In virtue of this right, I am allowed to say:
Brother! Here is my best beloved Child! Consider it but Yours. With
it I commend my whole soul into Your hands; I put my whole heart into
Your bosom.
Pempelfort, February 25, 1792
F. H. Jacobi
[vii] PREFACE
[to the 1792 Edition]
The first two volumes of letters here published still throw no light on
how Allwill managed to get possession of the complete collection and
make them his property. The editor himself has so little information
about this, and must make do with such uncertain conjectures, that he
is justifiably horrified at the idea of inflicting them upon a honourable
public whose curiosity is restricted simply to well established truths.
He would much rather let these letters be regarded as a fabrication,
and have the whole treated as a fanciful whim of his. Indeed he [viii]
wishes that this hypothesis may find favour, so long as it is not believed
as a truth that has been proved historically or otherwise, but voluntarily,
simply because of the embarrassment that must otherwise prevail; it
should be accepted for the sake of convenience.
The twofold favour that is requested of the reader—first, of biding by
an unlikely hypothesis; and second, of believing what is in keeping with
the hypothesis, yet also not believing it in a strict sense—this twofold fa-
vour would in fact be more than could be expected from even the kind-
liest reader, unless there is something in it for him.
But since, as I shall show, the unkindly as well as the kindly readers—
indeed, the unkindly ones above all—will find an apparent advantage in
it, I am all the more [ix] certain of their compliance because the twofold
effort that is asked of them ought to be accompanied by a twofold light-
ening of their burden.
For the unlikeliness of the hypothesis is [x] compensated by the fact
that one should not believe it in a strict sense, and not believing it in a strict sense
all but follows by itself because of the unlikeness of the hypothesis.
So I only have to lay the reader's own advantage before his eye—which
I hope to do in a few words.
I presuppose that I have readers.
Since these readers are my contemporaries, they are sworn enemies of
everything obscure. As far as the present [xi] book is concerned, how-
ever, they will find themselves entirely surrounded by obscurities. They
ask: Who is this Edward Allwill? Is he alive or is he dead? Where did he
live? If he is still alive, where is he living? How did he ever get his own
letters back in his hands? How did he get control of the rest of them?
What is his aim in publishing them? How does he come to be connected
with the editor?—And there are a multitude of further questions of this
kind, that I must all leave unanswered, partly because of my own lack of
knowledge, and partly by the fact that I have given my word.
The reader, therefore, since he cannot be at ease [xii] with either the
wherefrom of the book or its whereto, would be dissatisfied not only with
the collector and the editor, but also with himself; for as soon as he gets
entangled with the object of the questions, he will be as little capable of
ridding himself of the problem as of getting the clear answers that he
wants.
So, amid all this embarrassment I have come to his rescue with my hy-
pothesis. And if I can succeed in making it seem even moderately likely,
the reader will certainly seize on this likelihood with joy. For with, and
in, my hypothesis, the "whence" and the "whither" are both answered at
the same time, and he can say to himself that he understands.
So I suggest to the reader here and now that he should [xiii] imagine
the editor to be someone for whom, from his tenderest youth, and even
in childhood, it was an important matter that his soul be not in his
blood, or that it be not a mere breath that passes away.
This concern was so far from having just the common drive for life as
its source in him, that, on the contrary, the thought that his present life
would last eternally was dreadful for him. He loved to live because of an-
other love, and—once more!—to live without this [xii] love seemed to
him unbearable, be it even for just a day.
So, even as a lad, the man was an enthusiast, a visionary, a [xiv]
mystic—or whatever is the right name among the many that I have found
all carefully defined in so many different new writings, though I have not
retained them all.
To justify this love—to this was his whole invention and aspiration di-
rected. And it was only the wish to obtain more light on its object that
drove him to science and art with a zeal that did not slacken before any
obstacle.
Edward All-will's Collection of Letters 383
The youth bore a consuming fire in his bosom. But none of his pas-
sions could ever gain the upper hand over the one affect that was the
soul of his life, [xv] If they were to take root, they had to draw their nour-
ishment from it, and shape themselves after it.
So it happened that he brought philosophical purpose, reflection,
and observation, to situations and moments where they are very seldom
to be found.
He sought to fix whatever he explored in his mind, in such a way that
it would stay with him. His most important convictions all rested upon
immediate intuition; his proofs and refutations, on facts that (as it
seemed to him) were either not sufficiently attended to, or not suffi-
ciently collated yet. Hence his only method for convincing others was to
exhibit these facts.
[xvi] So there arose in his soul the plan for a work which, only cloaked
in poetry so to speak, would display as scrupulously as possible the way hu-
manity is, whether explicable or not.
The work was not to be more edifying than creation; or more moral
than history and experience; or more philosophical than the instinct of
natures endowed with senses and reason.*1
* i. I call "instinct" the energy that determines the mode and shape of that
self-activity which every species of living nature must be thought to be endowed
with, since every nature initiates and maintains by its unique (independent) en-
ergy the action of its peculiar existence; it determines it originally [xvii] (without
regard to any still unexperienced pleasure or displeasure).
So far as rational natures equipped with senses (i.e. those that generate lan-
guage) are considered simply in their rational property, their instinct has as its
object the preservation and elevation of personal existence (the preservation of
self-consciousness, or of the unity of consciousness turned back upon itself,*
through a steady and ever more thorough combination or cohesion); the instinct is
therefore uninterruptedly directed to everything that promotes this existence.
In the highest abstraction, [xviii] when one separates the rational property in
its purity and no longer considers it as a property, but entirely on its own, the in-
stinct of such a bare reason is only directed to personality, to the exclusion of the
person and of existence, since [xv] person and existence require individuality which
is here necessarily omitted.
The pure efficacy of this instinct could be called "pure will." Spinoza gave it
the name of "affect of reason." One could also call it the "heart of bare reason."
I believe that if one follows up this hint philosophically, several phenomena
* reflektierten
[xvii] For what annoyed Allwill was precisely that so much was left out
by the philosophers in order that they might be able to [xviii] explain
things; and so much was passed over in silence by the moralists, in order
that their [xix] supreme [source of] influence should not be denied. For
[xvi] he had little yearning for a light that only makes visible what is not,
and he put no trust in a supreme will-power of man beyond the human
heart, perhaps out of a lack of talent in his own head.
[xx] He went about collecting for his work with a love that prevented
him from carrying it out to completion. Now he has become too old to
think of completing it according to the first plan; yet, he will certainly
produce a second volume still, and very likely a third.8
The second volume (which would already be published the middle of
summer if wise men had not advised against it) covers the period of
Clerdon's absence that is announced in this first.
So much as regards the internal likelihood of my hypothesis, or about
the central issue, in accordance with its pragmatic purpose.
[xxi] As for the external likelihood, I shall try to produce it externally,
by circumstantial evidences, as follows.
If the alleged editor were not the actual author of this book, how
could the letters in this collection, which were already published be-
fore,9 have received the altered form in which we see them here, and
how could they have been altered in such a way as to fit the new ones?
In one place we run up against an addition; in another, against a lacuna.
And everywhere we catch a glimpse of a busy hand that is not too shy to
deal with these letters as its own property.
Against this view it can be objected that, because of the earlier desire
not to publish the eleven letters here published for the first time, [xxii]
the ten others that were allowed publication had perforce to be altered
to the extent necessary to prevent their drawing direct attention to the
ones that had been removed in between (a circumstance that would
have made it impossible to leave them out). This tiresome task was done
which are otherwise difficult to explain, including the phenomenon of the indis-
putable presence of a categorical imperative [xix] of morality, of its power and
the lack of it, will show themselves to be perfectly intelligible. But one must at
the same time pay careful attention to the role of speech in our judgments and
inferences, in order not to go wrong or become discouraged because of cases
that rest simply on word-plays somewhat difficult to unravel.
Edward Allwill's Collection of Letters 385
in the way in which tiresome tasks are usually done; and in the process
the copy became thoroughly corrupted. So it would be quite contrary to
the truth, and would betray a shallow critical attitude, if one were to take
as alterations of commission changes that are on the contrary only alter-
ations of omission.
[xxiii] I am too timid to deny outright that this objection outweighs
my argument in probability, and hence invalidates it. I shall try rather to
bolster the weight of my argument by appending what came into my
hands as the Addition to this first volume of Allwill's Collection of Letters, the
"Missive to Erhard O**."
I ask each and everyone, therefore, whether he would venture to deny
the family resemblance between the "Missive to Erhard O**" and the let-
ters in Allwill's Collection.
This missive is completely philosophical in content, yet does not have
the philosophical characteristic of making an incoming [xxiv] attack just
as convenient as the outgoing defence, and hence is not likely to be en-
joyed and easily tolerated by enemies and friends alike.
Why does it not have this superior trait? I say, because it is one part
of Allwill's Collection that had got away. It could not survive alone, how-
ever. It came back, and was received as an addition.
And now I think that I have done what I undertook to do. In other
words, although I have not entirely appeased the reader regarding his
questions, at least I have amused him to his fill—and even beyond all
bounds.
[xxv] I leave him to his amusement, and bring my Preface to a close
with an old rhyme which is not as well known as it should be, or at least
not sufficiently attended to. It holds a rich treasure of consolation, not
only for the author, but for the reader as well, if he will only change one
word and replace "reader" with "author":
Reader, dost thou like me?

Reader, do I like thee?
[xxvii] "In its beautiful forms Nature speaks to us figuratively, and the
gift of deciphering its secret writing has been given to us in our moral
feeling.—Even the charm of colours and tones takes on a language, as
it were, that seems to possess a higher sense and brings Nature closer to
us." Kant, Critique of Judgment, pp. 168-70.10
{ [ l 8 l 2 : Xxi] P O S T S C R I P T OF J A N U A R Y l 8 l 2
Twenty years have gone by since the above Preface was written, and no
second Part of Allwill has seen the light of day. I should have to tell too
long a story of myself and my fortunes if I were to explain satisfactorily
how I came to be hindered from carrying out a project that was once so
dear to my heart. But I hope that anyone who may wish that I had carried
out that plan, will be compensated in many ways by the present collec-
tion of all my writings—of those already printed which I have deemed
worth preserving, and the previously unprinted ones which I have
deemed worth sharing.
Friedrich Htinrich Jacobi]
[xxviii] [. . . . I have seen

It with my very eyes, the archetype]
Of every virtue and of every beauty.
What I have copied from it will endure.
[....]
These are not shadows of illusion bred;
I know they are eternal, for they are.
Goethe's Tasso, Act 11, Scene 2 1 1
Why, there wasn't a note of Olympus' melodies that he hadn't learned from
Marsyas. And whoever plays them, from an absolute virtuoso to a twopenny-
halfpenny flute girl, the tunes will still have a magic power, and by virtue of their
own divinity they will show which of us are fit subjects for divine initiation.
Plato, Symposium, Bip. Ed. x, p. 257 12
[xxix] INTRODUCTION
Sylli, nee von Wallberg, was born in C** of an old patrician family. At the
age of fifteen she lost her mother who had begotten more than just or-
dinary earthly life in her [daughter], and had felt her own self in her so
fully that from these feelings an indescribable love had blossomed in
both their hearts. Driven by an unhappy passion to the point of madness,
her father had buried himself two years later in a Carthusian cloister,
and there he still lived at the time the following letters were written.
Together with her brother, Sylli ended up in guardianship, and in such
a bewildering situation, that her heart could not but be overwhelmed by
it.
She might have been twenty-one years old when August Clerdon, who
had been one of the closest companions of her childhood and impres-
sionable youth, saw her again and fell passionately in love with her. He
was a spirited man, of great gifts of soul but very unstable. The bond was
contracted, and Sylli moved to [4] E*** where her husband occupied
one of the most respectable positions. Immediately after that his
brother, Heinrich Clerdon, came to C** as Counsellor. Both had been
born in Switzerland but had moved to Germany with their father when
still children.
Sylli had had a foreboding of the many ways that August would make
her unhappy, but had been swept off her feet by the element of great-
ness and glory in the young man. Three years later he died, all entangled
in a lawsuit that had been brought against him out of mean perfidy, and
now threatened to ruin his external fortunes completely. The widow,
who had only slender means of her own and could see that even these
were now endangered, had to go on defending the suit against the evil
men who were pressing it; and for this reason she had to remain in E***,
[xxxi] a place which she had never loved. This was now all the more re-
pugnant to her, because her whole soul longed for C**, where every-
thing that still bound her to this earth was centred. The single child to
whom she had given birth had followed the way of the father. At the time
when she wrote her letters in this collection, she may perhaps have been
twenty-eight years old.
Amalia, to whom reference is made without any introduction early in
the second letter, soon appears to be the wife of Heinrich Clerdon.
Lenore and Clarchen von Wallberg (or just "the two sisters," as they are
also sometimes referred to) were Sylli's first cousins. All of these charac-
ters had, at different times, spent many years with or close to one an-
other, and they loved and looked upon one another as brothers and
sisters—intimately connected as they were not only by external relations
but also, even more so, by internal ones. Of Edward Allwill it would be
superfluous to say anything in advance.
[l] I
Sylli to Clerdon
March 6
Yes, my friend, with each day desolation is closing in upon me, and the
strange state of mind that you see as a fault in me, for which you know
no name, takes hold of me ever more firmly. You want me to name for
you a condition that is neither hypochondria, gloom, hatred or con-
tempt of man, nor anything else for which an interpretation can be
taken from novels or plays—one that makes my heart warm and cold at
once, my soul open to the outside and yet closed upon itself. Dear
Clerdon, let that wait till some other time; listen this time to what took
place yesterday.
[2] I happened for a few hours to be at the bed of a dying woman. She
was a close acquaintance of my aunt Mossel; with me she had no other
connection, she stood in no truly personal relationship to me; a com-
monplace creature, dull, but also without any malice. Her sufferings on
her death bed were great. One of the most terrible operations had been
tried on her in an attempt at cure. She took it all with equanimity; this
was the make-up of her temperament: a straightforward pursuit of her
life to its end. Four adopted children (she had none of her own) stood
by her bed-side; closer stood her husband, who had married her only for
profit and from business motives. Everyone wept and sobbed in profu-
sion. I am sure, Clerdon, that their sorrow was heart-felt! But at the bot-
tom, what did it amount to? A bit of remorse perhaps, a bit of gratitude, a
mean fear of the shock when the departing soul would no longer be there,
uneasiness in the presence of death.—Oh, how nauseating it all seemed!

I [3] sat there cold. I was physically in pain myself over the bodily suffer-
ings of the sick woman; but otherwise I felt no sympathy for anyone.
At this moment the pastor arrived, and began his business. Believe me,
the good woman was not afraid about what was to come; she did not
have the slightest anxiety. Only the dying-out of her forces, and the fa-
tigue of life, drew many a painful sigh from her breast. What issued was
each time a call, a saying, a verse from a song. And this roused die im-
potent organs again to inflict pain; it armed the soft hand of death, and
prevented the soul from departing quietly and gently.—Oh, the chaos of
the world!
Today, because of her death, there is crying and lamentation also
among my own folk here—so much so that one would despair of com-
fort, if one did not know that there is none among these highly afflicted
people who would not always be prepared in their [4] own life to dis-
pense with wife, mother, or friend entirely. And I now, who can see all
this quite plainly, am in the midst of this crowd without being part of it,
though, alas, I am shaken deep within my being by unbearable
thoughts . . . ! Oh Thou of the many names, who pullest all men to-
gether, and intertwinest them—what art Thou? Source and current and
sea of society; whence? and whither . . . ?
I see the dark hollow, and the great cauldron where Macbeth's witches
gather assorted limbs of beasts and men, toes of frogs and teeth of
wolves, wool of bats and liver of Jews, noses of Turks and Tartars' lips,
and Heaven knows how many other things, to prepare for the "deed with-
out a name"; they boil and boil the stuff for their spell, until out of their
stew all the phantoms appear:
They appear and appear,
They come like shadows, and again disappear. And then the antic
round, [5] and the eerie music, and the enchanted atmosphere; the
whole, the most marvellous and perfect of delights.13
Yet it is not so extraordinary, or so frightful as all that, by a long way.
I must laugh at the horror that struck me. No, my good Clerdon, no; it
is only a gaudy, wooden, market puppet; its stump and its coat cut from
a small block of wood; arms, feet and head glued to it, and under it a
small board on which to stand. And is that a phantom?—
[6] ii
Sylli to Clerdon
March 7
I got up this morning long before day-break. An extraordinarily beauti-
ful light that fell ever more brightly around me drove me from my study
into the room to the east, which has the wide view looking towards our
little mountain. A shudder ran through me at the sight, and I remained
motionless at the entrance of the room. What held me captive was the
great stillness in all that radiance, in all that whirl of change across the
broad sky: incessant mutations that defied an encompassing view, yet no
visible alteration, no movement. Gradually the sun approached nearer.
Now, all at once, it rose up from behind the hills, and my spirits rose up
with it too.—Clerdon, those were blessed moments! And see, the whole
day was just like this sunrise—the first day of spring, and dawn [7] of a
new year, the first ray of light for a much greater creation than the cre-
ation of a single day. I had to be out of those walls into the open world.
Sophie, whom I called as I went by, accompanied me. What a walk! The
sky was so pure, the air so gentle, the whole earth as a smiling face full
of consolation and promise, of innocence and fullness of heart. I could
grasp it all wonderfully now; I looked about myself me gently, in a bless-
ing. And so, unnoticed, I became once more the good, confident, crea-
ture who had nothing in her heart except bliss at the beauty of God's
world, and plenitude of hope.
Yes, dear Clerdon, I was full of hope, without knowing what I hoped
for; every goodness and beautiful thing: and this pleasant confusion, this
half-light, was precisely the reason why I felt so well, why no lack of faith
could stir me into waking.
[8] I meant to enjoy this day properly. I wanted to be in the open also
for the sunset. We made our way over the embankments. I lingered at
the spot where, two years ago, you stood with me late in autumn, and you
were so enraptured by the breadth and variety of the view. "If only he
could see it now!" A gentle spring breeze blew my way, and set you down
at my side. Oh, how majestic and beautiful was everything around us!
But it could not be so for long; I took myself off. I soon came to the place
where you can see the long and broad road rounding the corner towards
S** directly before you.*2 "That's where I came from six years ago; that's
*2. The first post-station to S**.

where Clerdon came from two years ago; that's where the road goes to.
But when, alas?" You remember the place. It is a boundless plain with
nothing to obstruct the eye; the road stretches straight ahead, and it is
so broad and even—I wanted to be able to roll away on it! [9] But mean-
while I could hear two instruments nearby, right behind the city-wall.
They were a flute and a harp, and they fell in quite neatly with the mel-
ody in me, they accompanied it and led it on. I let myself go, and let my-
self get into such a state that I actually had tears in my eyes. My good
Sophie stood by, obligingly waiting through all this. I stayed there for a
long time in meditation leaning on my walking stick, and finally I walked
swiftly home with my companion, and—Good night to you, Clerdon!
Amalia, sisters, good night to you!
[10] in
Clerdon to Sylli
March 4
You should know, dear Sylli, of the many hours that I spend not writing
to you. A letter is soon written; not to write it takes a lot longer.
I have now been sitting in front of this sheet again, with quill in hand,
a long half hour, perhaps even a whole hour, pondering on where I
would find consolation for you, and how I would convey it to you.
Your few lines of February 28, which reached us today, witness to such
a feeling of depression that I was seized by it, and it oppressed my heart
so much that I did not know how to calm my anxiety—and I decided not
to share the letter with Amalia for now.
[i i] You must have received the day after, the first of March, a letter
from me in which I begged and beseeched you to pour yourself out to
us without reservation, to lay your state of mind quite openly before us,
since we are not really able to explain it for ourselves. No new misadven-
tures have come your way; and after what you have experienced, no new
reversal unknown to us could have brought you to the low point where
you apparently are. So why have you sunk into this most frightful melan-
choly, this faintheartedness that is so out of character for you? It makes
way for a deadening lack of faith in love, friendship, human worth!
I too can feel that the world is so big that all sounds are lost in it; be-
lieve me, I do feel it. And as long as the same order abides in the whole,
how can I avoid being oppressed and wounded, often constricted to the
point of despair in the daily [12] affairs of my life and profession? Since
I have no hope at all that things will improve? But it is true that these
sufferings have a good side for the worthy man—he pulls himself to-
gether all the better because of them. If he cannot translate his best ca-
pacities into deed; if he is encircled by stupidity, baseness and evil,
assaulted and importuned by it—this does at least sustain his spirit out
of rage in any case. What ought to bring him down, actually raises him
up, supports him, and gives him composure.
And so, my sister and friend, dear gracious Sylli—take heart! Pull
yourself together as well as you can; you will find help, for you possess
it in yourself!—Oh, if only I were able to display my feelings to you here
in all of their truth! The best in me is knowledge of what you are—What
you are\ Yet you, [13] my Sylli; you, the child of heaven, are drowning in
misery; you may indeed drown in the most dreadful desolation!—
—Even one's own excellence cannot be the highest pleasure, because
Sylli feels so wretched!—You angels before the throne of God, say: is
even your bliss spoiled?—Sylli, you must look into my heart; not look; you
must be able to take my heart into your bosom, if you are to feel the
mourning over you that is in me, and the consolation for you that is in
my heart.
IV
[14]
Sylli to Clerdon
March 8
I wrote to you yesterday and the day before, dear Clerdon; yet I must
reply to your letter, which I have just received, now, on the spot.
If you only knew, how distressed I am that you should have so many
worries, so much sorrow, on my account! But believe me, you good peo-
ple, believe me, that things haven't been quite as bad for me as you imag-
ine. All the beauty and the goodness in nature, is indeed good and
beautiful for me; and it becomes all the more so with each day. Do you
know anyone who tastes of every human joy more inwardly than your
Sylli? How could I not believe in love, I, whose bosom is bursting with
it? Look at this hyacinth here! How often have I stood before it, with pal-
pitating heart, drawing from its being with all my [15] sense* till my
nerves were in a tremor, and I had all its beauty and goodness alive in
me and felt its reciprocal love—call that foolishness, nonsense, and en-
thusiasm if you like! So I attend to each and every thing from whose
being a blessing flows directly, whether this thing be shape or spirit, song
or harmony, painting or whatever. I hold it close to me, I lend it hearth
and fire, and do not rest until its inner being—the goodness, the beauty,
the blessing—streams into me, and has received life and love in me.
Behold! nothing shall perish that has directed a look of communion at
me; whatever gave me life and took life from me shall not perish—not as
long as I last anyway!
To be sure, I am exposed in this way to many an injury which I would
not otherwise suffer. Every dullness, heedlessness, or disdain on the part
of other humans round me, [16] and the even worse insult of their fleet-
ing delights—these strike me and wound. And so, assailed from every
side, and with everyone's hand raised against me, still, my own hand is
not set against anyone—I swear it to you. I see much love and goodness
in human beings still. I have a few cheerful girls here who totally reinvig-
orate me whenever they run into me. One feels among them as if one
were walking in springtime into a shower of flowers. They are so full of
courage, so full of pleasure, that they cannot but bring help. And then
they cling to my arms, and hang upon my neck; they unload their lips,
and hold a spell for me in their innocent eyes that makes me forget
everything. I press them blissfully to my heart then, almost as if it were
love, lasting love. And, that's how I deal with a hundred other things too;
I let everything take its course, and let whatever good come my way that
can. I don't reject anything, don't trample on anything, but neither do
I set store by human favour and respect. For, you see, even if it comes
to pass, for once, [ 17] that something lasts as I expected it to, I am never-
theless overcome by such melancholy, such faint-heartedness, that I
could waste away. However warmly my heart feels touched from the out-
side, however glowing it is from its own light, in its depth it still seems
cold to me. Yes, the problem is that every impulse of trust and friendship
in my soul turns into a thought of affliction and horror; that I see imme-
diately and vividly before me, that I am once more being visited by that
long departed angel-like figure that left a dead skeleton on my lap.
Ah! Clerdon, Amalia, my sisters, do not be angry at your Sylli! You do,
Sinn
of course, know my story in part;—and if you knew all of it, then what lies
here deeply and firmly under seal would all be revealed to you!—But
speak, give witness: is it my fault that such things have happened to me?
Was I faint-hearted, or weak? did I spare myself pain and tears? did I ever
consider anything [18] except love? Unshakable in faith, did I not en-
dure all, dare all, give my all, full of courage, and of trust? All, all!—And
what good did it do?—I saw them all decay, one thing after another, one
with the other, the trees and garden-greens in the fields of my youth,
with the flower-beds round them; only an empty wilderness was left to
me.
Oh! that poisonkss arrow shooting into our heart from the hand of a
friend! and he, smiling, twists it, and asks in perfect innocence: How can
it hurt? it was notpoisonousl
Not those who exercised violence and evil spite against me were my
destroyers; it was those who fell away from me quietly, as a ripe fruit falls
away; it abandons its tree and away it drops with its fullness. Listen, I have
not been split by lightning, not cut down—only drained; [ 19] I have still
branches and leaves. And that is how the trunk will preserve itself, until
the branches too have decayed, and the leaves have withered and will re-
turn no more.
Oh! that I could keep my eyes from looking around; oh, that I knew
where to turn them, away from the wretched monotony of human lies
and deceits! It is truly a calamity, how much people ask of one another;
how much they expect, hope, put trust in themselves and their brethren,
truly intend to give and receive. Every sunrise brings immortal love, immortal
friendship, to the world; if we only did not know that with every day
there comes a dusk too, or did not remember what will happen thrice before
the cock crows.14 One pities most those good souls who, after they have
trudged along together for a few years, or have even kept company since
infancy, and believe they are now quite certain about their common
cause—they have eyes for but one [20] fate, and one grave, they defy
every storm—and still, at the last, without knowing how, they manage to
run each other aground, and often, simply lie shipwrecked there, with-
out rescue because of some pettiness. Lucky for them, that they seldom
know the secret of their fate!
Before the eye of my soul I have long held an image of all human
action and being, of our "life-course" as it is called: an image harsh but
apt—the image of a treadmill. Everyone runs forward with eyes closed, in
his own wheel; he congratulates himself on the stretch that he has put
behind him; he knows of all the many foolishnesses, the many calamities
that are at his back; but he does not notice that right away they all rise
up again, and again they fall upon his head, they lie before his gaze, and
under his plodding feet. I would rather not talk about it, for he who sees
it best, has only this advantage: that he stands still in his wheel, laughing
at the others, or bewailing—[21] and himself—oh, he is far worse off!
Wherever have I got to?—It's not where I wanted: but let it be my will
now; for what's the harm? You know, of course, what has been said a
thousand times: that one is bound to feel one's distress the most, at the
moments when one overflows with one's whole being into the represen-
tation of it; so, let it be said yet once more to you that basically things
in the world aren't so bad for Sylli. Believe me, trust the words of our
dear Primrose: "Still, as we approach, the darkest objects appear to
brighten, and the mental eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situa-
tion."15 And, Clerdon too has often on his lips the verses: "No situation,
however wretched it seems, but has some sort of comfort attending it."l6
Believe, believe, however few the witnesses [22] for it may be: he who
does not know what it is to make his bed on thorns, has yet to be invig-
orated by the best rest.
But all this talk would be nothing, of course, if my heart had let go of
my human brothers; but it clings tight to them with its strongest ties.
Nobody can resist loving children from whom we certainly don't receive
or expect more than I do from my grown-ups. Such a small, charming,
lively little one—when you press him close to you, kiss him and fondle
him, and can't let go of him: is it because you think of the good man who
may perhaps lie hid in him? No; it's the mere child that attracts you, em-
bodied and alive just as he is at this very moment; because he is lovely
to look at, and he has a sweet mouth, and friendly looking eyes, limbs
that move up and down, a body and a life, just like you, and his nerves
resonate with yours. You know that you can buy his affection [23] with
bribes of sweets and games, but you don't enjoy it with any the less hearty
satisfaction for all that. You are not afflicted, or angry, if somebody else
lures him away from you with shinier gifts or by fussing more, and then
he doesn't like you any more and turns from you with a bah; or if he gets
tired of you, the very moment you no longer cater to his whims, and can-
not satisfy all his desires. It astounds me that the remark, We adults are
only older children, is usually, if not always, uttered with a bitter expression
of contempt, as a testimony to lack of love—to me it appears to be the
most trustworthy balm of life.
Oh yes! it's pure bliss to love human beings so; without vanity, without
claims, just with plain love. Everything then goes to the heart so directly
and so unalloyed—and the heart is so powerful.—Oh, let me, let me just

be suspended in Limbo, until I am made perfect!
v
[24]
Clerdon to Sylli
March 8
Dearest Sylli, it is so long since you wrote! We are all fretting our brains
over it; kind Amalia, the nieces and I; each in our different way. But a
letter will certainly come from you next Saturday, for I know that you
won't let this latest one of mine go unanswered for a single day. In sit-
uations where the heart is touched, I can predict good deeds more con-
fidently from you than from myself, for on that score Sylli cannot fail.
Surely you are not now sighing over my strong faith?
You should be here with us now, dearest Sylli—to join hands with us
as we dance to celebrate the new spring. For you too must have felt the
irresistible delight of yesterday. It has pierced [25] me through and
through, and settled in my bones so to speak. I feel so joyful in my heart,
and at the same time secretive, like a youth who has just drunk his soul's
fill of love and hope from the eyes of a pious young woman.
It started early in the morning. I was awakened by the earliest faint
glow of dawn; I felt consoled as by the arm of a friend who was kissing
me out of my slumber to an unexpected reunion. I stretched out my
arms in the direction of that lovable friend; I wandered towards him,
and found him—yes, I found him labouring at his rising.—Whoever
doubts that there is music for the eye, should have seen the crimson of
this dawn. Never did such angelic music come floating into my soul on
hues. Yet, how do I know with which sense I took it in? I was besides my-
self. At the very first moment, upon the crowning of the presence, I was
transformed, I shuddered; then, deep [26] in the breast, and yet deeper
and more inward, a trembling—a trembling that shook everything loose
in the most secret recesses of the heart, and killed the mortal in it. It was
Death, that beautiful, heavenly youth! Unburdened of the corruptible
part, I flew into his arms, sank into his lap, took up my abode with him,
and in him, He who is, and was, and ever shall be; I tasted omnipotence,
creation, eternal rest in love.—Ah, Sylli, that I had to come back! that the
day had to come!
A glorious day nonetheless; one of the most beautiful in my life!

With the first gleam of the sun, which directed my eye downward to-
wards the glorious landscape stretching all around me, and returned me
to the earth, a damning thought crossed my soul with the speed of light:
how sinful, that one should only thus steal a glance at this majestic splen-
dour of God, across embankment and moat; only sneak up to it briefly
towards evening, [27] catching it in passing or from behind; while there
is nothing to prevent one from taking up abode in the midst of this glory
the whole day long, from covering oneself over and over again with this
splendour of God, and enjoying what belongs to Him, the wide open
Heaven, and the broad open earth.
I pulled myself together again, dragged myself out into the full radi-
ance of the sun, and wandered about. I took possession of the land, the
meadow, the brook, the forest and the stream, the high and the low,
heaven and earth. And as I now reached the hill, which was my destina-
tion, clambering up, and finally standing on top of it—as I looked far
and wide around me, my blood rushed, my heart skipped, my bones re-
sisted, and my hair bristled; while in all my nerves there rose a rejoicing,
a ringing and singing, of the love, the pleasure and the power to live.
[28] These dots, my dear Sylli, signify a violent interruption, a pause

that I must now allow to stand as an end to my song, for I am now out
of tune and time. Just as I was in mind to tune up for my second part,
up drove Allwill in a phaeton; and he would not leave me in peace but
insisted that I let myself and Amalia be taken for a ride before dinner,
and that he should be invited as guest to the midday meal in return. "He
who does not yield": that's Allwill for you. And so it was done, just as he
wanted. Now I am all distracted, and I cannot even think of trying to re-
capture the mood of early this morning. It is better that I should tell you
about Allwill, about whom you have already enquired twice, if I am not
mistaken. I will just sketch a few details about him for you. My wife, who
has taken the young man—for he is not yet twenty-four years old—under
her wing, in order to tame him and improve him, will make an exhaust-
ive report of him to you.
He has developed a lot since you last saw him; [29] but he is still an
incomprehensible muddle of a man. Recently his father told the tale of
him that, as a boy, he was never in one piece from his third year on, but
had always a couple of bumps on his head, and sores all over. We never
tired of hearing the good Major relate the strange pranks of the boy, and
how the Messrs tutors, and he too, did not hold out much hope for him;
for in spite of all his liveliness, he was slow in his studies, and for all his
good heart, he was extremely stubborn, unruly, and spiteful. He was
taken to be somewhat weak of mind, for his peers constantly outwitted
him, easily talked him into anything, and always left him with the bills to
pay. A couple of incidents come to mind that can easily be related in
brief.
Close upon his sixth year, he got it into his head that his beloved rock-
ing horse, [30] by the name of Chestnut, would come alive if he just fed
him a living fly. He exerted himself tirelessly in preparations for his plan,
which would not be so easy to pull off, since the rocking machine was not
hollow. Once, as he jerked it into motion with great vehemence, in such
a way that it kept on hitting the floor with its front extremities, he no-
ticed to his surprise that it had slid forward. He now began to drive his
animal forward with greater vehemence, and quite quickly he arrived at
the opposite end of the chamber. His joy was boundless. Nobody could
dissuade him from believing that his Chestnut had come to life, and
nothing in the world could budge him from his horse's side. Noontime
came, and Edward was not hungry. His father had him told that he must
at least come down; but although in other matters he feared the Major
a lot, this time he could not bring himself to obey. Everyone in the
house, who in dieir mind's eye already saw their dear Edward whipped
until the blood came, ran upstairs. [31] They beseeched and cajoled
him; they made promises and threats; but all to no avail. The Major, who
would be obeyed at all cost, commanded that the boy should be brought
downstairs by force. So it was done. After being thoroughly rebuked, he
was told to sit at the table. But no; he was not hungry. He was threatened,
and forced. It was all in vain for he only saw his Chestnut, and the open
heaven. Since his obstinacy must somehow be broken now, there was no
choice left but to thrash him soundly, and to separate him from his
horse—which was done, and so for a couple of hours he was locked up
in a dark hole.
Some time later, in the evening when it was dark, he had crawled up
a scaffold, with the intention of attempting a great leap which now, after
many successful tests, he believed he was in a position to attempt. Boldly
he leapt, but he came down with so much force that there was fear his
nose-bone had been split in two. [32] That was nothing! But how could
he appear before his father the following day? The youngster could have
endured anything in the world, rather than a rebuke. The Major was eas-
ily convinced this time to spare his Edward any punishment, and even
the obligation to sit at table. But after eating the boy would still have to
appear before him, and that caused great misery. The diffident pig-
headed boy simply did not want to go downstairs, until his older brother
William, a cunning talker but basically a good boy, finally induced him
to go, under the most sacred assurances that father would not allude to
the crushed nose even by a gesture. It still took great effort, for William's
ready tongue had got Edward into trouble many times before this al-
ready; but deep in his heart an invincible source of faith always sub-
merged his memory very quickly; so much so that even now he has not
grown much wiser on this score. Edward now walked up to the Major
holding his brother's hand. [33] As promised the Major surveyed him
with quite a mild look; but he did not fail to remark that he would in-
deed have to have a nose-sheath made for him. My Edward turned round
swiftly, crying " You liarl" and he gave his brother such a mighty push that
the boy went tumbling four steps backwards into a sand-box. The Major
was alarmed, and sent the culprit out of his sight, as a most despicable
monster.
Things of this sort happened every day. But nothing dampened
Edward's courage and good spirits in all this. Few men have suffered
more blows; but never would he trade them for the willing acceptance
of the smallest humiliation, or soften the displeasure of his superiors
with tears or entreaties. He told me himself recently how he was once
lashed near to death, because his tutor tried to lead him through
Socratic questioning to the admission that the strap was a good thing,
and he always kept him from the desired conclusion [34] by playing
dumb. More than once he took the blame and the punishment of his
playmates upon himself, not so much out of friendship, or from compas-
sion, as because he felt unbearable disgust at the whining and crying dur-
ing the administration of the punishment. In all this not a shadow of
self-assertiveness; on the contrary, he was so diffident, so meek towards
everyone (he took this to be a good thing) and at the same time so con-
genial, so thankful, so gentle and so good, that most people took him
partly for an idiot, and partly for a flatterer.
In the face of untruth, and even in the face of simple error. . . . Good
thing that I have to look for a fresh sheet here, else it would have hardly
occurred to me that the post leaves in a quarter of an hour. If you like,
I will return to this subject next time,.and tell you about the contrasts in
the little Edward—how in all his intractability he was not wild, but dis-
posed more to silence, and to private living; how in his intense desires
for sense-pleasures, in his recklessness of action, he was yet given [35] to
brooding, and adhered to invisible objects; how in his fourteenth year

he became a pietist, etc.—It is unspeakably fascinating to know all this
about the child, and then to observe the youth: how it is always the same
hand, perhaps only a couple of cards more or less, mixed and played in
a different way.
P.S. It occurs to me to enclose a letter for you that Edward recently

wrote to me from Kambeck. But I must have it back without fail, so that
at some point I can confront the author with the first half of it. The for-
est incident will amuse you.
[36] vi
Enclosure to Clerdon's Letter
Edward to Clerdon
It was not an apoplectic fit, my dear, that was being so horridly described
to you; only an attack of intense dizziness, which had its good causes. I
am better again now, and I am no longer forbidden, under penalty of et-
ernal life or ... the mad-house, to read, write, or undertake anything
otherwise human. The sun also shines again in the cheerful sky; the air
is still; I and the whole of nature—we are in good humour.
Word has it in our C** that Madam von Kambeck has me in her net;
or would it be better, that I lie prostrate at her feet, that I should worship
her? So be it! But you, dear Clerdon, [37] you ought to know better.
Listen to my whole secret. Association with the other gender entices me
infinitely; these pleasant creatures have the sort of thing in them, soft
and ingratiating, that suits me. Near them the intensity in my mode of
feeling (which is all too much) gradually tones down; they steal equa-
nimity and tranquillity into my heart. Well now, add a closer relation to
this, and I ride with my Juno up there above the clouds, while the poor
dandies down below climb their mountains and pile up their boul-
ders. . . . Oh, Clerdon! this sort of thing always drives the devil in me to
402 The Main Philosophical Writings and theNovelAll will
his wit's end; it's as good as being shipwrecked in a fountain of holy

water . . . I have won the match. Yet in all this or rather, because of it,
the thought of worshipping any of these goddesses whom I have just
praised, of lying prostrate at their feet in earnestness, is to me unbear-
able. Years ago, yes—then the deeds of a Roland17 would have been my
own style too. But I became aware quite quickly of just how my immortal
ones were constituted at [38] bottom; and I have happily endeavoured
to make the will of the all-powerful Fate into my own fate as well.
Oh dear, I have nothing against there being Clarissas, Clementines,
Juliettes,18 or, in general, holy virgins immaculately conceived.19 But let
us have no great fuss about it I pray! For look you, these sublime works
of the imagination are to blame that so many men think contemptuously
of their wives whom God made—wives for this earth here, and not for the
moon to which these gentlemen are seeking the way. They reproach
their wives, and complain of the cruelties, infidelities, horrors, and
shameful actions that they have suffered at their hands; and yet, more
often than not, the good creatures don't even know what these bad
deeds are. It is mad to behave so harshly towards them! Let us let them
be as nature wished them, without trying to torture and tempt them into
being angels; then they will gladly love us, and [39] with as much inward-
ness, firmness and magnanimity, as their pleasant little souls are capable
of.
I can't help making fun of myself, and getting angry, whenever I look
back upon how I could never attach myself to a young woman without
striving as hard as I could to reshape her according to a certain model
that was in my mind. Think of the American savages who squeezed the
head and forehead of their children between boards, and turned them
into monsters with the praiseworthy intention of making them like their
idols, the divine sun and the divine moon. I was doing exactly the same.
And while I burdened myself with this foolishness, I endured frightful
sufferings. My stars were in eclipse at every moment; and no matter what
loud din I made to frighten away the ugly monster who lay in wait for the
catch, [40] in the end I always had to watch him devour the poor
wretches before my eyes. Wearied by so many unhappy experiences, I
said to myself very wisely one day, in the early morning: "It is certainly
true, that neither Aspasia, nor Dana, nor Phyllis, nor Melinda, nor so
many other names that you know, are the names of stars in heaven. But
tell me: Are we not often happier drinking by candle light, than feasting
in the full light of the sun? So, enjoy the little festival, and leave the mar-
vellous and monstrous splendours alone—since without Merlin's magic
wand, they are beyond reach anyway."—From that day on, whatever ad-
ventures may have come my way in the region of love, I have never again
had visions of horns, fish-tails, or claws in my beauties; but . . . I have
always had fun.
It is not likely that I shall be able to get away from here at the begin-
ning of the coming week. [41] Nor would I mind being detained, were
it not for the young Count von Batuff, whom my guardian devil holds
spell-bound here, and who has me involved in some disagreeableness
with him at every turn. He put me in an ill humour the moment that I
stepped into the castle. You know that my superintendent instructed me
to ride a couple of hours down the road from here to inspect the water-
mechanisms in the mines at D***. I despatched the job as quickly as pos-
sible, and then rode back at an extended trot through the Kambeck
forest. Somewhere about the middle of it I saw two unharnessed horses,
an overthrown wagon carrying wood, and the driver standing by, leaning
against a tree. The poor fellow had unloaded his cargo of wood, and had
removed the one wheel; but he was still not able to lift up the sunken
wagon. No matter how I took it, the incident came for me at an incon-
venient time. I rode by. Apparently, however, my [42] right arm must
have pulled back automatically, for my horse lapsed from its trot. At that
moment I realized that I was not fleeing from anywhere, and regained
my control of what was right. I dismounted, and offered my help to the
poor man who needed it. A look at my golden mount, accompanied by
a bitter smile, answered to me that the likes of him could expect no help
from nobility, but only the cruellest mockery. That was a flash of light-
ning in my soul, Clerdon! I felt all the abuses and the thrashing that I
would not have failed to give the man, if he had met me in similar cir-
cumstances, and had denied me his help. Without further ado, I at-
tacked the wagon with such force, that in a single heave it came to rest
on the opposite axle; I then hurried to the wheel and rolled it by; the
wagon was pulled up, and the wheel put back in place. I also wanted to
help the man reload the wood, but he absolutely would not allow it, no
matter how sincere my [43] begging was. He did not feel what kind of
good deed he had rendered to me.—Ah, how pleased the man was with
me; how he thanked me, admired me, how he would never forget it, and
would relate it to his children, the whole village! Great God! I wanted
to disappear for shame, and I would certainly not have ridden to
Kambeck this time, if I had only known where else to go. I arrived late.
From the sad condition my clothes were in, it was concluded that I had
fallen off the horse. I recounted my story. Count Batuff stood swaggering
right by my nose, and listened with that special kind of smile, well known
to you in some of his kind, a smile that betrays emptiness and arrogance
at the first glance; this time, however, the Count's consciousness of his
own superiority over any such weakness, as he could hear I had just been
guilty of, gave it somewhat more expression and life. Hardly had I fin-
ished my story, than he sprang upon us a sudden idea that had long been
lying ready in ambush. It's a good thing, he said, turning to Lady von
Kambeck, that the farmer's horses had not run away from him, or that
he was not lying there himself with some serious wound; for otherwise
Allwill would have had to harness his English stallion, and cart his beloved
neighbour home.—Count, I replied, you are perhaps too kind in your
judgment of me; for I was so close to leaving my poor farmer without help,
and then I would have been . . . a callous blackguard. Out of politeness,
I uttered the word "blackguard" only lightly; but, as usual, it did not es-
cape the notice of Lady von Kambeck. She changed colour, and one saw
in the eyes of the Count . . . that he was feeling queasy. But I went on,
talking my heart out, and did not rest until I had dumped upon this
young gentleman (who only knew the word "Mensch" [45] in its most
contemptible secondary meaning) * all of the abuses and the thrashing,
the thought of which had frightened me in the morning. And that was
enough—for the time being.
Would you tell my superintendent that I shall be away a few days
longer? Make sure he sees it in the proper light, my dear fellow; and let
my father know about it too.
[46] vii
Amalia to Sylli
Saturday, March 11,

about six-thirty in the morning
Edward came yesterday afternoon, with the Lord von Kambeck and an
officer whom you don't know, and they abducted my Clerdon to Born,
where a string of English horses are due this morning. The good
Clerdon was not involved in the business at all, but you know how he lets
* "Mensch" normally signifies in German a genuinely human being (man or woman),

but it can also be used in a disparaging sense, as in "Du Mensch!"
himself be talked into things.—So I am now alone with my coffee, and

in the sad situation of having to pour all the cream from the milk into
my own cup. I began to read; but already by the second page all sorts of
things began to go through my head that had to do with you; I couldn't
get rid of the distractions, so I put the book aside. Dear Sylli! the sky is
not cheerful, so it is to blame if my study is not as charming as it could
be. I have opened [47] a window, and I stood by it for a little while to
muse about my friends; and now I shall chat a bit with you, until my boys
come.
First let's speak our misery, our vexation, annoyance, anger (which of
them it really ought to be, we don't yet know ourselves, alas!) because
of the unusually long lack of letters from you. Clerdon is ready to bet all
his cash (and how much do you reckon we offer to bet against him?) that
by the next postilion we shall receive several letters all at once. This
much is certain, that the postbag from U . . . r is already two post-days
late. Apparently a flood that has breached the bridge at E** and caused
immense damage is to blame. Already on Monday we thought that a let-
ter from you must come without fail; yet it failed to come. And so it went
on through all the following days, except that on each one, as our hope
rose, so our doubts rose also, [48] and we were overcome by a sense of
unrest that we could not accept, nor yet live with. The news of the great
flood, and the delay of the post from U . . . r, together with Clerdon's
encouragement and daring wager, have lately lulled us into security
somewhat. And apart from this worry, dearest Sylli, I am now so com-
pletely happy, so thoroughly content, so placidly joyous about life!—Oh,
take care, Sylli; take care indeed, and don't spoil my beautiful days!
Evening, four-thirty
My three older ones are now returning home with great jubilation from
a walking trip across the Danube; they are in high spirits. How much joy
the boys give me! All three of them behave uncommonly well—and
Heinrich is a human masterpiece. He is gradually becoming such a nice
boy that even his father has begun [49] to think less harshly of him, and
no longer favours Carl so cruelly, the Indian sunflower. His music
teacher is much attached to him. In a few weeks he will be playing the
overture to Deserteur,20 and he produces a multitude of pieces from
Lucile,21 and other operettas which he has seen performed, with such
hearty enjoyment that one likes to fancy he is doing it as beautifully as
it can be done. Certainly the young man is becoming quite musical, and
in my choir he deserves the first place, I have taken an oath that no other
will deprive him of it.—Mr Bering and Mr Ramp extol him highly too;
and since George now regularly dresses his hair every day, you will find
him quite delightful. About the junior Heinrich, Heinrich the senior
presages that he will be held in high regard one day by our own gender,
and that he will attain a great reputation. In fact he is becoming more
attractive by the day. But, ah, the node, the node under his chin! One
does not see it at a glance; but I feel it in [50] my fingertips, and it's im-
possible for me to get it out of my mind!—Well now, this is what is called
chattering about the children! If it bores you this time, remember, dear
Sylli, that you are the one who spoiled me with your generous sharing
of everything of this kind. You have engrained the habit in me. To other
people I speak. . . . / hear Clerdon\
Sunday morning
It's already nine. I slept until six-thirty, and got almost as big a fright
as if. . .1 had found myself dead. Let the simile stand, and hear me out.
I am in negligee; I open the door: What on earth!—Yes indeed! Just
imagine, Sylli: there, opposite my Clerdon, Edward is quite unashamedly
sitting in my easy chair, and is even presuming to drink from my cup. I
felt as if Clerdon should remove him from my chair by the hair; but he
shouted at the top of his voice: "Stay out! See here, my gracious lady, my
hair is not done!" So I summoned him at noon. I was now informed that
Allwill had appropriated my coffee only because it was cold, and I de-
served a better breakfast. That had already been looked after. A pot of
chocolate stood on the fireplace, and in a flash the valiant knight in at-
tendance had it on a serviette with all the accoutrements, and served me
from it in the best of form. Was that not courteous of him, Sylli? You may
believe me, or not; our sitting together and our chattering was just as
precious. Allwill is indeed a really good young man, and I have high
hopes for him in many directions; in other ways, however, I don't trust
him: there is something of the profligate in him. Clerdon will always
gloss over that.
Now everything has been looked after in the household, my hair is
made up, and still an hour is saved for you. Heinrich, Carl, and Ludwig
were fetched yesterday evening to go to Heimfeld,*3 where they will stay
until tomorrow; and so Ferdinand came today all alone to say "good
morning," holding little Sophie by the hand. Poor Edmund, as you
*3. An estate belonging to Lady von Reinach, with whom Lenore and Clare
von Wallberg resided. She was their aunt, hence also related to Clerdon.
know, still does not say anything. About little Sophie I could tell you a
lot, how gracious she is, how meek, obedient, and ingratiating. Her papa
is plainly in love with the little thing. She was at the door just now, and
asked, may I come in? I answered: No, because I had more to write; at
that she very gently came to my side, kissed my hand, and left again with-
out saying another word. I would have a multitude of little incidents of
this kind to tell you about. And think! The little girl will only be two in
May! Dear Sylli, yes, it shall all come to pass, and be, soon, exactly as you
wrote recently. The [53] little Edmund, whom so far you only know from
the portraits that Albano22 has made of him, with his large, light brown
eyes, the pupils clearly visible in them, exuding sheer cheerfulness of the
heart and goodness—he will laugh at you and feast over you, just as he
laughs and feasts after he has had a good sleep. The child will become
attached to you without the bonbon, for otherwise he would not be our
flesh and blood; he would have inherited nothing of my heart, and noth-
ing of Clerdon's—You see, I cannot touch on this point without quiv-
ering inside, and tears coming to my eyes; but these tears, oh, how sweet!
Angel Sylli, you must come and see how with every day our Clerdon be-
comes ever more of a father and a family head, ever more affable in all
things; how he spends time with his children, is always happy when one
crosses his way, and always rewards the innocent one for his happiness.
With Ferdinand there often is no end to the songs and dances; and then
one can [54] start up anything with him, he'll let himself be tousled and
roughed up, and we all stand around and laugh nervously. Really, Sylli,
he becomes a regular little boy; he helps them dream up all sorts of
tricks and carry them out; and when they catch on and laugh at him, and
there he stands, the dear, the children's laughing stock, and the unruly
boys jump all over their comrade, and shout and laugh, while I alone,
from my corner, can see the father in his eyes, the man, my manl—oh,
Sylli, then for the weak and blissful wife her limbs tremble; she sinks into
the arms of the lovable man, hangs upon his neck—and heaven and
earth could disappear!
Am I not all too happy, Sylli? Such a husband; such well promising
children; such dear and loyal companions as Lenore and little Glair, the
two angels, my sisters and daughters; a decent income, position, status,
and prospects; and on top of it all [55] a beautiful, lovely, crown of
friends! But, tell me, Sylli, do people seriously think that one can have
all this, without rejoicing and glorying over it? It must be so, for else why
am I so often asked what's with me, because I look so cheerful and con-
tented? Exactly as if it were a miracle, whereas it just can't be otherwise.
To you, dearest Sylli, I ought not, perhaps, to paint the picture of my

happiness so vividly as this; yet I may do it, just because it's you. You
know, how fascinating it is for me to share it all with you; how loudly my
heart beats with the desire to have you—and to make you, happy with
me; and how I then suddenly stop being happy, and let many a tear fall
because of my Sylli—Oh, you know all this, my dear, my dearest; for you
know your Malia through and through. Didn't you feel as if all your in-
sides were continually churning, whenever you became aware of some
adversity for us? [56] That's how it is for me too; a tormenting restless-
ness will give me not a moment's peace, if I know that you are indis-
posed, unhappy, or depressed. It seems from your latest letter that you
are now in fairly good health; also, the ** and the *** still make many
hours pleasant for you, for which I would like to thank them from the
heart, if thanking were at all in place here.
You reprove me for not telling you more about Ferdinand. The child
is hardly three years old; so there is not much else one can say about
him, except how he looks; and that—how does one report that? He is
small and round; his eyes are somewhat darkly set, but from them he can
look out in a friendly way, and there is a lot of fire in them. You know
that Clerdon has long since guaranteed that in this Ferdinand we shall
have the best, the most forthcoming, child in the world. He sticks to me
like a limpet; and his brother Heinrich fetches him from his [57] little
bed every morning, without fail, puts shoes and stockings on him, and
then we go to breakfast together. Brother Heinrich must then go with
him to the courtyard, and start him in his play; and this brother
Heinrich does with unfailingly even patience and friendliness.—While
I was writing this, Ferdinand came in with a great shout of joy, because
he has "find" me, and now he is running, playing and chattering away
all around me. I would also like to slip in a word here for your
Bombacino,*3 since it occurs to me that he belongs to the family of the
children too; but Church is out, my good girls have long since come
back, and I have hardly talked to them at all today.—How much laughter
and chatter there is next door around Clerdon's fireplace. I'll join in for
a moment, dear Sylli, and then get dressed, and then eat, and then to
Church, and then—oh Lord, yes! to the wife of the Director, to play
cards. Adieu, my dear!—
[58] vin
Little Clair to Sylli
Heimfeld, March 14
Clerdon and Amalia have been here since yesterday. As we ran up to
meet them, and I clutched Clerdon's left arm, he grabbed my hand and
pressed it lightly against his coat-pocket. I cried out gently: Letters from
Syllil—Good ones'?—"Patience," Clerdon said, "I bring three letters, and
none is like any of the others."—He said this with a smile that made my
impatience greater still.
Auntie was not dressed yet. She could take her time. We walked all the
way to the back of the thicket.—"Now, Clerdon, now!" we shouted jump-
ing up.—One look from Clerdon quieted us. We slipped close to one an-
other as we installed ourselves on the turf. Clerdon still [59] stood for
a moment; then he too sat down. He opened the letter-folder. "A mar-
vellous, lovable woman!" he said. "If she could just see herself as my soul
sees her!" And immediately after that: "Oh God, when you give a feeling
heart in gift, you give everything else with it, all your gifts, and yourself!"
The letters were read. Two hours went by. How they were spent, these
two hours,—let the one who knows how, the one who can and may do
it, tell you that, dearest Sylli. My. . . .
Clerdon
None of us will report it to you. The sight of a fully exposed soul, a soul
beautiful and deeply sensitive, the embracing of it, is [60] something too
holy to be mirrored in pictures and words. And who could deflect that
flash of lightning into them? Who could lend the living kiss of love to
something that has no life? No, just look! the transfigured eye—the bliss
that comes over it—the eyelids closed—yet something immeasurable
opens to the spirit!*
I believe you indeed, that fundamentally you are not too badly off,
however badly things have gone for you, and however many your suffer-
ings still are now. Yours is a chord that rings in the voice of nature ever
purer and fuller; an ever more powerful organ of becoming in the
Whole of the All-loving: ah, that's what recompenses you for every pain!
* The 1812 edition reads: "We enjoyed a glimpse into a beautiful and deeply sensitive
soul, unveiled before us: something immeasurable opened up before our eyes."
41 o The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
I learned a long time ago how to crush thorns, how to fluff them into
down; and now I know that there is for man a purity of the sense—and
with it a force and stability of the will—an illumination and a certainty
of the heart and spirit, [61] through which he gains the true enjoyment
of his better nature, the vision of the past and the future; and no one at-
tains to this except the one who, pressed from all sides again and again,
was forsaken by all outside him. Then, thrown back on its own resources,
the soul feels itself in all its parts; like Jacob, it has wrestled with the
Lord, and has wrested a blessing from him. Who, dearest Sylli, would not
gladly limp about for a while with a dislocated hip for this prize? 24
Little Clair
Beautiful, what Clerdon said, and good and true. But what if it is only a
palliative at the end; a lofty balm, but one that merely gives relief? And
what if the wound is mortal? Poor Sylli, you are indeed in a bad way; the
world really has been hard on you! Yes, I hear it so clearly—the cry of
grieving pain that comes from the depths of your heart. What good is it
to me, that you smile back on it afterwards? [62] That only makes me
weep all the more bitterly for you. For you know that Arria25 smiled
too.—Alas, Sylli, you cannot live without love; and what is love without
confidence? Say what you will; love that does not know that it is eternal,
and cannot requite itself eternally—that's no love; it's mere amusement,
and you gave it that name only in despair—it's a flowery delight, adorn-
ment, dance, and play. And you should be satisfied with this—you,
Sylli?—to blow soap-bubbles—and all of it, all soap-bubbles?—The more
I brood on this . . . ! Oh, I feel that your heart must have burst.
Lenore
With a "Are you finished, little Clair?" on the tip of my tongue, I entered
the room. Her look stilled my tongue and my step, and my heart pre-
pared for the blow that changes everything all at once. Without chang-
ing her position, she pushed what she had written towards me. After
reading it (I sat a moment while I was doing this) [63] I went and knelt
by her chair to kiss her. We ended silently in each other's arms, cried—
and found words.
We went over your letters piece by piece, and little by little we recon-
structed them into a whole of our own, which we could grasp better.
Everything now made a deeper impression by far, yet we had become
more cheerful. We had some inkling of your condition; and we had a

share in your divine being: Who wouldn't want to be Sylli? we said. The
mere reflection of just one part of her soul, which we can receive only
as a feeble glimmer. . . . How it gives us courage and bliss! And she—she
possesses it—she is this very soul; in her own being she has what is so in-
comprehensibly ravishing: the source and the fullness of all this beauty
and greatness!—Who would not want to be Sylli; who would not give up
all for the independence of this higher self-enjoyment, for the glorious
bliss of loving like God which can overflow only [64] from such wealth.
Happy, happy Sylli . . . !
Little Clair
My sister was called away, and I, dearest Sylli, am in no position to carry

on. My view has become melancholy again. That sigh, which I first said
that I could hear coming so clearly from your bosom, presses once more
upon my ear; and no shout of jubilation will drown it out. You know this
about me, that I don't easily lose myself totally in a feeling, or become
so engrossed by a representation, that at that moment I see and know
nothing else.—You have heaven within you; and who would not for this
reason call you blessed? But everything that I said earlier is still true, all
the same: you still sit with your heaven in a kind of hell. Despair and
bliss—your letters are an antiphony of both. What must a heart not [65]
endure, in which such hostile tones sound together—a heart that must
fuse them together, and reconcile them into a melody? All the strings of
the instruments must snap one after the other, and the sound-box itself
must break. Oh, my dear Sylli, I can't bear it. Oh, that I were with
you—or perhaps I should give up my Lenore for you! For you we would
gladly do without each other, would sacrifice much more still, if it would
just be of help to you. Say then: do you want one of us, and which one?
However inadequate the sympathy you would find in us, good children
that we are, it would be pure nonetheless, perfect in its measure, and sin-
cere. Our eyes, Sylli, would certainly let in most of your glances. And so
your soul would gain space; it would obtain a permanent home where
it could hide and store part of its life.—Say, dear; should I come? I have
been feeling for some time an extraordinary urge to be once more with
you, and I was even now intending to sound you about it. The last time
I was interested almost exclusively in myself. [66] I would like to be more
pleased with myself, and I certainly would be if I became more like you.
I am thinking of what Amalia said recendy about the little Heinrich—
that each of your kisses would have to breathe something of your gra-
cious being into me.
Clerdon lets me know that I must seal. Hence you receive nothing
from Amalia. The good woman could not bring herself to leave our Lady
von Reinach alone. A marvellous woman! So young, so bubbling with
life, yet as driven by anything that even looks like a duty, as others are
by their passions. We keep reproaching ourselves for encouraging her
constant sacrifices; but it is as if the impenitent woman diligently worked
at making us relapse immediately. I say it a thousand times: if she offers
to serve you like a maid, you would hardly think of refusing, so lovingly
and becomingly does everything issue from her. And one cannot guard
oneself enough from her; [67] in a flash the service is received, the good
is done, and there is no thought of thanks.—Adieu, Sylli! So I run to you,
and fall upon your neck.
[68] ix
Edward Allwill to Clement von Wallberg^
Of course I should have met your request sooner. Where there is genu-
ine friendship, there are demands too; and these must be recognized
unequivocally by both sides, and must have overall validity, or the whole
idea is just a farce. So forgive me, my dear, and let me pass over your fur-
ther remonstrances. You well know how completely I agree with you; you
know the expression on my face when I have heard of people who loved
one another so much that they never questioned one another: for that
is, at bottom, what it means to be capable of tolerating everything in the
other. How phony! My disgust about it grows from day to day: but that
I should be exasperated by it, as I once was, so foolish I no longer am;
I won't let myself be disturbed by it any more. [69] It happens that it
suits men to white-wash each other a bit; they agree on it, and it is sel-
dom that anyone comes off badly because of it. What use do people have
to love one another on top of that? What motive or reason could they
have? People have other business with one another; and if this goes all
right, harmony prevails without one person needing to be much con-
cerned about the other. But for all that, my dear, let us not hide from
ourselves the true spirit of that tolerance and noble impartiality among
friends: it is indifference and beggaryl—So, once more my brother, forgive
my wrong; but do not count too surely upon my getting any better!
Till now I have been too much in earnest with all things, and I have
an inkling that with this attitude one ends up being destroyed, and all
to no avail. God only knows how I shall do things differently in the fu-
ture. Inwardly and outwardly, I am under amazing pressure. I have en-
joyed some rest [70] again only because during the past few days I have
been indisposed. If my mind were to remain as dull and nebulous as it
has been in these days, then I would see an end to my confusion: every-
thing would quickly be straightened out and simplified; and what's once
decided, that would abide. You know how charmingly things flow into
one another in the mist; we never see more than we can fit into a neat row\
There is no entanglement of colours, all is grey and flat. So you see,
brother, how mist is truly the most apt picture of the disposition of a wise
mind.
Whenever my spirit is encompassed by mist, then I have the precocity,
the understanding of a schoolmaster; I know then how to make deci-
sions in all things, and whatever I enjoin myself to do, that I do; I clear
my room, put my papers in order, reply to all my letters according to the
date of their arrival, and would even make my last will and testament if
I only knew of any heirs who could submit to that. [71] Clerdon, who
came to visit me yesterday, thought he was at the wrong door, so strange
did my room appear to him: whatever should be standing, stood; and
whatever should be lying, lay. In these respects my nebulous disposition
is at times a true blessing for me: and the more I reflect on the matter,
the clearer it becomes to me that the virtue of a school, city, and army
morality that elicits the thoroughly good behaviour which is so much liked
by everyone, the exemplary life, is nothing else but a kind of mist that veils
whatever tenuous external reality there is in objects, such as lustre, col-
our, light and shade, and lets us only look at what is solid and unalterable
in them.
You want to hear how remarkably my romance with Nanny developed,
about which I wanted to write a whole long missive to you?—Listen, only
half a hour ago I still thought the story that I have to tell you was a mir-
acle. [71] I cut a new pen, dipped it, and had no other plan save to get
on with it, when I realized to my no small surprise that I had first to re-
flect a little. I reflected a good half-hour and was ready to begin, when,
all of a sudden, I myself no longer knew what I had set about with so
much fervour to report to you. The facts I remembered well enough, but
I could not remember them in the way that should have been of such tre-
mendous interest to you. Who knows, perhaps my material would not
have appeared so meagre to me, if the pen had not been cut so beauti-
fully to write it down, and dipped so deeply at the very beginning. At any
rate, that is what happened; the whole adventure, complete with its ac-
cidents and accessories, its rogueries, spells, heroic deeds and miracles,
appeared to me at that instant to be of no more interest—as a story
anyway—than some nursery tale. Please, understand! It was not You,
Clement von Wallberg, who at that moment of catastrophe was in the sit-
uation of being poisoned, so to speak, stabbed, shot from a cannon, or
turned into a parrot, a monster, the devil, or God. I was the one; and,
believe me, anything of that sort must be experienced in one's own skin.
So you must permit me—and be pleased to do it—to entertain you today
with quite other things than my affairs in Fairyland. I must report them
in detail to Lucy, for she has my sacred pledge not to hide anything from
her that happens to me inwardly or outwardly. Probably she will give you
the letter to read; and I shall certainly write to her this week. So, as we
said, to other things!
Where should I begin? I have a mass of news about myself and my sit-
uation here to tell you. I spend my best hours at Clerdon's house. It is
difficult to be on intimate terms there, [74] but I shall manage, since
Clerdon is well disposed towards me, and my reputation is unimpeach-
able. That I should always display uncommon adoration for the one or
the other princess who deems me worthy of her most complete respect—this
is natural* and causes no stir. . . . And certainly, my good Wallberg, I al-
most always do it innocently, and in any case I bring about more good
than evil. To plot against any womanly creature with the idea of seducing
her has at all times been so alien to my mind, that I cannot look at a man
capable of it without hatred and disgust. But that a bond of friendship
should become so friendly and intimate that for the future it knows no
measure or limit—who could have the heart to guard himself against
this? With your cousins it has no need; they move in a light that out-
shines mine. And Amalia—I would like to see anyone to whom it could
even distantly occur to want to be anything for her but [75] guest at
Clerdon's hearth. She is good to me, since I defer to her Clerdon, and I
look the guileless young man. Her youth, her beauty, does not hinder
me from calling her familiarly, "mama"; I would also not know a more
loving name for her. Dear mama, mama Malia,—if I could just tell you
how I feel when I speak to her so, and as I do it I look at her heavenly
bright face which is all goodness, and only smiles at me! I feel as if I were
submerged in innocence and purity, and knew of nothing in the world
so bitter, that I would not do it freely and with joy. The pureness of
* The 1812 edition adds: "at my age."

her heart surpasses all belief. Every good thing, every beautiful thing, is
present in it so entirely unaffectedly—just as what it is and appears,
immovable and indissoluble! And no feeling, no propensity, no
desire—nothing that would need to be hidden, or feigned! But to say
this is as much as saying nothing to you, for as I am just reminding my-
self, I too, [76] though I know Amalia personally, couldn't possibly be
in a position to portray for myself what is most real about her, if I did not
think of her in her determinate relations as the wife of her Clerdon, the
mother of her children, the mistress of her household. Tell me whether you
know anything about a special affect that goes by the name of conjugal
love, which is entirely different from the passion that generally goes by the
name of love, and the. . . . Tell me, have you already come across any
such thing? What can I then add to it!
I knew nothing of it before; and this new discovery in Clerdon's house
is the most interesting thing that has ever offered itself to my viewing.
The gentler sex seems not to be capable of true love; at least, no woman
has yet appeared to me to have the stuff for it. I believe that Amalia is
hardly more capable in this respect than others, and on this score
Clerdon, and she too, agrees with me. [77] At the beginning (she be-
came his wife at seventeen) her husband could win from her nothing but
an exceptional degree of respect; and to this day she cannot give any
precise account of how, later on, she gradually lost herself in him so en-
tirely that her heart now derives all its impulses from his alone, and her
forces feel their total stability in his will; freedom, love, happiness, doing
and being—her whole soul is ventured on him. I don't know whether
there can be a more glorious love than this, even if that higher love, of
which I once had such wondrous intimations, were not an empty chi-
mera; every other love would still be mere bubbly effervescence in com-
parison to this, no doubt about it. Where, among all the conflicting
properties and needs of men, can you find an inner sharing that fuses
all forces together in one will, and truly doubles a human being?—You
find it here! The small world, which they are united in creating and gov-
erning, [78] becomes for them a thousand-faceted organ for feeling and
grasping one another. And since common interest bestows upon every
faculty that they contribute to it a felt value, there stirs in the being of
the one all the powers of the other: and the more numerous and differ-
entiated these powers may be, the more remarkable is the gain and the
more enrapturing the compact. Consider how his different, even mutu-
ally opposite, interests divide every individual man within himself, and by
what bliss he is reinvigorated as often as true mutual understanding is
produced even among a few of them; consider how we unanimously

regard as greatest and happiest the man who has congregated all his im-
pulses under one will—has mightily arrayed them into one army—
without giving up or weakening his powers in the process. And now
think of two who have so much become onel It must cause a fullness, a
bliss, which. . . .
Oh, that I must feel all this so! that [79] amid the fire of the senses
and the tempest of the heart I must retain this brilliant, incorruptible
spirit, this soul that quietly soars up to heaven!—amid the fire of the
senses, and the tempest of the heart.—Cry, dear Wallberg, cry over your
poor Edward, who is consumed by the love of beauty, and who must
gnash his teeth in derangement for all eternity;—who has a presenti-
ment of the peace of God, but is damned to daily sin! Never, never,
will there be a place for his head to rest! Never?—Oh yes, yes! you will
burst one day—You will burst one day in bliss my good, tormented
heart!. . . .
But we were talking about happinessl Lovely mother Amalia—your
countenance, your laughter!
She is so good to all men, mother Amalia; yet, if the circumstances re-
quired it, she could certainly do without them all, as long as just her hus-
band and her children were left to her. I must not hide from you that she
is terribly loyal to these—to [80] her household—just about as the old re-
publicans were loyal to their fatherland. But of course, you are not one
of our mighty philosophers, who survey the whole earth-globe—what am
I saying?—the whole universe from on high and take it to heart accord-
ingly, and out of burning love for men in general carry a grudge against
the patriotism of old, or any other partisan love. They should come for-
ward, these kind gentlemen, with their unlimited divine goodwill, their
all-pervasive justice—and their unquestionable blamelessnessl They
should come, and see and feel where, in actual fact, all this anymore still,
is ultimately to be found—whether on their side or that of this woman
here who would rise up against the whole world for husband, children,
and home!—Gracious mother nature! How clearly my throbbing heart
says to me in protest that salvation is to be sought in your ways alone!—
Look at this happy-hearted woman, how the satisfaction of her pure
impulses fulfils all her wishes and makes her so free of all other
desires—how her sympathetic heart can now overflow freely and
universallyl—You, splendid paragons of worldly wisdom; you, lovely
Ladies and Gentlemen, with your sublime first principles and beautiful
sentiments! Tell me, do you pass muster before this housewife? You have
strewn your soul in the wide world, you have squandered it there; you
are everywhere, yet nowhere; your heart disinterested, uncommitted—
unprotected against every assault; without stress yet without rest; without
pleasure or sacrifice; striving for it all, and depending on it all; unwilling
to give up anything, humourless through every misadventure—quaking
throughout, down to the least fibre—weak, miserable, wasting away—full
of universal well-wishingl
Away from these all-encompassing ones; down, at the footstool of
Amalia, of this short-sighted woman, she who is poor in spirit, who only
loves her husband and her children; to all other beings she is only good,
and her doing good to others is just an overflow from the fullness of her
joy—just like the sun, who radiates light and warmth only because he is
light and warmth, and possesses the fullness thereof. When you come within
the range of Amalia's sphere, you are in bliss—that is all. Hence Amalia
is the most modest of creatures; the humblest one can find, I would say.
That she does good of all sorts beyond measure—of this she takes no no-
tice. That she fulfils all duties, keeps all the commandments—this she
does not know. She has no adequate concepts of the grounds of her un-
exceptional conduct—of course not! Indeed she does not have a morality
in any strict sense, hardly one of the kind that was already at the disposal
of the ancient Job thousands of years ago. It's a miracle that Amalia man-
ages as well as she does, for she is also not at all what one would call pious.
But let the most disgusting grouser put her ways to the most stringent
tests; and if he can deny that she is freer of sin, more [83] blameless
(even according to the many ridiculous concepts of our time) than
any—I shall then bow before him, and convert myself to him.
And you see no miracle in this, dear Wallenberg? or do you suspect
trickery? Step closer! What is it, except a genuine creation of God, healthy
and handsomely shaped by nature; brought up without artifice; and so
girded with a determination that allows its powers to group, organize,
and unite for effective action. All virtues are really a free gift of the
creator—an impulse of nature, only shaped differently according to the
different forms and circumstances of human society. There is no virtue
that was not there before it had name and prescript. All morality—it really
was always simply philosophical history, a speculative accretion, science;
and that inner harmony, that unity in deed and word (the goal [84] to
which humanity aspires), was always only the birth of a love that tri-
umphs and imparts a vocation to man, and a designl Where unity of desire
emerges, there unity of conduct comes of itself; there man builds the place
of his choice, and gradually shapes it to an ever more perfect whole: and
finally, the more restricted he is on the one side, the freer he will be on
all the others. Vulnerable only at one point of his being—and at that very
point certain, brave, contented, and hence independent, noble, obli-
ging, and from his whole soul good. Seize upon this truth from any side;
you will find that forthrightness of sense, urgency of undertaking, and
the industry and trust together with pleasure that it contains, are the corner-
stones of all happiness and virtue.
Remember now my philosophic meditation about mist and orderly
conduct at the beginning of this letter. Perhaps it sounded frivolous to
you; but when you ponder it more deeply, is it not true? How dull in
sense, how thoroughly dead, must [85] that man be who shapes his in-
clinations by nothing but morality, or who knows how to repress his incli-
nations at his pleasure just with moralityl For me, ten times better in his
place is the unruly child who still nourishes life in his breast, and love.—
And one more thing yet, lest you think that I only enjoy the light of day,
that I would give supremacy to it alone! Many things must remain in the
mist even for the higher kind of man who leads an orderly and utterly
coherent life. But it is only the haze that has receded from the illumi-
nated plane of his sphere of activity to the boundaries. Only our philos-
ophers can make their abode among the cliffs in the proximity of heaven,
unpolluted by any haze, with the endless brightness and endless void all
around. I would lose my breath there. The air is already too thin for me
where I am; so I am constantly scheming how to come down gradually
just a bit more. There is also no denying that in a narrower horizon
objects come to us with much more warmth for the eye and heart.
Boundless boundaries, space without measure or end—wherever I get a
glimpse of this, I sink into [86] a hell of dread. For this reason I like to
restrict myself a bit—indulge in terrestrial beginnings, where I see an
end to what I am doing, yet must commit all my forces to it.
Still a brief word in conclusion regarding friendship.—The unworthy,
stray entity, that goes by this name, to which we are both equally hostile
(as we were saying earlier)—isn't it too a monstrous child of that dead
sea of indeterminacy, lack of direction, infinite dispersion? Weak
threads spun from unstable aims and fleeting delight—how quickly will
they get entangled? And then comes tear on tear, knot on knot. Quite
different are the bonds of genuine friendship, where two take hold of
something like right and left hand, in order to make one work of it;
where two move something forth together, just as the two feet move the
body.—Away with him who says that any such friendship is built on [87]
self-interest! The object, the reason why the two friends unite, is for
them only the means through which one feels the other; the sense, the
organ. It's not the one who does the most for me whom I love most, but
he with whom I can accomplish the most.—Self-interest? Everything ought
to be self-interest\ Why would I be concerned more with myself than with
anyone else—I, who can only feel, value, and love the self in another?—
That may be nonsense to your philosophers perhaps! But I know who
has it better; I or they.
Fare well, and greetings to the good, the excellent, Lucy!
Your Edward
[88] x
To the Same
It's exactly three weeks today, dear Wallberg, that I sent a long letter to
you. Right the next day, that letter which you know about, the one to
Lucy that I meant to write about my affair with Nanny was ready. It was
a lengthy epistle, that; and I have already had an answer for it. But from
you I have none. Lucy does not even say a word about you; so I assume
that she has not shown my letter to you.
Well anyway, I told her, circumstantially and exhaustively, all about
my fatal relationship with Nanny; how it ended for both of us, thank
goodness—so that I no longer frequent the Hochscheid's at all.
In telling the story I got very worked up. [89] I was agitated, and full
of ill-humour; the catastrophe had shattered me—and there I was, tell-
ing myself off bitterly. I kept giving myself hearty reprimands for my fri-
volity just as I have often done before, for I don't know what kind of silly
softness in me—some cursed condition of loose disorder which others
might call goodness of heart, but which lands me in predicaments that
annoy and torment me from the very beginning, yet I let myself be drawn
deeper and deeper into them. I wrote of this the way I felt it, and spared
myself nothing. But it did not occur to me that I had suddenly become
an entirely different man; and that is not what I have said, or meant to
imply (even vaguely). Yet Lucy seems to have taken it that way. She
thought that now, suddenly and irrevocably, she had to take me at my
word, and thus take unfair advantage of me. This vexed me on two ac-
counts: in the first place, because it is foolish; and in the second, it is dis-
honest. It is foolish, [90] because Lucy knows me from the days when we
played blind man's bluff and the noble game of the "goose"; later on,
when her mother died, she grew up in our house by my side; and finally
in Vienna she was with me again for so long. Of course we fell a bit in
love there, and that does violence to mutual knowledge; but we also fell
out of love, and that restores the knowledge with even more violence.—
You shake your head inclemently, my good Clement; and you are right.
I ought not to speak of the affair in that tone; it was the most repugnant
story of my life, and I must be ashamed before Lucy who humbled me
without pride (truly generous as she isl), so that I must eternally lie pros-
trate at her feet and venerate her as the being of a higher kind that I rec-
ognize her to be. But for that very reason she ought not to act so
solemnly, and let such a letter of felicitations as the one she has written
befall me, Edward Allwill. That was, I say it again, [91] dishonestl For since
she caught sight of me from my worst side, as no other had done before
her—and took it to heart—she can't possibly be in earnest with her
pious hopes for which she now expects me to be thankful. Her letter is
a sermon en chauve-souris,27 meant to trick me into a conversion. I am too
fond of Lucy to let her get away with this. And in conscience, too, I must
strike a blow at her pomposity. Fondness for the pompous is especially
characteristic of girls. Whoever is a friend of hers, let him warn her
against it, or, if it's too late for a warning, let him consider how to cure
her. Lucy must get married, without delay. She is now turning twenty-
three, and for an unmarried lady that is already a frightful age. In her
present humour she'll never find a man she would approve of; and in
the end I shall have to take the blame, even though I was the least suited
of all men for her. Moreover your sister28 (don't take [92] offence at
this) is not good company for Lucy, however excellent a friend she may
perhaps be. She strains poor Lucy to ever higher heights, and increases
her propensity for whining earnestness.
I simply can't express to you how all of this cuts me to the quick. What
happened between Lucy and me was only natural; and yet it weighs. . . .
Should I say on my conscience? When I found her again in Vienna, I had
not seen her for several years. The beautiful, gracious, tender, intelli-
gent, young woman: in her I saw my childhood, and my youth, transfig-
uredl Such an impression will never happen to me again. And her joy at
our seeing each other again!—"Brother Edwardl" she called out, as she
fell upon my neck. My heart gave way, but to love it did not give in. What
then? Should I invoke the word friendship, because I saw her friendship
towards me pass over into a passion in which I did not want to share—yet
I nourished it knowingly? [93]—As I told you before:—/ let myself go; I
got all tangled up and went from one self-indulgence to another; I
wanted to deceive myself but could not; and I became ever more obsti-
nate. . . . You know the magnanimous step that she took, and how all
her cares went into making it possible for me to forgive myself in my

heart. She wrested the vow from me—that I would always be forthright
with her regardless of the risk, and never deceive her in anything. I shall
keep this vow, and even in this latest embarrassment I shall display myself
to her as I am. There will be no illusion left to her about me. Unrealistic
hopes and expectations about me, constant concerns and agonies over
them—all this is more unbearable to me than contempt and hatred. I
shall never be the perfection of another—nor my own, for that matter, for
I still do not know what sort of thing my own perfection is. Least of all
should Lucy set up in her own head any image of an Allwill who may yet
[94] come to be. That does not suit her, and I must put it out of her head
by force. When I am once dead, then she can speak of me as of blessed
memory; she can even canonize me, and if the devil will not tolerate
that, then she can make hell as hot as she likes for him. But as long as
I live, she should not make him any more perfidious towards me than he
already is. I find it all too disgusting to look at myself as this neat little
picture of ethical holiness that I ought to become.
Let me break off here, and do not say anything to Lucy. I began this
letter with the intention that you should prepare her, but as I was writing
it, I changed my mind.—You rascal, I suppose you are laughing at my evil
whims, and thinking: "So he did feel conscience, after all!"—Go ahead,
think it!
Fare well!
Your Edward.
[95] xi
Amalia to Sylli
March 20
Everyone has written to you; man and mouse, mouse and man. Malia
alone*4 has not written; she has even let her usual "post for Sylli" day go
by, and is almost inclined to let it go by today again.
Can it be that I am annoyed at you, Sylli? Have you done something
to me? To me alone? Yes, to me alone you have done something; or so
at least it seems to me—that I am the only one. What you have done to
*4_ See Letter vin.

422 The Main Philosophical Writings and the NovelAllwill
me alone is to make me ashamed of myself whenever I think of you, for

everything goes well with me, but everything is bad for you—and that's
not fair. I feel this as a [96] reproach, even though I cannot lay any
blame on myself; and you see, that is precisely what makes one feel
annoyed.
To be sure, I have often asked Clerdon, when I saw wives married to
rude, disagreeable, unbearable men, who appeared to be quite cheerful
about it, and actually felt themselves to be not at all unhappy too
—indeed, they rather liked to go on living that way—how that could
come about, how it was possible. The first time I asked Clerdon this (the
occasion was provided by the gentle, intelligent, most lovable, lady
Strohmfels), the answer I got was: "The lady Strohmfels has children."
That I knew already. "So, you know it?" Clerdon said, and added:
"Amalia will have children too!" And at that he held me in his arms,
kissed me and would not let me say any more.
Now I have children, and I understand what Clerdon meant somewhat
better, and I believe him on behalf of Frau von Strohmfels, and of others
as well, [97] and I am glad that I am able to accept it. But no man, least
of all Clerdon, ought to insist on it to me. I don't know why I love
Heinrich, Carl, and the rest of them down the line, so much—love them
so differently from other children—except because they are Clerdori's
children whom I bore to him.
That's how the rest of mankind understands it as well. Did not people
say at my first confinement: " . . . there's a valiant woman for you, the
lady Clerdon; she has born a son to her husband." And afterwards: "The
lady Clerdon will be proud; she has once moreborn a son to her husband."
Finally: "The lady Clerdon is happy; her husband wished for a daughter,
and now she has borne him a daughter."—Yes indeed, Sylli! The lady
Clerdon is proud and happy; Malia, however, is not proud, and for herself
Malta would not be happy, not even with her children. It would be well
worth the effort for Malia [98] to have children. Poor children, if you
were only Malia's!
I was led to all this by the lovely passage in your letter, where you cling
to children and child-like people. And there I wanted to say to you, dear
sister: Come to mother; come to the children and the children's father;
come to the girls of Heimfeld! I believe that I shall be in child-bed again
before year's end. So come, at least by that time, and come forever. You
must decide right now that you want to come, and forgo whatever you
don't manage to do before then.
You too have been a mother, Sylli; and although you lost your child,
you would not want to repress that you were a mother, and mother you
remain. Mother, come to mother!
You have yourself satisfied your child with your breast, as [99] I do
also. Nothing surpasses that. Whenever so small a creature has had his
fill of sleep, and is now breast-fed, and lies there in someone's lap, and
begins to coo with pleasure, and stir with pleasure, and begins to laugh
and toy with his mother who is everything to him, everything. . . . Oh,
Sylli! does he know what mother is, and what he really is himself? The
child knows nothing. But he clings to his mother, and he has the right,
so stupendous a right, to cling to her! Say, dear Sylli, whenever the sweet,
graceful, creature lay before you so, under your eyes, and looked up, and
reached out with all his body—he had you, yet he sought you, thanked
and loved you in an incomprehensible way—whenever you then pressed
him to you and cuddled him close to your heart—did not your hands
fold together as you embraced him? did your eyes have any other clear
way except to heaven? and could you resist praying? It seems to me that
if the Our Father did not already exist, I would have invented it a hun-
dred times over!
[100] Dear Sylli, others will say that it is not good to remind you of
such things; yet Malia, though nowhere near as clever as the others, un-
derstands the matter better, and knows that it is good indeed. What you
say of your joy in children, of the consolation you derive from it—that
I say too, and I say like no one else that it is a dear and beautiful thing
which nobody should take away from you. Yet the right thing it is not, and
even less should anybody take what's right away from you. The begin-
ning is not where you begin, with your love and liking of children; it is
not in the rosy cheeks, the rocking and the hopping and the merry-
making, or in the bon-bon; it is somewhere else entirely. It is where one
sees nothing and knows nothing; where the world itself began.
Do you know where the world began? I do, but I cannot tell anyone
who does not know already. I can tell you, and I will whisper it in your
ear . . . Did you hear me? ... and did you understand?
[ i o i ] Only yesterday someone was visiting us who was full of "hences"
and "therefores," and wanted to argue with my Clerdon that everything
derives from self-love, and we do something, or don't do it, according as
it brings us profit or loss, joy or suffering. For this gentleman the world
begins with self-love. Clerdon made certain objections; and at that mo-
ment Heinrich and Carl came tumbling and prancing into the room,
clutched at their father's hands and arms, and let him toss them away,
so that they went sprawling over the carpet, and then they came over to
mother to pull at her, and push, and tease. "Look here," Clerdon said
to the clever man, "suppose your philosophy had also been mine: I
would have had to give it up because of these boys. Disinterested love,
the doing of good without the remotest thought of compensation, is
present in me through them as a matter of fact. And my wife there alone,
even without the children, would have turned me away from that philos-
ophy. You'll [102] probably be able to explain this to me differently
without effort, and even take my 'facts' over to your side with words in
such a way that, with words, I wouldn't be a match for you; for the truth
that lies deep down always has the fabric of words against it; it is the in-
stinct of the letter to bring reason under it, and to deal with it as Jupiter
did with his father.29
I only half heard and understood this last comment, for as Clerdon
uttered the words, "My wife there alone!" I startled, blushed, and looked
away. But there my eyes happened to fall on Garbetto, and I thought:
What need has Clerdon to drag wife and children into this; he only has
to ask the dog, that good and faithful animal—he can speak too. At that,
I inadvertedly let the words out: "And how speaks the dog?"—You know
how Garbetto starts to bark when I say that. Clerdon, who guessed what
had happened to me, was overcome by laughter, [103] and began pre-
tending to be angry at the dog in order to stifle it. That made me begin
to laugh too. He shushed the dog, while I kept on saying: "And how
speaks the dog?" That caused a chase, a commotion, a tumult, with the
children in the middle of it, and laughter all around which made an end
of the conversation. Soon after that the philosopher took his leave.
What do I mean by this, dear Sylli? I mean that you ought not to have
eyes only in order to think more, like the philosopher whom Garbetto
silenced, but you ought to have them open, like Clerdon, and, like
Clerdon, you must have something for them to fall on that will put your
thinking in its place. What happens to one whose eye falls on nothing
you have experienced often enough in dreams. There, one is quite help-
less to open one's eyes, however much one may intend to in the dream.
If one's eyes actually open, however, then everything in the world be-
comes rational in a flash.
[104] That's why I have often thought that we may not really have our
understanding just within ourselves. I like this thought, because of the
good prospects for gain that I find in it, and because of the Finger putting
me right that I can grasp out there and hold on to. Just listen to what
Clerdon once dreamed, when I was at B. ... I shall copy it from his letter
word for word.
"You would never guess, dear Malia, what I dreamed last night, and
nor could anyone else. So let me tell you what it was. I had mounted my
horse, and there I was with you in B. ... We are sitting there happy and
quietly together, and here comes the servant with a letter. News from
homel you cry out; you break the seal impatiently and read. Good Lord!
Clerdonl you say suddenly; I have given birth to three children yesterday,
two boys and one girl.—That's impossible, [105] I retort; you were cer-
tainly here yesterday. 'Quite right' you answer; 'but read the letter: you
can recognize the writing of Lenore and the little Clair; it's what they
both say. I had to go through a lot; but I am well now, and my children
are alive.' I look at the letter, and it convinces me; so I have the horse
saddled in great haste in order to race home and outfit the poor chil-
dren with nurses and baptism."
You see, dear Sylli, how curiously things can happen in the world,
when you are not really in earnest about it, and just let the dreams come.
Alas, my little sister: there are some bad, bad dreams, and one cannot be-
lieve, while one is dreaming, that it's only a dream. Forgive all my hints,
and come to us, here your bad dreams will perish for sure, and your eyes
will stay open.
About Allwill, Clerdon has referred you to me; he said that "I would
give you an exhaustive [106] account of him." But he must be teasing.
He knows that I don't have quite the same opinion of our hero as he
does; out of his thirst for revenge he wants to land me in this dilemma,
either take sides against my husband, and spoil the reputation of un-
bounded submissiveness that I have, or else indulge in a bit of hypocrisy.
Faced by this dilemma, I have actually written only superficially about
Allwill; I have simply let him come before your eyes wherever and how-
ever he was actually found. And Clerdon regards this as a disingenuous
way of getting out of the difficulty. He says that it is irresponsible of me
to treat Allwill in such an uncommitted fashion, since I know what a truly
great devotion he has towards me. Alright, then! I will search my soul,
and I have already begun to do it.—I wanted first of all to know exactly
how old the young man is, for on the subject Clerdon has only managed
to confuse us greatly. To you he has written that Allwill is twenty-two (or
was it twenty-three?)—and [107] on this score I must give him credit, be-
cause he normally allows Allwill to pass for hardly twenty here; and for
our part we see ourselves obliged often enough to accept that he is even
less than that.—To put an end to these impositions, I have procured a
birth document which I shall produce when the occasion arises; and ac-
cording to that Allwill is incontestably twenty-five years, three months, and
seven days old today. Can you understand why Allwill is not permitted to
have one and the same age? I would have thought that there would easily
be room for that much monotony in him, without that turning him into
a bore. No doubt youth is a beautiful thing; and since Allwill has so much
knowledge and ability, since he has developed his great talents so emi-
nently, and most of the time actually lends himself to admiration, the
fact that he is young is an additional adornment for him. Still I should
have thought that he is young enough even at a little past twenty-five.
And anyway, the fact that he is hardly twenty-two, or perhaps not even
twenty yet, never comes up when it is only a matter of singing his [108]
praise; we hear that only on other occasions. Clerdon really began to
warm up to him because he has to defend him so often; but yesterday's
defence does not jibe with the defence needed for tomorrow, and still
less with the one needed for the day after, so that ever new artifices and
ever greater efforts have been necessary. The effort alone already in-
creases the zeal, as I have heard Clerdon say often; and the zeal increases
the effort in its turn. And so one takes up a cause—thus, Clerdon. One for-
gets oneself and lives only for the cause; you become one with the thing you
are engaged in. . . . Sylli, what if Clerdon's fondness for Allwill were to
make him as wicked as Allwill is in my eyes? Away, away with the evil man!
Did I break the ice, little sister? Hold on, there is more to come, and
it is better still. Clerdon will not have hounded me in vain. I shall [109]
search within myself ever deeper, until he does the same on his part, or at
least give up the hunt.
At this very moment I have received a card from Heimfeld. The girls
have received a letter from you, but they have not sent it on to me be-
cause they expect to be coming in person this afternoon, and they want
to be present when I read it. I think that's great; for now I can doubly
rejoice in looking forward to the dear good girls. Should I now put this
letter aside until the day after tomorrow? Heaven forbid! It shall be
sealed this very instant, and go straight to the post.
[no] xii
Sylli to Lenore and Little Clair
March 14
I have written to C** three times; but still the poor Sylli must rush to sit
down and write to C** again or to Heimfeld. Otherwise she can't bear
it. Her heart is again so sad; her longing for you is so strong, that she
can't calm herself. This morning, while Susanna was helping her dress,
there came an invitation. . . . The answer was "I will call on you this eve-
ning. With kind regards."—And at that the poor Sylli sighed and could
not restrain herself from saying to Susanna: "If only one could fly! I
know very well, where I would fly on a visit." Poor wooden Susanna had
nothing to say to this. The girl is far too clumsy a creature for me. [ i n ]
I gladly dispense with sensitivity in her—but she doesn't even have
enough imagination, enough faith, to develop any bond with you or
me.—But still I tell myself, she is not a marionette! and lately I have tried
to confide something to her; but then she confronts me as always with
her soul, as with a piece of wood, just as she confronts me physically
with her erect bosom. Even when she spontaneously speaks of the
Honourable State Counsellor, or of his esteemed wife, whose acquaint-
ance she had the privilege of enjoying, she does it with a look on her face
that's about as dead as the sewing-boxes she is standing by, to hand me
out needles. . . . You see, children, that's how things are with me\
A proposal of settlement was made in my nasty court case last week.
This forced me to deal with all sorts of base people, but above all with
that nethermost evil one, Gierigstein.* [112] The old demon hadn't
come into my sight for a long time; I took fright at his looks which in the
interim had become far more repellent. Just imagine, the man re-
proached me, and, after some exchanges, he finally even began to cry.
Oh my! that eyes like his—that any eyes—shed tears! For someone like
Gierigstein, something like flakes of dust that can be shaken off should
come out of his eyes instead of tears when he wants to cry; for tears always
move you in spite of everything; they deceive you. It frightened me to see
in this Gierigstein what kind of visage emerges when age dries up the
mask in a perverted man; when flesh and colour no longer hide the un-
derlying features. The hardened nerve shows up then. Frozen in nasti-
ness, it lies there plain to view in all its horror—the quivering naked
mouth, cold and fiendish; the gloomy squinting eye, with a glance
which, having lost its flexibility, [113] is forced into an vacuous stare of
malice; the drooping nose, useless for scents, but announcing the city's
latest gossip, the scandals, and nothing more; the flagging brow, impo-
tent, imprinted with wrinkles by fear and mistrust.—A man sunk so low,
now fixed to the earth below in open despair, is a painful sight, a truly
hellish picture!—My mother, so sweet and dear, oh, how beautiful she
was because of her beautiful soul! She passed away like an angel. I shall
* A derogatory name, meaning literally, "greedy stone"

never forget that heavenly picture, but shall freshen it over and over
again with tears, with tears of joy for my dear mother, that she was as she
was, and she looked as she did.
Would that I knew what you are up to today. You are together cer-
tainly, for it is Sunday; but what kind of good time are you having to-
gether, how and where are you entertaining one another, that's what I
would like to know. If Amalia is in charge, then you'll [i 14] certainly go
to the pheasant park, and you'll have cakes and milk, with music; but if
Clerdon predominates, then it's the woods, or the fields along the
Danube, and you'll work up an appetite and a thirst.—And what will you
be busy with along the way, you two girls on the loose? What sort of for-
tune or misfortune is coming to pass under your mischievous eyes . . . ?
No question now about Edward! I cannot possibly relish this Edward in
your midst; and from a letter that I received yesterday from Clerdon,*5
which deals for the most part with Allwill, I can see how much you like
him. What I hear about him, including what my brother*6—who actually
thinks highly of him—tells me about him too, makes me shudder in de-
spair. For that matter, the unruly fellow may well be a worthy young man,
and one who regularly means to do more good to others than to [115]
himself: but that only makes him all the more dangerous; that's what
gives him the open, innocent countenance, against which no counsel
holds, so that one reaches out one's hand to him from afar, entwines
one's lot with his, and makes company with him. Only later does one be-
come aware how uncertain the ways he travels are, how foolhardy he is
in action, how cheaply he offers his skin for sale, and hence the skin of
his associates as well. . . . A girl now, who came his way—to avoid him—
how would that be possible? Our Lucy dared to approach him, and the
sweet creature was lost; for she dies, my children, and is her death to be
this Allwill?
Never did the dear heart face a youth like Allwill—so sensible, so mod-
est, and at the same time so full of spirit and noble strivings. Not a virtue,
not a charm, that was not mirrored in him, like the sun in the sea; and
this entirely through the naked property of his nature! Always totally
[116] delighted in the accomplishments of others, his only wish was to
be tolerated. This touching simplicity, coupled with so many merits and
the most beautiful splendour of youth, could not but bewitch. Faced by
all this our Lucy . . . ! Oh, I see her, the angel—wavering quiet and un-
noticed in the distance—pray for the exceptional youth—kindled in sheer
*5- See Letter v.

*6. Clemens von w.
joy, in pure angelic joy over the precious youth . . . ! And yet it was
poison . . . ! Children! if you just feel horror at this, the way I do . . . !
Foolishness! You cannot feel my horror. But how then, can I save you?
Clerdon, Amalia, keep guard over the two dear creatures!
For this Edward to have failed in any of his schemes is apparently un-
heard of. He dares his all in the pursuit of every goal. Whoever wins
against him, gains no less [117] than his life. Clement calls him a man
possessed, one who is hardly ever allowed to act by choice.—What frightful
character! And what divine appearance the man must have when he
goes after the good and the beautiful!—Oh, guard them! Yes, flee!—
Especially you, Lenore; you, with your delicate penetrating senses!—
Believe me, my dear! Love always makes us women unhappy. So little do
men deserve the sacrifice of our existence, that they can't even accept
what we give them. The fortune of possessing a heart undivided—how
could they value that, when never for a moment is their heart undivided,
never is a feeling of the heart pure in them? No bliss, not the highest
human bliss, has value enough for them to preserve it in its purity. No
sentiment is so far dear to them that they will not foul it with disgusting
admixtures, and desecrate its image. The fullness of what is precious—they
never taste it, [118] they never have it; therefore they never have
enough; therefore they are . . . impotent to love. We poor women fail to
notice that for quite a while indeed, we believe that we are loved more
strongly than we ourselves love. But, how quickly is all revealed to be
otherwise!—There we are facing our loved one, and we feel all through
our being: Yoursl feel all through our being: Not minel . . . If you could
but have an inkling of the horror of it—the unspeakable humiliation of
the feeling: I—Yoursl You—not Minel To be lost, entirely lost in an-
other. . . . Our own self flown from us—flown from him. . . . No more
existence at all! One is lost among the living; shamefully erased from
their number—immeasurable, nameless suffering . . . !
[119] xin
Lenore to Sylli
Heimfeld, March 22
You know from Amalia that we received your letter, and decided to go
to her with it. The letter made us sad, and caused an indescribable kind
of uneasiness in us—one which we did not know how to explain to
ourselves—and for that reason we were in a thoroughly ill humour.

Malia scolded us for it, told us what she had written to you, bade us be
of good cheer, and instilled in us such a confidence of your coming
soon, that we took heart again, and in the end we were simplyjoyful with
her. Now that she had us in a good humour again, she went on warning
us once more not, as she said, against being afflicted* but against not
being on guard.^
What you wrote about Allwill was very welcome to her, on account of
Clerdon—[ 120] even though, as she put it, it went a bit too far both on
the good side and the bad. But it's all the more useful to me, added that
irrepressible woman. Little Glair and I—we should stand by her in the
attack; and it was funny how she issued our field instructions. I suggested
that we should first have a trial. Not for the life of me! said Malia; for if
things don't turn out the way we tried them, we'll be lost. So it went on,
and we did other things besides, so we were in the middle of a fit of
giggles when Clerdon stepped into the room.
Now you'll scold us, cried Malia to him. Little Glair did it; she climbed
on the chair before I could realize what was going on, and took the bust
of Caesar down from the console, to try our bonnets on him. I froze as
she reached out; and then gave a mighty shout. But once the bald gen-
tleman stood safely on the dressing-table, I consulted him on my own ac-
count regarding a bonnet, [121] and also asked him about the small
cloak which he is still wearing. No, you didn't! said Clerdon with only a
half-hearted laugh; you shouldn't engage in such foolishness. And you,
you worthless Clara, if you had broken that head, how would I have had
you reimburse me for it? Should I have taken yours in exchange? Surely
not, for it doesn't fit with the rest.
Caesar now had to give back bonnet and cloak in a hurry, something
which he certainly wouldn't have done when he was alive; and Clerdon
put him back in his place.
The girls have received a letter from Sylli, said Amalia now; and they
came here so laden with anxiety, that I took pity on them. You must find
ways and means to make sure that our sister comes to us, or I'll find the
solution and move to C*; for my Sylli shall not perish without me!
It was beautiful, so beautiful, dear Sylli, [122] how tears swelled in
Amalia's eyes at this point; and how anger, laughter, and supplication al-
ternated on her cheeks and lips, the one flowing into the other.
* betrubt sein
t trube sein
You know Clerdon's look, with which he virtually reaches out to

Amalia, and touches her; and you know how her hand, which he will re-
quest in order to press his lips and brow to it and refresh his eyes, already
trembles at the look.
When Clerdon had read the letter, he stood up, without saying a word,
and walked up and down the room with his arms crossed, the head at
times sunk low, at times held high.
Clerdon! called Amalia: if it's counsel you are taking with yourself,
you'll be more successful tomorrow in the early morning. Just collect
yourself now, and tell us, and tell us what Lenore should say about Allwill
when she answers.
[123] I was feeling hot, for what had just gone on, and Clerdon's
gloomy pacing up and down, had put me back in the melancholy mood
with which I had come from Heimfeld. In my mind I was before you on
my knees, crying and sobbing in your lap.
But how beautifully Amalia steered the course of the conversation at
this point: oh, if only I were able to tell you how it was! Both, Amalia and
Clerdon, said the right things. But everything that Amalia said was so
very much said to us, and so good, so unforgettable and true—and it was
all done spontaneously with such earnestness and humour, and im-
proved as it went along; and both little Clair and I were able to interject
our humble word with comfort too, so that by means of it we would hold
on to the rest all the better, and be able to make the thoughts sink
deeper into us afterwards—But my dear! It simply cannot be portrayed
in writing. So don't worry about us; as long as we are in Amalia's prox-
imity, [ 124] no evil will affect us, even if it were to touch us.
I left little Clair in the city, where she will stay until Monday in order
to copy various things for Clerdon which he wouldn't entrust to other
hands, and also—as he added—to think them over with him, and dispute.
The disputing is no laughing matter; they are both at each other con-
stantly, and the one who begins it is always Clara. Usually she begins with
a question. Then she is not satisfied with the answer, and asks another
one; again she is unsatisfied, and again, and she is always less satisfied than
before; and so the controversy is on, and it has already degenerated into
a quarrel more than once. Clerdon tells her that she is so slow-witted and
so stubborn, that he would not miss the practice that she affords him for
anything. We all take pleasure in this discord, and we are thankful for
the copying that occasions it. [125] You know Clerdon, how he turns
every favour that one does for him into a pleasure. The man can't bear
the sight of an ox muzzled at the thresher. Our sly Clara has taken ad-
43 2 The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
vantage of this, and has quickly propelled herself from secretary to ac-
tual assistant. Naturally, at this elevation of rank, Amalia and I had to be
co-promoted as well; for of course we could never let the little Glair out-
smart us. I can't tell you what a pleasure this has caused us already, and
how much we have imposed on our Clerdon's time because of it. Our
only fear was that Clara would at last actually become too learned for us,
so that she couldn't be joked with any more. She already tends to ignore
us whenever we make common cause with Clerdon against her. But if we
side with her, then we count, and with her permission we are occasion-
ally even allowed to take the floor.
[126] *Yesterday during supper Clerdon became very light-hearted,
and at the end he told us a fantastic fable which, as the nasty man said,
I should relate to you whole to lighten up my letter. We shook hands on
that. But I must give some background first, and I just wish that you'll
soon be yawning, because that's my aim.
Now listen.
The day before yesterday we travelled to the city by cabriolet. The air
was light and pungent. Little Clair had not slept much the night before,
and the pungency of the air, together with the brightness of the sun,
made her eyes a bit heavy with sleep. It all passed later on, and she felt
none of the drowsiness just before supper-time. But it came back all the
stronger after eating, and she finally nodded a couple of times during
conversation. Clerdon wanted to know [127] what had made her so
sleepy. She blamed it on the cats that had not given her rest the night
before with their frightful howling. "Poor child!" Clerdon said, "And if
you just knew what's behind the cats' howling you would have been able
to sleep even less. I shall tell it to you now as punishment for dozing at
table. I am sure that you won't do it again."
At the beginning of cats a beautiful tomcat became fond of a beautiful
kitten, and he began to parade constantly before her, and did it for so
long, that finally he found favour with the her. Now one day, when the
good kitten was enthraled by the tenderness of her friend, and quite out
of herself for delight in having made him so much her own, a sweet little
mouse appears on the scene. Up goes the tomcat, and off after the
mouse. And with a scream our kitten sinks into a swoon. All the kittens
[128] come around; and when they hear the details, they take what has
* The text from the top of p. 126 to the end of the paragraph on page 130 are omitted
in the 181 a edition.
just happened (and may happen again) to heart. With a great howling
they then decree in unison that whenever a lover lies at their feet, and
they like to see him there, they shall repeat today's howling, so that all
mice will retreat deep in their holes for fright, and not interfere with
fidelity in love.
Thus Clerdon, our observer of nature!
And I am committed to follow this farce by yet another, in the very same
letter, on account of Amalia who had me shake hands on it. And I am
supposed to put on a show of great earnestness, since it is about a hair
cream that makes hair grow, as long and as much as one requires, and
where and how one wants. Do you want a natural front a la grecque, the
eyebrows reaching to the temples? It's yours.—[129] But this is not the
main point, which is rather to relate to you how we got to it.
So—do yawn as much as you wish!—So, I say, we were all standing by
the window yesterday morning in the living room below; I, all ready for
the journey, waiting for the cabriolet to bring me again to Heimfeld;
next to me Amalia and the little Glair. There we stood (I repeat) by the
window, when the extraordinary figure of a man with a pig-tail (I lie
not!) as thick as your arm, and sideburns thick as a lion's mane glided
by close to us. Immediately after we heard the bell ring, and a
Frenchman was announced to us who had produced some small jars and
insisted on being received. We were curious to look at the extraordinary
figure more closely, and so we let it in. The figure immediately pro-
claimed itself as sign and wonder of the truth of what [ 130] stood written
in an advertisement that was handed over to us. In the same advertise-
ment it was also said of Madame Amon "that the collector of the great
masses of her hair could likewise give testimony to the efficacy of the
cream."—Now the question is only this: Whether to order a full ducat of
hair, or only half a ducat, since that's how the jars are divided. For my
part I think that the man has such an immense pigtail, and manes so
overpowering, that half a ducat should give you enough and some to
spare. N.B.! Even in cases where no hair is extant, or never was, this hair-
cream produces some, in two months for young people, but only after
three for the older. Don't put off placing your orders with Amalia, other-
wise it will mean that I have treated the matter too off-handedly, or even
perhaps with some disbelief.
Tell me, dear Sylli, which hour did the clock strike? You must surely
think it is noon, because I have written so much, and you will be telling
me off, since I shall not be finished dressing in time. [131] But listen!
it is striking seven! and look at the sun, how it's making its way just over
the corner of my dear blue desk. *I got up exactly at three; and that was
the fault of the racket those hideous cats make with their screams. I nor-
mally fall back to sleep over the noise, and stay sleeping afterward. But
I was reminded of Clerdon's antics, and they became so ridiculous in my
memory that I awoke completely. I then decided, without further ado,
to get up. Now you are up too, and I could let you read my letter at break-
fast, were it not that distance is in this unfortunate league with time.
Allow me to vent this absurd complaint. It's at least a way for me to [132]
dedicate my letter to you, in spite of time and distance, on the occasion
of your breakfast today. Receive the morning greeting that I despatch to
you from my blue desk, amid the joyful twittering of a multitude of birds
fluttering and nesting in our edges and fruit-tress—a greeting should be-
take itself still fresh to you in a flash across all the distance.—Receive it,
and take it in your heart as a prediction of happy days; let it prosper
there; and to the prediction say: So it shall be!
Lenore
[133] xiv
Appendix to Lenore's Letter
Lenore's letter came too late to be left with the post yesterday evening,
and that was a good thing, I say; for now I can also wish you a beautiful
morning, one at least as beautiful as Lenore's would have been. I am sit-
ting above, in the green room, and I look beyond the Chestnut Walk,
right into the open field. Light clouds hover roundabout in the sky, col-
oured so beautifully by the rising sun that they are more beautiful even
than the sun itself; yet I am on guard, my eyes are on the look-out, to see
it break forth. What do you think—does it suit my stubby nose to be look-
ing so high above the high peaks, away into the sun, like the majestic Jove's
eaglet I can't help laughing at this myself! But it is so frustrating to have
such a little face that something like that just won't do for it!
Dear Sylli, I feel ashamed now for my grousing only recently [ 134]
about having to go to the country so early. But, Heimfeld you know is an
hour away from Clerdon's house. Moreover, who could have imagined
from inside our three circles of walls that there was spring already out-
* The following three sentences are somewhat different in the 1812 edition. No refer-
ence is made to Clerdon.
side? Edges and shrubs turn green; and everywhere—upward from the
surface of the earth—and downward from the branches—one is so
heartily embraced, yes, so lovingly regarded, just as a baby is held and re-
garded by his mother. I can't tell you how my heart is touched—my dear
May is so near, Sylli, so near and nearer still, that I fear for it—that by the
time it comes, I may well have become a bit unfaithful to it.
The day before yesterday we were walking on the banks of the Danube
after sundown. I sat down and began to sing: 'Young girl, taste the joy."
It looked dark upstream, and darker still further up. But it was bright
downstream, and brighter still all the way down. [ 135] So we saw the day
pass away, and the night was immediately upon us at its heel. The glori-
ous river murmured gently as it flowed near me, mirroring the sky with
its evening glow and rosy-coloured clouds, and with its night. I thought
of you, my good Sylli, and blessed your soul with the serene quiet that
flowed from all around me upon all things, and on me as well.
As we left, I called out good night to you! And just then the first star
looked down, so I threw a kiss to you. Did you feel it?
But I almost forgot!—Those treacherous reports of me in Lenore's let-
ter: are you going to let them pass unreprimanded? To do this to an in-
nocent lamb like your little Clare! Still, don't punish her too harshly, the
poor Lenore; basically she doesn't mean anything bad. But that she
should come up with such lies to you, that's hard to take. The fact is that
she deceives herself in the first place, and then out of sheer partisanship
she accuses me—the very picture of acquiescence and modesty—of ob-
stinacy. In this way she speaks the thing that is not, though one cannot ac-
cuse her of lying. So dearest Sylli: have mercy on Lenore!
Little Glair
[137] xv
Clair to Sylli^0
March 29
Dear Sylli:
By now you have already received Lenore's letter of the 22nd with my
post-script, and you must think that I am again at Heimfeld. But, as you
see, I am still here, and I shall remain here until the day after tomorrow.
It has become clear in the meantime that somebody else will no longer
be here soon, and I must inform you of this with a very heavy heart, though
it is a very good piece of news. Clerdon has received the commission

which, as you know, he was wishing for. So we must rejoice. But now he
will be going away God only knows for how long; and for that we cannot
rejoice. That you shall travel: that should have been made clear!—Won't
it ever happen?
[138] Alas, Sylli! Why is it only the soul that has wings? And how could
it, with its wings, be ensnared in that nasty bird-lime which gums up its
feathers so badly that there can be no thought of getting them free in
this life? Your good Plato does indeed speak of a smarting and itching
where the wings are; and this is supposed to be a sign that they are get-
ting unstuck, and will soon lift themselves up.31 But I am inclined to be-
lieve that the good fellow said that for our amusement; for if what he says
were true, how could the two of us, you and I, not have already acquired
better feathers than these frustrating goose-quills which make our com-
ing together such a tiresome chore?
Often, dear Sylli, when I am deep in thought about you, something
like a proximity of your being comes over me. A frown comes over my face,
and then another, and it is as if I could command you to appear.
And so it will be, one day at any rate, [139] I say to myself in conso-
lation; and I get angry with Clerdon who feels obliged as a philosopher
to do away with this consolation, and would have me thoroughly con-
vinced that we shall remain beings of the senses for all eternity, for which
reason we shall have to have a body. But I have absolutely no wish to take
hands and feet with me out of this world, and would even reject wings
if they were offered to me instead. Nothing at all that would only improve
our present constitution suits me. For suppose, following Lavater's sug-
gestion,32 that my body's fork-like shape is improved in such a way that
with one step I could move from star to star: still I would have to walk,
and I would have just about as much to do to come to you, if I were on
this side of the Milky Way and you on the other, as if I were to walk from
here to E**. As long as aspiring and satisfaction, willing and fulfilment,
remain outside one another in the same way as they do here, there won't
be any special bliss, [140] however great the external ouday for it may
be. Therefore I insist that it must after all be otherwise than those gen-
tlemen would have it who wish to remain just as they are.
It has come to the point between Clerdon and me that, on this issue,
we live in open enmity—for beyond this earth I am ready to give up my
senses altogether, even though I fight for their due honour on this side.
Clerdon, on the other hand wants to deprive them of their dignity here,
although he means to go to heaven with them in the end. I have got really
angry at times, and so has Clerdon. He has a book by some Englishman
named Berkeley, with a copper-plate engraving at the front in which a

child is represented reaching into a mirror for his image, which he takes
to be an actual being. Next to him there sits a venerable philosopher, who
laughs at the child's mistake. [141] And under the engraving there are
inscribed Latin words which to the philosopher, who stands for every un-
sympathetic reader, mean: "He laughs at himself."33 You'll shed your
childish ways on this book, Clerdon said. But since they didn't fall away,
he had a mind to lift me up high and shake me, just once; for that would
surely do the trick. But his help had the opposite effect. For I found the
following: that all of Clerdon's proposals finally amount to this, namely,
that since we can only see with our eyes, and hear only with our ears, we
also see nothing else but our own eyes, and hear nothing except our own
ears. This he did not want to hear said, and he got angry. And after that
he pressed me to tell him what else I might see and hear with my eyes and
with my ears, and he badgered me so much that I got angry too.
He rebuked me for being stubborn and malicious, because I would
not be blinded by reason, which he steadfastly held out to me, just as
[142] Rinaldo* 34 held his brilliant shield unveiled against his enemies.
But not for a moment can I tolerate eyes that see nothing, ears that hear
nothing, and a reason that busies itself eternally with sheer nothing. Why
does he not want me to accept as genuine and good what is being given
to me here? Why can't I believe in nature on the strength of her honest
face; and look forward to something entirely new over there—not just a
"more" that comes from nothing and goes to nothing? Here, so I say to
him, we do indeed always come from a "there is nothing behind it/or us"
to another. Say, whether I do not have good reason, and do well in think-
ing myself as the cleverer one. The vexation that we, Clerdon and I,
cause to one another is comic enough; for he is no more serious about
his phantoms, which even as phantoms have nothing to show forth, than
I am about not wanting to see and feel you in the other world. It's just
that Clerdon wants me to do justice to the binding force of his chain of
inferences, [143] with which he would like to take my poor reason cap-
tive and reduce it to a spectre for mere spectres. Not only should I admire
his art, but also I am to takejoy in it. That's what he really wants from time
to time, and that's when I get really angry too.
Well now, that's how things stood until last night. I have let myself be
carried away in writing about this subject, because I am still so full of yes-
terday evening. So I want to tell you some more of what happened then.
In the 1812 edition "Rinaldo" is replaced by the more accurate "Ruggiero."

Finance Counsellor von Eck and Soder the librarian spent the evening
with us. Both of them had already heard a lot about the feud between
Clerdon and me, and they asked how matters stood. When Clerdon an-
swered that every day the hostility was becoming more bitter, von Eck
could not hide his desire to witness just once a battle between the mighty
Clerdon and the mighty Clair; [144] and I resolved, that no matter how
much the man is otherwise dear to my heart, he should not have this
pleasure. Clerdon had resolved to the contrary—and I could see that
too—a fact which strengthened me in my intention. But unfortunately,
he succeeded in enlisting Amalia's help. He reported my claims and my
objections in the most amazing manner, and then asked Amalia whether
that was not right. At this, she either found him to be right, or else cor-
rected him by interpreting me to my disadvantage in such a spiteful way,
that it became insufferable. It was very foolish on my part to let myself
be tricked in this way, for I could have foreseen that, given the resolute
intention of these naughty people to make me really angry, my objecting
would not help any. Nevertheless, I came out of it quite respectably, for
as soon as Amalia had succeeded in drawing me in, she began unnoticed
to fight on my side and helped me bravely, especially against the two sec-
onds, whom Clerdon could not leave in the lurch and, for this reason, of-
ten got himself into a difficult position. [145] Being encouraged in this
way, I was tempted into daring a bit too much, and I got myself into
rather a tight spot when the door opened, and we saw Allwill step into
the room with a roll of paper in his hand. Clerdon instantly summoned
him to be the judge, and, without consulting the two Amazons as to
whether they wanted this arbiter sprung on them, he reported the whole
dispute to him, this time—I must do him justice—in a passably honest
fashion. Without any further questioning, Allwill found for Amalia and
me. At this, Clerdon remembered that Allwill could not be the judge,
since he was generally committed to the ladies. That's Good! said Allwill;
I like it even more to be party to the dispute, and to judge with the sword.
Clerdon should decide, Allwill demanded, either to accept my accusa-
tions as valid, namely, that according to his philosophy we hear with our
ears nothing [146] but our own ears, see with our eyes nothing but our
own eyes, and hence we only sense (behind the eyes and ears, as far back
as the centre of sensation) sensation and nothing else; or else he should
explain clearly what it is that we do not see with our eyes, not hear with
our ears, and (back from there, to the centre of sensation) not sense
through our sensation, although it is a something just the same, and in-
deed it is the something that is genuinely true. He must bring to light this
Edward Allwitt's Collection of Letters 439
true, genuine something, in virtue of which, and by comparison with

which, we are cognizant of everything else, and are in a position to be
cognizant of it as wo£-something. He must do this, or else we can simply
deny him the rational possibility of making any distinction between one
something and another something. Clerdon's demand of us, that we
must first clarify for him what more we can see or hear with our eyes or
ears than our own eyes and ears, is against all right and form, because
he is obviously [147] the attacking party, and he is undertaking to dis-
lodge us with his arrogant assumptions from a possession well authenti-
cated by tradition.
We acknowledge freely and without compulsion, Allwill added, that
we do not grasp in a concept how it happens that, in virtue of a mere af-
fection and movement of our sense-organs, we do not only sense, but also
sense something—we become aware of something entirely different from
us, and we perceive* it, or in other words, we take^ it to be true. + We likewise
acknowledge that we do not grasp at all how we can distinguish our self
and can represent to ourselves what belongs to our inner state, in a way
quite different from all sensation. It is our opinion, however, that it is far
more reliable to appeal here to an original instinct, from which all our
cognition of truth begins, than to claim, on account of the element that
resists conceptualization, that the soul is capable of sensing, and repre-
senting in an infinitely manifold way, not its self, nor other [148] things
as well, but simply and solely a somewhat that is neither the being of the soul, nor
of the other things.
I blushed and paled with joy, that Allwill should have found words for
my thoughts. Forward, Rinaldo,§ I called out; up with the flashing
shield—that nobody should seriously contend that the "not-nothing"
come to the light of day!
To my great surprise I saw the enemy Clerdon smile, instead of becom-
ing angry. There was even a certain gleam of joy flashing from his eyes.
No stratagem of war was left untried in the effort to lure Allwill from
his redoubt; and here the warnings of his Minerva (meaning myself),
were not without their use. Finally, instead of withdrawing in shame,
Clerdon had to make preparations to march out with his not-nothing,
[149] and it was then that things began to go badly for him and his allies.
* wahrnehmen
t nehmen
I whar
§ The 1812 edition has "Ruggiero."
44° The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Alhvill
Every word with which they expressed themselves was stopped and dis-
armed, because Allwill showed that, according to their own system, it
could not have the sense that they wanted to give to it in that instance,
and that it was even more empty (if that was possible) than the pure and
simple "not-nothing" without any mediation. Clerdon took care not to
laugh, as his field of language was made narrower and narrower; and he
could well foresee how, in the end, only a breath without articulation
would be left to him.
Yet take notice, my young lady, Allwill said, and be amazed, how these
gentlemen are having the best of us. They base themselves, just as we do,
upon an original instinct which demands that we should immediately pre-
suppose being and truth, as what is first and most stable. This instinct
must therefore also give us a representation of truth and being, but immedi-
ately. [150] God himself cannot ordain the impossible, and it would be
a trivial impossibility to presuppose something that is in no way given in
an actual intuition. We ought not to allow ourselves to advert to this,
however, and still less ought we to take it into consideration, so that we
may indeed be well protected from the vile subterfuge of submitting to
a blind obedience. They ask obstinately: what would such an instinct have
to recommend for itself? And whenever we reply in all humility: nothing,
except its authority and right of primogeniture, they find this an
abomination.
Still, they don't want this abominable thing to be quite so entirely
banned that they will not allow it a name at least. On the contrary, since
it is the only true "not-nothing," the highest honour is due to it and pub-
licly acknowledged. We must resist this service, even though it may be
offered to us spontaneously (which is not impossible). We resist [151]
by stubbornly laying bare before the eyes of our disparagers the utter
nothingness of their claims, every time they presume that they can even
grant the most distant indication of a true, essential, "something," or
every time they pretend to furnish a single intelligible word, whether
about the thing itself or what indicates it. Since their "not-something"
ought to be a "noisomething" absolutely, it is not permissible by strict
right to join a "^-something" with it—a thing that is capable, qua "not-
nothing," of showing itself even if only in thoughts.
Each and every pathway for procuring a meaning for this or some sim-
ilar expression is irrevocably cut off to our adversaries, because of the sys-
tematic connection of their principles. Their true firm ground is an
agreed upon (omnipresent and eternal) "behind that, nothing for us
men." If they acknowledge this; if henceforth they only want to protect
their boundaries; if to make these more secure is all that they wish—
then, methinks, we can arrive at a peace with them—and even at some
sort of alliance; and so from enemies we can become friends.
Good enoughl I said, and generously offered Clerdon my hand, which
he repulsed with a "Away with your peace!" The most he was willing to
enter into was a truce, out of pure humanitarian concern, so he assured
us, in order to care for the many wounded on our side, and bury our
dead.
In the meantime my dear friend, Mrs Heinung, had come with her dis-
tinguished husband and the pretty Albertina. They had been invited to
supper, and so the armistice was declared without further negotiations.
Amalia, who had wanted a truce earlier, had taken from Allwill's hand
the scroll with which he had come—it was an opera scene by Majo35—
and had been interrupting him from time to time with questions about
the scene, [153] pretending to be more impatient to hear it than she ac-
tually was. Now, lest the dispute should start all over again, she immedi-
ately led the Heinungs to the adjacent room, and sat Allwill at the
clavier. The other gentlemen kept to their discussions.
Allwill plays the instrument skilfully, and sings with much taste and ex-
pression, though his voice is nothing special. We were all quite enrap-
tured by the new scene. The opera is called Iphigenia;^ and the opening
words of the recitative are: Chi resists potria* It has a divine setting, and
the following aria, Ombra cara ch'intorno t'agiri,^ has such a fullness and
majesty, that I thought I had never before been so shaken and en-
chanted by music. Then Mrs Heinung begged me to sing the wonderful
aria by Jomelli, Se cerca, se dice.* 37 The state of enthusiasm that I was
in helped me to bring it off exceptionally well. Allwill asked whether I
was familiar with Pergolese's38 much older, very simple [154] arrange-
ment of the same aria. I had never heard of it. He knew it by heart, so
he sat at the clavier, and played it for us. As a piece of musical craftsman-
ship, this arrangement compared badly with Jomelli's. But I felt that it
surpassed it by the same measure in appropriateness of expression, in-
wardness and higher design. In particular, I found the notes to the
words, che abisso dipene. . . ,§ and their movement, so unsurpassably well-
chosen, that any attempt at improvement would be bound to fail; even
* Whoever resists will conquer.

t Dear shadow that hovers all around
t If [she] asks, if [she] says. . .
§ What depths of suffering. . .
442 The Main Philosophical Writings and the N&velM\vn\l
Saint Cecilia in heaven,39 if she could think of anything of the sort,

should spare herself the trouble. Allwill took great joy in my excitement,
and set himself now to perform two more arrangements of the same aria
for us, by two great masters. He produced them both, and they gave us
uncommon joy. But, what I had said about Pergolese still stood, with
Allwill's total concurrence.
I know hardly anything more pleasant than the kind of conversations
that one accidentally falls into around the clavier. For it is almost impos-
sible to hit upon a topic that is not interesting, or be in a better humour
for handling it. Everything unfolds into its parts spontaneously on its
own, and then comes back together just as it ought. . . .
[155] I hear the wheels of Clerdon's carriage in the courtyard. Now
dinner will be called for at once. This evening, come what may, I shall
finish this letter.
Evening, 10 o'clock
Clerdon and Amalia, poor things, are at a big feast at the house of the
President von S*. I got permission, without too much trouble, to stay
home with the children. They are in bed now, and I want to hurry, so
that I can rest too, with my work done. Sancho Panza40 was certainly
[156] not far wrong when he praised the one who had invented sleep
as a great man.
I am beginning again exactly where I broke off. We are sitting by the
clavier; Allwill is in front of it, and I am next to it; close to me is
Albertina, who was clasping at my arm. Amalia had gone to the sofa with
Mrs Heinung.
"I don't know," said Allwill as he turned towards me, and, melodramat-
ically, struck a few more chords, "whether I should tell you or keep
quiet."
Then he struck a few more lively notes on the clavier, as if he had to
tear himself away because he was held fast by the strings. Finally he
pushed the stool aside a bit, clasped his hands together, and proceeded.
Help me through this! I really wish you would.
What has happened during our singing [157] and playing is that our
good cause against uncle Clerdon has become suspect to me, and I have
realized with a heavy heart that perhaps I must now go over to the en-
emy, and leave my brave cousin in the lurch.
Recall those different names that we gave to what we heard; we called
it beautiful, moving, sublime, majestic, heavenly, divine; and none of us were
speaking of something which detached itself from the strings of the in-
strument and sounded beforehis ears, but the sensations in his own breast—
sensations, that do not come through every ear into every breast with the
same tones; but which we generate ourselves, and which are not entirely
the same in everyone. We shall agree, near enough, about that.
But now, what about the tones themselves, simply as tones!
[ 158] What we actually heard was the clavier and the voice. But in our
imagination they were joined by the flutes, the violins, and the horns
that we read in the score; and I need not tell you what an effect this ac-
companiment had on our imagination. Assume for a moment that all of
the instruments were present, and then think the human ear away: what
remains?—Nothing, except air vibrating this way or that: not the sound
of flute, horn, violin, or clavichord. All of these different sounds are in
your ear alone; and their manifold appearances dissolve into a pure fac-
ulty of hearing as their first source, the ground of their possibility. Thus,
if it is the case that through hearing we are aware of something else than
the hearing itself, then we are aware of a mere not-nothing, for it is obvi-
ous that the sound is entirely and solely in us, and that it designates only
a modification of our pure faculty of hearing, to which something, a
[159] not-nothing, is added. So there arises a hearer and something heard
which are both of them also just a not-nothing in our representation.
Think through these arguments and tell me whether, if your uncle had
duly armed himself with them, we would not have had to succumb to
him?
"Well," I answered, "if you don't mean something completely special
by the word "duly," then Clerdon has already confronted me in this
armour—and hence he has confronted you too; and I can't see what's
so peculiar about it as to take away suddenly all heart from the weapons
that you were employing so successfully just now. What you have said
about the various instruments with respect to the pure hearing can just
as well be asserted about the various senses with respect to the inner
common sense; so that, just as there lies a pure seeing of nothing at the
ground of every actual seeing, and a pure hearing [160] of nothing at the
ground of every actual hearing, etc., so too there must be a pure sensing
of nothing at the ground of every sensing in general. In the end it will be-
come evident that the root, the deepest and most proper root of life, is from
nothing and for nothing, a mere empty space of sensation, a conscious-
ness without consciousness, a pure faculty to live.
Allwill smiled. At this point I told him about an unpublished essay that
I once copied for Clerdon, and which I also copied for myself with his
consent. I recited the following passages from it, that I know by heart.
"Our reason is like Tiresias,41 that blind soothsayer from Thebes to

whom his daughter Man to described the flight of the birds: he prophe-
sied on the basis of what she told him.42
" . . . Our thoughts are nothing but fragments. Our knowledge is
piecemeal.43 To the spirits created for heaven the visible world must
seem like a desert, indeed, just like the desert in which, for the thou-
sands consumed by hunger, only five loaves and two fish were to be
found. But no matter how pitiful the loaves that God has put in our
hands may be, or how small the fishes, they are blessed: we are blessed
with them by an all-powerful, mysterious God who works miracles.44
". . . Is it not our very own spirit that complains because of its distance
from the true and the essential; and through its complaining betrays its
own lofty origin? The spirit itself gives a sign of that origin by rising
above sense-impressions as a creator, by making them fertile, fitting and
building them into a scaffold, upon which it climbs to heaven—or by cre-
ating false idols, for which it fires bricks and gathers straw.45
". . . Every time philosophical curiosity [162] leads to disquiet and
wonder about the existence and the origin of the imperfect, the null and
the evil—should that not be taken as a dark consciousness of the divine
image in our reason?. . . ,46 Nobody is good, but the One Godl Instead of
asking, therefore, "Whence comes the imperfect, the null and
evil?" should we not rather turn the question around and wonder at the
fact that finite creatures are capable of enquiring after truth, of en-
joining the good on themselves, and laying claim to happiness?47
"All the phenomena of nature are dreams, faces, puzzles, that have a
meaning, a hidden sense. The books of nature and of history are noth-
ing but ciphers, secret signs that require a key. And those who believe in
a revelation need this key for the interpretation of it; it is itself the aim
of revelation, the one single possible aim of [163] it, and the only possible
proof of its inspiration." 4§ *7
Allwill's quiet attention, his whole demeanour which gave the impres-
sion that he would like to hide away, so as not to interfere with my mem-
ory; the single words, with which he filled the pauses, as I remembered
*7_ The editor is in possession of the manuscript from which these passages
are drawn. It is labelled: London, 16 May 1758. A Fragment of one sheet and a
half, full of lacunas, byjohann Georg Hamann. But as it is, with all its gaps, it will
be published.*
* The last sentence does not appear in the 1812 edition.
my way from one passage to another—all this was very good. But best of
all was his eye, which overflowed with a serenity that made his whole face
almost transparent, and let us see a truly beautiful soul, I would say a
pious soul, that could not stay hidden: [164] "an eye full of gentle salutations
and soft responses."—49 It was not good, however, that at the end he sud-
denly grasped my hand with both his, and kissed with such liveliness that
I was frightened, and fear came over me that I had gone pale, and Allwill
might have noticed it. But he did not see it; I guarantee that.
That's it, he said: the creator of the world could only create after his
image, and he had to give to each being as much truth as he imparted life
to it.
We seem to be a breath, often just the shadow of a breath; or, as an an-
cient poet put it: the dream of a shadow.50 But a being that is nothing but
shadow, one that is just a dream, is an absurdity. We are, we live, and it
is impossible for there to be a species of life and existence that is not also
a species of the life and the existence of the [165] supreme Being himself.
The sounds, and colours, and whatever else we may consider to be a
mere play of the senses, an illusion without substance, come forth afresh
as intuitions of the true from their greater context; and in that context
they allow us to recognize why we made the mistake that inclined us, with
such unspeakable force, to want to scratch a better sense into the book
of nature, always as if from the outside.*8
We were interrupted by the announcement that supper was being
served. As he was getting up from the clavier Allwill asked me whether I
was acquainted with Plato.—Only through what Clerdon has told us about
him from time to time, I said. I knew, for instance, that the soul had
feathers originally, and could have them again. . . . [166] "Are you more
closely acquainted with the dialogue in which this is to be found?"
"No. . . . " "Not even with the /on?" "No . . ." "With Theages?"51 "No."
At supper Allwill tried to get the seat next to me. He failed, and I was
glad of that. Why was I glad?—For several reasons, dear Sylli! But I want
frankly to confess the worst one to you right away—and only that one—
for fear you should believe that I want to conceal something from you,
or even from myself. Yes, dear Sylli, that evening I had come to love
Allwill, with quite a different love than ever before; but that would not
have disturbed me if I had not been so strangely frightened when he
*8. These last words seem to be a play on a passage from Tristram Shandy,
Vol. in, ch. 37.'
kissed my hand. From that moment on I was embarrassed, and I was

angry about that. I thought that it would pass as soon as we left the clavier,
and rejoined the rest of the company. [167] And certainly it would have
passed without fail, if Allwill's visible desire to sit next to me at table had
not prevented it. I was concerned that everyone would notice it; yet I
could not help being pleased by it. Hence renewed annoyance, and still
more embarrassment.—If this worries you, dear Sylli, there is nothing
that I can do about it. And I must reveal even more to you, namely, that
I cannot possibly imagine, nor do I want to, how things can be so bad
with Allwill, as you make them out to be. What is it, after all, that makes
a man good except what Allwill has in him so abundantly. There is too
much of what is good and beautiful in him, for him not to become mas-
ter of the evil. Even if there is something of the profligate in him, as you
are so sure, that does injury to him; it is not something he identifies with,
and nobody would be happier to be rid of that evil spirit than he. In
order to think otherwise, I would have to carry a grudge not only against
Allwill, but against human nature. [168] And what joy would then be left
in life? The very thought of it depresses me, and makes me melan-
cholic. . . . Good night, Sylli! Good night to you, my dear, my ever dear
one!
March 30
I had left the breakfast table this morning and had already gone to my
room to read over what I had written yesterday evening, before sealing
my letter, when Clerdon and Amalia came bounding in right at my
heels—he, with an open letter in his hand which he held out to me; she,
with a still-folded envelope. They were your letters of the i8th and aoth.
In a moment, we were standing close to one another, so as to read first
your letter to Clerdon all together. The words, "The little Clair struck a
chord which vibrated long after!" immediately jumped at my eyes as if
written in a different ink.—You can imagine how it [169] reverberated
on me. And what followed then; and on, and on, to the end. I thought
that never before in my life had I been so shaken. And yet I was moved
even more by the melancholic chant in the letter to Amalia. Amalia, and
Clerdon too, felt the same.
Oh, the dear Malia . . . ! You should have seen her, heard her! How
deeply I felt once more, that next to her I am simply an absolute noth-
ing! She is so wholesome in everything, with sense, heart, and spirit. And
in the end she prevails over everything, though no one knows by what force.
God could not have given me a greater sign,52 than the one I have in this
marvellous woman.
Edward AllwilVs Collection of Letters 447
And now you understand why my letter looks so creased. After reading
your letter, and while we were speaking about it, the idea of sending
what I had written to you seemed unbearable to me. I was overcome by
such disgust and vexation over all that chatter of mine, that I crumpled
up the sheets that lay on the table right there, [170] in order to throw
them in the fire afterwards. Clerdon grabbed them out of my hands; and
then at table he not only talked me into sending them to you, he even
had Amalia order me to send them.
Just before we sat down to table, a letter arrived from Allwill which em-
barrasses me. Amalia is busy copying it, so that I can include it. Both she
and Clerdon wanted me to send it. You may ask what Clerdon said about
the letter. He smiled as he read it with a dubious look, and then said:
"We shall have to see about that. Little cousin, take carel" Yes indeed; take
care, little cousin! Isn't that right?
Among her thousand greetings Amalia wants me to tell you what you
must already know by now—that she wrote to you on the 2oth.
[171] xvi
March 30
Forgive me first, my amiable cousin, for this somewhat more intimate
title, which Clerdon, whom I should call uncle, may excuse me; forgive
me also, gracious Clair, if I offer you something for which you did not
ask. This is the essay of a pupil who would like to learn from his master
whether he has understood him enough; and since he is troubled by hu-
mility and vanity in equal measure, he is glad to bring forward someone
else as an ally, or a champion to hide behind.
Socrates, the friend of youth, will be my champion; he will take me un-
der his wings.
A lad came to him, by the name [172] of Theages,53 burning with de-
sire to learn wisdom in his company.
In order to test him, the man with the daemon rebuffed his advances. He
advised him to apply to one of the many famous men who had control over
their talent of helping other men forward, and were not subject, like him, to a
dcemon, without whom he could do nothing.
Socrates's rebuff made the lad sad. He said to his father, Demodokus,
in whose company he had come, and who spoke for him: "You see now
how Socrates is making fun of us, when he talks like that. For I know
some of my own age, or somewhat older, who were not worth much be-
fore they took to him—but after they [173] came into his company, in
a very short time they became much better than all the young men to
whom they were previously inferior."
Socrates did not deny this, but only insisted that diis happy result
should not be attributed to his art and good will. He had himself asked
one of these youngsters, who was a grandson of Aristides, how it hap-
pened that the young man had derived such great advantage from his
company, since he had never taught him anything, and he got the fol-
lowing answer: "As you say yourself, oh Socrates, you never really taught
me anything. But I made advances after I joined you, even if I only lived
with you in your house and not in your room. But I gained even more
when I shared your room. And while you spoke, I gained more when I
could see you than when I could not. [174] I advanced most of all, how-
ever, and most vigorously, whenever I sat next to you, holding and touch-
ing you."
Gracious Clairl The sense of these words took hold of me the day be-
fore yesterday, the moment I grasped your hand, like one carried away,
to express my own thankfulness, and to fill my heart anew, and forever,
with a greater thanks.
Socrates finally gave in to the beseeching youth, for whom the father
was interceding.
"And so, said Theages, we must discover what the will of the daemon
is concerning our relationship; and if it does not show itself immediately
favourable to us, we must try to win over the divine that dwells in you,
through prayer and sacrifice or any other pious means."—"Well, then,"
said Socrates at last, "if it seems to you that that's what we ought to do,
then let us do it."
[175] Happy Theages, to whom the omen contained in his name, One
who is led by God, came true to perfection!
Plato tells the story of yet another youth, named Phaedrus.54
This Phaedrus was the pupil and favourite of a rhetorical sage, by the
name of Lysias; and Socrates found him one day still lost in admiration
of a speech that his friend and teacher had just delivered, in which noth-
ing but evil had been said about the enrapturing love of the beautiful, and
nothing but good about the prosaic love of the useful.
Socrates forced Phaedrus to recite the speech to him, and found not
only the wisdom but also the rhetorical art of the famous man shallow.
For Lysias, commented Socrates, [176] it all comes down to the fact
that cleverness should be preferred to recklessness. Since Lysias says that the
pleasant is so closely related to the beautiful that they generally make
common cause with one another, yet the pleasant is easily given prece-
dence over the useful, then, if one rightly distinguishes between what be-
longs to desire and to reason, it follows in the end that the love of the
beautiful stands to the love of the useful, as vice does to virtue, or as the
state of careful prudence does to the state of madness.
We could draw out this argument further, Socrates went on, and make
the point more incisively. Then we would have a better success than
Lysias did in raising the things of reflection above those of plain sensa-
tion, and in defending the pure interest of the letter against the impure
one of the spirit.
Phaedrus compelled him to give proof. Whereupon [177] Socrates
covered his face, lest he get stuck for shame in his speech; then he began
to speak, and kept his promise.
But after the speech was finished, Socrates uncovered himself in order
to be reconciled with the God of love through a recantation made with
bare face for the blasphemy he had been forced to utter against his will.
"I can grant to Lysias, Socrates said, that the love of the beautiful is by
nature reckless and it is a species of madness because in its highest stage
it sets men besides themselves. I can grant this without ceasing for that rea-
son to offer prayers to this mighty love as what is truly divine in man.
"What precedes all human good sense—what makes it possible and
real, what gives it objects, drive, direction and laws—is as far exalted
above any of its derivative [178] activities and paltry aids, as the utter-
ances of Pythia at Delphi are above the divinations of the soothsayers from
entrails and the flight of birds.
"If the God in your soul did not speak the truth to you, in vain would
you try to get hold of truths,* or to reach any conclusions about truth.
Neither sense ^ nor reflection* will emerge in you.
"What man can come up with§ all by himself is empty conjecture and
opinion which will mislead more harmfully than the urging of pleasure;
all of his own undertakings are void of efficacy and dignity. Look at the
fool who approaches the temple of the art of poetry without the inspira-
tion of the muses, thinking that the art alone is enough. He will come
to it like a dead man among the living, and [179] his poetizing, being
only rational, will be worthless in comparison to the winged utterances
* besinnen dich
t Besinnung
t Besonnenheit
§ ersinnen
of those inspired. Or look at that other one who bases his life on reflec-
tion,* and aims only at mortal and petty advantages and services; he
practices usury out of nothing but base interests; + he possesses and gen-
erates no virtue, even though common opinion bestows unlimited praise
upon him for his wisdom and virtue, whereas it derides the one who is
inspired by God, who strives to live in the element of the Divine and who,
in his pursuit of this higher element, finds everything earthly too
small—it derides him as an 'enthusiast', as senseless or raving mad.
"Words can only remind us of what is already known; and everything
is dead word and senseless letter without the spirit of interpretation, which
has its being in immediate intuition and cognition, and which is the one
and only spirit of truth—to the [ 180] pedants of reason unreliable; to the wise,
however, secure and certain." *$
So, my noble friend let me hear from you whether I am on the right
track with my Plato or not.
[181] But as a proof that I did not come upon the pathway that I think
right only yesterday, because of the company I was with, here's for you,
in certified copy, yet another soliloquy of mine.
It was on the twentieth of May of last year that I came upon the idea
of this soliloquy, at the sight of that majestic linden tree by my father's
country-house, with which you are acquainted.
That my document is not a fabrication, you will accept upon my word,
or at least upon an oath sworn by this linden tree.
The refreshing green, that most lovely of colours for its beautiful fluc-
tuations, as it dances and plays in the light—it is that, yes, that and noth-
*g. * "Unreliable to the pedants of reason." The Greek word (Vol. in,
p. 245 [c]; cf. the Bip. Ed. x, p. 318) is deinos which Ficinus translates as conten-
tiosus here, but in Ion, where it occurs more commonly, as peritus (Vol. i,
p. 532 [a]; Bip. Ed., iv, p. 182). Kleuker has translated it like Allwill, or Allwill
like Kleuker, and the editor is no less pleased by the translation in his friend
Kleuker than in Allwill. After going over, with pain and vexation, all the scattered
passages in the Phaedrus to which Allwill refers, the editor is still left with quite
different matters to call attention to, if they were worth the effort. For instance,
it appears that Allwill has ignored that it is perhaps debatable whether the Greeks
practiced divination from entrails.2
* Besonnenheit
t Gesinnungen
ing else, that fixes your eye on the linden's [182] gently waving crown;
that fills your bosom with the most peaceful of raptures; it awakens in
you every impulse of love, and inspires you!
[147] That and nothing else . . . ? Is that life and love quickening ap-
pearance, just a scripture without sense* and speech? For that did my
heart beat so, my spirit press upon me so, and my whole being rejoice—
because I was looking at empty features without meaning?
Silence!—and closer still!
Oh speak, sweet play of colours; speak and reveal your truth to me, for
in you, too, there must be truth!
From your majesty you beckon me towards those leaves striving for
their highest [183] existence, as they exult in their young and vigorous
shape along the branches full of sap—You beckon. . . . My heart beats
faster, my spirit beats its wings with greater joy. I see!—The fullness and
power of being is wholly there; that was what seized me, overcame me, dis-
played itself to me, while I took cognizance, yet knew nothing for the rapture
ofitl
A blessing for us! Thus nature brings its whole content to the heart,
and instructs man in the sweetest of ways immediately. So why do we
harden our hearts to her? Why do we mistrust her wisdom and love? Why
do we take her revelation for deceit; her guidance for snares; her lofty
governance for the intoxication of one without sense?
[184] xvii
Sylli to Clerdon*10
I have your dear, beautiful letter from Heimfeld;*11 I want to answer it,
thank you all for it, but I can't.
I was deeply touched by what you wrote. It has brought me joy, indeed,
much joy; but to arouse me and make me rejoice, that it could not do.
Oh, you dear ones! that I should have to admit this to myself, and con-
fess it to you!
*io. See Letter v, the end.

*i i. Letter viu.
* Sinn
Little Glair has struck a chord that vibrated strongly. Yes! What has
once been awakened in me cannot be hid, much less killed!
[185] Ofttimes I feel for a moment as if it will disappear: but then,
there I sit again, my head in my hands, not knowing how to disentangle
myself.
Believe me, my dear ones, my darlings! I keep you warm in my heart,
no matter how cold it sometimes is all around it.
Dear Clerdon, I am ashamed of myself, saying this to you. Nine
months ago, a little after my last visit to you, it seemed to me as if you had
forgotten me a bit; you felt less sympathy for me; your joy in me had
grown old. Amalia was about to give birth, and suffered long. For that
reason Lenore and little Glair too were writing less often and little. As for
you, you just about lapsed into complete silence. Yes, my dear, you were
neglecting me, you, my closest relation, the blood-friend of my suffering! I
did not complain, but I sank into brooding. This brooding, and a fearful
heart, were all that was left to me. [186] I thought I had achieved some
insight into the pattern of my destiny; I did not find it so extraordinary
any more—but alas! everything has turned so desolate around me again,
so dead in me!
It is terrible how deep down I have fallen in my dreaming, sinking
deeper, and deeper still, the more distant and obscure the original cause
of the dream became to me.
Dear! What I cannot hide from myself is that truth too, much truth,
has appeared to me in my dreaming, and this truth I cannot, nor will I,
undo for myself. But how to come out of the dreaming now?—That I
can't see yet; that frightens me!
I should pull myself together as well as I can, you have recently written
to me.*12 No, my dears! I will not pull [187] myself together just "the
best I can." Since I am attacked at the centre of my being, help must
come to me from that centre—total help. It will come; you say so; and
so do I. Each notable new situation leads to new counsel, to new means.
How often has it happened to me that I thought I would have to cry out:
Help, Clerdon, helpl—But I did not have to, and I did not. What would
happen to me, if I were to let myself be sustained only in that way! What
would I gain by it? Not any steady and reliable help. That is the help I
want, and that's the help I shall go after. It is my willto pull through, even
if I don't pull through.
*12. See Letter in.

Once, centuries ago, a voice was heard from heaven: "See, hepraysl"—
And for him who prayed, the scales fell from his eyes!
Enough for today. Tomorrow I shall try to write to Amalia, from whom
I [188] received such a dear, dear letter before yours.*13 And to poor
kind Lucy—and to my brother, who has not heard from me for so long,
and may well be worried about it!—All you good people! such a shame
that I must be there for you only as a grief!
[189] xvin
Sylli to Amalia* *4
March 19
My dear, faithful one!—I had many things to say to you perhaps; but. . .
I could not, or I would not?—I don't know myself. Early this morning I
was sketching an eye; and as I did so, I wrote much to you in my mind.
I did the same downstairs, during the midday meal. Yet hardly any of it
will get onto this page. No doubt I have upset most of you whenever I
talked about myself, making a great deal of this and that. I do not myself
understand yet what will come of it; but, my dear woman, I am in a very
busy state of mind; so much happens in my solitude to stir me into ac-
tivity inside. It also happens that I enjoy moments of greatest freedom:
but those moments are [190] so isolated, so detached. . . . Alas, dear
woman, how it all fades away! I took a closer look, and everything be-
comes distorted before my eyes. How do I feel?—My dear! Don't ask; let
me alone ask: How am 7?—Do believe, however, that your Sylli will pull
through, things will improve for her. Clerdon too will say it to you. Be
of good hope, therefore, and calm, and peaceful.
S—is here since Monday, and things are going nicely between the two
of us. It would please you to see how I school myself to entertain all sorts
of people with a truly easy cheerfulness, and to accommodate myself to
them. As a matter of fact I have already gone a long way in this. But I
must not exert myself too long. I hang on to my solitude passionately.
*i3. See Letter vn.

*i4. See p. 168.*
* 1812 edition: p. 137
For some time now the one who has had the most intimate access to me
is Montaigne. I live with him, as one who is alive. The man is so right for
me; he sets my mind at rest, because he [191] teaches me the spirit of
conciliation. That is something he understands very well, and it may
come upon me too, miraculously. As long as I don't sacrifice something
better in return for this good, and don't short-change myself; I shall
guard myself against that! Oh, yes indeed!
How can I thank you enough, you dear one, for the enduring benefit
of your letters? The latest one—how it brought me to life again!*15 You
have such a perfect knowledge of what will help me, and of what I need.
The way you reach your hand out to me even from afar, I already feel
support! What is there that you have not done for me always? Is there
any love that, through you, has not been demonstrated to me? And what
more do I need than these memories alone? If my feelings were freer
than they presently are, then I could rejoice even more in the love that
I have for you! You are so truly goodl
[192] And, my dear Amalia, you are also happylJust a hour ago
Montaigne was still agreeing with me about that—that just as you are,
Amalia, you were best created and constructed uniquely for the sake of
being happy, and making others happy. So I beg and beseech you, that
you will carefully preserve yourself in your being; you should remain just
as you are, and avert every alteration that might come upon you.
March 20
My writing was interrupted yesterday in a very unpleasant manner. G.
and S., the "friends," as they say, of Gierigstein,*16 were announced to
me. These Gierigsteinians are so delicate, they proceed so leisurely,
speak such a mild friendly language of sheer reason, fairness and [193]
right, that every time I have them at my house, I feel as if my teeth were
being pulled out.
I have slept well nonetheless, and I have been walking back and forth
in my room for an hour now, with my Montaigne in hand. Bombacino
went with me, skipping about and pulling at my skirt; he moved or stood
still, just as I moved or stood still. Now he is all over my feet, and is busy
at work with my slippers. It's a long time since I have seen the little an-
*i5- See Letter vin.

*i6. See Letter xn, p. 112.*
* 1812 edition: p. 95
imal so eager for company. Wait, here's something for you too. There,
Bombacino! It is some nougat, that the wife of the Justice Counsellor
Melbert gave to me Sunday evening. Since the ugly Gierigstein had just
left me, and I was in an unbearable state of mind, I went to the brave
woman, who is only distantly related to us, but is so happy to hear me call
her aunt. I brought small presents for her daughters. The old Justice
Counsellor [194] made his appearance too. They were all so friendly, so
good; and afterwards the aunt gave the servant another little basket of
pastry for me to take. I stayed until eight o'clock, and I was glad to linger
on. Everything is so straightforward with these people. You can't say that
they are open hearted, for there is nothing that they would want to hide—
but true hearted, that they are. I was so much in tune with my feelings
there; I felt familiar and at ease.
For some time I have also had much to do with a sick woman. The wife
of Waldbeck—you must still remember her, with her upright husband,
and the troop of well brought-up children in the house—she lay close to
death. It was a great help to these people in such sore distress to have
me among them. But how much they helped me, that nobody suspected.
It is so sweet to be drawn into such a sharing; so sweet to be the willing
instrument behind which God or an angel conceal themselves.
[195] Frau Waldbeck is recovering. And should I tell you now, my
dear Amalia, how I feel about it all?—Just see, the nourishment that I
fetch from here and there—my heart fetches something from out there
for its own inmost being, something like love and friendship; it fetches
it without the power or the authority to make its own; it cannot make it
one with its being; it won't grow there. Greater uneasiness follows. I ask
myself: What is there that I want? that I don't want?—What is there that
should be, can be, is?—And since I don't know how to sort all this out,
I would often rather see it even more tangled up than it is; everything
together in a terrible mess.
Here I made a long pause; I finally left my desk, got dressed, and went
to breakfast. Now it is evening. From the glow of the sun, which all today
alternated with rain-storms, I just caught the sparkle of the setting, the
parting. [196] From my window one could glimpse the narrow stretch
of landscape there, across the Danube. There were the strangest brilliant
outbursts and changes in light. It was beautiful, very beautiful, and fes-
tive and touching.
I stood there alone, dear Amalia—Sylli stood there alonel I can be star-
tled, as if by the appearance of a spirit, whenever I am unexpectedly so
alone: so totally alone!
This morning, as I was pacing my room and glancing repeatedly at the

Antigone that Clerdon translated for my birthday, and at his other trans-
lation (which he also did for my sake) of Xenophon's The Banquet—
these two volumes, which must always lie there for me at the prescribed
place on the arm-chair next to my writing-desk, and occupy it as if they
were a beloved thing, endowed with body and soul, which I am pleased
to see there in that spot—[197] how this kept on coming back to me;
it moved me ever more strongly, almost became an apparition—and
finally made me furious; I rebuked myself, earnestly, until I was almost
reduced to tears. . . .
That's how it is!—That is how, with all the anxieties that I experience,
my heart becomes ever more lively, it draws things to it, it yearns and
strives more. Every drop of blood seems to me to derive its movement
from the fact that my soul sees this thing here now, precisely this; I look
at it in such a way, and precisely so; so that this feeling, this one and no
other, springs from it; it is this feeling, the one that is alive, that alone
sets my heart in motion; my heart gets its beat from that; it wouldn't beat
at all otherwise;—my blood, which surges in my veins only because of
these beats, would stop without them; for there is no other life in me any
more.
I'll write again soon, dear Amalia! Little Glair, Lenore, the children,
[198] when they come to you fondle them in my heart. Surely little
Edmund has already heard about Sylli, about your Sylli!—Fare you well,
my one and only dear!
[199] xix
Sylli to Amalia
March 25, about midnight

Dear Amalia,
I came back home this evening around nine o'clock from the good
Waldbeck woman, who is slowly recuperating, and on my desk I found
your letter.*17 As at the close of a beautiful summer day, just when the
air is cooling, lightning convulses the sky and blends with the light of the
dusk, so too did my heart blaze at the sight of it. I opened it quickly, just
*17- The eleventh of this collection.

to see how long it was, and whether all was well with you. Then I folded
it, hurried to undress, called off my evening meal, and retired all alone.
I could not have been better prepared for the solace that was to reach
me through [200] you. It felt at home at the Waldbeck's; they are such
unpretentious, stout-hearted, human beings! Father, mother, daugh-
ters, sons—in their goodness and fidelity they are all alike, yet they are
of more contrasting characters than the ordinary, for in this respect
nothing in them is a copy, but everything has been forged directly on up-
rightness and solidity, as standards with which each character must com-
ply. That's how the father was brought up; and his wife too; and now they
are bringing up their children the same way, straying neither to the right
nor to the left.
During the wife's sickness, when I became as one of the family, I was
able to see this for the first time from close at hand, and to take it truly
to heart. Early today the two daughters, Frederica and little Malia, who
have long been very attached to me and would now lay down their lives
for me, came to me and said [201] that the doctor was allowing their
mother to spend that afternoon in the drawing room; and it would be
nice if I could join them, to make their pleasure complete. I went right
after eating, but I found them already all gathered in the drawing room.
The good Waldbeck received me with a warmth of feeling that suited the
blunt, simple, hearty man better than any words can describe. The con-
valescent directed her eyes to us with a look and a radiance of counte-
nance which brought the day of resurrection to one's mind—and not for
me alone. We were surrounded, Waldbeck and I, by the boys and the
girls, who were urging us towards mother's easy chair. As I embraced the
good woman, I let myself down on my knees by her side, to whisper into
her ear to be still, and to hide her face in my bosom, while with signals
from my eyes I restored order all around. A sense of loving intimacy
came upon us. We were joined later by the stout-hearted Fischering, who
came alone, and by the Vicar Bock, that faithful soul, along with his
brother the [201] assessor, both of whom I like so much. There was
much talk about many things, all good and sensible. For the most part
I simply listened, and I rejoiced in the stillness of my spirit, in the fact
that it makes little or no difference at all to common sense or sound rea-
son whether a man is endowed with a great or a small understanding by
nature; what matters is how his fantasy is constituted, and that in faithful
and reliable men it stays unmoved, like a rock. What for them has ac-
quired the honour of principle, rule, or faith, abides as such. They judge
and act without fear or doubt.
When we want to give our strongest assurances, we all say: as sure as

that I now stand in front of you, speak with you, have this pen in my
hand. But it is even more solemn, or is taken as having even more mean-
ing, if we say instead, as true as there lives a God in heaven; or, as true as I
hope to be blessed. Here is where [203] all truth and faithfulness have their
beginning, and where truly sound reason makes its home too. I often felt
strange, whenever I found myself among people of high or, for that mat-
ter, the highest society, to observe, even among the great esprits, what con-
trol they had and retained under certain circumstances, for the most
worthless of reasons; or in what a dreadful state of impotence they wal-
lowed in other situations, without shame or affliction. To be as they
were—to that, their fantasy had been shaped since youth, or distorted
into it later on. Now, take these men, with all their lustre, and put them
next an upright and thoroughly trustworthy man like Waldbeck; compare
their inner disposition with his: who wouldn't shudder at the contrast?
On this side, the steady pursuit of a life of decency: courage, cheerfulness,
steadfastness, and dignity. On the other, the blind stumbling of a life
[204] of in-decency, distorted and shattered for eternity: cowardice, de-
jection, prevarication, self-contempt.
It had struck seven before we knew it. The doctor came and rebuked
us because the invalid had sat up too long. We made her lie down to rest,
and I stayed on for another hour sitting by the bedside of the dear
woman, almost forgetting myself while I chatted away with the three
young women who had gradually surrounded me close on all sides.
Meanwhile the mother dozed off. We stole away to the drawing-room,
where my cape and my work-bag lay. There we saw the moon hang be-
hind the clouds right in the middle of the window. The view from
Waldbeck's drawing room is ravishing, especially because of the Danube
that flows nearby, and on the right it comes down from such a distance
that one can't tell from which side it is flowing. We rushed to the open
window of one accord, and stayed there for a long, long, time. I stared
at the passing [205] small clouds which took on now one shape, now an-
other, as they moved and would not let the moon shine clear. But it grad-
ually got brighter and finally stood naked there, enveloping the river
with its quivering shine. The girls compared it to silver drops raining
down onto the surface.
So I took my leave, went home, and found your letter.
It lay at the edge of a sketch that I had finished that afternoon, in the
style of Maratti:55 a sleeping child; the true picture of an angel.
Sleep on, I said to the beautiful youth, as I came back from un-
dressing: you angel! I shall not disturb you;—and I actually moved my
armchair gently, letting myself down into it softly, and was careful not to
strike against the table.
[206] I read all the way to the chapter on Allwill, with which I did not
want to be troubled today; so then I started all over again—and one
more time still; I slowed my reading more and more until, without no-
ticing it, I ceased reading from the sheet, yet went on reading still, as if
from a sheet. . . . Malia, my good Malia!—Look at that sweet, smiling
angel there! He lies on his most comfortable side, the head gently
propped upon the small arm: he sleepsl—Malia! You sang a lullaby to me,
and a restoring slumber came upon me. You have gently rocked my
heart—a sweet, warm, fullness, the fullness of your love, spread over it.
It's in my heart—this fullness of your love, of your innocence, of your
faith. Yes, it now lies still!
The high moon now shone through the curtain into my eye. There you
are againl I thought, and stood up.
It's a long time since I have seen the moon shine so bright and clear.
[207] All the clouds had gone away from it, moved sideways, this way and
that, in bunches, all sorts of small, round, clouds; and in the broad ex-
panse between, the most beautiful, dark blue, sky shone everywhere;
small stars here and there too, and they sparkled so gently. One star only
shone truly bright, and pulsated at a faster rhythm. I looked up at it:
"How you twinkle, you Bright One!" And the Bright One became so
friendly to me, that I could not help responding to its smile, and I was
surprised by it.
I could not think of going to the bedroom. I took my writing desk, put
it by the sofa, and wrote what you have read so far.
I too have just reread it, still sitting there. I have gone back to your let-
ter, and made a long, sweet pause.
What is that, my dear Malia? What is it, [208] that I feel here as
though I were leaning against it, peacefully and quietly? It is present to
me; but it does not show itself, I have no picture of it—but in words only,
in words affected by unspeakable beauty, holiness and goodness: there
alone it offers something like a sign of itself. By clinging close to this in-
visible presence with all my feelings—this is how I possess it, hold on to
it; it encompasses me, it carries and elevates me. Look, the tears run
from my eyes, but surely there is no expression of weeping on my face;
my features all bespeak serenity, for the purest bliss surrounds and fills
me.
Oh, my sweet, my love! let me sleep in this place 'til the morning
comes my way. Rest peacefully!
The 26th
Good morning, Amalia! good morning, sister! I look for new names,
for [209] new greetings for you, but I can't find what I seek. You, the
lucky one, found a new name fast enough; you found one for me without
looking for it. Mother, you called out; oh, mother, come to motherl and I felt
as if by this call I were transfigured.
Well, dear Malia, you understand it better than all of them—you the
one and only, you the seer—not in dreams, like the poor Sylli—but awake,
the seer of truthl Just compare what I wrote, it's eight days today, with
what's here! You had not yet called out: Come to mother, come to the
children and the children's father, come to the girls of Heimfeld; come
away and leave all—And the sick Sylli kept on dreaming; over all the lov-
ing words of Clerdon, the noble one, and of the lovely maids, she could
only weep.
Tell Clerdon, tell little Clair and Lenore, tell your children: Sylli is
coming! She [210] is leaving all, and coming; before the leaves fall
again, she'll be with us!
That mother I was and mother remain—what angel inspired you to re-
mind me of it? The way I found it in your letter, so it seemed to me, I
heard it for the first time, as if I were being crowned. It was exactly this
time of the year when I first began to feel my Gustave stir in my womb.
That he should awake at this happy time—how I rejoiced in that for him!
You had no husband at the time yet, you were not yet my sister. I chose
one for myself; she chose me. Oh, with what fondness I drew close to sis-
ter nature; and the good nature—how she accepted it and returned the
intimate sisterly greeting with a squeeze of the hand, and kisses! I went
holding her hand just like a child whom one takes along and says to him:
Come, there is this or that to do, you must helpl
[211] The budding of blossoms, the sprouting of leaves and twigs—
none of it happened without me; I helped, I was busily engaged in it: so
I felt. And all the birds, as they congregated on the trees around me, so
many kinds of them; as they chirped, sang, fluttered and flew; laid out
and built their nests. . . . How different than ever before my presence
there in their midst, with my eyes and ears, my sharing and care. Where
the air but stirred, where the least scent of life was present, there I
reached out with my sweet intimations, and made every concern a con-
cern of mine.
And it's still vivid in my mind how I often thought at that time: if that
should come to pass which later happened; if I were to experience the
bitter pain and had to be deprived of what I already loved so much, be-
yond all words. . . . Still, I had seen the angel, I had pressed him against
me, enjoyed his fondling, his smile, his look; with my nursing I had
brought him up to babble, to have joy, to [212] return love: and now he
lay there rigid before me, and I had to carry him to the grave—to his
dark grave. . . !
I shuddered at the idea! Yet I vowed, and impressed upon my mind,
that however unspeakable my suffering might then become, I would
never for that reason want to forget the bliss that I had enjoyed, and to
the end of my days I would bless the new, pure, love which had come to
me. That is what I promised to my Gustave, and I repeated this promise
to him often, ever more solemnly as the time went on, during the two
years that he lived.—Oh, that I was a mother, and mother I still am—how
could I want to forget that?—Dear Amalia—that bright star, the one that
beckoned to me in such a friendly manner, who smiled at me, and whose
smile I had to return—that was my Gustave; my Gustave shone to me in
the holy star.
How do I understand you in everything, you [213] lovely one! in what
you know and what you know not; in your pride and your humility.
What Clerdon said to the man with all his there/ore's and wherefore's, "It
is the instinct of the letter to bring reason under subjection," shot
through my soul like lightning. It reminded me of a pertinent word of
Fenelon.
He said: "In his perverted state man has eyes only for shadows; hence
truth appears to him as a phantom. What is nothing, he holds to be
something; and what is something above all else, he holds to be
nothing. ["]
You'll find this passage in his book on God's existence, at the conclu-
sion of the first part, where he addresses the Divinity. Let me insert just
this one passage here.
"Were You an impotent, lifeless [214] body, like a flower that withers
away, a brook that flows away, a building that stands then falls, a medley
of colours that we call a painting when our imagination puts shape into
it; a metal with a bit of shine: then men would take notice of You, and
in their foolishness they would attribute to You the power of securing
them some joy, though joy cannot emanate from a thing without
soul [ . . . . ] but from You alone, You Source of life and of all enjoyment.
Were You therefore only a being of the coarser sort, weak, lifeless, a mass
without intrinsic power, only the shadow of a being: then your nothing-
nature* would keep our nothingness+ busy; You would then be an ade-
* nature vaine
t vanite
quate object for our base and bestial thoughts. But since You are too
deep within them, where they never turn to, You are for them a hidden
God. For this inner self is the furthest removed from their straying look.
The order and [215] beauty that radiates from the countenance of your
creations is like a veil that keeps You away from their sick eyes."56
Say, dear Amalia! has it ever occurred to you—I mean, in such a way
that you lingered over the thought, you lingered at length over this: that
man can resolve to die?
No brute beast can choose between death and life: it has only sensu-
ous urges that are all directed to self-preservation, and compel it to pro-
long its being on earth.
Man is capable of this.
'You chose life, and I chose death!" Antigone says to her sister
Ismene.57
[216] To man a love is given that tramples death beneath its feet; it
cares for no pain or pleasure. Its seed germinates in the sight, the admi-
ration, and the regard, of SOMEONE else. Then a man would lose his
life, in order to gain it. There awakes in him the instinct of rational
nature, which strives to preserve, not the soul of the body, but that of the
spirit, to exalt it, to give it command. And with this, with the grafting of a
love that overcomes death and bears immortality, did the world begin.
No human eye can penetrate the mysteries of love and life. Every ac-
tive being begins with a desire that does not know its object. Later, and
only here and there, does the guiding urge slightly dispel the thick veil
that covers it. But every life, even the most obscure one, demands its
preservation with an insistence that is its right. The insistence of the life
that [217] hides in the lowest depth is the most powerful of all, and its
right is sacred above all. Whoever cognizes this right, whoever has felt it,
the same has trust in it. He has discovered what is right, as you say; and
to him it lies there indeed, where one sees nothing and knows nothing,
where the world has its beginning.
March 27
I have still to reply to the point in your letter about Allwill. What I
think of that young man, you know from my letter to Lenore and
Clara.*18 What I wrote may well be a bit exaggerated; but whatever I said
about the relation between good and evil is probably still right. I know
this race of men from the ground up; I have had occasion to observe
*i8. See Letter xii.

them at length, with an interest for which my heart still bleeds. Hence
I was moved by the [218] writing of that letter in a way for which, once
it had gone, I blamed myself. This sort of thing will often happen to me
again, and you must be ready for it. It's a rule that no improvement
comes about without many a relapse.
Concerning now this species of mankind with which I claim to be so
intimately acquainted, the superior talents which must be presupposed
in them already carry with them the danger of misuse. "Beware," so I
have read somewhere, "Beware of him whom God has marked!" Every
excess of powers prompts some sort of violence and repression. Add to
this in the "Allwills" of this world that their superior gifts are based on
an especially delicate and lively sensibility, a powerful sway of affect, and
an uncommon energy of the [219] imagination. I mention "affect"
ahead of "imagination," because the imagination of the "Allwills" is prin-
cipally an imagination of the affect, and not so much a free faculty of the
spirit as in other men. The mixture of these basic properties is never the
same from one individual to another; and similarly, understanding, dis-
cernment, and will, have their own modality in every individual. It can
be safely assumed, however, with respect to this species, that where the mind
is quick, a higher degree of profligacy will set in. With quickness of mind
the transition from sentiment to reflection, inspection and re-inspection
(with the help of memory) becomes ever more swift, varied, reciprocal,
radical, encompassing—until finally the acquired ease of self-discern-
ment, presence of spirit, and inner concentration, which never quite
abandons the heroes of this species even under the severest pressure
of passion, simply keeps on devouring intuition, consideration, and
sentiment of any kind; and these powers end up with no authority or nat-
ural right of their own. [220] On his moral side the entire man has be-
come poesy; and he can go so far as to lose all truth, and be left with not
one thread of honesty in him. The perfection of this state is a genuine
mysticism of enmity to the law, and a quietism of immorality.
These wizards constitute a special class among the egoists.
Every movement of passion is by nature selfish. Hence one can as a
general rule assume that the more sensitive a man is as such, the more
selfish he is too. Not that he wants to be so; on the contrary: he may very
much want to sacrifice himself, but he cannot, since he is moved first of
all by his own self beyond every measure. Understand me well! The
merely sensitive men, as such—[221] these alone are meant here; and
for this particular race of purely tender-hearted "tremblers" (as they say
in English)58 I have never had much patience. Their preciousness and
hypocrisy, their impotence and spite, have been so visibly repugnant to

me, that they have fled from me no less than I have avoided them. With
the "Allwills" I get along much better, particularly because few among
them reach the perfection of their species. They are also less repugnant
to me than the scheming, cold egoists, although these still don't belong
to the lowest class of their kind; they are not stones of greed.5® Since the
"Allwills" do not indulge themselves outwardly, they give proof of great-
ness, and in many instances of magnanimity; moreover, as long as they
are not entirely corrupted, they frequently allow glimpses of the most
beautiful impulses of the soul, indeed, they are not seldom even guided
by them. One cannot despise them altogether therefore, nor hate them
on a standing basis. And this is precisely what makes them so dangerous.
For their egoism is stubborn and brutal like no other. They are not ca-
pable of genuine renunciation, and the [222] resiliency of ethical life is
as good as dead in them.
I could not resist saying even nastier things if I don't break off.
As regards your Edward, your mistrust of him is enough for me; you
will look after the young women for me. At any rate, because of Glair,
danger hasn't come easy; she sees so clearly, so she can even help look
after Lenore. So Clerdon may well be able to gloss over things, as always.
The way he deals with this young favourite is the same as he has always
dealt with anyone to whom he feels vitally bound. It seems that the more
skilful we are in penetrating into all the recesses of the human heart, the
more liable we also are to being deceived in every individual case. We
fabricate people, and we believe that they must exist somewhere; and
again, out of actual people [223] we make something that is nowhere to
be found. And this is no wonder, considering the wide range that every
kind of character has. Our imagination is ready to lay out a hundred
plans before us, in order for us to pick the one through which the rep-
resentation wished for by the present affect can be brought about most
readily and well. But let the affect cease, and we take stock of the obser-
vations we have made; then there is no man who could know what we
have done better than we, if we have ever really been concerned about
it.
Evil will befall me, if you give this to Clerdon to read. I resign myself
to it; in the meantime, give my heart-felt greetings to him, our papa
Allwill.
[224] xx
Edward Allwill to Lucy
I have read your long missive over again, and even for the third time, my
good Lucy. I set everything aside, and now here I sit before you, at my
chair, as rigidly as if my small writing desk here were the enormous
round table in our Council Hall, and you, my dear young lady, were the
portrait of the lord of the land under the golden fringes of the green
baldachin—with this proviso, however, that you are this portrait. . . .
only inasmuch as my comfortable little desk here represents that con-
founded enormous round table in the Council Hall; and the whole com-
parison must be based simply and solely on my sitting rigidly here.
What is so stupid in all that, is that quite by chance and without any
malice, I have turned you into the image of a pagan god [225] in full ar-
mour; for as a matter of fact, dear Lucy, recently, as you stepped before
me with all your heavenly and earthly wisdom, I saw you in beautifully
blue-tempered steel from top to toe—mightily raised upon the toes of
the left foot; the other leg artfully leaping from the earth; up high the
holy right arm, to shadow the head with a laurel branch; and your whole
being intent on the digestion of the divine owl which you, still raw and
unplucked, had swallowed down.
You have very likely caught a glimpse, recently, of my humble person
under a not much less ennobled shape, as, for example, with an im-
mense wig on top of my defiant pig-tail, squeezing thick drops of sweat
from my brow; at the shoulders the two wings of a seraph that served me
as fans to waft air against me; standing likewise on one leg, firm as a
rock.—Come, come, dear Lucy! let us hobble to one another; [226]
then down with your helmet, that I may put off my wig; and now look:
here's Edward and there's Lucy; it's just the two of us; let's speak to one
another, intimately, just you and I!
Too bad, dear Lucy! Too bad for our wisdom, for all the splendid tran-
sformations on which we are want to congratulate ourselves so highly; at
the end there is this much to say in general, t h a t . . . we must be ashamed
of ourselves. We perspire in summer, and in winter we freeze: in one
case we dress in taffeta, in the other in fur; that's just the long and the
short of it. You know what kind of thing a Ptolemaic Epicycloid is (if not,
Wallberg can remind you of it): endless oscillations over, from, and
through one another; yet only one mid-point, and the planet constantly
steps back within the boundaries of its circle.
It is still imprinted clearly enough in my [227] memory how, at every

noteworthy change of mind, I used to believe that I had finallybeen con-
verted to the true wisdom, and had entered the one path to happiness;
and then I wanted to flee in horror and shame—that I could have been,
a few days before, sometimes only for a few hours, such an incomprehen-
sible fool. But (the tyranny of Fate!) my incomprehensible fool soon re-
turned to the light of day with all his dignity once again, as the wisest of
men; and was no less ashamed of his predecessor than the predecessor
had been of him only shortly before.
A rogue does more than he can, says an old German proverb. A fine thick
book could be written about this proverb, and it will be my first book if
I ever write one. A fiery, spirited, youth who wants to be an Epictetus 60
wants more than he can achieve, and he must directly become a rogue
as a result. [228] How can he be enraptured with love of all that is good,
all that is beautiful, and yet keep to the exact measure, and never go
astray? How can he know in advance what makes this joy into foolish-
ness? Have you, my dear greybeards, a sense of your boredom, your
loathing, your exhaustion? How can his couragebe alarmed by your fears'?
He, who defies pain and death, and only scents pleasure. In brief, you
cannot give your inner sense to him, and if he were to listen to you, you
would rob him of every enjoyment of life entirely. In his head, if he has
the slightest being of his own, your reason must turn into sheer non-
sense; at best it can saddle his imagination with a certain melancholy
through phantoms. Their voice must then ring into his ear like a tire-
some, painful, whining. It hurts him. It tells him to suffer incessantly the
most severe torments, just so that no suffering may thereby befall him.
[229] To understand the doctrines of your clever wisdom, to find
them acceptable, that soul would have to be in a state of equilibrium, her
lively desires would have to have gone to sleep—which is as much as to
say that she would not be in the state, or at least in the position, of feeling
any enrapturing joy.—Far from the bold youth any such existence! The
devil take it! Enjoyment and suffering: this is the vocation of man. Only the
faint-hearted lets himself be deterred from following his wishes through
threats; the stout-hearted makes fun of this; he cries out, love to deathl
and knows how to bear his fate.
*It's the hollowest idea in the world to think that bare reason can be
the basis of our actions, since by itself reason has only the power to lay
out given feelings and inclinations before the heart in a schematized
* The following paragraph is missing in the 1812 edition.

form, and obviously always acts in [230] the service of the original source
of life from which alone the first orientation, the final determination, the
power, movement, and action derive.
Whoever reconciles himself on this earth of ours to a lasting peace of
mind, and can taste in it the fulfilment of his wishes, cannot be carrying
a heart in his chest, but only a pump to spurt blood through his veins.—
And that man is supposed to be happy—happy above everybody else? There
are enough faint-hearted people who quiver at every accident, yet there
is hardly anyone among them, even among those advanced in years, who
would find refuge in your free states; all will risk their skin anew to
snatch at some more joy, to taste the fullness of their life. That is how God
created man, and it would indeed be somewhat incomprehensible to
claim that it were better otherwise than He willed.
Believe me, my gracious one, my love, it's best that [231] we remain
in harmony with nature. Her essence is innocence, and if we accept what
she whispers in our ear in accordance to time and circumstances, we
shall be as well off as anyone under the moon. We need strong feelings,
lively emotions, passions. What we normally mean by a rational, clever
conduct of life is an artificial thing; and the state of soul that it presup-
poses can be counted as the one that least comprehends truth within
it.—Suppose that one wanted to build a house so artfully arranged that,
if one were to hang one's light under the roof, the whole house would
be lighted by it.—It might be, that if one were to extend the wick and
let it hang well loose, a little glimmer of light might force its way through
the whole edifice; but what a poor, confusing, half-light it would be! I
would rather accustom myself to live in darkness. It might command ad-
miration just the same, as a clever device; but otherwise anyone with in-
telligence [232] would rather carry his own light every time to wherever
he needs to see at that moment, and let as much darkness fall behind
him as it may.
I ought to strive for firm principles, so as to attain to stable virtue
through them. But whenever anyone counsels me to become virtuous on
the basis of principles, it sounds to me as if he were to propose that I
should fall in love upon principles. One in love—not from feeling, but
from design—would of course be very faithful. And so too the stout-
hearted, the courageous, and the benevolent person, who is not such
from mere impulse and can avoid the feeling—not only would he be
stout-hearted, courageous and benevolent at all times, but also just as
stout-hearted etc. as fits the situation.—Oh, yes indeed! I know all this.
I have been guarded more than any other man to want what . . . I
wanted, feel [233] w h a t . . . I felt. Early enough I was shown with severity
how I had to find something beautiful and good, and only this something. I
was filled to my ears with an artificial, forced, faith; confused in my en-
tire being through the violent combination of ideas that did not hang to-
gether; directed, shoved, to a thoroughly distorted, completely fake
existence.
And yet true life held out the upper hand in me. My own heart saved
me. Therefore shall I go on obeying it, inclining my ear to its voice. To
be aware of this voice, to distinguish it, understand it—let this be my wis-
dom; and to follow it courageously, my virtue!
Don't cry out about danger, dear Lucy! Why should it matter to us that
the wicked one pretends to do just that, and thereby becomes more
wicked still? Each being grows within its own nature: Will not the beau-
tiful soul too build itself up from its germ ever more beautiful? [234]
What's more reliable, than the heart of one born noble? Take all the
moral doctrines, all the philosophies of life together, and try hard to
conduct your life according to their precepts: If you have a true feeling
for beauty and excellence, how many exceptions will you run against?
Will you now, for fear of erring, admit no such exceptions? Must not
your heart and understanding be finally hardened at that; your spirit be-
come incapable of any free endeavour?
Assume also a single man, the most sensitive of all, the strongest; and
after going through innumerable experiences, let him draw up with the
courage of freedom a philosophy of life just for himself, personally. He
would still run into exceptions afterwards; and were he to fear to accept
them, he would gradually turn to a kind of machine, although one supe-
rior to some other still revolving in the [235] wheel of even more ordi-
nary precepts. All too often would he have to repress his present feeling,
refuse to believe in it, to trust it; and hence act merely by the letter.
Should the fellow circumvent the law, distort it, he would become a hyp-
ocrite, a rogue; should he subject himself to it honestly, then he would
die to his sense and feeling—become all the colder, the more insensi-
tive, the loftier the level to which he brings the practice of his virtue; he
always obeys (blindly or discerningly—as it happens) only his former will;
but he no longer has his own will now, and can henceforth no longer rise
above himself.
We know that, for the sake of universal security, every judge must pass
judgment according to the dry letter of the laws, and be blind to any
other consideration; and often, as result, the most horrid misdeeds are
endorsed juridically, for the wretch did not act against the letter of the
law, and has used procedural form to his defence; [236] the most consci-
entious of judges cannot do otherwise. Even if he is the warmest friend
of mankind he must find against honest people who happen to be in a
prejudicial position. But what kind of man would this judge be if he had
no other conscience but this juridical, public* one; if he took those he
has condemned to be actually criminal?—But you see, our steadfast pur-
veyors of morals are all of them precisely judges of this sort. I can't shun
them enough!
The system of happiness, this is how they call what they want to teach us—
the highest pleasure of mankind; what that is, they know for every possible cir-
cumstance; they have in view the harmony of all needs, the measure of
every human power in the soul.
My Lords, most wise and most authoritative! [237] We are not meant
for one another. I sing a completely different song than any whose mel-
ody is pinned to the drum of your holy, moral, music-box. What is more,
we enjoy quite different diets, and we cannot sit together at the same
table; my healthy understanding, my healthy common sense, would be
put to shame next to your diet of a sick man. Leave me therefore to my
good nature which requires that I let every capacity be awakened in me,
every power of mankind come to life in me. Admittedly, sometimes this
causes a bit of a scrummage: but the free movement helps through the
difficult moment, it measures, it sunders and unites—it even corrects.—
—So you mock at me, you wise man? What is the long catalogue of my
transgressions, of my follies, supposed to mean? Say, have I become nas-
tier, more foolish than I was?—am I nastier, more foolish, less happy,
than you?— —The living breath of nature blows across all my
sentiments—the breath that multiplies, and eternally gives birth.—Let it
blow!—Yes, I shall still stumble [238] often enough, but also I shall rise
again each time, and walk on happier than before. Did not your nurse
tell you that one learns to walk only by falling down? Oh, you disjointed
people, you cripples in your litters!
It is sad to see how many good people take care indeed, so anxiously
and industriously, not to cause or allow anything bad, anything unjust;
but in their gloominess they manage to make things ten times worse, and
are often guilty of unspeakable mischief. To avoid the illegality of break-
ing through the locked door of an absent neighbour, they let you fall
into a more likely and immediate danger, say of being murdered in the
neighbour's garden by his wicked son. And in that way the wretched
* The 1812 edition reads: "pre-arranged."

neighbour loses a kin, a friend and helper, and must see his son die at
the wheel. But, they have not transgressed any law and would have noth-
ing with which to reproach themselves; they retain a "pure" heart and a
"good" conscience.
[239] It could be demonstrated in all sorts of ways, and illustrated by
a multitude of examples, that in the concept of even the most unambig-
uous virtues there still remains an element of ambivalence, so that it is
sometimes possible for a man to show himself at his best by acting right
against them. I can think of cases where to do so would be a service most
sublime. . . . But that would lead me too far afield. I will give just one
more example, for what I said earlier.
The most sublime of all virtues and one that has at the same time the
widest application, the one that protects all the others, augments and en-
genders them, is no doubt a thoroughgoing truthfulness. How divine would
a man who resolves always to be true have to become! That alone would
make for righteousness, if one carried out the resolution not to say any-
thing untrue—so great is our respect for our fellow men, so brilliant the
mirror that reflects our visage from [240] them back to us! Just bring to
mind a situation in which, in order to satisfy a passion, you have resorted
to deception, and imagine that instead of carrying on with your stealthy
work you must uncover the naked truth, your real design, to the one
whom you have deceived. Don't you start and pale at the very thought
of it?—Levity with respect to truth is the father and son of blasphemy,
its helmet and sword, and even the smallest lie is one of the most serious
crimes against ourselves, against humanity.—But who could, in our
times, come to the rash decision of never wanting to tell a lie?
And have there not been cases, at all times, where to lie was impulse
of the most sublime human nature, the inspiration of God?—"O, who
hath done this deed?"—"Nobody" answers [241] Desdemona; "I myself.
Farewell! Commend me to my kind Lord. O farewell!"—Othello cries
out: "She's like a liar, gone to burning hell. 'Twas I that killed her."61—
But, most righteous God, who would not want to give up the spirit with
such a lie on one's lips, and stand at your judgment seat?
That too, that I have just produced on behalf of truthfulness, straight-
forwardness, openness, is beginning to totter. We often shrink from re-
vealing what's innocent, even honourable, just as much as what is bad and
shameful, and the courage of a hero is required at times to overcome
this timidity.
So, we have gone through the beautiful catalogue of your so-called
virtues in this way, that is, we have treated them all hodgepodge, as you
would so dearly like to drive them into [242] our soul, one and all,
through a chemical process, and seal them there hermetically!—Then,
indeed, we should be (easily!) a kind of plant that bears chestnuts and
pomegranates at the same time and is also a pineapple, and a potato,
and a rose-shrub—but by Jove. . . . no thorns there!—Then Asia ought
to be situated in Europe—we ought to try to push the art of the barom-
eter and the thermometer to such a point, that we should have a zona
temperata all around the earth, and always have beautiful and fruitful
weather everywhere together.—We ought indeed to know how to ac-
quire and exercise all virtues—at tennis, or at taroc a Vhombre—we ought
to—we ought to—
Oh yes, many things can of course be THOUGHT IN THIS WAY OR
THA T, and just so. But how far it is from a chimera to the truth, from
dream to actuality!
[243] What an infinite distinction there is between picture and real
thing, between concept and intuition, is not generally considered enough.
What multitude of opposite things can we not bring together in the con-
cept, and make them follow upon one another? Many think of heaven
and hell, and they take each to heart about as much as the other. For this
reason the lure of the senses often outweighs the representations of the
most frightful future torments; and it is for this reason that any religion
or morality that has been learnt by rote is such a shoddy business.
A man who is steadfast in the intuition of noble objects will not easily
act dishonourably. But he, who has his inferior good, his inferior beauty
in intuition, and the superior beauty and good only in a conceptaallegedly
void of intuition—how can such a man will that he should be able to act
in accordance with this concept?
Everything conspires in casting the men of our time into this situation.
Hence the constant contradiction between actions [244] and principles;
hence the errors even in the system of principles, for nothing is more con-
ducive to error than the combinations of concepts that are practical in
a merely speculative sense.—What opinions, what resolutions, are not
drilled into our heads during childhood, what inclinations are not made
to dawn in us?—And when we, poor things that we are, are propelled
into the world where everything now goes the other way—what inner
conflict, what derangement, what reciprocal mistrust there is between
heart and spirit!
Oh, press on, dear heart—courageous and free; the Goddess of love,
all the Graces, will protect you: for you let all the friends of nature, all
of them, come to life in you; you put unlimited trust in the universally
good Mother; you give yourself entirely over to her tenderest smile,
every time anew; trustfully you fall into ecstasies: you learn from her,
receive from her, how to give and how to take, just like her. [245] Like
the millions of light-rays that rebound from innumerable objects
without getting entangled, and then collect in the eye, again, without
getting entangled—oh, unspeakable Blessing—infinite Goodness—Life
and Love!
Lucy! dear Lucy! that I could convey it to you! that I could teach you
to live this infinite life. Never would you then want to make the sun stand
still, either in the east or in the west, but would turn yourself instead to-
wards its rising and its setting.—And yes, the moon too is beautiful in the
night-sky among the stars—And beautiful the darker night in the light
of the new moon, with its stars twinkling more brightly!—Oh, that I
could stir in you this divine vein, and make it throb forever!
[246] xxi
Lucy to Edward Allwill
Your latest letter, my dear friend and teacher, was worth very nearly as
much to me as a personal appearance. What a sorcerer you are! After
reading it, this letter, I was . . . no, I was not two years younger; but time
had grown younger by that much. You were still with us, and I had you
here all around, just as it was shortly before our separation. Now judge
yourself how strangely it must have gone round in my head that I had
written to you, and had written all that—which caused so much merri-
ment in you, and so much heroism along with the merriment. My heart-
felt epistle to you now became a joke to me; I had to laugh and blush.
Great man, forgive me my clumsiness. I forgot that you were a hero;
[247] that I am only . . . an unimportant, innocent girl, and that to the
hero innocence must appear something so useless, so worthless, that the
godlike makes fun of it; the godlike tramples upon it and, sublimely tran-
scending it, marks his course above it.
Innocence, Edward!—dear Edward, innocence, innocence, innocencel—
Doesn't any memory of it awake in your soul?
Yet remember—way, way back! There, in the shadowiest region of
your soul—does nothing still linger of the horror that took hold of you
as your open eyes constricted, your light brow darkened; as the arch of
your breast gave way, and your breathing weakened; as your posture and
gait, your whole being wavered—as innocence threatened to take leave of
you? And does nothing still reverberate there, in dim echo, [248] of the
thunder—as you cast innocence from you . . . ?
No, poor Edward, that's disappeared, disappeared from you forever!
What shall I do, then? You can't possibly understand me. . . . You
good people, you outgrow yourselves while still in children's shoes.
Before you can collect yourselves together within you, your being is al-
ready strained; before your heart can feel itself, it is already infatuated.
And then arise, mostly where there was a talent for beauty and greatness,
such glorious monsters, like the centaurs of old.
Edward! you are in truth such an extraordinary man. To him who
knows you through and through, it must often seem a miracle that you
have not become an angel in virtue, or a satan in vice. The absurdity of
your being resists every concept. [249] Unruly sensibility and a propen-
sity for stoicism; feminine tenderness, extreme frivolity—and the most
cold-blooded courage and the most unswerving fidelity; the sense of the
tiger—and the heart of the lamb; totally present—and nowhere; all—
and never something.
Leave me be, Edward! I cannot bear it any longer to partake of you.—
And yet I must bear it!
Listen then to what your long epistle at first reminded me of. It re-
minded me of another Edward, who once poured his heart to our
D**—you'll still well remember by what occasion.
"I certainly am as good-natured, as forgiving, as tolerant," so wrote the
fiery young man, "as I can be without ruining my own true character,
without inconsequence. [250] It seems to me that whoever is tolerant in
some other way than mine, misuses the reality and the word; he is not
tolerant, but unsteady in character, weak, and childish. A child is fasci-
nated by all things that make a favourable impression on his delicate
senses just for a moment; he does not distinguish or treasure them fur-
ther: at every hour something else is beautiful to him, and whatever sat-
isfies him at the moment, that is to him the most beautiful thing of all.
A man, on the contrary, distinguishes things by their own proper charac-
teristics; he orders them according to their use for his whole being, and
he knows how to call what is good and beautiful by its name.
"Everything possible, when considered from a certain angle, can be
seen in a bearable light; for nothing can be ugly and bad throughout.
But just as we say of distant bodies that we cognize them in their true
shape [251] only when we see them appearing to us in our vicinity, at
that distance-which I would call the sphere of touch, so too moral objects have
their appointed distance or sphere within which their various appear-
ances must be rectified and referred back to the permanent forms of the
objects. Whoever does not accept a determinate sphere of this sort for
himself immutably, but flits now in one, now in another, shifting horizon
at every instant, and everywhere at home—such a man can appear to be
an entirely good man for perhaps half his life; for the other half, however,
he will be sure to be all the more of a bad man. And never can he be a
worthy man; not for an instant a whole one."
Still to this D** the same Edward wrote: "The romantic vagaries of
your young Count are unbearable. A Claudius who wants to play
Brutus!62 [252] I can't say what I think of it to his mother, but I can to
you. So, a slouch who regularly plays his stupid or bad pranks every day
might get it into his head that the world is not good enough for him! Yet
he should put up with it, for given the constitution of the young master,
he is not nearly good enough for the world, and he may perhaps care to
see to it that he does not take a rough leave from it one of these days.
I feel like slapping them in the face when I see people come forth with
sublime intentions who don't ever demonstrate honest ones. And I am no
more satisfied with them if they accompany their beautiful dispositions
with so-called beautiful actions as well; for to one who has a soft heart
and a bit of fire in his blood, it's easier to do such things than to omit
them. But to avoid evill That requires forces of an another kind; for that
the whole man must pull himself together; he must often [253] exert
himself to the point of annihilation, only to discover at the end that
there was too little stock in the forces of his whole humanity.—Or again!
It is easy, very easy, to do various things that are good; and to do what's
great is always a pleasure: to remain without sin, without misdeed—oh,
how difficult that is! but also how sublimely above everything! What's the
most amazing acrobat compared to him who is imperturbable in
battle?—An admirable writer says somewhere: I have known nothing
worthy of praise which even the most ill-advised, thoroughly fallible, man
cannot at times rise up to—order, moderation, and constancy excepted."
I don't request of you, good Edward, to reconcile these excerpts with
the most salient passages of your latest letter to me. Who knows what you
accomplished? [254] I have such a high opinion of your philosophical
talents, that I credit you almost with the impossible. It is supposedly up
to your heart, alone, where the fullness of truth is. Indeed you trust your
heart in everything; I trust it too. So ask your heart, when did it feel at
its freest; where was it entirely in tune and flowed with your thoughts in
a like stream: Was it in the letters to D**, or in the one to me?
Dear, sincere—royal youth! Alas, so lowly degraded to ... to an anx-

ious, squinting sophist!
You will hardly remember a letter that you wrote to me one year and
a half ago; it was one of the first after you had left Vienna. I was very
tempted to copy it out in full; but read over at this point just the follow-
ing passages: "In the past days, at night before [255] falling asleep, or
early upon awakening, at every silent moment, whenever my Vienna stay
came to my mind, many faded remnants of the past acquired new life;
related things came together; everything bore heavily upon everything
else, it became more of a whole and more internalized—and for so
much, yes, so much, I sank now into a sour, deep affliction; then, sud-
denly, the question shot through my heart, like a poisoned arrow: What
is the meaning of all your moaning, your remorse, your lamentation? All
of it is only scorn! An unconquerable sense of frivolity, a vile disregard
lies too deep rooted in your blustering, ever-active nature. Whoever
knows you, does not trust you, does not love you!—Oh Lucy! it has al-
most brought me to confusion, this sense of myself, this wrangle in
me.—I would not want to tell you everything, even if I could."
How great, how lovely! At that time, how close my Edward to the best
of his species!—[256] Allwilll You did not grow any wiser, however; and
so you soon had to become only all the more of a fool, all the more un-
happy. It cannot be otherwise, for the reckless [108] intensity with which
you throw yourself in every direction, disperse yourself in so many ways,
must cause the most absurd confusion in your being, must bring it ever
closer to total derangement. With both your hands full, you always want
to grasp still more, and then you are unable either to take hold or to hold
on. And then every object of pleasure has to reproduce itself for you in
every other object still. You are exactly the man of whom you made fun,
who wants chestnuts from a pomegranate-tree, and pomegranates from a
chestnut-tree; the wanton harlot ought to possess also the charm, all the
virtues, the love of a pious maid; and the pious maid, for her part, should
have the base comforts, the whole foolishness, of the wanton harlot: and
if nothing of the sort materializes, then there is a compulsion, a need,
to doubt whether [257] this world could indeed have a God as its creator.
And that then is what being of one mind with nature ought to mean!
Allwilll You, of one mind with nature? You, who constantly undo the
most authentic ties of nature; you destroy true, pure relationships, in
order to put others in their place that are dreamed up and chimerical—
then you toil to shore up this wavering shadow, summoning all the magic
arts to your help; but since the sun goes on shifting it, you curse the
movement of the sun's blessing—you, of one mind with nature?
If only I knew something more against nature than that immoderate-

ness which multiplies needs and creates infinite lack, with its infinite
miseries—fear, pain, violence, deceit, cunning, and spite. Just a passing
glance at the world—what's there that so [258] spoils everything, that we
have to call it an evil world? Clearly, it is just this immoderateness, this
blind struggle for everything, these delicate operations on things to un-
bind form from material, effect from cause; to invent unnatural means
for unnatural needs. I know very well that it is fruitless to preach against
it; but to preach for it, to recommend the theory of immoderateness, of
vice, as the one and only philosophy of life, as the one and only path to
happiness, yes, to the highest excellence—that in my opinion would in-
deed be as non-sensical a beginning, and as evil, as could be imagined!
Yes, Edward, Theory of Immoderateness, Principles of the Most Extended
Gluttony, these are the proper names for what you endeavour with so
much zeal, with such great expenditure of wit, hair-splitting, and poetic
[259] ornamentation, to put in place of the old wisdom; and this not on
the advice of your heart, which is great and noble but of your sensuality
which, under the names of sentiment and feeling, you like so much to
mix with your heart to make them one—as every other man is more or
less inclined to do for that matter, nor can do otherwise. The feeling of
well-being is the cloud of light where hovers every good gift of Heaven
to us; but mist from swamp and graves is no cloud from heaven, though
it creeps up the hills, and seizes the sunlight.
But you can't distinguish between the two! Yet you are otherwise so
sharp at distinguishing anything beautiful, so limpid at sensing it!—Of
course; but your sensation of anything beautiful is also 50 lively, that every
impression coming from it intoxicates you, and robs you for its duration
of any other sense. Let there be but one drop of nectar on the rim of
the cup and, without noticing it, you gulp down the most horrible of
potions.
[260] A frightful vocation, to be this Edward Allwill! Unceasingly
shaken to the marrow, in so many different ways; and a multitude of
deep sorrows in the wake. You, poor thing!—It's amazing that you do
not finally crumble into ruins under the shocks, everything in you gone
to pieces; or that you do not smother under the rubble.
If I could just take every innocent creature far away from your spell!
Alas, how many unhappy ones you will make yet, whom you will frighten
out of their true vocation, and their natural relationship—whom you will
deprive of any bearing for their future life!—My good girl, I don't say
that he does not love you. He certainly does, with more truth perhaps
than any other man would love you. He loves exactly all that is truly to
be treasured in you; exactly that wherein your well tempered soul feels
the activity most appropriate to it, its very own bliss. It's true, isn't, that
you feel it, and this [261 ] assures you that he loves you truly, as you love
yourself, and as you love him; and you have a right to believe in him so—
his entire love is yours. But, poor child! Allwill never loves otherwise; he
is to his object always entirely, as tomorrow, perhaps, to honour, or to an
admirable man, or to an a r t . . . or perhaps to a new loved one.—See, this
Allwill—the wretched one! He must be a runaway without rest; his lot is
cursed upon the earth—but he is marked with the finger of God, that no man's
hand dare be laid upon him.—Edward, good Edward! don't you feel pity for
the poor creature? Spare, then! spare, spare!
But, of what help is my beseeching; of what help is any other beseech-
ing? Your senses, your desires are too powerful for you; and since they
hold such a comforting cover of deception over your beautiful fantasy,
you will never recognize them for what they are. Alas, the [262] needs of
your senses, the deceptions of your senses—believe me, Allwill—(fading
breath from my breast, come, gather yourself, that my voice may tremble
less, and its sickly tone reach him)—Allwill, there are murderersl—Now
from here, now from there, this sound will ring ever more ghastly in your
ears: Murderers]—Assassinsl
The very fact that so much mischief is being caused through you, such
unspeakable misery, should sufficiently lay bare the nothingness of your
system before your eyes, were there not a plot to make you blind to the
sight. Supposedly there is a whole multitude of glorious sentiments and
feelings that could not otherwise be come by and assembled together;
which make up, and with usury, for all evil; and this inner pleasure out-
weighs all its costs. I am reminded at this of what I have often heard you
say of knowledge. You compared the great masses of our studious ones to
people who industriously run about [263] here and there looking for
what they have not lost. I heartily laughed with you at the folly of such
a busy idleness, this purely aimless knowkdgeability without knowledge. But
tell me, dear Edward, is there anything better about the idle collecting
of sentiments, about the striving to sense. . . . sentiments, to feel . . . feel-
ings'? Isn't there a much more absurd sundering here than that which
occurs there in the case of knowledge? I believe that whoever is in fact
in possession of a great and beautiful soul, does not stop to sever in this
way the sentiments that his actions excite, the enrapturing feelings that
accompany them; he will never become conscious of them in such a
form that he can preserve them as representations, and serve himself up
an independent pleasure from the consideration of them. He does not

say: There is bliss in this sentiment, in this feeling, but, There is bliss
in this deed. And that, my dear, is what keeps the course of the noble
straight.
[264] A few months ago a venerable old man died by the name of
Wigand Erdig.63 He had made a respectable town out of that dismal
place at D* full of happy burgers. I don't believe that, outside his trade,
he knew much more than his catechism; but he understood his trade
well, he was accustomed to order, diligence, and moderation—to a
healthy reason; and thus he had daily grown more clever, skilful, indus-
trious, and enterprising. He now set up in D* a manufacture of fabric.
The progress of his undertaking suffered from innumerable obstacles;
but once he got himself into straits, he had to get out of them. One dif-
ficulty after another was overcome; and the man grew in courage and
wisdom. A few years went by, and there were five hundred families who
earned their daily bread through him. To make this possible, the neigh-
bouring farmer enlarged his house and made tracts of waste land arable;
fruit-yielding trees were planted, gardens laid out; the whole region was
filled and beautified. For all these [265] happy people the valley finally
became too restricted. Then they broke boulders away, and built step-
wise up alongside the mountains. One single man brought all of this to
pass, and without any other aim (in his consciousness) than to make his
trade flourish, to establish his house, and to bring a blessing on his de-
scendants. And that is just how he attained the attributes of a worthy
human nature. The cleverness and irreproachable manner of his con-
duct gained such prestige for him in the eyes of his co-burgers, that they
let him rule over them like a father. His judgment, the light of his con-
science, carried more weight with them than any book of laws. In his final
years, whenever the old Erdig crossed the street, the people came to the
front of their houses, and whoever came face to face with him stepped
aside in order to greet him with due reverence. One has to see the peo-
ple when they tell how the revered old man would slowly move along,
bowing his luminous head in friendship towards each, and how all
the good that he did for them floods back to them.—Not [266] tears,
but something else comes to their eyes and expands all over their faces
—the promise of eternal life: he is with God!—Allwill! this radiance of
holiness—do you know anything of it?
The butterfly philosophy of people like you would gladly see anything
called "form" banished. Everything ought to happen freehand; the
human soul ought to build itself up into everything good and beau-
tiful—by itself; and you people do not stop to think that the human
character is like a liquid matter that cannot have shape and permanence ex-
cept in a receptacle; and so it never once comes into your heads to con-
sider that pure water in a glass is of more use than nectar poured on mud.
I can give up all moral systems to you, considered as form imparting
actual bearing, and I am ready to do this because I, for my part, [267]
only rely on the whole humanity of a man, and put little trust in the wis-
dom and virtue that is only inside him and [theory] to him. But to the
humanity of each and every man there belong principles, and a certain co-
hesion of principles; and it is therefore plain nonsense to speak of this
as of something that can be dispensed with. Of what use are experiences
if their comparison does not bring about steadfastconcepts and judg-
ments; and how could one deal with man, if one could not rely on the
effectiveness of his concepts and judgments? And it is so universally as-
sumed that acting according to principles is the most peculiar advantage
of mankind, that the agent's degree of facility in this respect determines
the degree of our esteem or contempt. We praise him in whom feeling
holds the scales for his sensations, and thought, for his feelings.
Therefore it is not wisdom's will to diminish our feelings, or to weaken
them; its will is only to purify [268] them; and then to elevate thought
to the vivacity of feeling: thus to sharpen, enlarge, sentiment in general.
I know that many times, inspired by a higher idea, you have repressed
intense desires, and have overpowered passions. Have you ever felt more
blissful than in such instants; were you ever more joyful, more trium-
phant? There is nothing you fancy more than that certain ideas have
such a hold on you, that nothing that happens could for an instant sway
your faith in them, though sense and imagination may offer you all sorts
of prospects. Noble pride could never have any other source. Sublimity
of character derives every time from an enthusiastic idea. When Porcia
wanted to convince Brutus that her soul was capable of accompanying
his in all its undertakings, she knew of no better means than to give him
visible proof that sense impressions had no power over her.64
[269] Suppose we come down from the ethos of heroes to what is ap-
proved in our own day? We see everywhere that whatever gives proof of
the superior power of thought over the impulses of the senses is most highly es-
teemed. However different the life-styles, however manifold and variable
the customs, this feeling shows up clearly everywhere; and it truly lies at
the basis of all our judgments about what is decent or indecent, not only
in regard to actions and words, but also to tone, demeanour, and atti-
tudes. Where thought appears to abandon man; where he is under the
total control of impulse; wherever he even lets impulse gain the upper
hand and exposes himself just to the danger of being overpowered by it—
that is where we feel the lack of decency.
What you say at the beginning of your letter about the contradictory
appearances in man, where his wisdom becomes to him foolishness and
foolishness in turn wisdom, speaks precisely in favour of principles. [270]
We ought to believe that the very pattern of the appearances that makes
that sort of comment such easy play for you, offers you a form and matter
for them; that it must also force upon you the conviction that a. firm doc-
trine of what is worthy of respect is indispensable to man—rules of con-
duct that are inviolable. What else can make him secure in his doings?
depict him as a reliable man?—Without it he would be lost on every path
of life.
Setting aside the admitted fickleness of the human heart, and assum-
ing that your heart is so constituted as to lead you always- straight, but
only in a way that often runs counter the said universal order: still your
character would have to become depraved. It could not be otherwise, for
you are attacking the very same laws that, as our common sense declares
without qualification would well-nigh all stand in your way, inhibit your
[271] efforts, cause for you (unknowingly or with intention) the most
extreme torture. In brief, every man's hand would rise against you.
Disgust, affliction, and spite would seize your soul. Force alone would
not pull you through. And so, to rescue your sublimelife, you would have
to appeal for help to cunning, dissemblance, and deceit; you would have
to travel but the crooked way: this would necessarily tear you apart—and
so, deep in terror, you would soon have to curse yourself and the world.
Base boasting, that your heart beats ever more freely! It cannot beat
free so long as it has mysteries of outrage and shame to conceal; so long
as it has to convulse before the eye of the blameless—choke in its blood
in the air of the pure—so that your brow alone remains pale whenever
he, the blameless and pure, designates the things of darkness by their
name, and in your feelings you realize that it is of your deeds that he
speaks.
[272] Allwill! I shudder at how, many a time, I saw you tremble, melt
away, in confusion to the point of powerlessness over the unintentional
words of a fool, or a child; over the pranks of a street-urchin, the abusive
talk of a drunk.
But I guess you have now removed weaknesses of this sort from you.
There is a passage in your letter, where you consider the ambiguity of all
virtues, which shows that you are at least assiduously working at it. I won't
disturb you, Edward. Still, as a recreation, let me tell you first what I
chanced to read in my good Montaigne yesterday, and then an anecdote
that I know.
The faithful Montaigne relates that no one had ever been able to
prevail upon him to consent to something bad, even for King and coun-
try.65 He believed that once he became untrue to himself, after that he
would [273] easily become untrue to the state as well. If it is humanly im-
possible to be of help, one must leave a thing up to God; and what is
more impossible than that a righteous man should forsake fidelity and
a faith"?
What is less likely to happen than what a man of honour could only bring
about at the expense of honour and fidelity?
Then he refers, among others, to Epaminondas, the most admirable
among men, for whom every single duty stood in such high respect that
he never forced a vanquished enemy to the ground in battle. He had
qualms of conscience slaying a tyrant or his associates without the formal
sanction of justice, even though it was for a good beyond measure,
namely to obtain freedom for his country.66 And however good a citizen
he might be, he considered a man to be bad, if among his enemies and
in battle he did not spare his [274] friend and benefactor.—"He comes,
awesome in his weapons, and sprinkled with blood, and he crushes an
invincible people, one that only he can defeat. But in the midst of the
hand-to-hand combat he meets his house-guest, and steps to the
side. . . . To combine anything of justice with the frenzy of war is a mir-
acle all by itself; but only the firmness of an Epaminondas made it pos-
sible to join the gentility of a composed behaviour and the most
unalloyed innocence with that frenzy! . . . If the disregarding of friend-
ship, private obligations, promise, and kin, for the sake of the universal
good or out of obedience to authority, is a sign of greatness of courage,
or the effect of extraordinary virtue, then it is fair enough for us to say
that a greatness of this sort was not one that found a place in the soul
of Epaminondas."67
Now, to the anecdote. You know Augusta von G**, that faithful, un-
blemished soul, [275] whose uniqueness is that she only has concepts of
the good and the true; she has no sense or mood except in them. A
wicked coquette seduced her husband. Augusta, having no malice in
her, noticed nothing for a long time. But since G** was forced to tell her
many untruths, and each one begat further lies without number, the
dear wife was finally forced to notice that she had been duped. Now, it
so happened that one day, in the presence of her husband, two quite
striking deceptions were uncovered at the same time. You can imagine
G**'s situation. Hardly had the door closed behind the friend who had
unwittingly brought the affair to light, before Augusta began: "Hear me
out, Max. This is what you told me about that thing, and this about that
other; and now I hear something entirely different. I have been noticing
for some time that you often tell me untruths—If you only knew how
much that grieves me!"—I admit it, replied G**; but it's not my fault;
[276] if one allows oneself impudent questions, one drives the other to
lie.—Dear God, said Augusta in an affectionate lament: If I only knew
what I must not ask; I would certainly like not to ask any such thing, and
then you would never need to lie.
Do you know of any lie, Edward, that could be accounted equal, in its
power for good or even in its sublimity, with this innocent prayer of my
dear Augusta for truth?
Innocence, Edward! dear Edward, innocence, innocencel Thus I began,
so I must end.—The sweet, pure, eternal bliss of innocence—that is what
you are seeking too, Edward: but, alas, you are seeking it on the path of
obduracy!
Dear maid, what's your name? Where are you? Hurry! Hurry, my
friend, that [277] his glance may find you, meet you, and that yours may
fasten on him! Love can perhaps save him—it can perhaps be the first
to arouse the taste for pureness and innocence in his heart once more.
Oh, do come! come and ignite in his eye the ray that will gather his vi-
sion, so that he will cease to gape about carelessly, and his eye will be-
come a light unto him. Fill his breast with forebodings of that bliss that
admits of no substitute, so that he will come down to earth and learn to
experience what is life, and what is joy!
Oh, the day when I still believed it was my vocation to awaken your
being to love, to sanctify it through love!
Edward, for your sake I could have tolerated everything, or dispensed
with everything!
[278] But there came the moment when I felt that I would one day
have to despise you. A profound horror took hold of me, and I escaped.
I had escaped—but back I came, my face covered. All my love for you
had been transformed into anxious care. I came back still veiled, with all
my love, never to abandon you.
It will be said that I am given to enthusiasm; that I die of too much
imagination.—Oh yes!—If you were just to come to my grave with the
maid I summoned to you, Edward—with the maid who should renew
your being, attune your senses again to the joys of mankind! You would
then always want one thing only, the most precious of all, and loathe every-
thing else: you would enjoy this most precious, lovable, thing with all your
force, and therefore deem a loss the enjoyment of any thing inferior that
was like it.
[279] Yes, Edward, do come to my grave with the maid, and kiss there
the heavenly, eternally new, kiss of fidelity.—Come, but quick!
There is this difference between love and the sun—that to those who have eyes
the sun shows the ugly as well as the beautiful on earth, whereas love is but the
light of beautiful things.
Plutarque68
. . . . [for] the Divine will not mingle directly with the human, and it is only
through the mediation of the spirit world [daimon] that man can have familiar-
ity and dialogue with the gods. . . .
Diotima69
[280] [281] ADDITION
To Erhard O**
Indeed, what is more true than that no one ought to be so foolishly proud as to
think that, though reason and intellect exist in himself, they do not exist in the
heavens and the universe, or that those things which can hardly be understood
by the highest reasoning powers of the human intellect are guided by no reason
at all? In truth the man that is not driven to gratitude by the orderly courses of
the stars, the regular alternation of day and night, the gentle progress of the sea-
sons, and the produce of the earth brought forth for our sustenance—how can
such an one be accounted as man at all?
Cicero, de legibus, n.y 70
[282] Socrates: Then you are willing that we should assent to what earlier think-
ers agree upon that this is the truth? And ought we not merely to think fit to rec-
ord the opinions of other people without any risk to ourselves, but to participate
in the risk and take our share of censure when some clever person asserts that
the world is not as we describe it (i.e. governed by reason and a wondrous regu-
lating intelligence) but devoid of order?
Plato, Phikbus, Vol. n [sic, in fact Vol. in], p. 28[e-2ga];
Ed. Bipont., Vol. iv, p. 244[~45].7'
[283]] January 28, 1791

Do you call that insulting, and are you angry because I called you, laugh-
ingly, an antediluvian'? Yet once you laughed with me—you seemed to
like being numbered among the giants, among those stolid, resilient,
men whom no avenging spirit could strike with weal or boil; among
those fortunate ones, who were always of good spirits, who wooed every-
one, and allowed themselves to be wooed by everyone, making fun of the
fretful Noah,72 until he packed up and went off with his floating hulk,
away from it all.
Have you now become an enemy of your stout-hearted, unslavish an-
cestors? Are you no longer the stolid, perfectly resilient man? [284] No
longer in good spirits, always and everywhere?—Far from it, says your
whole letter! You are what you were in a still higher degree; and, simple
justice requires that, as you grow in your being, so should my love for you
also reach ever greater heights.
Have you sensed a diminution in my friendship? Do I honour you less
than before? do I judge or esteem you differently?
Nature endowed you with extraordinary spiritual gifts; it gave you a
bright mind of inestimable value; geniality, fellowship, noble industry
and radiant confidence. This I loved in you; this I will love and respect
in you as long as I breathe.
I don't love in you, nor can I love in you, what you do not have—what
on several occasions I was supposed to define for you, [285] but could
not, and, because it was undefined, your swollen head scorned and de-
rided it as mere poverty of soul. You lack inwardness, a more profound
consciousness of the whole of man, a special faculty that follows from this
more profound consciousness—a self-nourishing and strengthening sense,
and spirit, that flourishes within its self. You lack that quiet concentration
which I (forgive me!) must call devotion: that festive silence of the soul
before its self and before nature; the steady drawing in of the beautiful
and the good that makes for a deeper life, and hence for independent
greatness. You lack . . . yes, what you lack is an echo in the mid-point of
your being, one that can never be silenced, and that gradually fashions
a second and better soul.
Listen to me, Erhard!—I say this with you: "A sharp sense and an
always cheerful confidence: if a man can bestow this much upon himself,
he has given himself the highest."—[286] Yes, truth manifests itself in
joy; in joy, life manifests itself. The great and serious meaning of truth and
life is concealed along with joy in the striving which does not know itself
or its object to begin with, but through joy it rings out in our breast like
a living word; it permeates every nature that acts on its own and controls
its own advance in formation—a eureka, of which the testimonial is: "As
truly as I live, so truly I am!"
Do you have joy, Erhard? You, devotee of the transitory, of the form-
less, and of death?
You make fun of my hopes, of my struggle for a secure conviction
which I, beforehand, call truth and cognition. You would rather call a
quest of this sort a treasure-hunt. You ask, and again you ask, lest I neg-
lect to ask myself, What is truth?—And you feel so complacent with this
question! You rest so peacefully in the womb of your [287] Deity—of
that eternally devouring and eternally ruminating monster which ap-
peared to Werther,73 just as his evil genius once appeared to Brutus.
"Thou shall see me at Philippil'"74 —And at Philippi the hero gave up his
spirit with the words: "Virtue, thou are but an empty namel"175
That, she is not! You too, Erhard, call out with noble indignation:
That, she is not! But then, let me struggle for truth too, hunt for my trea-
sure, and not despair of the discovery.
Illusion and shadows encompass us all around. We are not even cog-
nizant of the essence of our own existence. We imprint our image on
everything, and this image is a fluctuating shape; the "I" that we call our
self, an equivocal birth from the "all" and the "nothing"; one's own soul,
only an appearance. . . . Yet, an appearance that approaches the essen-
tial! [288] Self-activity and life manifest themselves in it immediately.*19

Hence the soul's pure feeling is to us substance, the prototype of the being
of all; its pure sensing,* is the power that fashions^ everything; its pure
striving is the heart of nature. Thus a living, seeing, ordering, determin-
ing, spirit fills the infinite. Absorbed in this vision, the amazed searcher
resembles that ruler of Assyria who knew only that there lay in him a dream
in his soull A dream he was in no position to ordain, much less to
interpret.*20
[289] Shall someone wiser perhaps interpret it then?—By grounding
what is living on the non-living, what is rational on the irrational, the
moral on the animal. Truly, that would mean asking the dead more fool-
ishly than any superstition has ever yet tried to do anywhere!
Milton was rebuked for speaking of a visible darkness, since "darkness
visible" cannot be thought.*21 It happened to this seer as to all seers:
their explanation and justification is reserved for the fullness of time.
Milton prophesied of the wisdom of the present age which, dauntless,
has forced its way through the moon-shadows and the twilights of error
and illusion to the material night and visible darkness of a positive non-
knowledge.*22 [290] There was a time when behind every error one ex-
pected a truth, and one strained only for the stolen light. But, it is said,
that very faith in the truth was the most serious error. Another star—the
star of a rapturous non-light—beckons to us; it beckons us, perhaps, to
the barren jubilation of the golden wedding feast of Erebus with the
Night, without the offspring of a new heaven and a new earth.*23
*ig. "The soul has not the power of itself to see itself, but, like the eye, the
soul, though it does not see itself, yet discerns other things. But it does not see,
what is a matter of very little moment, its own shape,—and yet possibly it may do that
too. . . . "Cicero, Tusc. Qucest., 1.28 [«c].3
*2O. Daniel, n.
*2i. Paradise Lost, i, 62.
*22. * "The opinion of the Academics and Epicureans were of a less religious
cast (than those of the Stoics and Platonists); but [290] whilst the modest science
of the former induced them to doubt, the positive ignorance of the latter urged
them to deny, the providence of a supreme Ruler."4
*23- The ether and the air came forth from the night, which had given herself
in marriage to Erebus. This, according to the most ancient mythology, was the
beginning of things.5
* Sinnen
t bilden
l Note omitted in the 1812 edition
Just as I finished writing these last lines, the latest issues of the journal
of the great Capital City,76 now the freest of them all, [291] were brought
to me. The number fourteen lay on top, and my eye fell on these words:
"No more illusion since Locke; from now on, whatever is to last must be
grounded on the eternal rocks of nature which the rigorous demonstra-
tions of reason have, so to speak, laid bare." (". . . en quelque sorte mis a
nudpar les demonstrations rigoureuses de la rawow").77
Bare rocks, to be sure! But are they eternal rocks of nature? Their true
name is presumption* and pretension^— nothing but plain, bare, egoism.
And it is true that this egoism, once it stands naked in its own presence
without grief or shame, at least no longer makes a show of virtue. But it
must still put on a show for all its brazenness, so as to deceive. It must de-
ceive; and it must roam beyond all bounds, so as to forge a life for itself.
[292] It must deceive others as well as itself and ever more delude them,
so as not to die of disgust at itself. Yes, a new heaven and a new earth —
the heaven below, and the earth abovel Your gifts and your promises all
converge into one general state of contentedness which is called happi-
ness; the pure and fulfilled happiness of mortal man. First, therefore, away
with honour, and let regard for the useful alone step into the place of that
foolish one. Away with love, for it is a weakness in all its forms; and let
correct insight into the order of advantages be extolled over it. Away with
faith, promise and trust, for their being depends on a lack of visible ev-
idence, which is the root of all evil. To the pit, all ye offspring of guile! *24
*24- * I would not like because of these statements to be associated even for
a moment with certain opponents of the French revolution, inside or outside of
France, [293] whose political opinions are directly opposite mine, as all my writ-
ings demonstrate without exception, or better still, the history of my life.—Bellum
est in eos qui judiciis coerceri non possuntl§ This saying abides eternally true; and I
quite frankly confess that Cromwell and his assortment of fanatics fill me less with
indignation—they make my heart better disposed towards humanity—than his
royal successor and all his cavortings, his intrigues, his Masses and remissions of
sins. Cromwell was actually motivated by ideas, and his self-interest was only part
of the common good that was uppermost in his mind. His royal successor only an-
swered to himself instead; he hated anything communal, and smiled with loathsome
scorn at every crime that his will, arbitrary and absolute, committed him to.—
* Selbstsucht
t Scheinsucht
I Note omitted in the 1812 edition
§ Warfare is for those who cannot be constrained by judgments!
[293] Away I fly, and kiss the earth that has been swept away from the
sublime mountain range. I want to retain faith, and love, and shame, and
awe, and humility—retain [294] eternity deep in the eye; earnestness
and festive excitation deep in the breast; intimations in the spirit high
and ever higher; the full and actual enjoyment of things invisible in the
soul.
Oh, the wretched pride that would trample under its feet all that it de-
spises as affairs of fleeting feeling, or as the insubstantial deceptions of
a mean soul. Disclose to us the sanctum sanctorum of your one—the
Unchanging, the Autonomous, the Actual; the True, and Worthy, and
Good in itself!—On its veil is writ: the One and Only Reasonl—So be it!
Since there is reason at all, there must also be a pure reason, a perfection
of life. All other reason is but an appearance or reflection of it. [295] And
this reason certainly is the One and Only in the strictest sense. . . . Hen
kai pan!*—But alas, for man's intuition it is also: ouden kai panta! +
Not so behind the veil—I know that! But I only stand in front of it. And
there I say to you, who also stands next to me only in front of it: As little
as infinite space can determine the particular nature of any one body,
so little can the pure reason of man constitute with its will (which is evenly
good everywhere since it is one and the same in all men) the foundation
of a particular, differentiated life, or impart to the actual person its proper
individual value. What produces the manner of sensing* that is someone's
peculiarity, someone's peculiar permanent taste—that inscrutable energy
which, acting all by itself, determines its own object, comprehends it,
holds it fast. . . . supposes a person . . . and in particular it constitutes the
mystery of the [296] slavery and the freedom of each and everyone—
that's what decides. It decides and resides in the faculty, not of syllogism
(which can be compared to the faculty of only one half of a pair of scis-
sors or pliers) but of sense-dispositions;^ in the faculty of an unalterable
affect that triumphs over all passions. If I rely on the word of a man who
goes by such and such a name, I don't take his pure reason into account
Solomon, a king and a wise man, [294] says in the Preacher, one of the canonical
Books: "It is a disaster what I saw under the sun, the lack of understanding, which
is common among the rulers."6
* One and All

t Nothing and all things
t Sinnesart
§ Gesinnungen
thereby, any more than I do the movement of his lips or the sound from
his mouth. I trust the word for the sake of the man, and the man for his
own sake. What gives me assurance in him is his manner of sensing, his
taste, his mind and character. I base my bond with him on the bond that
he has established with himself, and in virtue of which he is who he shall
be. I believe in the invisible word which is deeply hidden in his heart, and
which he wills to give and can give. I put my trust in a secret force in him
which is stronger than death.
[297] Moreover, since any opinion can become for man dearer than
his life,*25 the authority of concepts in general is thereby so clearly man-
ifested as expression of an overpowering energy of rational nature (not of
the ens rationis called "reason"), that only a fool can deny it. And how
could its authority not be the highest, how could the concept not be
mightier than the sense-reception,* since our temporal existence, put to-
gether from past, present, and future, possesses self-control only in the
concept? Whatever lives in time must first generate its present conscious-
ness, ^ its temporal life, acting alone within itself through combination.
Hence the/orm of life, and the drive for life, and the life itself, are in [298]
actuality only one. The object of the unconditional drive, which we call the
fundamental drive, is immediately the form of the being whose drive or ef-
ficient faculty it is. To retain this form in existence, to express oneself in
it, is its unconditional goal and the principle of all self-determination in
the creature, so that no being can propose a goal for itself except in vir-
tue of, and in conformity with, its drive. In general, drives refer to need.
Everything alive in nature moves with purpose, that is, according to rela-
tions of needs. The first ground of these relations, and the manner of
their origin, is inexplicable, and hence we can just as little explain the
drive on the basis of the need, as the need on the basis of the drive—we
can just as little say that drive determines need, as vice versa. The first be-
ginning of both lies outside them, and it is a common beginning. We only
cognize the business of the drive—[299] to preserve a certain cohesion,
to promote it and enlarge it—and we cognize it indeed as necessary, for a
*25- "Every opinion is strong enough to gain endorsement at the price of

life," thus says Montaigne in Chapter XL of the First Book of his Essays, and he
does not fail in proofs.7
* Sinnesempfindung
t "Its present consciousness" is omitted in the 1812 edition.
finite being not in combination and self-combination (inward and out-

ward) is a non-thing. TOTUM PARTE PRIUS ESSE, N E C E S S E EST.* 78
But can the nothing too have or take on a form, and be or become
something thereby? Is it possible to think a form which would be just
form—an efficacy whose one, single, pure aim, that is, empty aim, would
have no therefrom and no thereto'?
No drive, no matter how much one considers it just on its own, intends
only its own free efficacy. Its essence is relationship: it wants satisfaction,
The drive of rational nature for the true and good in itself is a drive
for an existence in itself, for a perfect life, a self-directed life; it is a demand
for [300] independence, self-sufficiency,^ freedom!—But in so dark an
intimation only—so darkl
For where is existence in itself, life in itself? where is freedom? Truly,
only beyond nature! It is evident that within nature everything exists in-
finitely more in an other than in itself, and freedom is only in death!
Yet we know that there is something, and was, and shall be—an author
of that activity in us which is ungenerated according to nature, of the kernel
of our existence, wondrously girt in transience—sunk into it, a seed diat
shall sprout. Eternal life is the essence of the soul, and therefore its un-
conditional drive. Whence then came death for it? Not from the Father of
Life and of everything good, who moulded his own heart and his own
will in the innermost of our hearts, and could not have moulded any-
thing else in it.
[301] Plato writes to Dionysius: "Animi praestantissimi haec ita se ha-
bere divinant, deterrimi autem contra. Sed majores fidei sunt divinorum
virorum praesagia, quam aliorum. *
,. I)*2fi
It is not a bare cliff, but a living fortress that forces its way out of the
bowels of the earth, rising above the clouds; an altar to the eternal,
around which all the peoples have assembled from time immemorial:
conscience, religion.
Are these just phantoms, Erhard?
"Who will be so impudent," I read in your letter, "as to deny phan-
toms?" "They appear as surely as there is moonlight, the glow of the lan-
tern, a half-awakening from dreams, an active fantasy. Even he can still
see them, who is already in possession of the theory of their appear-
*26. Plato, Ep. n, Ed. Bipont., Vol. xi [1787], p. 66.8
* The whole is necessarily prior to its parts.

t "subsistence" in 1812 edition.
ances; [302] he can even still be frightened by them. He will only not
seek their company now; still less prefer it to the company of actual
things; least of all, however, aspire to become the likes of them."
What you tell me is serious, my dear Erhard. For if I understand you
correctly, you are capable of stripping away all appearances, and of con-
sidering the actual alone, in itself. I have often exercised myself to the
point of despair in an attempt of this sort, and each time I have only
come away from it with a new riddle, the riddle of my incurable non-
knowledge. If man could forego his claims to actual existence, to free-
dom and cognition, I would have long since given up mine, in the course
of all the stubborn negative answers that have come my way from nature,
from history, from my reason, my will, my heart and consciousness. The
more we learn, the less we comprehend—and the more we stand per-
plexed, poised between heaven and earth—all the more at a loss within
ourselves! . . . Or perhaps we have enough, and all that we need, in one
all-powerful stopgap—and in yet another—and another still. . . .—
which are it and yet are not; might indeed be it, yet might not be it at all;
which do not fulfil and support us, but only do so to one another,
reciprocally?—Have we in fact?. . . .* Yet in the search for my self I van-
ish before my self, [303] as nothing else does before it; I become a noth-
ing before my self, as nothing else does before it! Before my very self!
this self that I nevertheless feel more, and more intimately, than anything
else!
Consider also the middle point of human reason, where alone reason
finds its support, around which alone it moves, thinks, invents,
endeavours—I mean the idea of a Something Unconditioned, Something Self-
subsistent (something that alone can be the beginning and end of all
things in a strict sense). As soon as man wants to define this idea, to
mould it into the representation of a being. . . . See, how the idea is dis-
torted before him into an unfounded non-thing, and how dreadfully
shaken is the reason that rests upon it.
Unity and combination; combination and unity: we seek what's pur-
poseful, we see it and feel it. Its concept is the beginning, middle, and end
of all our [304] searching!—And yet there is nothing that we are less ca-
pable of exploring than a combination of ends.*27 The more we learn,
*27- . . . of all needs together, their relations and harmonious satisfaction.
* From here until "And do you even understand' on p. 304 is omitted in the 1812 edition.
the less we comprehend—the more affected do we stand there, between

heaven and earth; and the more embarrassed within ourselves! . . . Or
do we perhaps find enough, all that we need, in one omnipotent
STOPGAP, and then in another, and another still . . . ?—stopgaps that
are all that we need and yet are not; that might be all that we need, yet
are not quite it; that don't fulfil or support us, but do so only for one an-
other? Do we really find enough in them? "And do you even understand
what you read?"
A structure of bones is the foundation of the human shape, of its
beauty, its regal countenance. If however it stands [305] there without
content or cover, it means Death which, no less than the Night, is
Everyman's friend. But neither is what comes first a hideous skeleton.
Something moved and stirred—something alive in something alive. The begin-
ning was a desire that worked with fury, without understanding itself—
the gift of prophecy!*28
[306] Enough, Erhard. I aw just as unknowing, just as entirely
unknowing, as I say to you. Unknowing to such an extent that [307] I
can well look down upon the mere doubter!—Still, far be it from me that
*28. Plato calls it, in a somewhat more mystical way, remembering.

Plato remarks that as hungry, i.e. in so far as he strives for repletion, the hun-
gry man senses the opposite state that he is actually in. One who is starved can
sense only pain, only the present break-down of his body. He cannot sense what
would restore it—he cannot have any longing for food—unless the experience
that his pain is stilled through food intervenes first. Desire however scents for its
object. It seeks and finds it first [306] prior to all experience. It is aware of some-
thing not to be found in the subject of its perception. Hence desire sees further
than a sensation can reach; it has a glimpse of what an opposite sensation would
bring about to save a being threatened by destruction.
This physician, this counsellor and helper, is the very force thatjoins and holds
together the finite and infinite in each individual being according to its right
measure. It is the soul. It cannot derive the knowledge that it gives proof of from
its body, whose existence and life it causes instead—nor from the experiences
that it has in communion with it. For the knowledge came before the experi-
ences and made them possible in the first place. But since it must be thought as
prior, it appears in the present state as a [307] second sense.* And this sense
through which the soul, acting alone, reflectively collects what occurred in the
past, we call "memory." See the Phikbus.g
* Besinnung
I should boast of this rapturous unknowing, mistake it for the truth,

whose promise I carry in my breast; or, drunk with pride, consecrate
temple and altar to it, thus perpetrating the most senseless of all idola-
tries. Rather, consciousness of it casts me down in humility* to the point
of a dejection^ which is indeed incompatible with disdain, but yet might
well say to the laughter of complacent knowers and nonknowers: "You
are mad!" and to their rejoicing: "What are you doing?"
To lead non-knowledge to battle against insolence and lie, and keep
truth in reserve—like Socrates: the great one, rich in intimations—that's
great! [308] But it is not a great thing to take notice of the truth of all
truths: there is no truth. The whole man must have become shallow and
stale, if he can say to himself and yet remain in good spirits: I am noth-
ing; I know nothing; I believe nothing.
There is only so much good in man, only up to a point is he worth any-
thing to himself and to others: according to his capacity for intimation
and faith. It belongs to the nature of a finite being—that is, one who cog-
nizes by the senses, only mediately—that truth, genuine existence and life,
can no more be entirely displayed to him, than it can be entirely hidden.
Faith is sympathy for actuality, life, and truth that are invisible. The more
one shows a sense for the invisible in nature and in man; the more ef-
fectively and actively one demonstrates oneself to be because of the in-
visible in him, the more admirable must we esteem him, and in general
we do esteem him so. Strange, that [309] we should be so pleased,
one and all, to be able to attain to the rapturous, and the wondrous in
our science, art, or in any other occupation, so as to be honoured and
loved for that. . . but not comprehended! Strange, that we too should hon-
our and love others to the same extent, but that we should then suddenly
turn away, and only esteem worth the trouble of fixing our eyes on those
things that can be established theoretically, that to some extent can be
copied and thus grasped with one's hands.
A dark mystery weighs just as heavily upon us all: the mystery of non-
being, of existence through impermanence, of ability together with and
through plain inability—the mystery of the finite. The infinite seems to be
the material; finitude is the form of things. Thus—if the concepts of fin-
itude and non-being converge—non-being would be possibility; non-being
would be the first cause of nature and its content!
* demiitigt
t Schwermut
[310] Plato declares himself in a remarkable way on this subject. In

the progression of things, he boldly assigns the lowest place to the infi-
nite ; the highest, to measure, which unites the finite with the infinite and
gives birth to actual things first. He presupposes a God, who is a spirit, a
discerning personal being, as the author—through the perfection of his
will—of all things.*29
*2Q. In the Philebus. By the "infinite" Plato understands the "indeterminate,"

which can only be thought in an image of the "more" and the "less"; as some-
thing actual in itself, however, it can never be represented.
To this infinite he opposes, not the finite, but the Eternal, the Sole True and
Actual through which all things are and are known—to the extent that they can
be known and possess an actual existence.
[311] The finite stands in the middle, between the infinite and the eternal, the
true and the untrue, being and non-being.
Hence, in the progression of beings, measure must be posited as the highest
and first—an ungenerated source of determination which is determined in and through
itself.
As the second, equal measure or proportion, which preserves the generated finite
in existence; the proportionate mixture: beauty, perfection.
As the third: cognition. In the order of beings cognition justly stands after its ob-
ject, and after its aim, for a cognition of nothing and/or nothing would be no cog-
nition. Its value is above all the value of its content; its degree, the [312] degree
of the truth of which it is the representation.
As the fourth: theory and art.
As the fifth and last: pleasing sensation. This receives the lowest place because
it does not have either beginning, or middle, or end on its own, but gets all of
this from the purpose whose generation it accompanies, and it is only the sign of
its fulfilment. The joy that is neither transient nor passive, and hence is not compre-
hended under this genus, is produced by the understanding itself which is a kind
of first cause, as an indispensable admixture of cognition and virtue to the satis-
faction of both. Hence this joy belongs to the nature of the Eternal.
Plato lets Socrates conclude these discussions with the following words: [313]
"The first place is not therefore due to pleasure—even if the oxen, and the
horses, and the rest of the animals, were all to say together that they pursue grat-
ification. It is on these animals that most people rely, just as on soothsayers, for
their judgment that pleasure is for us what's most preferable in life, and they
hold the pleasures of animals for more authoritative witnesses than the dis-
courses of those who prophesy with the Muse of philosophy."10
[311] But how could the temporal have been generated from the eter-
nal? humanly speaking, what [312] possible relation between the two
can be thought? No philosophy fills this gap, [313] and to get across it
one needs a bridge—or else wings.
Is it too hard to see that with one's feet one can only walk on the
earth—not soar with them above the clouds?
What I am able to discover with my eyes—only with the eyes, and only
just with them—what I am not able to grasp with my hands, or [314] take
possession of with my feet—this binds my understanding in the follow-
ing way.
Transient being cannot be the soul of nature anymore than eternity can
be produced, displayed, or filled through time. The living cannot be just
a modification of the non-living; nor rational existence only an accident
of restrictions, an empty form and null appearance. Therefore, my rea-
son commands me to believe in an Eternal which is not just an infinitude
of appearances, a make-shift of the impotent fantasy, but is in fact the
First and the Beginning. Believe in a Life in itself, which is the Good and the
Truth itself—in an all-powerful God, who is a spirit and your Creator.
Did he make me with his hands, this Spirit and God"?
[315] Reason answers the question put in this way with a firm Yesl For
here, where every attempt to come closer to actual insight through
analogies—even that which remains furthest off—comes up against
error, an obstinate anthropomorphism is the form of expression that
reason loves best because it is openly symbolic. For it cannot ever be
Reason's wish to assimilate opposite forms of efficacy to each other.
I never was able to understand how a mechanistic representation of cre-
ation, i.e. of the possibility of the universe, should be more rational, more
sublime, or closer to the highest being that, in one way or other, we are
all compelled to presuppose, than an anthropomorphic one. Faith in a
highest being in general, as the source of all being and becoming; and
faith in a God who is a Spirit, are both given to man in the inexplicable
fact of his spontaneity and freedom, without which not even [316]
Euclid's first postulate can be thought. Therefore the general faith in a
God is natural to man; and the faith in a living God is the most natural.
The cogitator who has lost touch with it must first have cut himself off
violently from nature and his own being, through the most wanton mis-
use of the faculty of arbitrary designation, this two-edged sword of truth and
falsehood; he must have seized his life by the root so to speak, in order
to throw it from him.
If I am to say it, may I at the end say it loudly that as I see it the history
of philosophy has unfolded like a drama in which reason and language

play the erring brothers in the old comedy*30 —and the longer it has
gone on, the more true this is.
[317] Does this extraordinary drama have a catastrophe, an outcome,
or is it only a string of ever new episodes?
A man whom everyone with eyes now calls great, and who already stood
there, in his greatness, twenty-five years ago, but in a vale where the mul-
titude passed him over as they looked up at the lofty and adorned
stages—this man seemed to have explored the tangled course of the
piece, and to have seen the end of it.*31 Several claim that this end has
already been found, and is known. Perhaps they are right. . . . And all
that's lacking is a critique of language which would be a metacritique
of [318] reason, in order for us all to be of one mind* concerning
metaphysics.
I can just see you open your eyes wide, as if I wrote strange things.
Leave it at that, and fare thee well!
F. H. Jacobi
*30. See the play by this name in Plautus, or in Regnard, or in Shakespeare;

in this last the Menaechmae are called Errors. 11
*31. See Kant's Enquiry concerning the Clarity of the Principles of Natural Theology
and Morality, in Answer to the Question Posed by the Berlin Royal Academy of the Sciences
in the Year 1763 [1764].
* Sinn
Jacobi to Fichte
We stand too high above ourselves, and shall not be able to comprehend
ourselves.
Fenelon, after Augustine'
Hamburg: at Friedrich Perthes's, 1799
"How does Genius manifest itself?" Through that by which the Creator/
Manifests Himself in nature, in the infinite All!/Clear is the ether yet unfath-
omable in depth;/Visible to the eye, it yet remains eternally secret to the
understanding.
Goethe2
NOTE: This translation is made from the first edition of 1799, which varies slightly in
places from the second of 1816. I have indicated the changes unless they are purely tech-
nical. A critical edition of the letter can be found in Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 111.3.
[ii] Errata
[v] PREFACE
I make the following letter public just as I wrote it, without then even the
remotest thought that it would ever be published; for the immediate and
sole eyes of the man to whom it is addressed, to come to terms with him
philosophically, and satisfied if he would only comprehend and not mis-
understand me. I publish it now with his approval, among other reasons
because I prefer that it should circulate in an authentic edition rather*
than in unauthentic rumours or corrupt copies.
Since nobody will be compelled to read this letter by virtue of its pub-
lic appearance, I count on the fairness of voluntary readers that they will
take it as it is, and not complain that I ought either to have [vi] drafted
it for publication from the beginning with a general audience principally
in mind, or at least that I should now recast it before publication into
something better.—A completely new work would have emerged from
such a recasting, and that would not be right. + I have no recourse, there-
fore, except to assist the general reader with notes and appendices. And
this I have done.
What troubles me most in publishing this text are the unguarded,
though not unintentional judgments concerning our great Konigs-
berger—his moral philosophy and theology—that occur in it inciden-
tally.3 A closer determination of these judgments, and a more com-
* From here to the end of the sentence slightly changed in the 1816 edition.
t Omitted to the end of paragraph in the 1816 edition.
Jacobi to Fichte 499
plete justification of them, will be found in another essay which I hereby

commit myself, and now also feel obliged, [vii] to have published as soon
as possible.* In the meantime, I would be distressed if what is to be
found here, for instance in the passage where with respect to
Transcendental Philosophy I call Kant only the precursor of Fichte, were to
be understood and interpreted otherwise than its location, tone, and con-
text [vii] require. In the case at issue, the precursor is patently the one
more distinguished. Fichte himself, honourable man that he is, has beau-
tifully and emphatically declared himself on this score, showing too
much rather than too little modesty.*1 But for me the matter presents
[viii] itself in yet another light. For since I regard the consciousness of
non-knowing as what is highest in man, and the place of this consciousness
as the place of the true inaccessible to science, so I am bound to be
pleased with Kant that he preferred to sin against the system rather than
against the majesty of the place. In my opinion, Fichte sins against this
majesty whenever he wills to include the place within the domain of sci-
ence, allowing it to be looked down upon from the standpoint of specu-
lation, allegedly the highest of all, or the standpoint of truth itself.—But if
Kant does not do the same, Fichte will say, he is inconsistent and stops
half-way.—On that point I agree with him. I said the same myself, twelve
*i. Cf. [pp.] v[-vi] of the Preface to his essay On the Concept of the Doctrine of
Science, where he says: "The author is to this moment sincerely convinced that no
human understanding can penetrate past the frontiers where Kant stood, espe-
cially in his Critique of Judgment, but which he never fixed for us, and declared to
be the ultimate frontiers of finite knowledge. He knows that nobody will ever be
able to say anything which Kant has not already pointed to, whether directly or
indirectly, clearly or obscurely. He leaves it to future ages to fathom the genius
of this man who, starting from the standpoint at which he found the philosophi-
cal faculty of judgment, swept it with great might towards its ultimate end, often
as if directed by a higher inspiration.—He is just as sincerely convinced that after
the genial mind of Kant no loftier gift could have been made to philosophy than
the systematic genius of Reinhold. . . . He truly considers it to be no merit of his
own that, by an accident of fortune, he has been called to labour in the wake of
such admirable predecessors. And he knows that whatever merit may accrue here
does not rest on the luck of discovery but on the honesty of the quest: on this
score one can only be one's own judge and one's own rewarder."1
* In the 1816 edition Jacobi here refers in a note to his Concerning the Undertaking of
Criticism To Reduce Reason to Understanding (1801).
years ago.* But is not Fichte inconsistent too?—One has accused his phi-
losophy of atheism quite unjustly, because Transcendental Philosophy
cannot, as such, be atheist any more than can Geometry or Arithmetic.
But for that same reason it cannot [ix] in any sense be theist either. If it
tried to be theist, indeed in an exclusive sense, it would thereby become
atheist, or at least it would take on the semblance of being atheist; for
it would show how God too capitalizes on the fact of "non-existence in it-
self in order to become philosophically valid through it alone, yea to be-
come something real at all. So why did Fichte give philosophy the
reputation that it wants, and can be, theist? Why did he not guard himself
more carefully against the impression that through Transcendental
Philosophy a new, unique, theism was to be introduced, and through
it the old theism of natural reason was to be banished as thorough
nonsense? He has thereby brought himself and his philosophy into
disrepute quite unnecessarily. It would not be any reproach to
Transcendental Philosophy that it does not know anything about God,
for it is universally acknowledged that God cannot be known, but only be-
lieved in. A God who could be known would be no God at all. But a merely
artificial faith in Him is also impossible as faith; for in so far as it only wants
to be artificial—i.e. simply scientific [ix] or purely rational—it abolishes
natural faith and, with that, itself as faith as well; hence theism is abol-
ished as a whole.—I refer to Reinhold's Letter to Fichte.*2
To the Rein and Holden, the pure and gracious one who for the sake
of truth courageously forsakes himself and all else^—to him I defer in
advance, in case I should somehow come under attack because of this
writing.—You, dear friend and brother, will have to step into the fray if
that happens, and carry the older companion away from the heat of battle
upon your shoulders, just as Socrates once carried the younger one.4
Would I ever have dared to put myself forward this time without your en-
couragement, and your repeated exhortation?—"I should do it, I must
do it—at your peril and risk!"
So, let's see now how you stand the test!—From this moment on this
writing is no longer mine—not my thing, my property, but yours.
F. H. Jacobi
*2. See Letter to Lavater and Fichte Concerning Faith in God'2 (Hamburg: Perthes,
1799)-
* In the 1816 edition Jacobi here refers in a note to the Appendix to his David Hume.
t Jacobi is playing on the name "Reinhold," which is made up of rein, "pure," and holden,
"gracious." Reinhold became in succession a disciple of Kant, Fichte, and ultimately of
Bardili, declaring each time to have finally discovered the truth.
[i] Eutin, 3 March 1799
Today, my honourable friend, begins the sixth week5 that I wait, impa-
tiently but vainly, for a day of serenity in my inner self to write to you.
And this day, since I am even less capable of the wait than on any before,
I take up my pen with the fixed resolve of not putting it down until I am
finished writing. What I propose to do by this resolve, which I make out
of despair, I myself do not know. But for this reason it is all the more
suited to my "non-philosophy," that has its essence in "non-knowledge"
just as your "philosophy" has its solely in knowledge and, according to my
innermost conviction, is for this reason the one that alone deserves the
name of philosophy in the stricter sense.
I say it at every opportunity, and I am ready [2] to confess it publicly:
I consider you the true Messiah of speculative reason, the genuine son
of the promise of a philosophy pure through and through, existing in and
through itself.
Nobody can deny that the spirit of speculative philosophy, and what
must have been the object of its incessant striving from the beginning,
is to make unequal the equal certainty that these two propositions
have for the natural man: "I am" and "There are things outside me."
Speculative philosophy had to try to subordinate one of these proposi-
tions to the other; to derive the former from the latter or the latter from
the former—exhaustively, in the end—so that there would be but one
being and one truth before its eye, the all-seeing one! Should speculation
succeed in producing this unity, by pushing the production of inequality
to the point that, out of the destruction of the natural equality, another,
an artificiall likeness of it, were to spring up inside the certain knowledge
of an "I" and "not-I" whose existence is finally manifest—an entirely new
creature completely belonging to speculation!—should it succeed in this,
then speculation might indeed also succeed, acting on its own, in pro-
ducing a complete science of the true from itself.
[3] Thus the two main avenues, materialism and idealism, or the at-
tempt to explain everything from a self-determining matter alone or
from a self-determining intelligence, have the same aim. Their opposing
courses do not take them apart at all, but rather bring them gradually
nearer to each other until they finally touch. Speculative materialism, or
the materialism that develops a metaphysics, must ultimately transfigure
itself into idealism of its own accord; since apart from dualism there is
only egoism, as beginning or end, for a power of thought that will think to
the end.
Little was lacking for this transfiguration of materialism into idealism
to have already been realized through Spinoza. His substance, which un-
derlies extended and thinking being, equally and inseparably binds
them together; it is nothing but the invisible identity of object and sub-
ject (demonstrable only through inferences) upon which the system of
the new philosophy is grounded, i.e. the system of the autonomous philos-
ophy of intelligence. Strange, that the thought never occurred to Spinoza
of inverting his philosophical cube; of making the upper side, the side
of thought [4] which he called the objective, into the lower, which he
called the subjective or formal; and then of investigating whether his
cube still remained the same thing; still for him the one and only true
philosophical shape of reality. Everything would have transformed itself
without fail under his hands at the experiment. The cube that had hith-
erto been "substance" for him—the one matter of two entirely different
beings—would have disappeared before his eyes, and in exchange a
pure flame would have flared up, burning all by itself, with no need of
place or material to nourish it: Transcendental Idealism]
I chose this image because I first found entry into the Doctrine of
Science6 through the representation of an inverted Spinozism. And I still
portray it to myself as a materialism without matter, or a mathesis pura in
which a pure and empty consciousness counts for mathematical space.
I do not need first to explain how pure mathematics—by presupposing
the drawing of a straight line (movement, that is, and all that this con-
cept presupposes and implies) and the construction of a circle (measure,
surface, figure: quality, [5] quantity, etc.)—is capable of creating math-
ematical bodies in thought out of nothingness, and then an entire
world.—So only one ignorant and tasteless enough to despise Geometry
and Arithmetic (the former, because it does not produce substances;
the latter, because it does not produce numerical meaning, the value
"existence")—only such a one could also despise Transcendental Phi-

losophy.
I request and expect of Fichte that he understand me from hints; that
he understand now-fleeting thoughts from fleeting words, outlines, and
sketches. If this were not to be allowed to me, what book would I have
to write! and never in my life shall I write such a book!
And so I proceed. And first, among the Jews of speculative reason I
proclaim you once again, ever more zealously and loudly, as their King.
I threaten the obdurates, that they recognize you as such and accept the
Baptist from Konigsberg only as your prophet instead.7 The sign that
you have given is the union of materialism and idealism into one [6] in-
divisible being—a sign not altogether unlike that of the prophet Jonah.8
Just as, eighteenthousand years ago, the Jews in Palestine rejected the
Messiah whom they had long yearned when he actually appeared, be-
cause he did not bring with him the sign by which they wanted to recog-
nize him—because he taught, neither circumcision nor foreskin counts,
but a new creature9—so you too had to become a stumbling-block and
a stone of scandal10 to those whom I call the Jews of speculative reason.
There was only one who professed himself for you openly and honestly,
an Israelite in whom there is no guile, Nathanael Reinhold.11 Had I not
been his friend already, I would have become one then. 12 But an en-
tirely different friendship than had hitherto existed has since then arisen
between us.
I am a Nathanael only among the heathens.13 Since I did not belong
to the old covenant but remained still uncircumcised, I must abstain
from the new one too, out of the same incapacity or stubbornness. *One
among the more exuberant of the apostles of your doctrine,14 a minister to
my soul, has actually hit the nail on the head, as they say, when he has ac-
cused me of lack of that purely [7] logical enthusiasm which is the "quin-
tessential spirit" of the "quintessential philosophy,"^ just as in Socrates it
once was the genuinely Socratic.15 *3 He is perfectly right [8] when he says
*3- * This judgment is confirmed by Mr. Nicolai in his latest work where,
driven by necessity, he must, this once and no more, speak about himself and well-
nigh commend himself. The author of the Letters Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza
* In the 1816 edition the text from here until p. 9, "my non-philosophy," is reduced to
a few lines.
t Alleingeist, "Alleinphilosaphie"
I Note omitted in the 1816 edition
that it is only by deceitful pretence that in my writings I here and there

give the impression of belonging among the quintessential philoso-
phers, and even of accepting the doctrine of the categorical impera-
tive: basically, I am everywhere impure.l6 In general, this mutual disciple
and soul-minister of ours has grasped this side of me very well, and has
with right asserted that I am only a natural philosopher and an incidental
writer, in places (not to say everywhere) incapable of making the form
alone into the substance—as one should, for this making is itself the all in
all, outside which there is nothing. * 7 *4
[i.e. Jacobi] is reproached (See My (Nicolai's) Scholarly Upbringing) "for not show-
ing himself to have any sense for enquiries done simply for enquiry's sake." And
this is a very shocking weakness for so pure and thoroughly gymnastic a spirit as
Nicolai's, "a spirit grown strong between the pro and the contra." Unselfish with re-
spect to truth, he scorns his booty (at least the speculative one) but, as befits pure
philosophy, he has respect only for the athletic constitution that one acquires in
the struggle that is waged perpetually about the truth alone.$
I sincerely endorse this judgment passed upon me by these two equally emi-
nent enthusiasts of a purely logical enthusiasm, equally unselfish with respect to
truth, and equally just and moderate. Actually, as regards my self-centredness
with respect to the true, it goes well beyond anything they have thought. The "let-
ter to Fichte" will uncover much new about this. For the future, however, in order
to cleanse my conscience, I want to bring the matter even more clearly to light,
[8] show myself before the world entirely naked, with my lack of philosophical
virtuosity before these genuine virtuosi and wise masters.
*4. * See the condemnations of my Incidental Outpourings and my Woldemar in
the journal Deutschland, the 2nd and 8th issue (if I remember correctly) of the
same year.4 Since in publishing my letter to Fichte I see myself compelled myself
to refer to this verdict of "guilty" that is so humiliating for me, I should at least
not omit to reassure the reader who looks it up that, on my word of honour, the
personal content of this critical fiction (its secret historical side) is drawn solely
from the productive imagination of the [9] author. It was fully at play even in the
citations. The "untruths," if one wants to call them that, are by-products of the
poetic-philosophical method: first you derive the writer from the man, and then
again the man from the writer. So they are not intentional defamations or lies.
When this is taken into account, the rest is just splendid: it was even then a man-
ifestation in the creator of the now published masterpiece Lucinde.5
* Note omitted in the 1816 edition

[9] It has however escaped this enthusiast—he wasn't capable of even

a distant premonition of it—in which form quintessential philosophy
and my non-philosophy come in contact at their extremes, and, in the
moment of contact, compenetrate, as it were. But you, my friend, have
felt it, just as / have felt it. You have acknowledged me as the one who
stood waiting and prophesying at the door of your lecture-hall, long be-
fore it opened. In this hall I now occupy the first place, as a privileged
heretic, excused in advance from any anathema that might otherwise fall
upon my head in categories. And since my actual true opinion patently
aids rather than [ 10] hinders the coge entrare* into the Science, I am even
allowed to hold my own lectures from my seat after-hours.
Both of us, living only in the spirit and honest seekers at any cost, are
well enough in agreement, I think, about the concept of science. That
is to say, we agree that science as such consists in the autonomous pro-
duction of its object; it is nothing but this very production in thoughts.
Hence the content of every science is as such only an inner activity, and
the entire being of the science is constituted by the necessary modalities of
this activity which is free per se. Every science, I say just as you do, is an
object-subjectaccording to the prototype of the /. This / alone is science
in itself, and for that reason it is the principle and the solvent medium
of all objects of cognition, the faculty of their destruction and recon-
struction from a bare scientific point of view. By fashioning concepts the
human spirit only seeks, in all things and from all things, to retrieve it-
self. It strives and counterstrives, incessantly tearing itself away from the
momentary conditioned existence that would swallow it, as it were, in
order to rescue its selfhood and self-contained being, and enhance its
free and independent action. [ 11 ] This activity of the intelligence is nec-
essary to it; there is no intelligence where there is no such activity.—
According to this insight, it would be the greatest foolishness to want to
inhibit the longing for science in oneself or in others; the greatest fool-
ishness, to believe that one could indeed overdo philosophizing. To
overdo philosophizing would mean to overdo trying to make sense.
And so we both wish, with like earnestness and zeal, that the science
of knowledge—which is the element of unity^ in all sciences, the world-
soul in the world of cognition—be perfected; yet with this differ-
ence: you want it so that the foundation of all truth be shown to lie in
the science of knowledge; /, so that it be made evident that this founda-
* force the entry!

t das Eine
tion (the true itself)is necessarily outside it. Yet my aim does not in the
least stand in the way of yours, just as yours does not stand in the way of
mine, because I distinguish between truth and the true. You take no cog-
nizance of what I mean by the "true"—nor, as a practitioner of the
Doctrine of Science, should you take any in my opinion as well.
[12] 6 March
If I am to keep my word and carry out my resolve not to use pen, hand,
or eyes intentionally for anything else until I have brought this writing
to a conclusion, then I must make a second bold resolution, namely this:
to make my way forward at a more rhapsodic, more grasshopper-like18
jaunt yet, and put before you nothing but a patchwork of thought con-
nections, from which you may gather my understanding and lack of un-
derstanding as well as can be done.*
The state of my body, my entire present situation, only gives me the
choice of either postponing this letter to you until God knows when, or
helping myself in this way.—To surrender myself, to display myself to
you just as I am, so that you might get to the bottom of what in me trou-
bles to you—this was my aim. But hardly do I like—I, so diminutive in
my every capacity—to appear before the man of unprecedented thought-
power, moreover armed as he is to such a high degree with every gift of
the spirit; hardly do I like, powerless as I am and only a shadow of myself,
to appear before this tremendous man.—[13] Yet, so be it!—I begin my
ordeal.
The mystery of the identity and difference between Fichte and me, of
our philosophical sympathy and antipathy, ought to be apparent (so it
seems to me) to everyone willing to make the effort of reading correctly,
and thoroughly understanding, just the one Epistle to Erhard O*, at the
back of AllwiWs Collection of Letters.
I can transpose myself into Fichte's standpoint, and intellectually iso-

late myself there, to such a degree that I almost feel ashamed of being
* The 1816 edition adds: "Let it be so!" The paragraph immediately following is
omitted.
of a different opinion, and I am hardly capable of uttering my objections

against his system, even to myself. But I can also feel in my opposite
standpoint such a gravitational pull, such firmness and stability, that I be-
come angry at him. From lack of patience, almost furious at his artificial
way of taking leave of his senses in virtue of which I, following his example,
am to be liberated from my natural lack of sense, I bravely fling around
his neck the charge, not of being [ 14] too mad, but rather its alternative,
of not being mad enough. So I shall not complain if in return Fichte
flings at me, on my head, the charge of being too mad.
A pure philosophy, that is, a thoroughly immanent philosophy, a philos-

ophy of one piece, a veritable system of reason, is only possible in the man-
ner of Fichte. Obviously everything must be given in and through
reason, in the I as I, in the selfhood of the /* alone, and must be already
contained in it, if pure reason is to be able to deduce everything alone,
from itself alone.
"Taking hold of'^ is the root of reason. +—Pure reason is a taking hold
that only takes hold of itself. Or again: pure reason only takes hold of
itself.
The philosophizing of pure reason must therefore be a chemical proc-
ess through which everything outside reason is changed into nothing,
and reason alone is left, a spirit so pure that, in its purity, [15] it cannot
itself be, but can only produce everything—this again, however, in such
a state of purity that it too cannot itself be but can only be intuited pres-
ent in the production of spirit; the whole just a deed = deed.
All human beings, in so far as they strive for knowledge at all, set that
pure philosophy as their final end without knowing it. For man knows
only in that he comprehends, and he comprehends only in that, by
* Selfhood = Ichheit
t Vernehmen
I Vernunft
changing the real thing* into mere shape, + he turns the shape into the thing
and the thing into nothing.
More distinctly!
We comprehend a thing* only in so far as we can construct it, i.e. let
it arise before us in thoughts, let it become. And in so far as we cannot con-
struct it, or produce it ourselves in thoughts, we do not comprehend it.
(Spinoza-Book, pp. 402—404, especially the note on pp. 419—420).*5
So if a being is to become for us a. fully comprehended object, we must
cancel it in thought as [16] something objective, as standing on its own; we
must annihilate it in order to let it become something thoroughly subjec-
tive, our own creation, a mere schema. Nothing must remain in it, and con-
stitute an essential part of its concept, which is not our activity, now just
a display of our productive imagination.
Thus the human spirit, since its philosophical understanding^ will
simply not reach beyond its own production, must, in order to penetrate
into the realm of beings and conquer it with its thought, become world-
creator, indeed, its own creator. Only to the extent that it succeeds in this
last [task] will it notice any advance in the other. But it can be even its
own creator only under the stated universal condition, viz. it must anni-
hilate itself according to its being so as to arise, to possess itself, in concept
alone—in the concept of a pure absolute exodus and return (from noth-
ing, to nothing, /or nothing, into nothing); or the concept of a pendulum
movement which, since it is a pendulum movement, must, as such, establish
limitations for itself in general, though it has determinate [17] limitations
only as a particular movement, through an incomprehensible process of
limitation."
*5. * Supplement i.
* real thing = Sache

t shape = Gestalt
t thing = Sache
§ Verstand; the 1816 edition has verstehen.
ii The 1816 edition adds: "on the analogy of the expanding and contracting force of
matter."
# Note omitted in the 1816 edition. The parenthesis in the text is also omitted in the
1812 edition. The pagination refers to the second edition of the Spinoza Letters.
A science that has itself alone, qua science, as object, and has no con-
tent apart from this, is a science in itself. The I is a science in itself, and
the only one. It knows itself, and it would contradict its concept if it
knew, or were to get hold of, something outside itself, etc., etc. . . . The
I, therefore, is necessarily the principle of all other sciences, and an un-
failing menstruum with which they can all be dissolved and made to van-
ish into the I without any trace of a caput mortuum—the not-I—being left
behind.—It cannot fail: if the I gives all sciences their principles, then
they must* all be capable of being deduced from the I; and if they can
be deduced from the I alone, then they must all of them be capable too
of being constructed in and through the I alone, i.e. inasmuch as they are
sciences.
[ 18] Abstraction lies at the basis of all reflection, in such a way that re-
flection becomes possible only through abstraction. The same applies
the other way around; the two are inseparable and fundamentally one,
an action of dissolving all being into knowledge, a progressive annihilation
through ever more universal concepts leading up to science. But what
was in this way annihilated by involution, can also be once more restored
by evolution: by annihilating I learned to create. For as I attained by way
of dissolution and analysis to the state where nothing is outside the I, it be-
came apparent to me that outside my free, only relatively restricted,
imagination all is nothing. From this imagination, acting on its own, I
can then let all beings issue forth again just as they were before I recog-
nized them as being, standing on their own, a nothingness.
In a mischievous moment last winter, in Hamburg, I summed up the

result of Fichtean Idealism in a simile. I compared it to a knitted
stocking.
[19] To form an idea other than the usual empirical one of the origin
and constitution of a knitted stocking, one only need undo the end of
the knitted web, and let it run off on the thread of the identity of this
* I am following the 1816 edition: "so muBen"; the first edition has: "daB . . . miiBen,"
which is cumbersome.
object-subject. One will then clearly see how this individual thing at-
tained actuality through the mere back-and-forth-movement of the
thread, that is, through an incessant restriction of its movement pre-
venting it from following its striving towards the infinite—without empiri-
cal intervention or other admixture or adjunct of sorts.
To this stocking of mine I give borders, flowers, moon and stars, all
possible figures, and cognize how all this is nothing but a product of the
productive imagination of the fingers hovering between the I of the
thread and the not-I of the stitches. Looked at from the standpoint of
truth, all these figures, along with the being of the stocking, are but the
one bare thread. Nothing has flowed into it either from the stitches or
the fingers. It alone, pure and simple, is all these things, [20] and there
is nothing in all of them apart from it. It is those things all by itself, but
only with its movements of reflection on the stitches which it has preserved in its
advance, thereby becoming this determinate individual.
I should like to hear how anyone would deny to this stocking the cer-
tain truth that, with all its infinite manifolds, it still is only its thread; and
to the thread, that it Alone is this infinite manifold. Indeed, as I have al-
ready said, the thread only need return to its original identity by expos-
ing the rows of its reflections in order to make it visibly apparent that
that infinite manifold, and manifold infinity, was nothing but an empty
weaving of its weaving, and that the one single reality is only itself with
its self-initiated, self-contained, and self-directed activity.—The thread will
moreover want this return, which is release from the bonds of the not-I
clinging to it—and there is nobody who does not know from experience
how all stockings have the tendency to remove their limitations and run
up the infinite. [21] How ill-advised! For they should well know that it is
impossible to be All, yet One and Something at the same time.
If this simile is so inappropriate as to betray a crude misunderstanding
on the part of its author, then I do not know how the new philosophy
can pretend to be actually new,aand not just a variant formulation of the
old philosophy based in one way or other on some dualism; but then it would
not be a truly and genuinely immanent philosophy, a philosophy of one
piece. What in the old was called "perception" would be called "necessary
imaging" in the new, but would still mean basically the same thing.
Should it turn out only to mean the same thing in any way at all, empir-
icism ultimately remains still on top, and would behave with respect to
science as living limbs with respect to their artificial instruments. A higher
place than scientific knowledge must then be assumed in the human spirit; and
from there one would be looking down upon science; but in that case "the high-
est [22] standpoint of speculation" is not "the standpoint of truth."19
I therefore don't fear that reproach. I can rather imagine the new phi-
losophy liking my simile and using it to its advantage.
"Reflect!" it could say to me, "Go into yourself!—What in heaven and
on earth are all the stockings and the wearing of stockings against the in-
sight into their origin? What, against the examination of the mechanism
through which they are produced in thefirstplace; or against the reinven-
tion in universalities ever more universal* of the art of stockings, a reinven-
tion through which the art itself is first created as art proper?—Scoff as
much as you wish at this pure pleasure in the pure knowledge of pure
knowledge alone, a pleasure which has not altogether inappropriately
been called naked logical enthusiasm.20 We don't deny that in it we are
blessed, no longer concerned about heaven and earth; and that even if
body and soul were to fail us, we would not care because of this lofty love
for the knowledge of knowledge as such, the insight into [23] seeing as
such, the doing of doing as such. Scoff at this in your childish lack of
knowledge, your pitiable state; in the meantime we demonstrate and
prove to you irrefutably that at the basis of all generation and being,
from the lowest animal below up to the highest saint and God-like being
above, there necessarily lies a plain logical enthusiasm, that is, a purely
self-intending and self-contemplating activity, simply for the sake of acting and
contemplating, without any other subject or object; without inherence, point of de-
parture, purpose, or point of arrival."^
I reply simply by producing my stocking again, and I ask: What would
it amount to without reference to, and for the purpose of, a human leg,
by which alone understanding enters into its being? And what would a
mere weaving of weaving amount to, from the animals below up to the
saints above?—I declare that my reason, my whole inner self, flies into
a rage before a representation of this sort, it shudders in horror and
fright; I recoil from it just as I do before the most horrible of all horrors;
and I invoke Annihilation, like a divinity, against such a Danaidic, such
an Ixionic bliss.21
[24] Taken simply as such, our sciences are games that the human
spirit devises to pass the time. In devising these games, it only organizes its
non-knowledge without coming a single hair's breadth closer to a cogni-
tion of the true. In a sense it rather moves away from it thereby, for in thus
* im Allgemeinen und immer Allgemeiner

t ohne in, aus, fur, oder zu
busying itself it distracts itself from its non-knowledge, ceases to feel its
pressure, even grows fond of it, since the non-knowledge is infinite, and
the game that it plays with the human spirit becomes ever more varied,
engrossing, extended, and intoxicating. If the game thus played with our
non-knowledge were not infinite, and not so constituted that at its every
turn a new game arose, we would fare with science just as with the so-
called game of tic-tac-toe: would be sick of it once all its moves and pos-
sible turns are known and familiar to us. The game is spoiled for us
because we understand it entirely, because we know it.*6
*So I don't understand how one can be satisfied with scientific cogni-
tion; how one can sacrifice all truth apart from the scientific, and rejoice
at the [25] insight that there is no other, if one has attained to this truth
(to scientific knowledge) at its foundation as Fichte did, and sees just as
clearly, or at least as clearly as I do, that in purely scientific being we only
play a game with empty numbers, with the numbering of number, we cal-
culate propositions only in order to calculate some more, and must consider
quite silly, laughable . . . detestable, even to ask for a meaning of num-
bers, or a content for them. . . . Once more, I don't understand this ju-
bilation over the discovery that there are only truths, and nothing true;
I don't understand this love for the purest of all pure truths that no
longer needs the true itself-—divinely self-sufficient because, from the de-
ceit of the true, it has gone over to the pure and essential truth of the de-
ceit. . . . It has thrown light upon God discreetly and on the sly. . . . God
has not disappeared, for He never was. Psyche now knows the mystery that
so long and so unbearably tortured her curiosity. Now she knows it, and
she is blessedl Everything outside her is nothing, and she is itself a
phantom—not just a phantom of [26] something, but a phantom in itself,
a real nothingness, a nothingness of reality.
*6. * Because of this passage I have been repeatedly and quite harshly re-
buked by young and old. I am supposed to have equated science to the game of
tic-tac-toe, notwithstanding the fact that in truth I was doing the clear opposite,
as anyone must discover who can readjust a bit. My true and actual meaning is
to be found more fully elaborated in my writing Concerning Divine Things. I refer
to it, and to the Comment added to it in the present new edition of the writing.6
* This paragraph is omitted in the 1816 edition.

t Note added in the 1816 edition
All sciences first arose as means for ulterior goals, and philosophy in
its true meaning, Metaphysics, is no exception. Philosophers all set out to
reach behind the shape of the thing, i.e. to the thing itself; behind the
truth, i.e. to the true. They wanted to know the true, not knowing that if
the true could be known by man, it would have to cease being the true,
in order to become a mere creature of human invention, of the imagin-
ing and cultivation of insubstantial fictions.
From this ignorance and presumption the two great men, Kant and
Fichte, have freed us; Fichte alone radically. They have uncovered the
higher mechanics of the human spirit, have fully expounded, in a system
of the intellect, the theory of motions in resisting media, thus achieving in an-
other sphere what Huyghens22 and Newton23 once achieved in their
own. [27] These recent discoveries have once and for all put a stop to
a useless and harmful waste of human energy; have completely cut off
one road to error. From now on nobody can be carried away with reason,
and be forgiven for it; no one can go on hoping still to find the true
Cabbala at the end, and to bring forth beings and living forces with let-
ters and ciphers.—Truly a great service to our race, if, forgetting oneself
in the science of one's non-knowledge, one will not seek blessedness sim-
ply by squinting hard with both eyes at the tip of one's nose.
I understand by "the true" something which is prior to and outside

knowledge; that which first gives a value to knowledge and to the faculty
of knowledge, to reason.
"Taking hold of presupposes something capable of being taken hold
of; reason presupposes the true: it is the faculty of presupposing the true.
A reason that does not presuppose the true is a non-entity.
With his reason, man is not given the faculty of a science of the true,
but only the feeling and consciousness of his non-knowledge of it: the in-
timation of the true.
Where this direction towards the true is lacking, there is no reason.*7
This direction; this compulsion to consider as its object the true that
hovers before it only in intimation, to consider it as the final aim of every
*7- * Animals lack it. Direction towards the true is at the same time direction
towards the good.
* Note added in the 1816 edition
desire for cognition—this constitutes the essence of reason. Reason is ex-

clusively directed at what is concealed beneath the appearances, at their
meaning, it is directed at the being that gives only a show of itself, and
which does indeed have to shine through in the appearances if these are
not to be phantoms-in-themselves or appearances of nothing.
In contradiction to the true being, towards which reason is exclusively di-
rected as to its ultimate goal, reason posits the beings of the imagination.
It does not just distinguish between some images and others—say, be-
tween necessary images and free ones—but distinguishes images [from
the real] absolutely. It opposes true being to the being of the imagination,
just as it opposes being awake to dreaming. On this [29] immediate and
apodeictic distinction between being awake and dreaming, between fic-
tion and true being, reason stands or falls.
Whenever man is cut off from the reason expressed in the world of the
senses surrounding him, a reason that regulates his imagination with com-
manding force; whenever he loses his senses in dreaming, or in an attack of
fever, he goes out of his senses.* Then his own pure reason, everywhere
present in him, does not prevent him from thinking and assuming the
most absurd things, and from taking them for certain. He goes out of his
mind and loses his human reason the moment he goes out of his senses,
just as per-ception, or "taking hold of the true," becomes impossible to
him. For his limited human reason is nothing but the per-ception, the
grasping of, the true, whether internal or external, mediate or immedi-
ate; but as rational (a determination already given by the literal sense of
the word "vernunftige") perception is endowed with reflection and purpose;
it is regulative perception, persistent, free—full of intimation.
A reason that does not merely per-ceives [the true] but produces all
truth from itself alone; a [30] reason which is the very essence of truth and
has the fullness of life within itself—a self-subsisting reason of this kind
(the fullness of the good and true) must of course be present, for otherwise
nowhere would there be the good and the true; the root of nature and
of all beings would be a pure nothingness, and the ultimate aim of rea-
son the discovery of this great mystery.
As surely as I possess reason, just as surely I do not possess with this
human reason of mine the perfection of life, not the fullness of the good
and the true. And as surely as I do not possess all this with it, and know
it, just as certainly do I know that there is a higher being, and that I have
my origin in Him. My solution too, therefore, and that of my reason is
* Wahn-sinnig wird
not the /, but the "More than I"! the "Better than I"!—Someone entirely
Other.
I am not, and I would not want to be, if He is not!—Indeed, I cannot be
myself my own highest being. . . . So my reason instinctively teaches me:
God. With irresistible commanding force the highest in me directs to an
All-highest outside and above me; it compels me to believe in the incom-
prehensible, [31] yea in what is conceptually impossible, within me and
outside me, from love, through love.*8
Because reason has Divinity in its eye, and God necessarily before its
eyes, only because of this we consider it higher than the self in common
sensible understanding; and to this extent it may also make sense and be
counted as truth "that reason is the goal, personality only the means." 9
"God," says the venerable Timaeus, "is that which everywhere pro-
duces the better."24—The origin and the commanding force of the good.
But the good—what is that?—I have no answer, if there is no God.
Just as this world of appearances, if it had all its truth in the appear-
ances and no deeper meaning, if it had nothing to reveal apart from
them, would become a ghastly phantom before which I would curse the
consciousness where this horror has its genesis, and would call down
Annihilation upon it like a Divinity, so too everything that I called good,
beautiful, and holy, would become for me a non-entity that shatters my
spirit and tears the heart out of my breast, the moment I accept that it
exists without [32] connection in me to a higher and true Being, without
being in me only symbol and image of this Being; if all that I have in me
is only empty consciousness and poesy.
I therefore admit that I do not know the good in itself, but that* I have
only a distant intimation of it. I declare that I become furious whenever
they want to impose on me the will that wills nothing in its stead, this hol-
low shell of self-subsistence and freedom in the absolute indeterminate,
and accuse me of atheism, of true and genuine Godlessness, if I resist ac-
cepting it in exchange.
*8. t God, i.e. to be God, is obviously impossible to me, i.e. it presents itself
to me as something impossible.
*g. t Words of Fichte.7
* The 1816 edition reads: "do not know the good in itself, as I do not know the true in
itself, that I. ...
Yea, I am the atheist and the Godless one, who, against the will that
wills nothing, will tell lies, just as Desdemona25 did when she lay dying;
the one that will lie and defraud, just as Pylades did when he passed him-
self off for Orestes;26 will murder, as Timoleon did;27 or break law
and oath, like Epaminondas,28 or John de Witt;29 commit suicide like
Otho,3° perpetrate sacrilege like David31—yea, I would pluck ears of
wheat on the sabbath just because I have hunger, and the law [33] is made
for man, not man for the law.$2 I am this godless man, and I scoff at the phi-
losophy that calls me godless on this account. I scoff at it and at its high-
est Being, for I know, with the most sacred certainty that I have in me,
that the privikgium aggratiandi^ for such crimes against the pure letter
of the absolutely universal law of reason is man's true right of majesty, the
seal of his worth, of his divine nature.*10
Don't teach me what I know and understand how to demonstrate per-
haps better than you might like, namely that if a universally valid and rig-
orously scientific system of morality is to be established, one must necessarily
lay at its foundation that will that wills nothing, that impersonal personality,
*io. * "Force may influence life, in that it holds certain misfortunes before
man to frighten him off from wrongdoing, but the morally evil itself is a greater
misfortune than those which force is capable of inflicting; and therefore the ob-
ligation of honesty and humaneness is as complete as it can be through the fear
of a misfortune or the consideration of happiness. Whoever reflects upon the be-
haviour which is appropriate to him in a certain situation will often find himself
less strongly impelled to grant one person that which one calls his right than an-
other help and support. A boy lay almost naked upon the grave of his father,
whom he had recently lost; a man who was just going to his creditors to pay his
debt which had come due according to his promise saw him; the man raised the
boy up and bestowed upon this dear fellow the money for which the creditor was
already waiting; the latter was therefore disappointed. Who would want to disap-
prove of this deed as though a stricter obligation had clashed with it? Even before
the courts, the extreme need of one person sometimes forms the basis for not
discharging the right of another. Thus it will be permitted the one who is in dan-
ger of starving to infringe on other people's property for his own preservation
and the demand for humaneness regarded most sacred than that of an uncon-
ditional and exclusive right." Ferguson, Principles of Moral and Political Science,
Part n, ch. 5, sect. i.
* Note added in the 1816 edition

that naked selfhood* of the I without any self—in a word, pure and bare in-
essentialities. For love of the secure progress of science you must, yea you
cannot but, subject conscience^ (spirit most certain*) to a living-death of
rationality, make it blindly legalistic, deaf, dumb, and unfeeling; must tear
from it its living [34] root, which is the heart of man, up to the last fibre—
yea you must, by all your heavens and as truly as Apollo and the Muses
are just categories to you! For only so are unconditionally universal laws,
rules without exceptions, and is unswerving obedience possible. Only thus
does conscience know with certainty everywhere, even outside, and, a
wooden hand, does unerringly point§ ex cathedra in the direction of all
highways."
Is it my will then that no universal, rigorously demonstrated doctrine of
duties should be erected, which can only happen in and over a pure system
of reason? Do I underestimate the value of such a discipline? deny its use-
fulness? Or do I dispute the truth and sublimity of the principle from
which the ethical doctrine of pure reason proceeds? Not at all! The
moral principle of reason, the accord of a man with himself, a fixed unity,
is the highest principle within the concept, for this unity is the absolute and
unchanging condition of rational existence in general, hence also of all ra-
tional and free activity; [35] in it and with it alone, does man have truth
and a higher life. But this unity is not itself the essence, it is not the true.
Its self, in itself alone, is barren, desolate and empty. So its law can never
become the heart of man and truly elevate him above himself; what does
this is yet only his heart, which is the faculty proper of ideas—ideas not
empty. Transcendental philosophy shall not wrest this heart from my
breast and put a pure drive for selfhood alone in its place. I shall not let
myself be freed from the dependence of love and be made blessed
through pride alone.—If the highest that I can recollect in rne, that I can
intuit, is my I, empty and pure, naked and bare, with its self-subsistence
and freedom, then reflective self-intuition is a curse for me, and so ratio-
nality. . . . I curse my existence.
* Ichheit
t Gewissen
I gewisseren
§ weisen
ii Jacobi's play on the words wissen, Gewift, and weisen cannot be rendered in English
without departing from the text altogether.
[36] Here I must break off, or make a book out of this letter. I would
never have ventured the few words I have jotted down about morality *if
from my writings, in patches at least, I could not range over the subject
the right way. I expect therefore that out of friendship, and in order not
to misunderstand me in a way that I would find offensive, you will thumb
through my writings and read again, at my request, the passages that I
shall now indicate, i) The "Aphorisms concerning Non-Freedom and
Freedom" that I have inserted in the preface to the new edition of the
Letters concerning Spinoza.34 2) The note, pp. xvii-xix, in the preface to
Allwill, and pages 295-300 in the same book.35 3) Pp. 138-41 in the first
part of Woldemar.s6 You will scarcely hardly need half an hour to read all
of this; so you must indulge me.*11
[37] These same passages also prove that the Kantian moral law never
was for me anything but a necessary urge to be consistent with ourselves,
i.e. the law of identity. I have never understood how anyone could find
something mysterious or incomprehensible in the categorical impera-
tive, which is in fact so easy to deduce (Spinoza Letters, Pref. pp. xxxiii
and xxxiv),37 and then undertake, with this incomprehensible thing, to
make the stop-gaps of theoretical reason the conditions of the reality of
the laws of the practical reason. In no philosophy have I met with any-
thing more scandalous to my eyes than this. Imagine my jubilation,
therefore, at the publication of your writing on the Vocation of the Scholar,
*i i. t Since, because of its connection, this Letter is likely to find many a
reader unacquainted with my writings, and others who at least do not have them
close at hand; and since it is important to me that they should have the indicated
passages before them, I have included them in an Appendix that takes up only a
few pages. One will [37] also find there, in addition, an excerpt from a letter con-
cerning the Kantian ethical doctrine that I inserted for Fichte as well. My hope
is that by making it public I shall prevent somebody or other from imagining that
my way of contradicting the sage of Konigsberg is no contradiction at all; that I
misunderstand him, or the like.
* From here to "and then undertake" onjacobi's p. 37, the 1816 edition reads: "if in
my earlier writings a patchy explanation had not been given on the subject. I remind you
especially of the 'Aphorisms concerning Non-Freedom and Freedom' that I have inserted
in the preface of the new edition of the Letters Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza. I have never
understood how anyone could find something mysterious and incomprehensible in Kant's
categorical imperative, which is in fact so easy to deduce from the urge to be consistent with
oneself (I refer to the just mentioned Aphorisms) and then undertake. , . ."
where in the very first pages I found the most complete agreement with
my judgments on this subject.38
[38] But for this very reason I have not been able before, and so sub-
sequently too, to make this urge for identity into my highest being, and
to love and worship it.
And so I am in all respects still the same man who in the Letters concern-
ing Spinoza took his start from the wonder of perception and the unfath-
omable mystery of freedom, and in this way dared not so much to ground
his philosophy with a salto mortale but rather to display his unphilosoph-
ical obstinacy recklessly in the eyes of the world.
Since outside the mechanism of nature I encounter nothing but won-
ders, mysteries, and signs; and I feel a terrible horror before the nothing,
the absolutely indeterminate, the utterly void (these three are one: the Platonic
infinite!), especially as the object of philosophy or aim of wisdom; yet,
as I explore the mechanism of the nature of the I as well as of the not-I, I
attain only to the nothing-in-itself; and I am so assailed, so seized [39] and
carried away by it in my transcendental being (personally, so to speak),
that, just in order to empty out the infinite, I cannot help wanting to fill it,
as an infinite nothing, a pure-and-total-in-and-for-itself (were it not simply
impossible!): since, I say, this is the way it is with me and the science of
the true, or more precisely, the true science, I therefore do not see why
I, as a matter of taste, should not be allowed to prefer my philosophy of
non-knowledge to the philosophical knowledge of the nothing, at least in
fugam vacui.39 I have nothing confronting me, after all, except nothing-
ness; and even chimeras are a good match for that.
Truly, my dear Fichte, I would not be vexed if you, or anyone else,
were to call Chimerism the view I oppose to the Idealism that I chide for
Nihilism. I have paraded my no^-knowing in all my writings; in my non-
knowledge I have prided myself so to be with knowledge, so perfectly and
completely, that I am certainly allowed to be contemptuous of the mere
doubter.*12—[40] I have wrestled for truth with zeal and fervour since
childhood as few others; as few others have I experienced my
powerlessness—and my heart has grown tender for that—yea, very ten-
der, my dear Fichte—and my voice so gentle! Just as I have deep com-
passion for myself, as human being, so I have it for others. I am patient
without effort; but that I am truly patient without effort costs me a lot. The
earth will be light above me—it won't be long.
*12. Allwill's Collection of Letters, pp. 306 and soy.8

My heart grows soft as I write this. I would like to get up and hurry to
you, to lay my soul bare to you, eye to eye, heart to heart. This was my
feeling, my ardent longing as I read the lines you wrote by hand below
the printed letter;40 they moved me deeply. I was moved and shaken
even more, however, by your address [to me] in your writing. The hand
you grasp so full of confidence responds to yours with a friendly
squeeze.41 And it would be so, even if I were obliged to call your doctrine
atheist, like that of Spinoza; I would still not consider you, personally, an
atheist for that reason; nor a godless man. Whoever knows how really to
elevate himself with his spirit above nature, with his [41] heart above
every degrading desire, such a one sees God face to face, and it is not
enough to say of him that he only believes in God. And were his philos-
ophy also atheist; were his opinions atheist by the standard of the (I be-
lieve correct) judgment of natural reason that calls a God who is non-
personal a God who is not, a non-entity; were he even to give the name
"atheist" to his system, still his sin would only be a matter of thought, a bun-
gling of the artist, in words and in concepts, the fault of the brooder, not
of the man. Not the being of God, but only his name, would be denied by
such a one. This is what I thought of Spinoza when I wrote the following
passage to be found in my Justification against Mendelssohn: "Eh proh
dolor. . . .* And may you be blest for me, you great, yea you holy
Benedictusl for whatever you may say philosophically about the nature of
the Supreme Being, and whatever verbal mistakes you may fall into, His
truth was in your soul, and His Love was your life."42 13
*i3- t "What is your God, you, who publicly profess, and never have enough
of repeating, that Religion is only [42] a means. Could fools and enthusiasts alone
consider it an end? What more can He be to you, your God, than a mere tool for
supporting your soul in the service of your body, which is the great thing above all.
Truly, it is only external needs, a clever economy of wants and desires, that ulti-
mately constitutes the sum of your philosophy, and of your much-vaunted wis-
dom. Religion is added to this clever economy only by way of help as seems fit.
And she should well be glad that we still find her useful to this extent. If we could
ever manage to secure our social relations, and draw up our theories, without the
use of God's name, then away with this tiresome device of our ignorance and in-
competence; away with this inconvenient piece of furniture that only takes up
space without being in itself of any use. . . .9
* "Alas, the pain"

[42] The profound agreement between the religion of Spinoza (his

philosophy displays itself throughout as religion, as a doctrine of the high-
est Being and [43] of man's relation to It) and the religion of Fenelon43
"But if on the contrary religion and virtue are final goals for man, and his high-
est good; if they are original, universal and eternal motives in the kingdom of
spirits, and hence too noble and sublime to be only directing the circular motion
of the wheels of a machine towards goals that constantly pass away, then it must
seem utterly nonsensical to want to set these very motives in motion with the life-
less, dull, weights of such machines, indeed, to arouse them, and produce them.
Wherever we approach religion in this perverse way, the state must corrupt reli-
gion, and religion must corrupt the state. To wish a [43] God only so that He may
protect our treasures, and keep our house in order, provide for us a comfortable
life, is the godless way of the idolater.10
"The intention of true, divine, religion has never been to serve in the things of
the earth. Nor did it ever want to rule over the earth; for this there is another
spirit, and in this spirit another faith as well. Every page of history gives testimony
to the evils that this spirit has wrought. —"Look at it, your God and your service of
Godl" the mocker of religion cries out. And the foolish priest zealously endeav-
ours to wash the disgrace away. He wants to save God, but he only saves Satan,
the blackest Satan of them all, the one who in his path points to heaven.
"If we take history, experience, and reason together, who can deny that when
religion is used as external means, and is not accompanied by superstition and fa-
naticism, it is without efficacy; but that in this company it only brings about evil.
So, for as long as our priests preach another doctrine than the one that is pure,
holy and inward, and do not command the rest to God alone; as long as they bid
us turn our eyes to heaven only because it fertilizes the earth (thus lowering the
spirit to the level of excrement); as long as they only want to adorn darkness with
the light and, instead of exterminating Satan, to talk him into profitable deals,
to befriend him with the Divinity, so long shall I hate them more than I hate the
man who denies God. [44] This denial at least shows me the man's highest good
where it lies; the atheist doesn't want to deceive me, nor does he deceive me; he
gives me his truth pure, and is perhaps a ten times more pious man than the util-
itarian who curses him.
"What has been said about of the fear of God here applies to virtue as well.
Whoever cannot believe in it simply as virtue, whoever cannot grasp its supra-
earthly nature, and honour it in its essential independence, should deny that
there is virtue at all; for he would have to deny it according to the truth." (Against
Mendelssohn's Accusations, pp. 84—89. J1
has already been adverted to several times but never argued for in a way
[44] to encompass all philosophies. To undertake such a project has
long since been a cherished thought of mine. Here I shall only remark
that the charge of either atheism or mysticism, and in any case of fanaticism
and non-sense, will to the end of time always be made against any philos-
ophy, whichever form it may assume, that invites man to rise above na-
ture in spirit and above himself inasmuch as he is nature, by the huge
family of those who call themselves philosophers and teachers of reli-
gion. The charge is not to be averted, for it is not possible for man to rise
above nature outside him and inside [45] unless he at the same time
rises with the spirit above his reason (the temporal one), up to the con-
cept of freedom.
As for this concept of freedom surpassing reason, how to define it,
what it comprises, its presuppositions and consequences—we can hardly
come to a complete agreement about all this.*14
So a certain difference of opinion would also emerge between us re-
garding the distinction that we both make, otherwise in quite the same
manner, between religion and idolatry.
*I have declared myself on this issue as follows in a still unpublished
essay:
"In order to seek God and what is pleasing to God, one must already
have Him and what is pleasing to Him in one's heart and spirit, for what
is not in some way already known to us we cannot seek, not search after.
But we do know about God and about His will, because we are born of
Him, created in His image,44 after His likeness and kind. God lives in us,
and our life is hidden in God. [46] Were He not present to us in this way,
immediately present through His image in our innermost self, what would
announce Him to us? Pictures, sounds, signs that only give us to know
what is already understood? The spirit to the spirit: what?
"Created after His image. God in us: this is the tidings that we have of
Him, and the only possible one; with it, God has revealed Himself to
man in a living way, ever propagating, for all times. A revelation through
external appearances, call them what you will, can at best stand to inter-
nal, original appearances only as language to reason. I say,"at best"; and
I add: a false God can no more exist on its own outside man's soul than
*i4- t See Supplement n.

* From here to p. 48, "do I claim," is omitted in the 1816 edition.
the true one can appear there. As man feels and pictures himself, just so
does he represent the Divinity too, except as being more powerful For
this reason the religion of men has always been in accord with their
virtue, and their moral state. A famous commander-in-chief during
the reign of the French King Jean45 had this motto which he bore on
his banner: L'Ami de DIEU, et L'ENNEMI de tons ks [47] hommes.46
This "friend of God" meant in his heart: For myself and against all. Only
through moral ennoblement do we rise up to a worthy concept of the
Highest Being. There is no other way. Not every fear of the Lord pre-
cludes malice and depravity. In order to have worth, that fear itself must
be a virtue. And when it is a virtue, then it is the noblest and most beau-
tiful one, presupposing them all—like the flowering of all their drives put
together, of their total force. The God we have, therefore, is the one who
became man in us, and it is not possible to acknowledge any other, even
through better instruction; for how would we ever understand any
other? Wisdom, righteousness, goodwill, free love, are not images but
forces of which we acquire the representation only in use, in independent
activity. Man must already have performed actions with these forces,
therefore; he must have acquired virtues and the concepts of virtues, be-
fore any instruction about the true God could reach him. I repeat: God
must have been born in man, if man is to have a living God, and not just
an idol; He must have been born a man in him, for man would not [48]
otherwise have sense for Him. The objection that in this way God would
only be a fabrication couldn't be more wrong. For how is the non-
fabricated God to be constituted, where discernible as the only true
G0d?["]47
Hence do I claim: Man finds God because he can find himself only*
in God; and he is to himself unfathomable because God's being is nec-
essarily unfathomable to him. "Necessarily," for otherwise there would
reside in man a supra-divine power, and God would have to be capable
of being invented by man. God would then only be the thought of some-
one finite, something imaginary, and by no means the Highest Being who
subsists in Himself alone, the free creator of all the other beings, the begin-
ning and the end. This is not how it is, and for this reason man loses him-
self as soon as he resists finding himself in God as his creator, in a way
inconceivable to his reason; + as soon as he wants to ground himself in
himself alone. Then everything gradually dissolves for him into his own
* The 1816 edition adds: "at the same time."

t The 1816 edition has "understanding" instead of "reason."
nothingness. Man has this choice, however, and this alone: Nothingness
or a God. If he chooses nothingness, he makes himself unto a God, [49]
that is, he makes a phantom into God, for it is impossible, if there is no
God, that man and all that surrounds him should be anything but a
phantom.
I repeat: God is, and is outside me, a living, self-subsisting being, or I am
God. There is no third.
Were I not to find God outside me, before me, and above me, so that I
have to posit Him, the One Being on His Own,* then I am myself this
so called being, in virtue of my selfhood,^ and my first and highest com-
mand is that I shall not have other Gods outside Me, i.e. outside that selfhood.
I then know, and comprehend quite well, how that foolish, stale, and
basically atheist, servility to a being outside him arises for man; and in find-
ing the ground of that delusion, by deducing and constructing it, I do
away with it once and for all.
But as I do away with the delusion by coming to an understanding of it,
and discredit this idolatry, I must also extirpate everything connected
with it. I must extirpate from my soul the [50] religion of love, of exam-
ple; mock every impulse and outpouring from a higher being; ban all de-
votion, all adoration, from my heart.
Far from me any such salvation! Decidedly, openly, without hesitation
or doubts, I give preference to an idolatry which is only external over this
religion which is too pure for me, and has for me every appearance of
a self-divinization. And if someone wants to call my weakness irreligion, or
the effect of this weakness, i.e. my superstition, atheism, then let nobody
be angry if, against the one who confronts me with this uncompromising
"either I or Thou" of atheism, I assert the "Thou." But with you, my
friend, I am not in this situation, for in your Appeal (pp. 61 and 62 ) 48
you explicitly declare that superstition does not exclude morality uncon-
ditionally, hence does not exclude true veneration of God either. And as for
me, I have likewise already granted that the idolatry which is not of the
senses but posits a concept, a thing of thought, a generality, in lieu of the
living God (I could almost call it idolatry "by adjective") does not [51]
exclude morality and the true, inner, religion indivisibly conjoined with
it. The living God will be denied here—but only with the lips.
Anyway, as regards superstition and idolatry, my opinion is this. It is
all the same whether I engage in idolatrous practices with images made
of wood and stone, whether I do it with ceremonies, stories of miracles,
* Ein Selbstseyn
t Ichheit
rituals and invocations, or whether I do it with philosophically unalloyed

concepts, barren entities of the letter, empty forms of the imagination.
Whether I make the shape into the thing in this way or that, I still hold
on to the means superstitiously, cheating myself of every true goal. I have
often said to certain devout individuals: You don't want to practice
magic with the help of Satan, yet you do it with the help of God; for your
religion is made up of nothing but instruments of magic, visible and in-
visible, and is at bottom only a constant conjuring against the devil and
in competition with him. Yet, even among these men whose disgusting
superstitions and anti-rational opinions angered me, and who most
painfully offended me, I found some for whom this superstition, this
insolence of unreason and the idolatrous [52] zeal associated with it, re-
sided only on their lips. Inwardly, in their heart and spirit, with all their
perverse ways of speaking and their curious fancies, they nevertheless in-
tended the true. But to them it was impossible, honestly impossible, and
hence appeared absurd as well as Godless, to separate this true from
those words and images of unreason. One might as well have expected
them to be able to think without words and images altogether, and to sever
anything individual, anything called "shape," from their representations,
sentiments, and feelings. But since even the best, or the purest, philoso-
pher is not capable of this if everything is not actually to be reduced to
naught in thought, not be elevated to impossible unalloyed concepts of
pure emptiness and empty purity, and the true eternal happiness consist
in this elevation alone, then, I thought, we should not let the accusation
of idolatry and superstition fall so lightly from our lips. One could very
well reproach us from the opposite side for exalting ourselves shame-
lessly above the small sin of our neighbour with a greater sin of our own,
for our accomplishment, our endeavour and power has been to make a
wilderness of the place of the True—that very place which every people
of the world has marked off [53] in its own way with altars—and to strew
salt on it. We would be infinitely wiser, in my judgment, if we first firmly
convinced ourselves, and then strove to convince others as well, that "it
is not the idol that makes the servant of the idol, nor the true God that
makes the true worshipper. For if God made the true worshipper, then
we would all be that, and all in equal measure, since the presence of the
true God is common to all."* *15
*i5- From the still unpublished essay cited above. See Supplement ni.t
* nur Fine Allgemeine ist
t In the 1816 edition Jacobi simply refers to Of Divine Things.
Lucky the man who constantly senses this presence; and for whom the
ancient adjuration, "By the living God!" is at every moment the highest
prototype of truth. Whoever lays a destructive hand upon the lofty and
holy simplicity of this faith, is an opponent of humanity; for no science
or art, nor talent whatever its name, could compensate for what would
be taken with it. A benefactor of humanity is on the contrary one who,
prevailed upon by the loftiness, the holiness and [54] the truth of that
faith, will not tolerate its being laid waste. His hand will be strong as he
exalts and raises high once more the fallen altars of the one Living and
True. Only did he stretch his hand out, and the hand of the iconoclast
fell withered. So has it been until now; and so will it always be: Hegroweth
not old.*16
Don't ask me to apologize for the length of my letter. I at least am of
the opinion that I ought rather to excuse myself for making an end here,
out of tiredness, after just giving you, incompletely and rhapsodically,
more of a narration of my doctrine of non-knowledge than a philosophical
exposition. But [55] neither did I promise anything more, and at bot-
tom I feel only my self-love offended, which tells me that surely this doc-
trine is yet amenable to a more philosophical development, and not
unworthy of it as well. Every philosophy, without exception, is at some
point marked by a miracle. Each has a particular site, its holy place, where
its miracle appears and, being alone the True, makes all others superflu-
ous. Taste and character determine to a large extent in which direction
we shall look, towards one of these sites or another. You have aptly re-
marked on this yourself (on p. 25 of your New Exposition)49 where you
say: "The philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of man one is.
*i6. * " . . . Time washes away the inventions of imagination but confirms the
judgments of nature." Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 11.2.
"Indeed, what is more true than that no one ought to be so foolishly proud as
to think that, though reason and intellect exist in himself, they do not exist in
the heavens and the universe, or that those things which can hardly be under-
stood by the highest reasoning powers of the human intellect are guided by no
reason at all? In truth, the man that is not driven to gratitude by the orderly
course of the stars, the regular alternation of the day and night, the gentle pro-
gress of the seasons, and the produce of the earth brought forth for our
sustenance—how can such a one be accounted a man at all?" Cicero, Laws,
n.vii.12
* Note omitted in the 1816 edition
For a philosophical system is not a dead utensil that one can either take
up or put down at will, but is quickened through the soul of the man who
has it."—You may well be surprised that I should quote this passage, and
call it apt, for the surrounding context (pages 23 to 26) proclaims with
biting wit your contempt,* or at least your indifference,^ for my way of think-
ing, and a scarcely restrained ridicule. But for this reason I have thought
of this passage with all the greater fondness, [56] as an occasion to note
that by writing this letter I have exhibited a strength of spirit at least not
contemptible. For the harsh and pointed commands undeniably directed
at me, not to speak at all about subjects of this sort, did either occur to me in
thought, or, while at work, leapt at my eyes often enough as I was leafing
through, and could have disturbed my composure. What consoled me
each time, I have already indicated; namely, that I may once and for all
consider myself exempted. Actually, I am in all honesty convinced, and
I know in any case from personal experience, that even where we make
no exception of persons but on the contrary, while voicing our indigna-
tion in general terms, we have a particular person in mind and become
all fired up at its very image, we yet do not make the person itself the ob-
ject of our indignation, for down deep we vividly feel that with respect
to it what matters is ... another matter.—Do me the same courtesy my
dear Fichte, and excuse me, just as I have excused you, if you should per-
haps find that [57] here or there I have expressed myself with a bit too
much animation in this letter. I have deliberately drawn my lines with a
heavy hand and applied the most strident colours, so that what should
stand out does so boldly, and what is only misunderstanding between us,
and what is a really opposite way of thinking, be brought out as neatly
as possible.
Fare Thee well! This I wish to you from the bottom of my heart, just
as from my heart I am your friend and true admirer.
F. H. Jacobi
The 2istof March, 1799
* Verachtung
t Nichtachtung
[6l] SUPPLEMENT I
[Here Jacob! reproduces passages from Supplement VH of the 1789 edi-

tion of the Spinoza Letters, pp. 402-04, 419-20; see pp. 370-73 above.
To the word "mechanics," in the note on p. 419, he adds the following
note:]
I superfluously remark that here, in the following Supplements, and in

the Letter to Fichte, whenever the words "mechanics" or "mechanistic"
occur, any necessary concatenation must be understood by them. In this
broad meaning the concept of the "mechanical" thus includes every-
thing [63] that occurs in time necessarily according to the law of causality;
hence, also the chemical, organic, and psychological, modes of pro-
duction—everything, in a word, that manifests itself in the course of
nature alone, and is attributed to its forces. [Here Jacobi cites extensively
from Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, 173—74-]
I don't think that anyone will take what I have called above "the mech-
anism of the genesis of a circle" for the circumscription of the area of a
circle with a compass!
[65] S U P P L E M E N T II 5 °
"Does man possess reason, or does reason possess man?"51 This

strangely sounding question that I raised ten years ago in Supplement
VII of the Letters Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza has been subsequently
given different turns by others, or rather, its turn has been used by them
differently. Even Kant has made use of it in his Metaphysical Foundations
of the Doctrine of Virtue, p. 47,52 where he says: "In its full perfection virtue
is thus represented, not as man possessing virtue, but as if the virtue possessed
man."
The distinction adumbrated in the question, namely between a sub-
stantive reason, or the very spirit of man, and an objective one that is not a
being persebut only the property and constitution of a being*—[66] this
distinction must in my opinion be laid at the foundation of the doctrine
of freedom, or otherwise this doctrine will only display an idle web of de-
ceptive words and images unable to withstand close inspection.
The distinction is actually to be found in Kantian philosophy as well.
But it occurs there only momentarily. It makes an appearance only to
disappear again, and this for the very good reason that spirit does not tol-
erate scientific treatment, since it cannot become letter. Spirit must there-
fore stay outside, [67] before the gates of its science. Where that science
is, there spirit itself is not allowed. For this reason we can be sure that who-
ever believes himself to be spelling out spirit, in fact always spells out
something else, whether knowingly or unknowingly. In other words: We
necessarily extirpate spirit by striving to turn it into letters, and any letter
pretending to be spirit is a lie. It is a lie, because it never is the letter of spirit
that bestows that name upon itself; seen from this side, it is plain decep-
tion, for true spirit has no letters. But the letter has indeed a spirit, and
this spirit is called science.
I shall not allow myself to pursue this line of enquiry further here. I
proceed directly to the determination of my concept of freedom.
By the word "freedom" I understand that faculty of man in virtue of
which he is himself, and operates, acts, and produces autonomously,
within and outside himself. Inasmuch as he looks upon himself as a free
being, feels and considers himself as one, he ascribes his personal prop-
erties, his science and art, his intellectual and moral character, exclu-
sively to himself. To this extent he looks upon himself as their originator,
as their creator; and only to the extent that he thus looks upon himself
(the spirit, the intelligence) as their originator and creator, and not upon
nature (from which he has arisen by necessity according to one part of
* Here Jacobi quotes verbatim the first two paragraphs of p. 423 of Supplement vn of
the Spinoza Letters (second ed.); the third paragraph in the footnote is nowhere to be found
verbatim in the pages that follow; Jacobi gives as reference pp. 422-32 of the second
edition.
his being, to which he belongs with this part, intertwined and interwoven
into its universal mechanics)—to this extent he calls himself free. He
therefore calls himself free only in so far as he [68] does not belong to na-
ture with one part of his being, is not arisen from it and has not been
borne by it; in so far as he elevates himself above it by distinguishing him-
self from it, uses it and masters it, cuts himself lose from it and over-
comes its mechanics with his free faculty, and makes use of it. Spirit
alone, not nature, invents and produces with purpose; He alone contrives
and strives* The production of nature alone is a blind, irrational, neces-
sary, purely mechanical one,*17 without providence, plan, free choice,
or goal. In our consciousness too, therefore, reason and freedom are
found inseparably connected together, not only in such a way that the
free faculty must be derived from reason (the adjective) but that reason
be derived from the free faculty (the substantive).
The union of the necessity of nature and freedom in one and the same
being is an absolutely incomprehensible fact; a miracle and a mystery com-
parable to creation. Whoever were to comprehend creation, would also
comprehend this fact; and whoever were to comprehend this fact, would
comprehend creation, and God too.
From its side reason, whose being consists only in what can be conceptual-
ized, strives to deny the reality of this mystery and the truth of this miracle.
[69] As the representative of a necessity that has already determined
everything with violence, and that will not let anything happen that has
not already happened, though fundamentally never did happen, reason
busily endeavours to clear that mystery and miracle out of the way, as a
deception due to temporal lack of knowledge. It repels them step by step, an-
nihilating time and eventuality. But from the other side, the inner certi-
tude of spirit equally proclaims the reality and the truth of the same
mystery and miracle. It compels us to heed its witness with the power of
an authority that no rational inference can outface. It attests to what it
proclaims with its deed, for no action, not even the least one, can happen
without the influence of the faculty of freedom, without the contribution
of spirit.
What spirit contributes is the wow-mechanical element not originating
according to a universal law of nature, but from an autonomous force in
*i7_ See the note in Supplement I [pp. Gaff.].

* dichtet und trachtet
the actions, the works, and the characters of man. If we deny this influ-
ence of spirit, its incursion into nature, we deny spirit in general, and in
its place we posit mere beings of nature [equipped] with consciousness. Such
consciousness then produces nothing but representations, and repre-
sentations of representations; concepts, and concepts of concepts. And
these arise gradually, just as substance is posited in action and acts. The
blind man goes ahead; he shows the way, and the he who sees follows be-
hind. Then the waste has invented order and form; the senseless, sense*
and reflectivity,^ perception and [70] understanding; the irrational, rea-
son; the lifeless, the living. Or again, everywhere the work has invented the
master.
Whoever can now accept this and, based on the conclusions of his
temporal reason, does not shy away from claiming that Homer,
Sophocles, Pindar, the barbarians Ossian and Klopstock, Aristotle,
Leibniz, Plato, Kant and Fichte—all the poets and the philosophers
whatever their names, all the law-givers, the artists and the heroes—that
at bottom all of them have brought forth their works and deeds blindly
and of necessity, in sequence according to the necessary order of cause
and effect, i.e. the mechanics of nature; that intelligence only accompanies
consciousness, and that therefore it only has had merely thefunction of observ-
ing in all this—whoever, I say, can accept this and make it his truth, with
him there is no further arguing.
We can force him on the rack of logic to confess that, in denying free-
dom, he makes his confession without compulsion; that by the word
"freedom," whenever and wherever he uses it, he always and everywhere
only means the materialistic principle of mechanics, an original, purely
indeterminate activity as such, an actuosity or agility (whatever gnostic re-
pugnance for anything corporeal or sensuous he might otherwise also
show or profess, and, where possible, experience).
Once he has made this confession, we must give him up. Philosophical
justice cannot [71] touch him any more, for what he denies does not
admit strict philosophical proof; and what he proves does not admit
strict philosophical refutation.
We say to the contrary: It is impossible that everything be nature and
that there be no freedom, for it is impossible that what alone ennobles
* Sinne
t Besinnung
and elevates man (truth, goodness, beauty) be only delusion, deception, lie.
So it would be, if there were no freedom. Impossible would be true re-
spect, impossible true wonder, true gratitude and love, if it were impossi-
ble for freedom and nature to dwell in a single being, and the one to
spin where the other weaves. A machine, an automaton (it is all the same
whether it is spiritual or corporeal) could not respect any man, or love
him, thank him, or even just admire him. Whenever we admire a ma-
chine, an automaton, we only admire the art hidden in it, the spirit that
produced it through insight and intention. The feelings just mentioned
all refer to just this spirit; they refer exclusively to a faculty that does not
operate mechanically purely and simply; a faculty that operates and pro-
duces determinate effects in a way that is conceptually impossible—
indeed, that conceptually (or naturally speaking) is impossible.
If you were teasingly to request me that in any work whatever, or
action, or human character, I separate what pertains to nature from what
pertains to freedom, and indicate how the one must be distinguished
from the other, so I request to you in reply, without teasing, that [72] you
do not draw this distinction in any instance whatever in which you feel
admiration, respect, gratitude, or love; that you do not represent a fac-
ulty of freedom alongside the efficacy of nature, and do not refer the
feelings thus aroused in you to that faculty alone. I know that it would
be impossible for you. You would immediately forgo the feelings the mo-
ment you think the free faculty away, the moment you truly dispense with
the assumption of it.
This much I grant to you without protest: the region of freedom is the
region of non-knowledge. I only add the following: This non-knowledge
is unsurmountable by man; in this it is distinguished from the other non-
knowledge whose realm and rule it is reason's vocation ever more to re-
strict. Reason necessarily starts out with the intention of conquering it,
in order to subjugate it step by step to science. But like Alexander,53 it
would indeed weep if it ever saw the danger of achieving its aim.
If faith in freedom is based on that non-knowledge upon which reason
is set on extirpating by generating science, then reason would be an asset
to man only to the extent that it remains in its childhood, and gets along
with delusion and deception. As it grows up and makes progress towards
perfection, death simple and pure develops from it. This death is called
science and truth, and these mean victory over everything that uplifts
man's heart and gives bliss to it; what transfigures his countenance, di-
rects his eye upwards—the victory over everything great, sublime, and
beautiful.
[73] If this is not to happen—if the divine in man is not to be delusion,

if truth and purified reason are to be godlessness instead, then the non-
knowledge connected with faith in freedom must be a non-knowledge of
an entirely different kind. It must be that place of truth which is inaccess-
ible to science.—"Remove your shoes, because this is holy ground!"54
[74] S U P P L E M E N T III
[Jacobi's text gives the context of the unpublished essay cited on p. 53

of his text, and comments on it. The essay was eventually published in
1811 (and ed. 1816, in the Werke, in) under the title of Of Divine Things
and Their Revelation. On pp. 300—05 (Werke, in) one can find a parallel
text to the one being cited here and on p. 53. The correspondence is not
at all exact.]
[79] APPENDIX
[The Appendix consists of five sections. In the first, pp. 81—95, Jacobi
reproduces his theses on man's freedom first published as a preface to
the second edition of the Letters Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza (1789),
pp. xxvi-xlviii, translated above. In the second and third section,
pp. 95-100, Jacobi reproduces two passages from AllwiU's Collection
of Letters (1792), namely the note to p. xvi of the preface, and
pp. 295—300, translated above. In the fourth section, pp. 101—03, ne re~
produces a passage from his novel Woldemar, and in the fifth, an excerpt
from a letter to a friend concerning Kant's moral doctrine.]
[101] 4
From Woldemar, Part I, p. iy8.55
Woldemar now related to his friends how he had once become pro-
foundly preoccupied, to the point of melancholy, with the question:
What does the human spirit actually strivefor with his a striving for virtue?
What does it truly and solely aim at by being directed to this object truly
and solely?
So many different and often opposite things have been assumed at dif-
ferent times to be the true and only objects of this striving. And just as
the opinions of men have diverged on this issue, so too have they di-
verged on the subject of happiness.
Pure shadows!—Fleeting, confusing shapes! . . . Images'?—Where pro-
totype?
Was the prototype impenetrable, how could insight into the good ever
become reliable? How could the will for the good only know itself, un-
derstand itself, stay just with itself, yet become an immutable will?
Or was this will perhaps only the immediate consequence of a [102]
personal consciousness attached to universal concepts and images'? Only the
striving for self-preservation essential to all natures but in pure rational
form?—It then had no object except its own activity, and the prototype
and origin of all virtues was the pure empty form of being in thought—
personality without person or distinction of persons.
So the whole magic lay in a deception of concepts and words, and as this
deception is removed, the discomfiting mystery of a mere spinning out
of being after being, just for the sake of being there, raised its head.
I was terrified, Woldemar said, by the darkness and emptiness that
arose in, and all around me. I anxiously stretched both my arms out, to
see whether I could still grasp something that would restore a feeling of
actuality and being to me. And it happened to me as in Buffon's beautiful
poem, the "First Man," where the protagonist, overpowered by slumber,
had feared to possess only an accidental and transitory consciousness, no
life of his own. . . . Then, as he awoke, found himself twice over. . . .
Astonished he cried out: I! ... Delighted he cried out: More than I! ...
Better than 11 . . . All my life flows in there!56
A throng of heroes in festive attire of immortality—Agis and
Kleomenes—57 and their sublime companions in life and noble death,
men and women, in beauty eternal. . . . They appeared to me: And
[103] I awoke from my troubled dream as if transformed. To me it was
as if I now experienced all this for the first time; as if memory had not led
me to this part of Plutarch.58 Never had I felt what I now felt in such
striking contrasts: hence everything was so very new to me. I felt that the
numbness from which I had just awaken, even if it were to overcome me
again, would never frighten me again like a slumber of death: I had now
felt too deeply within myself that I was, never to fear again, even for once, that
I could cease to exist.
[104] 5
Excerpt from a Letter to a Friend

concerning
Kant's Moral Doctrine
I do not understand how Kant can be so misunderstood as I see him mis-

understood in the note you sent me. For whichever work one takes as
basis for ajudgment on his practical philosophy, one finds that he begins
with the proof that it is impossible to derive a moral law from the object,
as the expected result of an action, and that the moral law must necessarily
be derived from the subject, as cause and principle of all ends in general,
hence also of all particular actions.—How can it therefore be possible
that he has established a formula that refers to the effect of actions for
a determination of the latter?
In the formula mentioned in the note Kant says: "Only act according
to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it be-
come a universal law."59 Or: "So act as if the maxim of your actions
should become universal law of nature."60 This formula [105] is nothing
more, nor is given by Kant as anything more, than a formula, i.e. a means
for judging whether subjective maxims contradict the law, of which univer-
sality is the first characteristic. A maxim that would contradict itself
when brought to the form of universality, cannot belong to the moral
system.—
The source, or the very principle of morality, is rationality. Rationality
however consists in that faculty of a being, through which the being in
question distinguishes itself from all other things (even from itself, inas-
much as it is affected by objects], or in the faculty to affect itself. Now, just as
rational being, the soul, the "I," cannot possibly be thought as predicate
of something else, but is by nature necessarily self-subsisting, object and sub-
ject at the same time, so too it is impossible to think of it in its works
otherwise than self-determined, or as immediately determining itself.
This means: it is by nature an end, an end in itself.
Suppose now that I think several rational beings together. Since each
is an end in itself, these beings necessarily restrict themselves in relation
to one another, inasmuch as none of them may be used by another merely
as means. Rational being gives this law to itself necessarily; or, the rational
will necessarily determines itself to righteousness through itself, without
any other aim.
[106] For a will affected by the senses as that of man, this willing of
the intelligence is transformed into the following should, command, or

imperative:
"So act that you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of
any other, every time as end, never merely as means." Ql
In this way a prescribed systematic bonding of all rational beings
through a common law manifests itself, or the idea of a Kingdom of Ends.
This idea is not, therefore, the principle of the law, but on the contrary,
the idea develops out of the representation of the law as binding all
rational beings equally.
Self-respect t is the first and last ground of all morality. Self-respect re-
stricts self-love; it commands it; it subjugates the person to its own person-
ality inasmuch as the person belongs to the world of the senses. This
self-respect is a felt attitude of the mind based on our consciousness of
our personality, our self-subsistence and freedom. And this conscious-
ness, and the feeling [that goes with it], arises every time the will man-
ifests itself according to that property by which it is a law unto itself, and
thereby equally gives a law to all other rational beings as well.
[i] David Hume on Faith
or
Idealism and Realism
A Dialogue
Nature confounds the Pyrrhonists, and reason the dogmatists.—We have an in-
capacity of proof that no dogmatism can overcome. We have an idea of truth that
no Pyrrhonism can overcome.
Pascal *
[3] Preface
and also
Introduction
to the Author's Collected
Philosophical Works
[1815]
But I think there is a lot in the proverb about the need for repeating a good thing
once and twice and once again.
Plato's Phikbus2
NOTE: This preface to the David Hume was added by Jacob! to the Werke edition of the
dialogue (Vol. n, 1815). It was also intended as an introduction to his collected works.
The following Dialogue is connected with the work on the Doctrine of

Spinoza. It was published in the spring of 1787, a year and a half after
the first announcement of the Letters to Mendelssohn, and two years before
the second edition appeared with its considerable appendices.
The claim put forward in the book on the Doctrine of Spinoza,
namely, that all [4] human cognition derives from revelation and faith, caused
trouble everywhere in the German philosophical world. It simply could
not be true that there is a knowledge at first hand that would first con-
dition all knowledge of second hand (i.e. all science)—a knowledge with-
out proofs that necessarily precedes all knowledge from proofs as its ground,
and governs it always and in every respect.
The Dialogue that follows was written to justify the disputed claim, and
to expose the utter absurdity, the naked mendacity, of all the accusations
that were being levelled against me because of it—that I was an enemy
of reason, a preacher of blind faith, one who despises science and espe-
cially philosophy, an enthusiast, a Papist.
At the time of its publication the author was somewhere between the
still predominant system of the Leibnizian-Wolffian school (to whose fol-
lowers it was mostly directed) and the new doctrine of Kant which was
gaining ground fast. His own convictions diverged from them both, [5]
and the Dialogue had some impact on the thought of his contempo-
raries at that time. From the philosophical point of view, it was consid-
ered to be quite significant; let us hope that it will still make itself felt
and be influential even now, according to the measure of the truth that
is in it and its historical significance. The situation has changed of
course, but the circumstances are still similar.
Because I did not want to do violence to its historical significance, I
David Hume on Faith (Preface, 1815) 539
have not allowed myself to make any improvements to the Dialogue in

this new edition that would have removed it from its time and falsified
it as a historical document.3 1
After all, why should I want to hide the fact that thirty years ago I may
have made mistakes—as if I couldn't still make mistake now? Do I really
think that I am now free of all error? Do I believe that I have grasped
the truth so well at this moment, that from now on neither I nor anyone
else will have to do anything for it or in virtue of it in the future? [6]
Fools might boast of their riches before the crowd, boast that they have
had their fill and have now enough. And then they might even want to
persuade the credulous, and actually succeed in persuading them, that
in truth they have never erred, but have appeared to contradict them-
selves in so many instances only because it is not possible for the higher
Spirit to communicate itself to the lower one all at once, and to reveal
itself entirely. But as for us, we prefer to boast instead that, through our
earnest and continued striving to acquire a knowledge that satisfies the
spirit, a science of the truth, we have only become ever more deeply
aware of our distance from it. At the same time, however, and by the
same token, we have also become ever more certain of the actuality of
truth, and, in the truth, of what is good and beautiful in itself.
But perhaps the dialogue has a lasting value itself, in its original form,
apart from what it meant and accomplished in its time, a value which
drastic changes could only diminish, even though they might pass for im-
provements in my view and that of many others. There is indeed only
one way [7] to philosophy for everyone, that of self-understanding, but
even this one way is something different for each mind according to its
richness and depth. The writer who has won new insights by dint of deep
and prolonged thought is often most effective in conveying them to
others of like mind when he offers them as they come, without a second
thought, at the moment of their first conception. As a rule he still does
not understand himself entirely at that point; but precisely because of this
others can take all the more freely from him, and may even understand
each other better on his terms perhaps, than he will later be able to un-
derstand himself from his own words.
What the author now objects to in this Dialogue, which was an early
work, is that he still does not distinguish between understanding and rea-
son in it with all the sharpness and determinateness he achieved in his
*i. The notes that have been added now are distinguished from the older
ones by the sign**.
later writings. As long as he failed to do this, he continued to be embar-

rassed by the ambiguity of the word "reason," and he had to get rid of
that ambiguity before he could achieve his aim. At that stage he still
could not give a proper philosophical bearing to his fundamental doc-
trine of a power of faith that surpasses the faculty [8] of demonstrative
science.
At first sight it seems that a sharply defined distinction between under-
standing and reason ought not to pose a difficulty, for we make this dis-
tinction constantly, without ever erring thereby, whenever we distinguish
between animal and man in general. Nobody has ever spoken of an an-
imal reason,4 but we do all know and speak of a merely animal understand-
ing. We also recognize several levels in it. Do we not place the dog, the
horse, the elephant, far above the bull or the sow? Yet, at no level is the
animal any closer to reason; they all fall short of it equally, the more per-
fect ones just as much the least perfect, that is, they all lack it completely.
But how can there be a merely animal understanding which appears at
times to exceed that of humanity, but absolutely no animal reason? A
thorough study of this question ought to yield a solution to the mystery.
[9] The animal perceives only what pertains to the sensible, whereas
the human being, who is endowed with reason, is aware of the supersen-
sible as well. And we call the organ with which we are aware of the super-
sensible, reason, just as we call what we see with, our eyes. The animal lacks
the organ for the awareness of the supersensible, and because of this
lack the concept of a merely animal reason is an impossible one. Man
possesses the organ, and it is only with it and through it that he is a ra-
tional being. If what we call reason were merely the product of a faculty
of reflection resting on sense experience alone, then all the talk of su-
persensible things would be only prattle. Reason would have, as such, no
foundation; it would be a poetic fancy. If it is truly revelatory however,
then there comes to be a human understanding through it which is ex-
alted above the animal one—an understanding, that knows about God,
about freedom and virtue, the true, the beautiful and the good.
There is nothing in man higher than an understanding and a will en-
lightened by reason, not even reason itself. For consciousness of [10]
reason and its revelations is only possible in an understanding. And with
this consciousness the living soul comes to be a rational being, i.e. a human
being.
We do not attribute reason to God any more than we attribute senses
to him. He, the Self-Sufficient One, needs no organs. It is proper to Him
to be the perfectly independent self-contained Being that knows Itself—
the pure understanding that surpasses every other; the pure, almighty
will.
These views, which for the author became perfectly clear and turned
into definite cognitions only later in the course of many struggles over
them, were still blurred at the time when he published the dialogue On
Idealism and Realism by the fog of the representations that then prevailed.
Like all other contemporary philosophers, he called something that is
not reason by the name of "reason"—i.e. the mere faculty of concepts,
judgments, and inferences, that hovers above the senses but is unable to
reveal anything at all by itself. But what reason truly is in actuality, i.e. the
[ 11 ] faculty of presupposing the true, the good, and the beautiful in it-
self, with full assurance of the objective validity of the presupposition—
this the author expounded under the tide "power of faith," as a faculty
that is above reason. This was bound to give occasion to serious misunder-
standings, and involved the author himself generally in unsurmountable
difficulties in expressing and presenting his true meaning.
Encumbered though it was by this weakness, the dialogue found an
audience. Some of the best minds were convinced by further independ-
ent reflection that, far from wanting to injure the dignity of reason, the
only purpose of the new doctrine was the restoration of reason in its full
measure.
Ever since Aristotle the growing tendency among the schools has
always been to subordinate immediate knowledge to mediated cogni-
tion. The faculty of perception that originally grounds everything has
been subordinated to the faculty of reflection, which is conditioned by
abstraction—in other words, the prototype has been subordinated to the
ectype; or the essence to the word, and reason to understanding.
Indeed, reason has been allowed to sink into understanding entirely,
and [12] to disappear in it. From now on nothing was to count as true
that was not demonstrable, i.e. amenable to a double proof by turns: in
intuition and in the concept, in the fact and in its image or word. And
it was only in the latter, in the word, that the fact truly lay and could actually be
known. Now, because of the preeminence of the second over the first,
this showing and re-showing proved to be appropriate to the under-
standing, but not to reason. Hence reason was declared incompetent to
wield the sceptre in the kingdom of true science. So even though, re-
markably enough, reason was still accorded the royal title and the orna-
ment of the crown, the sceptre was delivered to the understanding. As
for those who did not conform—the realists of reason, i.e. those loyal
to a genuinely original reason—for them the supporters of the new
dynasty, the merely nominal rationalists, invented a nickname. They

called them the "philosophers of feeling" or "of sentiment."**
[13] Long ago, the might of the Merovingian Kings gradually de-
volved into the hands of their head stewards (majores domus) in this same
way. These stewards too reigned, not in their own name but in that of
another, until at last, because of the situation created by their constant
encroachment, it was possible to put the following case of conscience to
the Holy Father: To whom does the dignity of royalty properly belong?
To the inept heir to the throne, or to him who in fact presides compe-
tently over the kingdom? Pope Zachary decided for the second.5
In the case of reason and [14] understanding of course there was no
such official and public verdict. The word "reason" was not banned from
philosophical language as a royal name. It was retained, and was even al-
lowed outwardly to keep the meaning of a faculty different from the under-
standing, and preeminent over it. But inwardly the meaning disappeared,
because everyone became convinced that reason would be set against it-
self if it trusted itself without further ado (blindly, as it was put); if it
claimed for itself a knowledge without proofs (a groundless knowledge, it
was said), and wanted to preside over the understanding as an uncondi-
tioned authority.
Since the time of its inception with Aristotle, this error has assumed
very different shapes in the subsequent philosophical schools, until Kant
finally bound the Protheus, and forced him to manifest himself in his
true shape.*3
*2. The history of learning is full of consolation for those who have experi-
enced injustice of this sort. When Newton made public his [13] theory of grav-
itation, the universal outcry was raised against him that he wanted to reintroduce
into science the qualitates occultae which Descartes had so successfully driven out
of it, and thus render it blind once more just when it had begun to see. It took
half a year for the outcry to subside.—
So deeply rooted in every mind had become the doctrine of a man for whom
nothing certain had been left after the total dismembering of his consciousness
except extension and thought, without a substrate for either.
*3- "It was Aristotle who first separated the forms of reflection from the re-
maining material cognition completely; he isolated the faculty of reflection in
order to experiment with it. And at once the error arose of seeking the law of
truth only in the [15] clarity of the cognition of the understanding. Ever since
then the effort has always been, more or less spontaneously, to do philosophy with
the faculty of reflection alone. The logical form of the definitions, inferences and
[15] The objection just lately repeatedly made against this great re-
former is incomprehensible. It has been alleged that through the eleva-
tion of reason over the understanding, which he was the first to have
attempted, he has turned everything in philosophy up side down, and
has given rise to a Babel of languages in it. The truth is quite the reverse.
The Babel-like confusion was there in the first place, and the cause of it
was that the senses alone were in truth at the basis of the understanding,
in accordance with the Aristotelian dictum: Nihilest in intellectu, quod non
anteafuerit in sensu.6 But it was still pretended that a knowledge of super-
sensible things could be acquired simply through progressive abstrac-
tion and reflection, and by converting the lowest into the highest. The
faculty for raising sense-cognitions to supersensible ones in this way,
without further ado, was called reason, and the claim was made that the
true-in-itself is actually comprehended with it and through it in virtue of
this reason, and a reliable science of the true in itself is thus achieved.
Kant appeared on the scene, examined this edifice of Babel, and dem-
onstrated incontrovertibly that it is in no way possible to come with it to
a pinnacle that penetrates the clouds of the senses, touching the beyond
of appearances. Or to speak without [17] metaphors: He showed that
what are paraded as cognitions of the supersensible are ideas generated
only through negations; their validity must forever remain unprovable.
demonstrations, that serves only for the reflective observation of our cognition,
ought to be enough to get us to philosophy. It is exactly as if one wanted to use
the telescope for astronomy without a sky to observe. Except for a few thinkers, who
were dismissed until recently as enthusiasts and fools, the universal mistake of all
the philosophers in this long period was that they tried to establish the system of
Metaphysics from Logic using just the logical form. Hence the whole period of
the Aristotelians, the scholastics, and the new philosophy, up to Wolff, is in fact
only a preparation for Wolffianism—which is the perfected logical Metaphysics. Even
the more famous recent names, such as Leibniz and Spinoza, fall in this line. For
if we do not limit ourselves to the statement of their dogmas [, which are inclined
to Platonism,] but observe the methodology in their writings as well, we find
everywhere the same hope of success by the rigorous application of logical
method, and the systematic building up of theorems with a superstructure of
definitions and axioms. Through this logical method, which was eventually
called the application of mathematical method to philosophy, everyone hoped
to be successful here." Fries's New Critique of Reason, vol. i, pp. 201— 02.'
What follows then?—If it is quite impossible according to Kant's expla-

nations and proofs to gain a true and actual cognition of the self-referring
truth that lies at the foundation of appearances, must not his doctrine,
like that of the Aristotelians, either issue with rigorous consistency in
plain materialism or not leave even the shadow of something substantial
and true for cognition?
It would of course have to do that, unless some hitherto unknown phil-
osophical power intervened to prevent it. And so Transcendental Idealism
appeared, and mediated all. Reason, which had been submerged into
the understanding theoretically, could now rise again above it practi-
cally. It could institute and command a. faith in what lies above the senses
and the understanding, and even above reason, a faith that outweighs
any knowledge.
[18] The only fault of this Kantian antidote for the materialism that
was the necessary consequence of Kant's disquisitions and proofs is that
its power is too great. It purifies the senses to such an extent that, after
the purification, they entirely lose the property of being a faculty of per-
ception. We experience the fact that we nowhere experience anything
true through the senses; and therefore we do not experience anything
true through the understanding either, because (as the Kantian teaching
would have it) the understanding can only refer to this sensibility and
would be entirely empty and destitute of function without the material
delivered to it by the senses alone. So Transcendental Idealism, or the
Kantian Critique, that was supposed to make true science possible for
the first time, lets science vanish into science instead, the understanding
into the understanding, each and every cognition into one universal non-
ground from which there would be no rescue if reason, which died only
an apparent death, did not now decide to raise itself up again out of its
make-believe grave, bursting out of it by force, and ascending above the
world and all that lies in it more glorious than ever before, crying out
with victorious voice: "Behold, I make all things anew!"7
[19] The Dialogue On Idealism and Realism, which was published a year
earlier than Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, considers only the first,
theoretical, part of his system. It objected that that first part leads to
nihilism, and that it does so with such an all-devastating power that no
rearguard intervention could recoup what had been lost. It was lost once
and for all.
Every philosophy that denies man a higher faculty of perception (one
that is not in need of sense intuition) but undertakes to rise from the
senses to the supersensible, from the finite to the infinite, simply
through protracted reflection upon what is visible to the senses, and

upon the laws for the imaginative projection of this visible into the under-
standing—any such philosophy (and this includes therefore also the
philosophy of the immortal Leibniz) must ultimately lose itself, above and
below, in a clear and bare void of cognition. For the author of the
Dialogue On Idealism and Realism, this insight had not yet acquired the
clarity and perfection which gave him [20] the courage later, once he
had achieved it, to found his entire philosophy upon the firm faith that
immediately emerges from a knowing not-knowing and is in truth iden-
tical with it. This faith dwells in every man just as certainly as, in virtue
of his rationality, every man necessarily presupposes a truth in itself, and
a goodness and beauty that is no mere non-nothing. And he only be-
comes man with this presupposition, and through it.
By adding the restriction nisi ipse intelkctus, except the intellect itself,
to the famous dictum of Aristotle that we have already cited, Nihil est in
intellectu, quod non antea fuerit in sensu, Leibniz was able to escape from
the coarser type of materialism and from plain sensualism well enough.
But he did not actually escape at all to a truly real supersensible realm
above that world of the senses which he had dissolved and made equal
to nothing.
But what use is it to be raised above nothingness only to find oneself
in the void, where we are deceived by fictions rather than by appear-
ances? This is no [21] genuine elevation but is more like a flight in
dreams, when we never move at all. Kant destroyed this dream, and by
this deed he elevated himself above Leibniz and above all his predeces-
sors since Aristotle.—He destroyed the dream by proving quite decisively
that a faculty of understanding that only constructs concepts and only reflects
upon the world of the senses and upon itself, if it reaches out beyond the re-
gion of the senses, can only reach to the void; and in that void it only
grasps its own shadow extending to infinity on all sides. He proved this
against false rationalism (we must repeat the point here again because
of its importance), i.e. against the merely nominalist rationalism that mis-
takes being awake for dreaming, and dreaming for being awake, so that
it really makes everything stand on its head.*4
"4. Cf. Critique of Pure H, [B] pp. 790, 791, and also 306, 309.
But this teaching as good as says t h a t " . . . not only is everything super-
sensible a fiction, and its concept empty of [22] content; but just for this
reason everything is ultimately sensible."*5 Hence it follows that either
this claim is to be assumed as valid (neatly cutting man off from all cog-
nition of the truth) or the truth must be known in opposition to it
through a higher faculty to which it announces itself in appearances and
above them, in a way that escapes the senses and the understanding.
In actual fact, then, the Kantian philosophy does rest on such a higher
faculty. And it does not rest on it only at the end, as it might seem, in
order to add to itself by violence an indispensable "keystone of the ed-
ifice of philosophy, without which the latter would collapse upon itself
and plunge into an abyss of scepticism that the master-builder himself
has opened up."*6 It rests on it, rather, from the very beginning, at the
place where that higher faculty, through the absolute presupposition of
a thing in itself, actually lays the foundation and cornerstone of the ed-
ifice. [23] For this thing-in-itselfis revealed to the faculty of cognition nei-
ther in the appearances nor through them—though only with them, in an
utterly positive or mystical fashion, incomprehensible both to the senses
and to the understanding.
Even in the first and purely theoretical part of Kant's Critique of
Reason, we have the thought of a power of cognition innate in man "that
feels a much higher need than merely to spell out appearances accord-
ing to a synthetic unity, in order to be able to read them as experience.
Reason," which is this faculty of cognition, "naturally exalts itself to cog-
nitions so far transcending the bounds of experience that no given em-
pirical object can ever coincide with them, but which must none the less be
recognized as having their own reality, and which are by no means mere fic-
tions of the brains."*7
And that is how it is, truly!—But it is just as true that Kant's doctrine
contradicts itself on [24] this point, for implicitly it subordinates the un-
derstanding to reason, just as it subordinates reason to the understand-
ing explicitly. And the actual result is a confusion that can with some
aptness be called a babel.*8
*5. Cf. Cr. of Practical R., the Preface, pp. 4, 8, 9, and passim.
*6. Cf. Cr. of Practical R., Preface, pp. 4 & ff.
*7. Cf. Cr. of Pure R., [B] pp. 37off. [Stress added by Jacobi.]
*8. In his New Critique of Reason Fries remarks on this subject that "indeed Kant
everywhere presupposed an immediate cognition of its own on the part of reason,
How it could happen that a profound thinker like Kant, could make
this mistake, and contradict himself without himself discovering it—this
I have explained in my essay Of Divine Things and Their Revelation,8 in a
way that leaves no blot on the reputation of that truly great man. While
referring to that essay, [25] I only want to add here some remarks about
my distinctive qualitative distinction between reason and understanding,
that sets me at variance with Kant—not to compel those readers to un-
derstand who have no wish to, but only to ease the task of those who wish
to do it right and in full, and happen to be especially keen to be set
straight on this subject.
In the Introduction to the Transcendental Logic Kant remarks, quite

rightly, that "of the two properties of the mind, the senses and the un-
derstanding, neither must be given preference over the other, since thought
without content is empty, and intuitions without concepts are blind.
Hence the union of the two faculties is necessary, if there is to be human
cognition."*9
To this I add:
Just as the understanding ought not to be given preference over the
senses, nor the senses over the [26] understanding, so too reason ought
not to be given preference over the understanding, nor the understand-
ing over reason.
Without the understanding we would have nothing in our senses.
There would be no power to unite them intrinsically (and this power is
indispensable even for the life of the lowest animal): sensible-being itself
would not be.
one impervious to error; but he was never clear about this knowledge.—His spec-
ulative reason is apparently nothing but the mere faculty of inference, or reflection,
and this faculty, since it is a mere instrument for reflective observation, has naturally
nothing of its own to give to cognition.—But even in practical reason, Kant always
sees immediately only what belongs to the faculty of reflection. For this reason his
practical philosophy too, and its faith, remain something very obscure. It is im-
possible to learn, in any direct and definite way, why this practical reason is more
capable than the speculative." Cf. Part i, pp. 203-06, and earlier, pp. iggff. 2
*g. Cr. of Pure R., [B] pp. 75, 76.3
In the same way, without the understanding we would have nothing in

reason: rational being itself would not be.
Likewise man is elevated above what is animal simply and solely by the
property of reason. If we abstract from this property (which distinguishes
the genus "man" essentially from the genus "animal," and pertains abso-
lutely and exclusively to man), then what is so often claimed would be per-
fectly correct, namely that the difference between an orangutan and a
native of California or of Tierra del Fuego is much less than that between
the Californian or Patagonian and a Plato, Leibniz or Newton.
The implication of this claim comes out even more clearly if we put
it in the following [27] way: taken as one degree of being versus another
degree of being, the difference between the more perfect animal, the el-
ephant for instance or the beaver, and the more imperfect one, the oys-
ter or the polyp, is strikingly greater than the difference between the
humans we call uncivilized and the so called higher animals.
So the plain truth is that if "man" has no other advantage over "ani-
mals" than a higher view of the one identical sense-material furnished to
the more perfect animals by their sense-organs, then he in fact differs
from "animals" only in degree, not in kind and essence. The superiority of
the human understanding over that of the animal would only be, then,
like the superiority of an eye equipped with a microscope or telescope
over one without it.*10
[28] In my opinion, the question whether man is distinguished from
animal according to kind and not only according to degree, i.e. through
less or more of the same powers, is therefore one and the same as the
question, "Is human reason an understanding only hovering above the in-
tuitions of the senses and in reality only referring back to these, or is it
a higher faculty that gives man a positive revelation of the true, the good,
and the beautiful in itself, and does not just lead him to believe empty
images (ideas) devoid of objective reference?"
The first alternative, that man is distinguished from animal, reason
from understanding, not according to kind but degree only, not qualita-
tively but merely quantitatively, has been basically the opinion of all non-
* i o. "Anything discovered by the eye equipped with the telescope (something
on the moon) or with the microscope (some animalcule in an infusorium) is seen
through our naked eye. For these optical media do not yield more light rays and,
through these, images in [27] the eye that would have not also been portrayed
on the retina without these artificial instruments. Rather, they only make them
larger, so that we become conscious of them." Kant's Anthropology, p. 17-4
David Hume on Faith (Preface, 1815)) 549
Platonic philosophers, from Aristotle all the way to Kant, however diverse
or even radically opposed in appearance their doctrinal edifices might
have been.
[29] In his remarkable final main section of the Critique of Pure Reason
(which deserves close attention) Kant puts the Aristotelian rationalists
and the Aristotelian sensualists on a scale and weighs them against each
other; he finds that in one-sidedness and incoherence they are both
equal. I agree with that judgment completely; and like Kant I consider
the naked and unmixed sensualism of Epicurus superior as system not
only to the mixed sensualism of Locke but also to the mutilated
Platonism of Leibniz that collapses into Spinozism because of its mutila-
tion. (See Letters Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza, Appendix vi). 1J
*i i. But how, just because this is my vote, my consent, my profession and as-
sertion, can I have deserved the title of "misologist," the harshest that could be
invented against a philosophical enquirer? (Cf. Tenneman's Outline of the History
of Philosophy, Leipzig, i8i2.) 5
This title has been bestowed upon me, supposedly, because I have professed
myself in favour of the genuine, un-emasculated, teaching of old Plato. Yet every-
one hesitates to bestow it on Plato himself, and so accuse [30] him of having
given free rein to superstition and enthusiasm—in spite of the fact that one
grants that his intellectual system is not just conceptual, but mystical as well!
(Cf. Cr. of Pure R., [B] p. 882.)
Nor is Kant himself to be saddled with this same attribute, and so to be counted
among those who disdain science and trample on it; yet he was the first to dem-
onstrate in full the theoretical impotence of science to ascend past the region of
the senses into that of the supersensible, "and actually reach the proper goal in which
all the strivings of reason must at last be united."
"I had first to relinquish knowledge," Kant says, "in order to make room for
faith."—To have brought this about, and "to have put down, once and for all, the
cheek and arrogance of a reason that ignores its boundaries and its true deter-
mination, that boasts of insight and knowledge where insight and knowledge actually
cease"—this is what he considered his proper contribution, his philosophical hon-
our, his glory.—6 According to Kant's explicit claim (cf. the Preface to the Cr. of
Pure R., [Bxxxff.] but especially the Preface to the Cr. of practical R), we cannot
[31] ''assume God, Freedom and Immortality (i.e. accept their validity problem-
atically) without first doing away with the knowledge of anything that transcends
What divides me from the Kantian doctrine is only what divides it from
itself too, and makes it incoherent, [30] namely that, as we have shown
earlier, it both presupposes and denies the existence of two specifically
distinct sources of cognition in man's mind. It presupposes them implic-
itly and unbeknownst to itself. But it denies them explicitly, openly, and
radically.
[31] The Kantian doctrine begins with the claim that apart from sense
intuition (empirical and pure) there is no other source of cognition
from which the understanding could draw concepts that are objectively
valid and would truly enlarge its knowledge. It proceeds from this claim
explicitly and openly, abiding by it to the end, and substantiating it all
the way.
Although it is called a second source of cognition, the understanding
itself is not truly that, since objects cannot be given through it but can
only be thought. To think means to judge. [32] Judgment, however, pre-
supposes the antecedent concept, and the concept presupposes intui-
tion. One cannot think without knowing that there is something outside
of thought to which it must conform—which it must verify. If there are
a priori intuitions that condition actual experience itself, then there can
also be a priori concepts and judgments that are independent of it,
i.e. that are formed prior to experience. But according to Kant (see Cr.
of Pure R., [B ] p. 677), unless something is given, either in pure or in em-
pirical intuition, the understanding that arises from the basic faculty of
the world of appearances, however pressing reason's requirement of such as-

sumptions for its necessary practical use might be. For speculative or theoretical
reason would otherwise retain its primacy, and the assumption of practical reason
would have to yield to the assumption of theoretical reason—i.e. freedom, being
inconceivable, would have to yield to the mechanism of nature, which is indeed
conceivable and manifests itself in the form of sheer necessity.—In other words,
God, Freedom, and Immortality would have to be denied absolutely, without
qualification."7
I ask: If Kant does not deserve the bitter reproach of "having vowed war upon
all speculation and theory out of a spirit of misology" even though this is his
teaching—then why should it be charged against me, since from the beginning
I have only opposed the possibility of a metaphysics based on logic alone, and
have never dared to make an assertion which I have not tried, as earnestly as pos-
sible, to ground philosophically?8
the mind, the imagination, cannot develop to the point of attaining an

actual existepce. Consequently, understanding is conditioned by the
senses, to which it always refers in its thinking as just a means. (Cr. of Pure
K, [B] p. 33).
The understanding, however, as from concepts it begets concepts of
concepts, and thus makes its way gradually up to ideas, can easily give the
impression that, in virtue of these merely logical phantoms arising for it
above the intuitions of the senses, it has truly taken flight above the
world of the senses and above itself, and that this flight gives to it, not
just the faculty, but the most decisive criterion, for a higher science in-
dependent of [33] intuition, i.e. a science of the supersensible.
This error of the understanding, Kant says, "comes about through an
illusion that has its necessary ground in the constitution of the human
faculty of cognition, in such a way that even the sharpest critique cannot
eradicate it, but can only prevent it from deceiving us." (Cr. of Pure R.,
[ B ] p . 6 7 o).9
The whole theoretical part of Kant's philosophy is directed precisely to
this end: the exposure of a false, self-deceiving, rationalism that counter-
feits science.
The radical exposure of this self-deception was also the radical and ir-
revocable destruction of it.
And so, for the time being, "at least an empty space was won" for genuine
rationalism. This is Kant's truly great deed, his immortal contribution.
But the commonsense of our wise man kept him from harbouring any
illusion that this empty space [34] would not inevitably and immediately
be transformed into a truth-devouring abyss (unless some God inter-
vened to stop that from happening).*12
This is where Kant's teaching and mine meet; and because they lead
to similar results from this point onwards, it seems as if they ought to find
themselves in company farther back as well, and that they can coincide
in one identical teaching. But this is impossible because of the irrecon-
cilability of the original presuppositions upon which they are based—my
doctrine being based on the presupposition that there is perception under-
stood in the strongest sense, and that its actuality and truth, even though
it is an incomprehensible miracle, must none the less be accepted abso-
* 12. Cf. the Prefaces to the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason cited above
[on pp. 21-22].
lutely; Kant's, on the quite opposite assumption (a hoary heritage of the

schools) that there is strictly speaking no perception. In other words man re-
ceives through his senses only representations that might indeed refer to
objects present on their own independently of these representations,
but [35] contain nothing that pertains strictly to those objects; and the
human understanding is only a reflection of these representations, just as
man's so called reason is in turn only a reflection of the understanding,
so that the comprehension of something supersensible, or something
true on its own, must be impossible for man, and must remain forever
impossible.
On the presupposition that the representations of the outer senses not
only might refer to something that is present independently of them and
that we call the "thing in itself but actually do refer to it beyond
doubt—on this presupposition, these representations are called appear-
ances; and, from this denomination (simply and solely because of it), it follows
that the presupposition itself is necessary. For it would indeed be non-
sensical to speak of appearances without assuming that there is some-
thing that appears. (Cr. of Pure R., [B] pp. xxvi, xxvii) But apparently it
is not nonsensical to speak of "appearances" and yet claim that nothing
at all of the actual truth and true actuality that lies hidden behind them
is revealed to the faculty of cognition in them and through them. It is
not [36] nonsensical to give this name to these representations that pres-
ent only themselves; to call these unmitigated ghosts "appearances,"
even though only a rare, amazing mind, one that begets only empty
ghosts of this sort, is in fact displaying itself in them.
And, according to Kant, even this mind cannot in truth display itself.
For we remain ignorant of why we must necessarily create the pure fun-
damental ghosts of space and time in our minds, and why, in order to
produce what we call "cognitions," we are bound to just twelve root-
concepts, precisely these and no other. (Cr. of Pure R., [B] pp. 145, 146)
Thus the pathway of Kantian philosophy leads necessarily to a system
of absolute subjectivity. But just for this reason it is the favourite of the
kind of understanding that only interprets, the one we call "philosophi-
cal" and that, ultimately, does not explain but only ingests. Opposed to it,
there is only the reason that warns us against this pathway. This is the rea-
son that gives us a positive revelation, that judges unconditionally in-
stead of just explaining. Or again, it is the natural faith of reason. The
pathway of the Jacobian doctrine, since it leads just [37] as necessarily
to a system of absolute objectivity, displeases the understanding that only
feeds on what can be conceptualized (even when this understanding also
calls itself philosophical reason); on its side it only has the reason that does
not interpret but reveals immediately, or the natural faith of reason*l*
If the Kantian doctrine squarely rejected natural faith as completely il-
lusory, then it would remain free of contradictions and incontestable (at
least in this respect). But, instead, it undeniably proceeds from natural
faith in a material world present independendy of our representations;
and it does away with this faith only retroactively, through the doctrine
of the absolute ideality of everything spatial or temporal—in such a way
that, as [38] I have put it some time ago, it is impossible to enter into
the system without proceeding from natural faith as a firm and stable
foundation and yet also impossible to take up residence and abide in it
with that faith.10 Later on, Kant himself was not satisfied with just natural
faith [in an independent world]: "It still remains a scandal to philosophy
and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us
(from which we derive the whole material of knowledge, even for our
inner sense—to which we owe the "I") must be accepted merely on faith,
and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable
to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof."*14 In order to heal this
infirmity of philosophy, he invented a demonstration which (amazingly
enough) refuted the earlier incomplete or half-way idealism of
Descartes, Malebranche, and Berkeley, through an idealism that was en-
tire and complete, his own Universal-Idealism. But then, this idealism,
which dissolved both the world of spirits and that of bodies equally into
nothingness, has been declared [39] ever since the Prolegomena not to be
"Idealism" at all, but Critical Philosophy.*15
At the foundation of every idealism lies the argument that the matter
of our representations can only be sensation, a modification of our own
self, indeed, that it is impossible for objects that subsist independently
* 13. Either all cognitions are ultimately objective, i.e. they are representations
of something present independently of the representing subject, so that they
would have to be found also in the divine understanding, though not in a limited
finite way but in a way that encompasses all relations infinitely and at once; or
there are no truly objective cognitions, no world, no God. Cf. Part i of the igth
Letter in All-will's Collection, where what absolute objectivity means to me comes
out more intuitively and comprehensibly, perhaps, than anywhere else in my
writings. I refer especially to pp. 134—35.9
*i4- Cr. of Pure R, 2nd ed., Preface, p. xxxix, note.
*15- Cf. Prolegomena, p. 71.'°
outside us to be hauled into the soul, like equipment into a room,

through the eye, the ear, and the touch of the hand, or that their prop-
erties should stray over into our faculty of representation. So, on the as-
sumption that there are actual objects outside the representations corresponding to
them, we are merely affected by them, without receiving with such affec-
tions, and through them, any knowledge whatever about what the ob-
jects might be on their own.
Kantian Idealism simply assumes that there are objects corresponding
to the representations, and on this basis it pretends to be a non-idealism.
For, as [40] Kant says, idealism consists in the claim that there is no
other being than thinking being; the remaining things that we suppose
ourselves to perceive in intuition are only representations in the think-
ing beings (images) to which no object outside them actually corre-
sponds.*16 Nothing of this sort, he continues, is being asserted by his
idealism (i.e. Transcendental Idealism), but the very opposite instead,
namely, that the /is impossible without the Thou.*17—"In that I demon-
strate that even the [41] inner experience of the I amis only possible on
the assumption of external experience, I pay Idealism back with its own
coin, only in reverse order and with greater right." (Cr. of Pure R., [B]
pp. 274ff., ibid., p. sig) 1 1
*i6. Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics, pp. 62ff. [§13, Anm. 2].
*i7- This proposition, 'Wo I without the Thou," which the author of the Letters
Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza had been the first to proclaim unequivocally a
few years before, was transformed in the second edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason into a formalized refutation of idealism. The proposition was later turned
around by the profound Fichte on behalf of his Idealism (which strived to sur-
pass that of Kant). Fichte proved against it, on perfect grounds, that it is just as
impossible for an impression to become a representation or a so<alled "appear-
ance" as for the representation or appearance to display the object itself (its
being as it is in itself and by itself, independent of the representation). But now,
the theory had to issue in the proposition that "Every Thou is I," or that the ab-
solute I is all that is. But then it followed again at the end that "All that is, is
nothing."—For what else would an absolute subjectivity be, or a subject that is
just subject through and through?—This conclusion [41 ] did not escape Fichte's
keen eye. In the practical part of his philosophy (Part II) he proved therefore
that Part I, the theoretical part, i.e. his final result, ought not to be true. (See on
this point especially Fichte's Vocation of Man.}''
All right! But what is actually gained by this turning of tables in virtue
of which the Cartesian cogito, ergo sum only comes to be confronted by a
similarly constituted "cogito ergo £$"?* Really there is no gain except the
one that we have pointed to already, and that we are pleased to repeat
once more: namely that a complete, and hence thoroughly consistent,
Universal Idealism, one that encompasses both worlds, has replaced all
the previous half-hearted, and hence inconsistent, idealism.
The most shocking thing in all this is, however, the claim itself that it
would be a scandal for philosophy, and human reason in general, if
there were no proof of the independent existence outside the faculty of
representation of objects corresponding to our [42] sense-intuitions,
whereas, according to the same Critical thought, it is not, or ought not,
to be a scandal for philosophy and human reason in general to have to
admit that we are incapable of verifying scientifically (or proving) the re-
ality of the objects of the concepts of reason, or the objective validity of
the ideas, i.e. that we cannot prove God's existence, or the reality of free-
dom, and the substantiality and immortality of our own spirit. It is no
scandal, therefore, to philosophy and human reason in general [to
make] this open profession of impotence, knowledge of which is insep-
arable from the conviction that, as a science that actually and truthfully
transcends the nothingness of the world of the senses, philosophy is im-
possible, hence impossible the very science for which (according to
Critical Philosophy's repeated assertions) all other sciences ought gladly
to be sacrificed were it to be got hold of, since it is the one about which
they all say, though only prophetically, that it comes "to give us a foun-
dation for our greatest expectations and hopes in that final [43] end
wherein all the strivings of reason must ultimately be united" (Cr. of Pure R., [B ]
p. 491)—impossible the science (to sum everything up finally in one
word) that cannot be given up without reason itself being given up along
with it, for reason is then certified to be not a true faculty of revelation
but only a faculty of illusions, one constantly blocking the pathway of sci-
ence with empty conjuring tricks, aping and teasing the understanding
all the way.
Critical Philosophy meets this scandal, and avoids causing displeasure,
by replacing in the practical part of the system the lack of proof for the
objective validity of the ideas, which in the theoretical part it puts at
centre-stage, with faith—not plain faith but a rational one, and as such el-
evated in full right above all the knowledge of the understanding which
* / think, therefore you are.

(according to the Critique) refers only to the experience of the senses.

But this rightful elevation of faith above knowledge—certain knowledge,
which indeed directly contradicts it—would have been impossible if all
our knowledge had not already been annulled in advance (as true, objec-
tive, knowledge) by means of [44] Transcendental Idealism. So, this is how
the matter truly stands: first Critical Philosophy undermines metaphysics
theoretically, for the love of science; then, since everything now tends to
sink into the wide open, bottomless, abyss of an absolute subjectivity, it
undermines science practically, for the love of metaphysics.
In spirit, however, this doctrine of faith that Kant puts in place of the
previous metaphysics he has just destroyed is as true as it is sublime.
There are instincts in man, and there is a law in him, that unceasingly
commands him to prove himself mightier than the nature that surrounds him
and pervades him from all sides. Hence there must glow in him a spark of
that omnipotence which is the life of his life, or otherwise the lie is the
root of his being. And in that case, in coming to know himself he would
have, in despair, to perish within himself. But if truth is in him, so is free-
dom, and then the truest knowledge gushes out for him from his own will.
His conscience [45] reveals to him that the almighty is not a nature
eternally transforming only itself, according to the laws of an iron-clad
necessity; but that above nature there is one mightier still, whose image
man is.
By beholding God man produces in himself a pure heart and a certain

spirit;12 outside himself, the good and the beautiful. Creative freedom,
therefore, is no fictional concept.13 Its concept is one of a power of prov-
idence and miracles, of which man becomes aware in his rational per-
sonality through himself, a power that must be present in God in
superabundance if nature derives from Him, and not He from nature—a
night figure of fantasy that the daylight of science banishes.
Omnipotence without providence is blind fate. Providence cannot
however be separated from freedom. For what would freedom be, with-
out knowing and willing? And what, a will that comes after the deed, or
only accompanies it?
Yet although an invincible feeling—[46] the witness of a perception
through reason—forces us to ascribe freedom and providence to man,
still, it is hard to avoid refusing them to him later in reflection, or even
to avoid denying them altogether. For the two are each totally incompre-
hensible to the understanding, and hence appear impossible. What can

be conceptualized is only a providence based upon experience, and not
essentially different from the faculty of anticipating like instances that
can also be found among the animals, not providence properly understood.
What is conceptualizable is only a freedom that has the cosmic law of
causal connection above it, i.e. an activity that reproduces mechanically
and in keeping with a universal system of impulse (no matter whether the
impulse is dynamic or atomistic); not a freedom that produces itself and
does so intentionally, a freedom that initiates works and deeds, and is for this
reason the only freedom worthy of the name.
The assumption of an actual and true providence, and of freedom,
not just in the highest but in every rational being, and the claim that
these two properties reciprocally presuppose each other—this is what
distinguishes my [47] philosophy from every other, from Aristotle down
to the present day.
Nothing that I have proposed in my various writings in defence of the
philosophical recognition of the miracle of providence and freedom has
been deemed worthy of formal discussion and examination by those of
my contemporaries who are differently disposed. For they all judge in
their heart that the freedom I am calling attention to is nothing but tire-
some chance, absolute coincidence. And surely, whoever bases philoso-
phy on this patent non-entity, not only does not deserve any attention,
but justly deserves to be laughed at. But that no other base is left to them
except blind necessity, the non-entity of an endless mechanism of
nature—this they have refused to acknowledge, or at least to own up to.
This is how things stood thirty years ago; so they stand still. They will
neither accept, with me, the providential efficacy of a miraculous force
(such as I call "freedom") as a Supreme and First [principle], as absolute
starting [point]; nor declare themselves explicitly and consistently to be
fatalists like Spinoza [48] and other philosophers before and after
him.*18 They will not take the first option because the understanding,
since it rests on the principle of causal connection throughout, can only
*i8. Aenesidemus-Schulze says of Spinoza (Encyclopedia of the Phil. Sciences [for

Use in His Lectures], p. 62) that he must be commended at least for having frankly
avowed that it is an illusion that men are free and their actions morally good or
bad, and that his intention in the Ethics was to transform it into a Physics, as his
system necessitated. Cf. Epistolae ad B. de S., et auctoris responsiones, Letter LXII.;
Tractatus theologicfrpoliticus, ch. xvi. 12
see chaotic chance in anything opposite to necessary. And they will not
take the second, because the proposition, "Everything that happens or
is done happens or is done according to a universal necessity of nature,"
has conscience and every human feeling against it, since it would put an
end to all accountability and estimation of actions and works, to person-
ality itself.*^
[49] I am aware of the expedient which is resorted to in certain quar-
ters in this predicament. Reason is said to be originally blind, and in this
state it is called "absolute"; then it is identified with "necessity," so that
the latter is now presented as secretly rational, and in this way the scandal
of a blind fate, of an irrational necessity, is speedily disposed of.
"If the concepts of the rational and the necessary are equivalent, as
everybody concedes and as all languages testify," so it is said, "if the ra-
tional is only the mirroring of the necessary, the representation that fol-
lows upon it in reflection, then it cannot be the case that the concepts
of necessity and freedom are opposed concepts reciprocally annulling
each other. Obviously the concepts of the free, the rational, and the nec-
essary, collapse into the one concept of the unconditional, or of the et-
ernal essence of [50] things and the eternal primordial power present
in it. The Free, therefore, does not hover above nature as its creator, as
many dreamed in their childish days, and here and there still dream. It
lies, rather, only at the ground of nature as its sole true being."
I shall not ask how anything could conceivably evolve or come out of
this Free [being] which, as they say, does not hover above nature as its
creator but lies at its ground as its sole true and unconditional being—
this Free which is identical with the eternal essence of things and the et-
ernal primordial power present in it, just as it is identical with reason, or
more precisely, with the absolute reason which, in turn, is identical with
necessity, both blind, though necessity precedes reason and leads it by
its unfailing tread in the great work of evolving "entity" out of "non-
*ig. "If everything that comes to be is determined through the being of the
Absolute, from the greatest to the smallest, in the spiritual no less than in the cor-
poreal world, then the representation of the freedom and spontaneity of our spirit,
or of merit and guilt with [49] respect to our actions, is a lie by which we deceive
ourselves. And so the commission or omission of any human atrocity is some-
thing divine, and only unreason or short-sightedness can find anything deserving of
reprimand in it." (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Science, Schulze [first edition],
§40, pp. 61-62).13
entity."* I shall not ask how anything could conceivably evolve or come
out of this Free, since for this immutable Eternal Being creating would
be just as much of a contradiction as being created. I shall make only one
comment instead, namely that according to this teaching Might is clearly
[51] the primordial starting point, a Might above which there is no
other, and which Knowledge, Wisdom, and Goodness (even supposing
that they are present as germs hidden in their ground, the All-
encompassing-essence) would, therefore, not be in the least able to control
and direct. But any such Might, above which there is no other, and over
which neither Knowledge, nor Wisdom, nor Goodness can have govern-
ing control, is a blind Fate. And in no way will it become a truly rational
being ruling with freedom, just because we invest it through the sound
of a word with the name or surname of absolute Reason and Freedom, which
is to say: Fate will not thereby become God.
What makes our God a true God, in opposition to Fate, is his providence.
Only where there is providence is there reason; and where reason is, there
providence is too. For its part providence is spirit, and only the feelings
of admiration, respect, and love, which manifest its presence, correspond
to the things of spirit. We may well judge that an object is beautiful or
perfect, without [52] knowing in advance how it became so, whether
through providence or without it. But we cannot admire the Might that
has brought it into being, if this Might has brought it forth thoughtlessly,
without purpose or design, according to the laws of a naked natural ne-
cessity. Even the splendour and majesty of the heavens, that cast the still
childlike man on his knees in prayer, no longer fill with awe the mind
of one who knows the mechanism that moves the heavenly bodies, pre-
serves them in their movement, and even shapes them. Such a one is no
longer awed by his object, even though it is infinite; he is awed only by
the human understanding that was able in a Copernicus, a Gassendi, a
Kepler, a Newton, or a Laplace, to rise above the object, put an end to
wonder through science, rob the heavens of their God, the universe of
its enchantment.*20
*20. "Newton provided the firm, perfectly intelligible, fundamental ideas,

through which Kepler's doctrine, which was still full of mystery, was transformed
into a perfectly clear Mechanics of the Heavens as we now have it in Laplace's
immortal works. In this mechanics we learn not only how to comprehend all the
events of the past or future from one fundamental law (that of gravitation); [53]
* entity, non-entity = Ding, Unding
[53] But even this admiration—of the faculty of cognition alone—

would disappear if a future Hartley,14 a Darwin,15 Condillac,16 or [54]
Bonnet17 were actually to succeed in laying out a mechanics of the
human spirit for us that is just as all-encompassing, intelligible, and en-
lightening as the Newtonian mechanics of the heavens. Then we could
no longer consciously honour either art, high science, or any virtue in
truth; nor find them sublime, and treat them with devotion.*21
Yet the deeds and the accomplishments of the heroes of the human
race—the life of a Socrates and an Epaminondas, the science of a Plato
we can also follow the teacher with confidence in his conjectures about the be-
ginnings of the planetary system."
"One may perhaps retort to this: You explain everything through your all-
powerful gravitation. But what is the parentage of that? To which I answer: That
too we know very well! Gravitation is the hereditary daughter of the ancient blind
Fate: Quantity, Number, and Measure, are its servants; its inheritance, however, is a world
without God, one that needs no God."
"If the great astronomer Lalande denied the Divinity; if he could find no God
in the Heavens, no trace of God's finger in the movements of the stars, we must
agree with the train of thought of his understanding. For that order above, that
purposefulness, is indeed just the product of a strict mechanism of necessary laws
of nature. Up there a blind Fate, devoid of spirit, is the unrestricted Lord of his
world."
"But I, for my part, appeal to the truth of the saying of John: It is only in spirit
that the Divinity is to be worshipped.'4 Only in what our science is to the spirit
do we find its dignity. Only he who adds faith in purposes can call the order of
the world"purposiveness."The true explanation of the course of the world based
upon ends lies, in a much simpler form, in the feeling of man.—The infinite spirit
does not dwell in Measure or Number! The number game is a frivolous game,
its enjoyment only the enjoyment of the imprisoned spirit at the rattling of its chains."
See the popular lectures on Astronomy byj. F. Fries, pp. 225, 227, 18, 16.'5
*21. Dr. Hartley looked forward to an era, "when future generations shall put
all kinds of evidences and enquiries into mathematical forms: reducing
Aristotle's ten categories and bishop Wilkin's forty summa genera, to the head of
quantity alone, so as to make mathematics and logic, natural history and civil his-
tory, natural philosophy and philosophy of all other kinds coincide omni exparte."
See the Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Reid, by Dugald Stewart
[1753-1828] (Edinburgh, 1803, p. 126). l6
and a Leibniz, the poetic and plastic productions of a Homer, a

Sophocles or a Phidias—would still be able to affect us aesthetically, and
still arouse in our mind the kind of satisfaction that spills over into de-
light; just as the [55] sensuous spectacle of the firmament would still be
capable of affecting even the most accomplished student of a Newton or
a Laplace, and still stir his mind with joy. l8 But we would not be allowed
to ask for the cause of such an emotion, for reflection would unfailingly
answer: like a child you are only being deluded; just keep in mind that
admiration is everywhere only the daughter of ignorance.
The jewel of our race is not a science that does away with all miracles,
but a faith that stands next to science and is not to be surmounted by it—
the faith in a Being who can only do miracles, and who also created man
miraculously; the faith in God, freedom, virtue, and immortality. This
faith is the distinguishing mark of the human race. One might say that
it is the rational soul itself and for that reason it is not only older than
all the systems invented by man or the arts taught by him but also, since
it is a power that derives immediately from God, it is essentially exalted
above all of them. Faith is the shadowing of divine knowledge and will
in the finite spirit of man. And if we could transform it into knowledge,
then, at the [56] moment of fulfilment, what the serpent promised to
the lustful Eve in Paradise would come to pass: we would be like God.19
In the state of still uncultivated understanding, in which entire nations
often persist for a long time, knowledge, and faith (i.e. the trust in the
things we see, and the even firmer and more intimate trust in those that
we do not see) appear so mixed together that from this state of inter-
mingling all the strange phenomena in the history of humanity can be
explained to everyone's satisfaction: the crude as well as the refined fet-
ishism, the worship of animals and stars, the innumerable types of idol-
atry and superstition, the multitude of absurd and contradictory systems.
The animal void of reason, incapable as it is of religion, is also incapable
of superstition and the worship of false gods.
The moment the perceptions* of sensible being begin to be dearly dis-
tinguished in human consciousness from the discernments^ of the super-
sensible, philosophy begins. In a confused way this distinction already
* Wahrnehmungen
t Vernehmungen; cf. Vernunft, i.e. "reason."
occurs in the child who, while still in the cradle, tries with his babbling
to speak, and, as mothers say, laughs with the angels. But many [57] cen-
turies must pass before an Anaxagoras appears on the scene to open up
for the understanding (which in its scientific evolution has remained up
to that moment in close communion with nature alone) the way to a
higher development, the way to the knowledge of a spirit that rules over
nature, a creative Intelligence.
Science exclusively devoted to nature might of course be able gradu-
ally to eliminate the pseudo-faith of superstition (which is perverted
faith)* by its own means alone. But it is not able to prevent genuine faith
from being lost along with superstition.*22 But this faith does not really
get lost; rather, it sets up house next to science, and in full view of it, but
higher up. The result is a doctrine that [58] rises above the science of
nature, and limits the concept of nature by means of the concept of freedom; yet,
precisely by doing this, it truly widens the scope of the understanding.
In other words, the result is philosophy in Plato's sense.
Like any other system of cognitions, philosophy too obtains its form
from the understanding alone, as the faculty of concepts in general.
Without concepts no "repeat-consciousness"^ is possible, no conscious-
ness of cognitions; hence, no distinguishing or comparing of these cogni-
tions, no weighing of them, no pondering, no appraising; in a word, no
actual taking possession of any truth whatever. On the contrary, the content
of philosophy, what belongs just to it, is given to it by reason alone which
is "the faculty of a cognition independent of sensibility, beyond its
reach."*23 Reason does not produce concepts, it builds no system, and
does not even judge; instead, like the external senses, it simply reveals, it
makes positive proclamations.
*22. "The advances in Physics necessitate Metaphysics, lest Physics become ar-
rogant and dethrone reason at the hand of the understanding.—[§49, p. 71 ] The goal
of Metaphysics, however, is to procure a safe passageway from the world of the
senses to the supersensible. [§31, p. 47] And its ultimate goal is to answer the
questions: With what attributes are we to endow the Being to which the world
must be referred as to its highest ground? and how is the connection that obtains
between that Being and this world constituted?" [§33, p. 52] Cf. Encyclopaedia of
the Philosophical Sciences, by G. E. Schulze, pp. 71, 47, 52 [first edition.].
*23- Principles of General Logic, by Schulze, §2, note i. 1?
* "pseudo-faith of superstition" = Aberglaube; "perverted faith" = Afterglaube

t Wiederbewufitseyn
[59] This is to be held firm above all else: Just as there is an intuition
of the senses, an intuition through the sense, so there is also a rational in-
tuition through reason. The two of them stand facing each other as gen-
uine sources of cognition. It is just as impossible to derive reason from
sense as to derive sense from reason. And therefore, with respect to the
understanding, and hence also to demonstration, they stand in the same
relationship. No demonstration counts against the intuition of the
senses, since every demonstration is only the bringing of the concept
back to the sense intuition (empirical or pure) 20 that justifies it. With re-
spect to the knowledge of nature, this intuition is what is first and last,
what is unconditionally valid, the absolute. And by the same token, no
demonstration counts against rational intuition, or the intuition of reason,
which gives us objects that transcend nature for our cognition, i.e. it
makes us certain of their actuality and truth.
We have to make use of the expression "intuition of reason" because
language does not possess any other way to signify how something that
the senses cannot reach is given to the [60] understanding in feelings of
rapture, and yet given as something truly objective, and not merely
imaginary.
Whenever someone says that he knows, we rightly ask him how he
knows. Finally he must inevitably appeal to one of these two: either to
the sensation of the sense or the feeling of the spirit. About what we know
on the strength of the latter, we say that we believe it. This is how we all
speak. We can only believe m virtue, hence in freedom, hence in the spirit
and God. But the sensation that grounds knowledge upon sense intui-
tion (what we call knowledge proper) stands no more above the feeling
that grounds knowledge upon faith than the animal species stands above
the human, or the material world above the intellectual, or nature above
its creator.*24
[61] And so we admit without fear that our philosophy begins with
feeling, but with a feeling that is objective and pure; that it professes the
*24- "It is indeed not for common sense to see how what is loftier in man, his
reason, stands in the way of the senses, and how thought proper begins in the in-
nermost part of the mind, not with a transformation of sense [61] representa-
tions into concepts, but with the elevation of the mind above sense representation, and
just because of that with afeelingwhich is of an entirely different provenance than
all sense representations. The ambiguous word"feeling"is here a makeshift for
the lack of another that we must seek in vain in any language not invented by phi-
losophers." Gottingen Erudite Notices, 1809, p. 207. l8
authority of this feeling to be the highest; and that, in its role as a doc-
trine of the supersensible, it bases itself upon this authority alone.
We assert that the faculty of feelings is the one that is exalted above
all others in man. It is this faculty alone that distinguishes him from all
animals in species, and incomparably elevates him above them, i.e. in
kind, and not just in degree. We assert that this faculty is one and the
same as reason; or, as we could also quite properly say, that what we call
"reason," what we extol above the bare understanding devoted only to na-
ture, originates simply and solely from our faculty of feelings. As the
senses direct the understanding to sensation, so reason directs [62] it to
feeling. The representations of what we are directed to only in feeling
we call "ideas."
To a degree the animals also possess understanding. And so must all
living beings, for without the conscious function of connecting (which
is the root of the understanding) there could not be a living individual.
But animals completely lack the faculty of feeling which is identical
with reason, i.e. the incorporeal organ for the perception of the
supersensible.
When we say of a man that he is without all feelings, we do not simply
equate him to an animal but cast him way below, even lower than the an-
imal, for we must assume that, as a man, he was endowed with feelings
by nature, and that he could only have divested himself of them freely.
Hence, even though animals are totally incapable of the knowledge of
the good, the true and the beautiful, we can still love them, and enter
into a sort of friendly relationship with them. But we look upon the man
who is not incapable of that knowledge but has estranged himself from
it unnaturally, either in horror, as a [63] disgusting monster, or with
fright and loathing, as a satanic being.
So once more: the faculty of feelings or the lack of it is what dis-
tinguishes animal from man. Where there is no reason, there are no
objective feelings either, i.e. feelings that immediately present to
consciousness something that is external to them. And where there are
such feelings, there reason too is unfailingly present. There, freedom,
virtue, wisdom, art and the knowledge of God reveal themselves and ac-
tively press forward.
Against the doctrine of rational intuitions, or of pure feelings and

their objectivity, stand united in revolt all those who simply will not hear
of a spirit certain of himself* who guides everywhere in the truth immedi-

ately, but will only countenance the certitude of the letter, without which the
spirit would be of no use but that, in its perfection, even makes the spirit
superfluous; the letter that first gives birth to the only genuinely certain
spirit, and then administers to it. This letter they call science.
[64] What you call the certain spirit (these men tell us) is an uncertain
will-of-the-wisp, a tempter. Put the spirits to the test! Which means: test
them against the letter, test whether they can accept it, fit into it com-
pletely; do not trust any who shies away from this trial and, instead of ap-
pearing in a body, slips away from one. Let it go, renounce it, but only
strive with ever renewed zeal after the being that exists in and according to
the word alone, that only exists through the letter, by the letter, and in the
letter.
What these men say is not to be dismissed entirely, and we must in fair-
ness distinguish what's true in it from the untruth. "Without word, no
reason—no world." "In the beginning was the Word," proclaims a
holy voice. And, without any break in its message, it continues rather in
the same vein: "And the Word was with God, and God was the Word."21
Where those who have just spoken against us go wrong is in letting the
Father be begotten by the Son, the word by the letter, for the word, so
they think, must obviously be made up only of letters, and these [65]
must therefore exist before it does. The word, thus constituted, then
begets their understanding first, and thereupon understanding begets
reason last of all. So everything is turned up-side-down. There is no spirit
left who exists on its own, but only souls of bodies or living corporeal
beings; and as the body, just so, always and everywhere, is the soul too.
If the understanding is, and wills to be, no more than a faculty of re-
flection on sense intuitions, a faculty of dividing and re-uniting in con-
cepts, judgments, and conclusions, based on that one single ground,
then it cannot escape from this inverted construction. For the reflection
engendering this type of understanding is one that inverts by nature. In
reflection, or the understanding, the species of individual beings appear
prior to the beings, seemingly producing them, and the genera prior to
the species. In reflection every particular thing proceeds from the womb
of a creative universal, so that its total actuality, the real itself, follows
upon the thing simply as a property that accrues to it, a complementum
possibilitatis, a [66] concept without content, an empty word. Hence, the
* gewiflen Geist = certain spirit. One must remember that Gewijien means "conscience" in
German, and that Jacobi is always playing on this word.
understanding which is completely wrapped up in the world of the

senses has defined itself as the faculty of cognizing the particular in the uni-
versal through . . . conceptsl And, donning this crown, it assumes the sur-
name of reason. Then, by fashioning ever broader concepts, this reason
finally achieves the infinitely wide concept of a One and All, which is the
non-thought of a thoroughly indeterminate, at once simple yet twofold,
infinite being; to wit, on the one side, a thoroughly indeterminate infinite
matter which physically unfolds into an infinity of finite determinate ma-
terial beings, all of them bodies with their different properties; and, on
the other side, a thoroughly indeterminate infinite thought which in its
infinity has no knowledge of itself, but from which the souls come forth
to join the bodies, each associating with a body with necessity. I say "ne-
cessity," because the infinite matter and the infinite spirit together con-
stitute only one and the same being. Every soul born of the being of all
the beings of this System (the System of absolute identity of being and
consciousness) [67] is and can only be the immediate concept or the life
of a body. It comes to be with it; it unfolds and passes away with it. And
yet, its passing away is such that one can also say of both soul and body
that although mortal they are in equal measure and relation everlasting,
or, though transient, immortal. For in the One and All, which stands for
the identity of being and non-being, of absolute rest and absolute move-
ment, there is neither yesterday nor today or tomorrow, but all is in it
equally eternal, a parte ante just as a parte post.*'
According to Plato the beginning of the doctrine of the One and All
is that man, taking his start from what is visible and tangible, from the
corporeal [in other words], and having made it, as the only true being,
into the foundation, discovered upon further enquiry that the corporeal
things perceivable .through the senses do not exist, but that everything in
this realm is just motion, and nothing else besides. In the Theaetetus Plato
has Socrates say that the following is not a bad doctrine at all, viz. "that
nothing (perceivable through the external senses)22 is [68] one thing
just by itself, nor can you rightly call it by some definite name, nor even
say it is of any definite sort. On the contrary, if you call it 'large', it will
be found to be also small, if 'heavy', to be also light, and so on all
through, because nothing is one thing or some thing or of any definite
sort. All the things we are pleased to say 'are', really are in process of
becoming [. . .]. In this matter let us take it that, with the exception of
Parmenides, the whole series of philosophers agree—Protagoras,
* i.e., antecedently and subsequently

Heraclitus, Empedocles—and among the poets the greatest masters in

both kinds, Epicharmus in comedy, Homer in tragedy. When Homer
says that 'I see Oceanus, and mother Tethys',*25 he means that all things
are the offspring of a flowing stream of change."*2®
As Plato, or his Socrates, goes on to show, however, this improvement
on that crude doctrine of being by which being was [69] reduced to cor-
poreal things, ultimately improves nothing at all. For just as in the first
doctrine everything was drawn into the corporeal, so everything is now
drawn into a movement of becoming which everywhere banishes being,
and leaves only a speech about it behind—a speech which is however de-
ceptive and false and in truth can never quite be spoken. For in its flow
the words too, that is, the nouns or substantives, flow away, just like every-
thing else, and only the verbs remain. And these too lose in it the present
tense which for them never is, just as in general no "is" or "being" is.
Where however nothing is or becomes at all, there no knowledge is or
becomes either, and every teaching comes to an end.
In view of this, later wise men have taken the ancient proposition that
goes back to Homer and earlier still, viz. that everything is only movement,
and nothing but that, and turned it round. They laid down the very oppo-
site thesis, viz. that movement is in truth nothing at all, but that in truth
there is everywhere only an Unmoved Being, a One that exists alone. Just
as the earlier wise [70] men had assumed an eternal becoming without
being, so now these later ones assume, on the contrary, an eternal being
without becoming. And just as speech vanished from the first view, and
the doctrine had to withdraw silently into itself for lack of nouns, so now
speech vanishes again because of lack of verbs, of which only the present
tense remains, which in fact means no tense at all.
This is where, for the first time, the authentic doctrine of the One and
All comes upon the scene to act as the helpful mediator. It marries off
the being without becoming to the becoming without being, with the
words: "So it is! Behold, it goes yet stays!"
Even Plato does not deny that this doctrine would be the only one
valid for an understanding turned towards the world of the senses alone,
rising above it only in concepts, and concepts of concepts drawn from
it. Its untruth, so he says, is seen only by means of a higher faculty of cog-
nition, an eye only created for the intuition of the supersensible towards
*25- Iliad, xiv, 201 [also, 302].

*26. Plato's Theaetetus (Ed. Bipont. 11, p. 6gff.), and in Schleiermacher's trans-
lation, Vol. 2.1, pp. 2o6ff.19
which it is unmovably turned. "Just as the corporeal eye," he goes on to

say, "if it did not move independently, would have to turn round from
[71] the darkness towards the light with the whole body, so also this
power of cognition must turn away from mutable things with the whole
soul, until with its intuition it is capable of rising to the sublime light of
what is permanent (which we call the good)."*27
What is being claimed here is not that nothing permanent can be cog-
nized in the mutable, but only that we must already have cognized something
permanent in order to re-cognize it in the mutable. If the mutable contained
nothing of the permanent, it could not exist at all even as changeable;
it couldn't even simply appearin any way at all. For this reason the under-
standing turned towards the world of the senses alone, pressing ahead
on the strength of its thought alone, ends up by transforming this world
necessarily into the One and All of nothingness. Nobody will bring the
teacher of the One-and-All to admit that this is his fate, or that the path-
way [72] of his science and its end is the transformation of all being into
pure word. How he flies away from this admission, making it impossible
for the philosopher to catch him and chain him down, this is found un-
surpassably portrayed in the Sophist. I have elsewhere already referred to
this masterpiece of the divine Plato, and I refer to it once more here with
yet greater earnest.*28
But I hark to the Socratic warning to turn back "lest always a new flood
of topics submerge our first discourse entirely."23
Our starting point was the question: Is the human reason an under-
standing that only hovers above the intuitions of the senses, and truly
refers to them alone; or is it a higher faculty that actually reveals to man
a truth, goodness and beauty in itself, and does not merely deceive him
with empty pictures devoid of objective reference?
[73] We have shown that the first alternative is the one assumed in all
the philosophies that have arisen since Plato, starting with Aristotle and,
after him, all the way to Kant, just as much in the so called rationalistic
philosophies of Leibniz, Wolff, and Sulzer,24 as in the explicitly sensual-
ist ones of Locke, Condillac, and Bonnet.
*27- Plato, Republic, vn, Ed. Bipon., vii, p. 135.20

*28. Cf. Of Divine Things and Their Revelation, the third Supplement.81
As evidence for this claim we were able to appeal to Kant's proofs in-
controvertibly establishing that whenever an understanding, which as a
faculty of concept-building only mirrors the world of the senses and it-
self, tries to reach beyond the region of sensibility it only manages to
catch thin air, its own shadows stretching out on all sides in infinity.
Therefore, we went on to argue, "everything supersensible is a fiction,
and its concept is void of content"*29—either this, or we must render
judgment in favour of the veracity of a reality that transcends the senses,
and of man's knowledge of it based on a higher faculty to which truth
announces itself in and above the [74] appearances, in a way incompre-
hensible to the senses and the understanding.
Based on this either-or, we took our stand upon the assumption of two
different faculties of perception in man, one by means of visible and tan-
gible, hence corporeal, instruments; and the other by means of an invis-
ible organ that in no way manifests itself to the external sense, but whose
existence is made known to us through feelings alone. This organ, this
spiritual eye for spiritual objects, has been called "reason" by men (prac-
tically by all), so that in truth they have never understood anything else
by this word except this very organ. Only a few, who went by the name
of philosophers, tried to dispense with it—this second eye of the soul—
thinking that the One and Only True must let itself be seen more sharply
and securely with one eye alone than with two. They actually gouged out
this one eye of the soul, the one turned above the senses, and discovered
that without it everything stood there for them much more clearly and
distinctly than before. What had been taken to be an actual second eye,
so [75] they said, was only a phantom eye, really nothing but a patholog-
ical double vision by the one eye that actually saw. One should look at
them to see, after the operation, how the one true eye has taken up
abode in the middle of their forehead, and not even a vestige of the sup-
posed second eye is now left to discover. These Polyphemuses25 found
an audience and, among all too many, credence as well. And these then
all wanted to be healed of the pathological double vision, and of the false
eye. Only Socrates and his pupil Plato after him withstood the wisdom
of the single eye, and demonstrated in the most diverse ways that the
human soul needs the two eyes granted to it in order to attain cognition
of the One True, hence that it must protect them with care and always
keep them open; and that, were it to shut the eye turned above the
*ag. Words of Kant, Cr. of Pure R., [B] Preface.22

senses, or eradicate it entirely, it would gain through the other only an assort-
ment of sciences void of foundation, without insight and ultimate goal.*30
[76] This discourse of the divine Plato was however overwhelmed by the
discourse of the many others, "for it is just as impossible to instil cogni-
tion of the truth into souls not equipped with the organ suited for it as
to instil sight into one without eyes by holding mirrors before him."*31
This means that there is no arguing against anyone who is not con-
vinced by the pure feelings of the beautiful and the good, of admiration
and love, respect and awe, that in these feelings, and with them, he
perceives something independent of them, beyond the reach of the
external senses and of an understanding exclusively directed at their
intuitions.
It has long been established that there is no defeating the lower, half-
way, idealist a la Berkeley, who in spite of natural feeling claims not to
perceive a material world actually existing outside him but only to have
sensations; there is no defeating the clarity with which his [thesis] can be
demonstrated. And in the same way we have to establish that there is no
defeating the upper or [77] full blown idealist a la Hume, who, in spite of
rational feeling, denies the veracity of the ideas immediately proceeding
from it, highest among them the indelible and indivisible ideas of free-
dom and providence.26
We have already shown above how man is driven on the one side by
a powerful temptation to deny freedom and providence despite his
deepest and most personal feelings; but that on the other, he is pre-
vented from denying them by a fear that is just as powerful; and how he
finally invents some wondrous artifices by which to secure for himself a
philosophical place in between, where he can say "yes" and "no" at the
same time. How these artifices are however so deceptive that not only the
inexperienced apprentices, but their inventors as well, are from the start
cheated and duped by them, this we have yet to make clear as the indis-
pensable conclusion to our work.
27
The illusions are twofold by which sensualism or materialism, by
changing its name and form in a variety of ways while in truth always re-
maining the same (the refusal to let freedom hold sway [78] over necessity
or Omnipotence over Fate), has tried to cover up for its one-sidedness and
weakness, thus giving the impression that the concept of freedom and
the conviction about the supersensible are also not strangers to it.
*30. Cf. the whole Book vi of Plato's Republic.

*3i. Plato, Republic vn, Ed. Bip., vn, p.135.23
The first of these illusions rests on the belief that the concept of the
unconditional is obtained through protracted abstractions of the
understanding.
For in abstraction we drop the particular relations and marks that con-
dition an object of the senses. We only hold on to the universal, which
then appears to be unlimited in comparison to the particular, no longer
bound to the singular conditions of the latter; and so we imagine that
through abstraction from all limitations the concept of the uncondi-
tional must be yielded to the understanding.*32 But this abstract [result]
is not in fact the concept of "freedom," not the genuine concept [79] of
the "unconditional," but only the null mirage of a whole without any con-
tent and hence without any restriction, a concept of the completely inde-
terminate, since in the moment of abstraction we looked away from all
singular determinations. As to content, this highest concept to which the
understanding can advance through abstraction is the concept of pure
negation, of pure nothingness. *33 If we take it as the unconditional ground
from which every conditioned thing comes forth, then it actually is the
absolute non-ground, a perfectly indeterminate becoming, out of which a de-
terminate result is supposed to have emerged—a totality without any
characteristic whatever, yet the ground of a real world with an infinite
manifold of determinate characteristics.28
The fact that I join the concept of an infinite time to it and also join
the concept of an [80] infinite mechanism of nature that reveals itself
in it (i.e. a series of necessary causes) does not endow this purely nega-
tive concept with any positive content. For there is absolutely no "first"
and no "last" here, no "what" and no "what for"; indeed, the concept it-
self of an endless mechanism of nature must, upon closer reflection, ap-
pear impossible to the understanding. But now, to this conceptual
impossibility the thinker juxtaposes the obvious existence of a sensible ac-
tuality, the causal nexus which is undeniably present as the law of the
cosmos, though it still remains just as absurd to assume this nexus with-
out beginning or end, and to proceed from the proposition "Nothing is
*32. Cf. Tradition, Mysticism, and Sound Logic, or On the History of Philosophy, by
J. Fries (Studies, vol. vi). 2 4
*33. See the essay "What Does Thinking Mean?" in Bouterwek's New Museum
of Philosophy and Literature, Book i, Issue i.
Issue 2, the treatise "Of the Ideal Object of Rational Appetite." Cf. Of Divine
Things, Supplement A. 25
unconditioned except the causal nexus itself, the bare becoming from
becoming."
How is it, then, that we are satisfied with this mirage, and put our
hopes for scientific explanation in an absurdity?—I answer: The concept
of freedom is inextirpably rooted in the human mind as true concept of
the unconditional, and compels the human soul to strive after a cogni-
tion of the unconditional that lies beyond the conditioned. Without the
consciousness of this concept, nobody would know that the [81] limita-
tions of what is conditioned really are limitations. Without the positive ratio-
nal feeling of something higher than the world of the senses, the understanding
would never have stepped out of the circle of the conditional, nor ever have at-
tained to the negative concept of the unconditional. It is absurd of course
to put a mere negation at the pinnacle of all philosophizing. But the feel-
ing of reason overrules this absurdity in the understanding,*34 and since
abstraction can proceed to the highest universality, the greatest indetermi-
nacy, we take the absolutely indeterminate to be the genuinely unconditional,
the very concept of freedom, and we look for its root in the understand-
ing, thus failing to recognize its true source, which is the perception of
reason.
The second illusion is closely associated with this first.
Sense perception, to which in sensualism the understanding is ex-
clusively directed, comes to the aid of this false concept of the un-
conditional. [82] When we look at the actual coming into being and
becoming in nature, the whole which we call the "universe" seems to
point to a gradual development from an earlier chaos, an original empty
waste. We always do see an imperfect unfinished [product] precede the
more fully finished [one], lack of form precede form, thoughtlessness re-
flection; the unruly desires the law; coarse immorality, morals; and how
each provides the basis for the other. The concept of "chaos" corre-
sponds to the "total indeterminacy" of the understanding. Each includes
the other: the empty concept of the understanding gets as it were filled
with matter, but with only a non-being of matter, a matter without any
material determination, one that is supposed to be the mere possibility, but
not the actuality, of the determinations perceived by the senses.
Fundamentally this chaos is in turn nothing but a pure negation of all
material properties, and hence a nothingness of the senses, just as the nega-
tion of all the characteristics pertaining to concepts is a nothingness of the
understanding. But since [83] becoming presupposes a non-being in the in-
*34. See the already cited two essays of Bouterwek.a6

tuition of the senses, yet from a bare nothingness equally nothing can
come to be, the inadmissible element of the assumption is to some mea-
sure disguised by the fact that the imagination fashions the non-being in
question as an imperfect, merely potential, existence, from which fully ac-
tualized existence arises in stages. Understandably, the better must then
everywhere emerge from the worse first; and the more exalted, from the
baser. But this assumption is patently just as absurd as the assumption
that being comes from non-being; indeed, it is really the same assump-
tion. It receives its semblance of truth only from yet another absurdity.
In other words, we posit the absolutely imperfect as the absolutely per-
fect, because the absolutely imperfect is the One from which everything
comes to be, but not on its own, and hence only transitorily. Accordingly,
the absolutely imperfect is the only permanent being, the one truly ac-
tual and eternal Being, natura naturans, God—not a "He" but an "It."
And just as in this One and Only Being—which is non-being [84]
though eternally creative—there stirs the first and universal matter of all
matters, one in itself thoroughly void of qualities and without differences,
so also there stirs in it a first and universal spirit of all spirits, one thor-
oughly void of thought, without differences. Although unconscious, this
spirit of all spirits is the most perfect spirit, the spirit kat'exochen, for
all spirits evolve from it, through the medium of the organism. Their
possibility is given in it alone, and from it they all arise, together
and in sequence (just as bodies arise from the universal matter,
contemporaneously with these spirits).
According to a recent discovery, though void of consciousness, this
spirit of all spirits is also the self-driving force behind science and art—an
art and science, however, that have no knowledge of themselves but^'w.^
produce works, hallowed only because of their sublimity; not provident to
be sure, yet providers just the same.29
Yet it is possible (so it was further discovered soon afterwards) that, in
a future week of creation, the primordial and all-encompassing Being will
turn from a merely material spirit into a formal one as well, [equipped]
with self-conscious knowledge and will—into a Spirit [endowed] with un-
derstanding. [85] Only then will God have truly come to be, i.e. be perfectly
actualized, now also a personal being, self-possessed and self-knowing.
But then it is also possible (we add) that what these recent inventors
and seers posit in a distant future—the perfect actualization of God, its
personal existence as well, its self-possession and knowledge—that all of this
might already have been in the past once, or even several times, from time
eternal. Perhaps (as they also say) the primordial ground of nature, the
Dark, worked for a long time alone, attempting with the divine powers
inherent vn. it a creation of its own, which in the end always sank back into
Chaos (and perhaps the series of species extinct before creation and never
come back bear witness to this),30 until the Word of Love came to pass,
and with it the lasting creation found its beginning.
But if [86] in the past there were, as we can conjecture, abortions and
monstrous births, a manifold fluctuation back and forth, then why not
also complete and sound births too?
And first of all: where do you get your proof that you are no longer
now living in a transient creation, a creation before creation, but in one ac-
tually begun and lasting? And how does the proof go? The ground that,
before Creation, made attempts at creation after creation—the divine
powers inherent in it—might well now be caught up in another such new
attempt, playing his game and idle trick on you, just as it does on the
God still slumbering within it. For you acknowledge this much yourself
when you say: lawlessness, chaos, lies at the ground of the creation of the
world, and still simmers there, as if it could eventually break through again.31
We ask: And why should it not actually ever break through again?
You answer: It cannot happen and will not, because after the actual in-
ception of creation chaos now serves only as [87] the necessary basis of
this lasting creation. The basis of the reality present in all things, you as-
sert, is lawlessness, a chaos, so that the world would disappear into noth-
ing if it lost this basis, if form and order were to put an end to this
lawlessness once and for all.—Thus it is quite understandable, you add
in reply, that form and order could not be original; that perfection
could not be from the very beginning; nor a perfect ready-made God,
any more than a perfect ready-made world.
But what about at the end? If perfection cannot be at the beginning,
then surely it cannot come to be only at the end!
But all the same, you answer, that is how it must be. Scripture too dis-
tinguishes between periods of God's revelation, positing the time when
God will be All in All in a distant future, i.e. the time when He will be to-
tally actualized.^ The judgment separating* evil from good then will
finally be brought to completion and, with this separation, God's perfect
actualization will come to pass.
So, no more becoming then? For what is there to become then?
Hence, no more life, for life is only [88] in becoming, as you say; it exists,
* die Krisis der Austofiung, krisis in Greek means both "separating" and "judging" or "de-
ciding." "To separate" is also the root meaning of the German word for "judgment" (Urteit)
and of the word for "decision" (Entscheidung).
it preserves itself, and feels itself, only in struggle. For this reason too, as you
go on saying, the moment God sundered the world of light from that of
darkness in order to acquire personality, He freely subjected himself to the
suffering of becoming; He submitted to a destiny which is the necessary lot
of all life.
Will all this therefore—we now ask again—will all this be no more
after the judgment of that distant future? Will what was necessary for God
to become a personal being no longer be necessary in order for him to
remain a person? Will it not be necessary, once He is finally done with the
world and Himself, for Him to start with the world and himself all over
again—to return into the non-ground and there divide into two once
more, freely though unconsciously, 50 that through creation the creature may
again become possible and He personal? In a word, will it not be necessary
that He should start anew, and execute once more the whole undertak-
ing of self-evolution across the wicked world? [89] Will it truly and ear-
nestly not be so?
This question they answer only with a stern rebuke. It is beyond us to
grasp the circle from which everything comes to be and, within it, the all-
pervading universal, the Neither-Nor, the essence of divinity. And hence
we are incapable also of grasping the indifferentiation of the beginning,
the identity at the end, and the struggle in the middle. It is simply not
worth the effort to talk to shallow theists, who dream of a perfectly ac-
complished God, one fully actualized with understanding and will at the
beginning; of a God who would be at once living and personal, a thorough-
going impossibility in other words—though something still possible
perhaps, or rather certain, at the end.
On this score our despondent [interlocutors] actually have a point.
We neither comprehend this circle from which everything comes to be, nor un-
derstand its language which must by right be called a "circular lan-
guage," for its every proposition and word must at one moment mean
what it signifies to [90] ordinary understanding but then the opposite as
well, at another. Indeed (this is the worst for us) it must also mean both
at once—and here is where the genuine Neither-Nor steps on the scene,
the key (as we suppose) both to the System and its technical language.33
They explicitly teach that the Neither-Nor is before all things, and that the
actual world has immediately come forth, or broken forth, from it; and
not only this world but also the actual (though at present still not perfectly
actualized) God into whom the world will eventually be assumed, as the
real is assumed into the ideal. Yea, they explicitly teach that this Neither-
Nor is God himself, the whole God as he was before creation, when he had
not yet spontaneously parted into two equally eternal beginnings, hence
still the perfect God a parte ante. But this perfect God a parte ante, not yet
parted into two equally eternal beginnings, and hence s^//the entire God,
who is the Alpha, and whose true name is "the primordial ground" or the
"non-ground"—this God is to [91] be distinguished from the God who
is only perfect a parte post, who is the Omega, and will be only in a distant
future, though now he is already called Spirit and is considered as if he
were already perfectly actualized, for he is as good as a minus sign.
For in the circle from which everything becomes, nothing in truth comes
to be. There is in truth neither before nor after, nothing truly past, and
nothing truly future; no first and no last, as little according to being as, ac-
cording to time. We should not be surprised, therefore, if the spokesmen
of the Circle say that the Spirit will finally subjugate everything to itself
and that it will be above All; and at the same time that even then the orig-
inal Non-ground will still be and abide above the Spirit, except that now
it will no longer be indifferentiation, equivalence, but Love, of which
Spirit is nothing but the breath.—And in their opinion Scripture gives
witness to this with the words: The Father-will at the end subject all things
to the Son; but the Son too will then be made subject to Him who has
subjected all things to the Son, so that God be All in All.34
[92] Whoever has eyes to read, let him read the unbelievable where
it is to be read in the original; let him read it with his own eyes. For how
the pro and the contra marvellously devour one another in this discourse
about the Circle; how the most patent contradictions are here joined
in brotherly embrace and swear to abide by one another in eternal
harmony—all this cannot be reproduced in a brief presentation.
But what Plato has relayed to us about the kind of philosophers whom
he calls the Ephesians, (or sometimes the philosophers of the "flow") fits
these spokesmen of the Circle remarkably well; "For there is no discuss-
ing these principles . . . with them," he has Theodores say to Socrates;
"you might as well talk to a maniac. Faithful to their own treatises they are
literally in perpetual motion. . . . When you put a question, they pluck from
their quiver little oracular aphorisms to let fly at you, and if you try to obtain
some account of their meaning, you will be instantly transfixed by an-
other, barbed with some newly forged metaphor. [93] You will never get any-
where with any of them; for that matter they cannot get anywhere with
one other."*35
*35. Ed. Bipont., n, p. 129. In Schleiermacher's translation, Part i, Book i,

p. 260.27 Socrates's reply is also relevant here: "Socr.: Perhaps, Theodorus, you
have seen these gentlemen in the fray and never met them in their peaceable mo-
At this point, we abandon these spokesmen, and turn once more to

those who indeed assume, as we do, that the most perfect being is neces-
sarily at the beginning, but also assert, against us and for the reasons al-
ready adduced above,35 that this most perfect Being is of necessity one
not conscious of itself, that does not act knowingly and voluntarily with
pre-set goals but works its effects necessarily, according to laws inherent
in it and prescribed for it by its nature; a thoroughly impersonal being.
[94] About these people we still have a few things to convey, namely
how they so successfully manage to make what testifies the loudest
against them speak for them instead.
Suppose for instance that, in an attempt at overcoming them, we con-
front them with that old consideration, sublime just as it is plain: Should
he who has made eyes not see; he who has implanted ears, not hear;%& he who has
made ready this heart, not love; he who has born this spirit from himself, not
know, and will, and have effects spiritually? At this they would reassure us
that nobody seizes on this point as willingly and seriously as they do. Do
we not posit, they say, the primordial power and true essence of all hear-
ing and seeing, of all understanding, heart and spirit, in the primordial
and all-encompassing being who alone truly is, and whom we call
"God"?—Is this not enough for you?—And if not, then tell us whether
anyone given to deep self-reflection could possibly accept that the divine un-
derstanding is like the human, which is based on sense experience and
develops mechanically through abstraction and [95] reflection. Or
whether any such profound person could possibly claim that he can think
his own human imagination, which is only imitative, as an original power
creating things out of itself, summoning true beings to existence.—-Just
consider seriously—their animation increasing as they carry on—how
your intelligence grows in you and how you profit from it. Think about
it carefully and you will be ashamed that you have attributed any such in-
telligence to the primordial being, whom we all call "God," with the only
difference that in Him it is already complete whereas in you it still is in
a state of becoming, a highly absurd thought all by itself.
Take proper stock, they exhort us, of the human intelligence. Must it
not be already present in the embryo in order later to emerge through
ments; indeed they are no friends of yours. I dare say they keep such matters to
be explained at leisure to their pupils whom they want to make like themselves.
Theod.: Pupils indeed! My good friend, there is no such thing as a master or
pupil among them; they spring up like mushrooms. Each one gets his inspiration
wherever he can, and not one of them thinks that another understands anything."**'
57§ The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill
simple development of the organism? But in its earlier state the intelli-
gence as such, or reason, does not know anything about itself. The con-
cept of a reason that actually exists yet does not know itself is not, [96]
therefore, a nonsensical one but on the contrary necessary. This imper-
sonal reason without knowledge of itself is actually the true, absolute,
substantial reason, as it is and endures in God. The absence of a formal rea-
son in God is no deprivation, but rather a fullness. He wall reason; hence
he has none.—The spontaneous unconscious doer of works: precisely that
is Spirit. For this reason even in man you properly call spirit, genius, the
divine, what brings forth works in him unconsciously, as through an alien
inspiration.
Thus speak these men, and a host of believers shout their loud ap-
proval in exultation. The young comprehend, understand, and are
made full with knowledge. Above all, however, they feel convinced by
the concluding argument, the Achilles of the discourse—that anything
worthy of admiration produced by man is brought forth by him uncon-
sciously, as through an alien inspiration; that we unanimously give to the
source of inspiration the name of genius and divine, [97] and this divine
source is nothing but the productive power of universal spirit ignorant
of itself.
If deep down the matter were precisely as they allege, then we would
indeed have to fall silent at this discourse, before the young and their
teachers. But we see things otherwise, and our intention now is to try to
exhibit the difference.
Let us recall, first of all, the sacred story of a creation after creation,
in Paradise.
According to this sacred story, a spouse was born to the first man out
of a dream.37 While he slept, the mother of the human race was fash-
ioned in him, the prototype of beauty, love, comfort, and gentleness.
Adam awoke to her presence. There she stood in front of him, the wo-
man, the flesh of his flesh, the bone of his bone, taken from him, a sec-
ond self outside him and in him.
Inwardly, in spirit, Adam had already seen the beautiful creature; for he
had longed for her, and had painfully felt that he [98] was alone. And
then there fell upon him that deep sleep, a sleep from God.—And God cre-
ated his wife from one of his ribs, and replaced it with flesh.
But now, the original Creator did not create while also asleep, in some
state of unconscious darkness: He knew and He willed.—When earlier he
had said: Let there be light! he had called light down only upon the
earth, which was in itself an empty waste.38 And from then on everything
in it had to come forth from darkness first, so that of none of its offspring
could it be said: In the beginning was the Word.39 In no way, however,
should we childishly imagine that on this account the night is the
mother of everything, and that the spirit comes only with the years, after-
wards, a late-born, just like the understanding that grows out of sense-
experience. There is a distinction here, that is similar to that between
primitive peoples, who speak of "before or after so many nights," and
more cultured ones, who speak instead of "before or after so many days."
Understanding based upon the senses presupposes the night; it does its
reckoning after the night, starting from it. Reason or the spirit presup-
poses the day instead.
[99] Let us be clearer. Before the actual deed the human understanding
knows nothing of the doing of the spirit that in man rules over it. It be-
comes aware of it only during and after its fulfilment in a deed. Since the
understanding recognizes that this doing does not proceed from it—
because the understanding only reflects upon the senses—* after long
deliberation it finally declares it a blind efficacy. We say "after long de-
liberation," for originally it was of course inclined to think of intelli-
gence as coming first, and in general of the will as preceding action.
When it however put the question, "How is it possible that intelligence
comes first, and the will precedes action, i.e. how is true providence and
true freedom possible?" it received from itself the definite answer: "Both
are utterly impossible."
In the same way the understanding had already asked itself earlier,
"How is perception possible through the instruments of the senses," and
had received the equally definite answer: "There is only sensation; hence
genuine perception is impossible."
Thus did the understanding invent its twofold [100] unbelief, first in
a material world, and then in an immaterial and spiritual one as well;40
and it called the art of losing all truth (for that was its invention)
Philosophy.
Just as in the nocturnal heaven the moon outshines the whole firma-
ment with its borrowed light, and by outshining it the moon obscures the
whole, yet the moment the sun rises above the rim of the earth its glow
disappears, for the true light shines forth which the moon itself had only
radiated, so too there is a time when the perceptions of reason, radiating
in the dark, grow dim before the imperfect day of the understanding;
but the understanding's lunar light pales whenever the splendour of ra-
* dem blofl nach-sinnenden

tional cognition dawns, and we then become aware that its glimmer had
its origin in the source of light that was previously withdrawn from out-
side our range of vision.*36
[ i o i ] All philosophizing proceeds from an intimate yearning in man
for a knowledge which he calls knowledge of the True, even though he
cannot sufficiently explain to himself what this word that means to him
more than any other, actually means. He knows it and does not. That,
through which he knows it, he calls his "reason"; that, through which
he does not know it but is prompted to search for it, he calls his "un-
derstanding."
Reason simply presupposes this True, just as the outer sense presup-
poses space and the inner, time. Reason exists only as the faculty of this
presupposition, so that wherever there is no such presupposition, there
is also no reason. As certainly therefore as man possesses reason and
what he calls "reason" does not merely delude him, so also must the True
be in some way present to him, however intimately, and be known by
him.
Since the understanding proceeds from the intuition of the senses
and develops first of all in connection with it, the understanding cannot
assume prior to this intuition the concept of the True that reason presses
upon it, nor extol [102] the concept above intuition. It asks for the sub-
strate of the concept, without which there would be no corroboration of
reality; and it seeks this substrate in appearances, where the intrinsic re-
ality of beings and the manifold of their properties must be found. But,
as we have already sufficiently demonstrated above,41 what one ulti-
mately finds in appearances is only a negation of nothingness, a some-
thing that passes for mere "not-nothing" and would pass for plain
"nothingness" if reason (which still retains the upper hand) did not for-
cibly prevent that. *37 For it is certainly possible for man in his foolishness
*36. "Whenever a single truth reigns like the sun, that's the day. Put in the
place of this single light as many stars as grains of sand on the shore of the sea,
and nearby a small light that surpasses this whole firmament with its glow—that's
a night which is the darling of poets and thieves."]. G. Hamann, Crusades, p. 190.2Q
*37> "Descartes's inference, 'I think, therefore I am,' is from the point of view
of Logic a play on words, for the 'I am' does not mean anything else logically
speaking than 'I am thinking,' or 'I think.' Yet, let us each ask ourselves whether
this so often criticized inference does not exercise a compelling power over us
consistent with the persuasive force of the strictest argument. This power points
to something other than the logical void of a so-called identical judgment." Idea
of an Apodeictic, i, pp. 41, 42.3°
to disavow reason or deny faith in it. But he cannot silence it completely,

or prevent it from still being effective in him.
[103] Xenophanes, whom even a sceptic called "the thinker without
conceit," complained "that even in his advanced age he could not enjoy
any knowledge. Wherever he cast his glance, everything dissolved into the
One, and only one and the same being appeared to him everywhere."*38
In almost the same terms, the noble, but not on that account any less
acute and profound thinker Fenelon complained that for him every-
thing vanished into the many, and the many into nothingness.
"I don't find myself" he says, "in this multitude of thoughts flowing in
me, yet they are all that I can find of myself. I am such a multitude of
thoughts of all sorts, of which no two are the same, [104] that in their midst
I become a nought to myself and, because of this, I am also no longer
able to catch sight of that one thing which is the True that I know and
I am seeking. For to represent it in some way on the basis of my opaque
knowledge, I must divide this one thing. I must make a variety of things
and a manifold out of it, such as I am too. And when I do that, it disap-
pears before my eyes, just as I disappear to myself.—Oh! who will free
me from all the numbers, the compositions, the combinations and the
series which, the more deeply I delve into them, the more invariably they
turn out to be a nought to me, and the more removed from what alone
is true in my mind? There is brilliance, and great promise, in the display
of the many and numerous. They are filled with unities, and grounded
on unity. But this ground of unity fails to reveal itself. Mocking my
searches, it incessantly escapes, whereas the numbers always increase
and the multitudes multiply. Even the series disappear with the disap-
pearance of what is ordered in them, and vanish into nothingness. Do
you want to get hold of what is? It is already no more. To catch what
comes immediately after? It is already gone. And what will come next?
*38. Tennemann's History of Philosophy, Part i, p. 164. The verses there cited
have been translated by a friend of mine as follows:
Would that I too had attained a mind compacted of wisdom,

Both ways casting my eyes; but the treacherous pathway deceived me,
Old that I was, and yet unnerved in the doubts of the sceptic.
For in whatever direction I turned my mind in its questing
All was resolved into One and the Same; All ever existing
Into one self-same nature returning shaped itself all ways.31
It will [ 105] come, but not be!—It will not be, yet will constitute a whole
with what was before it, and all of it is already no longer."*39
Man inevitably sinks into this void, this abysmal all-devouring nothing-
ness of cognition, whenever he turns the purely inward knowledge that
comes to him from the unfathomable depths of his mind into an outward
one, wants indeed to reach out to the supersensible, but with his senses
alone, abiding throughout by the conceptual stages of an understanding
ultimately based on sense intuition alone.
The "is" of the exclusively reflective understanding is equally an exclu-
sively relative "is"; it expresses no more than the being like something else
in concept, not the substantial "is" or "being." The latter, the real being,
being pure and simple, is given to know in feeling alone; in it the certain
spirit manifests itself.
We confess to our incapacity to define in which form the spirit certain
of itself presents itself to [106] man in feeling (objective and pure feel-
ing), and makes him ready to cognize what is only equal unto itself, i.e. to
cognize the True directly and exclusively in the True, the Beautiful in
the Beautiful, the Good in the Good, and thereby to acquire conscious-
ness of a knowledge which is not merely a dependent knowledge subject
to demonstrations but stands independent above all demonstration, a
truly sovereign knowledge. Above all we confess to our incapacity to de-
fine in which form the knowledge of freedom and providence that
dwells deepest in us will present itself—the freedom and providence
which, like two powers appointed above nature, rule in us and over us.
We only bring facts to light, and then, based on these facts, we justify our
doctrine with scientific rigour.42
How far this was actually accomplished in the author's earlier writings,
must be examined in the writings themselves. The essay "On the
Inseparability of the Concept of Providence and Freedom from the
Concept of Reason,"43 re-published in this present second volume of the
Collected Works, presents the system of the author's beliefs in highly con-
centrated form, [107] or the justification of his faith against philosophi-
cal understanding; it also presents, in what is perhaps its most
comprehensible fashion, what the author asserts in opposition to other
doctrines, and what he does not. For that reason I am making a special
reference to it here.
In haste to conclude, I append here a few more of the points that I
would like to add to what I have already said, in short sections, leaving
it to the reader to complete and order them. It is often the case that an
*3g. De I'existence de Dieu, Part 11, ch. 2. 32

aphoristic style, or what my departed friend Hamann called his "grass-

hopper style,"44 attains its goal more readily than the most polished
discourse.
Just as the actuality that reveals itself to the outer sense needs no guar-
antor, since it is itself the most powerful representative of its truth, so too
the actuality that reveals itself to that inward sense that we call reason
needs no guarantor; in like manner it is the most powerful testimony of
its own truth all by itself. Man necessarily believes in [108] his senses; he
necessarily believes in his reason, and there is no certainty above the cer-
tainty of this faith.
The moment man sought to establish scientifically the veracity of our
representations of a material world that exists beyond them, and inde-
pendently of them, at that very moment the object that the demonstra-
tors wanted to ground disappeared before their eyes. They were left with
mere subjectivity, with sensation. And thus they discovered idealism.
The moment man sought to prove scientifically the veracity of our rep-
resentations of an immaterial world that exists beyond them, to prove
the substantiality of the human spirit, and of a free Author of this uni-
verse who is however distinct from it, of a Providence conscious of its
rule, i.e. a personal Providence, the only one that would be truly
Providence—the moment he tried this, the object likewise disappeared
before the eyes of the demonstrators. They were left with merely logical
phantoms. And in this way they discovered nihilism.
All actuality, both the corporeal that is revealed to the senses and the
spiritual that is revealed to [109] reason, is attested to for man in feeling
alone. There is no demonstration over and above this.*40
*40. "The highest source of all assent to truth is an immediate trust in the pro-
nouncements of our consciousness. If this trust were to be lost, so would also the
entire assent." See Principles of General Logic, by G. E. Schulze, #103, and what pre-
cedes and follows:33
"Conviction always steps into the place of the final argument as feeling." See
[Bouterwek's] Idea of an Apodeictic, vol. I, p. 31. So too Schulze: "In the simple in-
ference of one judgment from another, abstraction is made of the truth of the judg-
ment. Consciousness of the truth, however, is part of the actual conclusion." See
Gottingen Erudite Notices, [in.] 142 (1802). 34
One of our sharpest thinkers has given an account of feelings (i.e. the
objective and pure feelings, which are the only ones at issue here) as orig-
inating immediately in reason, and has called them the "basic judg-
ments" of reason.*41 We gladly borrow this designation from him, and
share it with him. For we do commonly say also of the eye, the ear, the
taste of the tongue, that they make judgments, indeed, [no] that they
discriminate, although we all know that the perceiving sense only reveals,
whereas judgments belong to the reflective understanding. We speak in
this way out of clear insight that without understanding, that is, without
the reflection and the synthesis, hence without the spontaneity of a con-
sciousness, the senses are a non-entity. The same applies to reason. As
was indicated at the very beginning of this essay and was further estab-
lished in what followed, reason without understanding is a non-thought.
It would be like the thought of a science or an that does not know itself,
but is merely productive.
There is one thing, however, that must not be forgotten here, namely
that the proposition, "Where there is reason, there the understanding
must be also," is not equally valid when we convert it into "where there
is understanding, there reason must be also." All the beings that we call
"living" or, since they have life in them and manifest independent activ-
ity, "beings endowed with sour but that are "irrationar as well or, in gen-
eral, "animals," possess understanding, in the measure that through the
senses their organism sets them in communion with other natural
beings. Yet all animal species lack reason, i.e. the "discernment" proper
to the Spirit* that creates Thought and, together with Thought, the Word;
indeed, they lack it in exactly equal measure, [in] those most generously
endowed with senses and organs for the control of their life just as much
as those most scantily equipped with them, the most giftedjust as much
as the most wretched. Hence the irrational animal is just as incapable of the
feelings and concepts we unanimously call "ethical" and "religious" as is
incapable of science. But in no way does it lack those feelings and con-
cepts just because it lacks science. Reason is not grounded in the power
of thought, a light that only later shone in the understanding; the power
*4i. See Fries's New Critique of Reason, part i, p. 75, and p. 34iff., The Theory
of Feeling.35
* der Vernehmung des . . . Geistes. I am reading the genitive as subjective.

of thought is rather grounded in reason, which lights up the understand-

ing wherever it is present and awakens it to contemplation—and upon con-
templation there follows enquiry, distinct cognition, science.
Not only does this prophetic reason, this creative Spirit certain of itself,
precede all scientific theories and systems; it also abides [112] above
them all as their superior ruler, ruling them as their inward seer and judge.
No logical artifice can replace it or dispense with its actual and immedi-
ate presence in the feelings testifying to it. It has often been remarked,
even in ancient times, that theories and philosophies concerning the
True, the Good, and the Beautiful (the systems of ethics, aesthetics, and
metaphysics) begin to proliferate only when the living apprehension of
the True, the Good, and the Beautiful has become feeble and taste has
become less certain of itself; when art has sunk low, and the virtues have
been corrupted by the addition of perverted elements. It is as if the
mighty and self-assured spirit had disappeared from the living actuality,
and we then turn to the dead for answers. We open up corpses to discover
where life came from. Useless efforts! Where the heart no longer beats
and drives, where the feelings are silent, there the understanding en-
deavours in vain with all its arts to bring back the seer endowed with the
power of miracles from the sepulchre. Not even [113] a shadow appears,
only an illusion; it flits by, and what it reveals is deception.
Worthy of honour is science, wherever it can be and actually is. Worthy
of honour is art come to maturity, self-controlled and experienced.
Worthier of honour and more glorious is, however, the inspiration that
illumines their theories; worthier of honour and more glorious, the
spirit that tests them and determines their worth, the spirit which they
indeed serve but cannot create.
Does one show contempt for speech and writing, for letter and word,
just because one says: "They are servants'?"—Does one show contempt for
nature just because one says: "There is a God above it, a Creator; and
without this Being above it, it would only be a ghost"?
Just as the Creator's Word, calling worlds forth out of nothingness, is

exalted above its echo eternally resonating in the endless appearance we
call the universe, so too is the [114] productive power originally inhab-
14)
iting man exalted above the power in him of reproducing after
experience.
They say however (those others from whom we have heard above) that
this highly praised productive power, this power truly exalted above the
merely reproductive one, is the one that in man we call genius and in the
original being, pro-vidence. It is a power that works unconsciously yet is
endowed with wisdom, and love, and science, and art; and, on top of all
these and prior to them, with freedom as well, because only what a being
brings to completion aimlessly, from the necessity of its nature, is
brought to completion by it with perfect freedom.
To all of them we reply that they speak words for which they have no
concept, since it is impossible to think a blind providence, a design without
design, a free necessity; and that by perverting word and sense with their
language, they engage in a disjointed and deceptive game offensive to
honest people.
Spinoza too already knew how to interpret unconscious, blind Fate as
providence, and, [115] on the basis of this interpretation, likewise to talk
at length about the decrees and the world governance of his God; about
God's commandments and directives, universal and particular, internal and
external; his assistance; and yet other things of the same sort.*42
Just as I have been fighting to unmask this fraud for the past thirty
years, the fraud which this otherwise veracious man was the first to per-
petrate and which in our times has become even more unholy, so will I
go on fighting it to my last breath, unconcerned by the wrath of those
to whose heart it is dear. The more strident their anger, the more con-
spicuously they themselves betray the wages of their doing, by the ab-
surdity of their subterfuges and prevarications.
[116] Just as I have very precisely defined elsewhere (and have several
times repeated since then) which war I wage and which not, so I now de-
fine it once more. I am not waging war against a perfect and pure nat-
uralism in the style of Spinoza; on the contrary, I am honestly at peace with
it. It is a naturalism that knows itself for what it is and openly professes
it, not hesitating to reject the concept of freedom as irrational. It is a
*42. Tract. Theol. Polit., ch. m, p. 32; ch. iv, p. 48.

It is false to claim as some do nowadays that Spinozism has been t transfigured;
on the contrary, it has only been muddied and contaminated. And whereas the
writings of that sharp and consistent thinker still offer strong nourishment to
every healthy understanding, the more recent ones derived from him are full of
fraud and delusion: instead of doctrine they offer only chatter. The venerable fa-
ther sits there senile, telling children's stories.
straightforward, undisguised, fatalism or perfect naturalism, and if, un-

dauntedly consistent with itself, it allows the consequences to follow that
must, it can safely defy every attack on the part of a philosophy that as-
serts freedom and providence. Within its boundaries, i.e. within the con-
cept of nature, it is invincible.—I wage war only against the fatalism that
either does not know itself for what it is or does not profess it honestly;
the fatalism that mixes necessity and freedom, providence and fatum,
together into one thing and, completely inconsistent with itself—
miraculous mongrel that it is—also pretends to know of supernatural
things, yea of a helpful, gracious, and merciful God, like the [117] God
of the Christians. Against this illegitimate usurping fatalism I enter the
lists on the side of Spinoza's legitimate, self-abiding, upright and austere,
fatalism—indeed as its confederate. I stand on the side of a consequen-
tial fatalism that can stand the test of science, against the inconsequen-
tial thoroughly fantastic fatalism of the Neither-Nor.
In the same way, Lessing once came to the defence of the old and in-
flexible, yet consequential, orthodoxy against a new, very pliable but
inconsequential, form of it. "It is not simple orthodoxy that is so
loathsome," he said, "but a certain cross-eyed and inconsistent ortho-
doxy! So loathsome, so repugnant, so vexing: these are the right words
for it, at least to my sensitivity.—It is not the name that counts, but the
thing itself. And whoever has the courage to teach it, or insinuate it,
must also be frank enough not to try to avoid the name."*43
[118] Whenever man considers with his inner sense the nature that
displays itself to his outer senses, and strives to grasp its infinite being
with his understanding, to conceive it and to ground it, he discovers at the
end of his strivings not a ground explaining this nature and the universe
to him, but only a dark non-ground. But the still childish understanding
thinks of this non-ground as a chaos from which a hybrid of necessity
and chance first makes building materials gradually emerge, then fin-
ished products; gods and worlds, animals and men. When it reaches ma-
turity, the understanding rejects this non-ground and this chaos, for it
has risen to the clear insight that the thought of a universe only gradu-
ally developing since eternity is a totally absurd and can be used to force
its advocates back into absolute nothingness. At this point there comes
*43. See Lessing's Contributions, Part in, p. 516, Part 11, p. 412.s6
upon the scene the doctrine of a universe that has always been equally
perfect; of an infinite being circling back upon itself from eternity to et-
ernity, and aimlessly allowing the infinite to emerge from the infinite in
an infinite manner, solely in virtue of the necessity of its nature—[119]
allowing it to emerge here and pass away there, without any real coming-
to-be or passing-away ever taking place anywhere or at any time. This is
the doctrine of a nature which is not a creative force but only an eternal
force of change.
The understanding that only delves into the things of nature cannot
attain to a higher concept than that of the hen kai pan given here and not
in need, at this point, of further exposition. In nature the understanding
cannot find what is not there, its creator—hence its claim that nature
stands on its own, self-sufficient and alive through and through; that na-
ture is indeed life itself; that it alone is, and apart from it and above it is
Nothingness.
We could abide by this claim if man were only sense and reflective un-
derstanding. There lives in man, however, a spirit immediately from
God. This spirit constitutes his being proper, and through it alone does
his understanding first begin to understand, i.e. become a human under-
standing. Just as this spirit is present to man in his highest, deepest, and
innermost consciousness, so also is the Giver of it, God, present to him—
more present to him through his heart than [120] nature is to him
through his external senses. No sense object can so seize upon the mind,
and so invincibly establish itself before it as true object, as can those su-
persensible objects that are only seen with the eye of the spirit—the
True, the Good, the Sublime, and the Beautiful. Hence we may well have
the courage of our audacious language: we believe in God because we
see him; though he cannot be seen with the eye of the body, he appears
none the less to us in every upright man. The appearance itself, however,
is not God; and often can even deceive us. Yet the feeling aroused in us
by it did not deceive us, and the inner countenance we beheld was a vi-
sion of the true.*44
"Nothing is more like God," Socrates says according to Plato, "than the
most righteous among us." 45
*44- In order not simply to repeat in different words what I have already said
elsewhere, I refer to the discussion of this matter in the first main section of On
Divine Things [and Their Revelation, Werke, in].
*45. Plato's Theaetet., [Bip. ed., 11] p. 122; Schleiermacher, [Vol. 2.1] p. 263
[sic, actually p. 253].2137
[121] Every purely ethical, truly virtuous, action is a miracle with re-
spect to nature. It reveals Himwho only can do miracles, the creator, the
almighty Lord of nature, the ruler of the universe.
And the same applies to every creation of true genius. An understand-
ing that is only devoted to nature and justly admits of no miracles in its
domain, must deny the reality of genuine and alone the true creations
of genius just as necessarily as it must deny the reality of genuine and
alone the true actions of virtue. The only witness to their reality is the
Spirit—the inner Spirit who everywhere reveals only mysteries to us, the
unjustifiable—no science therefore. The latter necessarily leaves off where
the activity of freedom announces itself.
If, therefore, one asks us whether we understand the being of the uni-
verse in motion before us better by assuming freedom and providence,
an original intelligence; in a word, a creator God, than by conceiving it,
not as a product, but as an eternal [122] being revolving within itself
without beginning or end—a being which, as natura naturans, is void of
consciousness, void of understanding and will, but as natura naturata is
full of self-conscious and intelligent beings who determine themselves in
accordance with concepts, though none of them can ever be or become
an absolutely supreme Spirit—*46 to this question [123] we answer with
*46. Yet, some fancied themselves able to think even this. There lived in
northern Germany, about thirty years ago, a nobleman given to speculation. He
sent his thoughts, in single printed sheets, to several persons known to him as
thinkers through their published writings or some other way. So I too received
these sheets. I have lost them—which I now regret. The principal thought of this
man, so far as I remember, was this: God is not always the same being in the uni-
verse; rather, it is possible that as things change, ever different beings attain to
this dignity. He considered God's being in the world as a place that can be won and
then lost again. I found a similar thought later on, in an unpublished essay of
Diderot, The Dream of D'Alembert. In the first section Diderot is conversing with
D'Alembert; in the second, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse with Doctor Bordeu,
whom she had sent for because D'Alembert had fallen into an alarming sleep
and was saying strange things in his dreams. I shall only cite here the following
passage from the dialogue with Doctor Bordeu, which is for us the most relevant:
MLLE DE LESPINASSE: And who said that there isn't in some [i 23] corner of
space a large or small spider whose threads extend everywhere. . . . a spider with
an infinite web?
a resolute No. This, however, we comprehend perfectly well. If provi-

dence and freedom were not at the beginning, they would not be any-
where now either; hence man would only be deceived by his spirit, his
heart and conscience, which urge these concepts on him as truest. Then
man would be a fable, a lie; and the God of man a fable and a lie too—
the God of Socrates and Plato, the God of the Christians.
So I spoke at the beginning. I end now as I began.
BORDEU: Nobody; either that there wasn't or that there won't be one.
MLLE DE L E S P I N A S S E : Well now, this sort of God there. . . .
BORDEU: The only conceivable one. . . .
MLLE DE LESPINASSE: Could have been, could come to be, and could pass
away?
BORDEU: Undoubtedly. For since it would be a matter in the universe, a por-
tion of it, it would be subject to changes, it would age and die.
This is enough of the citation for the purpose for which I am citing it.38
Notes tojacobi's Texts
C O N C E R N I N G THE D O C T R I N E OF S P I N O Z A (1785)
1 See Hamann's letter of 14 November 1784, Hamann-Briefwechsel, v

(1783-85), #782, pp. 256-66. Also below, p. 33 of Jacobi's Spinoza
Letters, the footnote.
2 Archimedes adds: "And I shall move the earth."
3 Rene Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, AT x7405-06, tr. John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothoof, and Dugald Murdoch.
4 Redone in English by Jeremy Walker. This is the first of two poems of
Goethe's that Jacobi published at his own initiative, without Goethe's
knowledge, as part of the first edition of the Spinoza Letters. He probably
came into possession of this poem, to which he openly attached the
name of the author, during his stay at the poet's house 18—29 September
1784. See Scholz, Pantheismusstreit, p. ciii. The stresses were added by
Jacobi. They highlight in a selective fashion the elements in Goethe's vision
of man that also fall within the scope of Jacobi's own philosophy.
5 Pempelfort was the location of Jacobi's country residence until the turmoil
that followed in the wake of the French Revolution. The presence of
French troops in the vicinity eventually forced Jacobi to relinquish the place.
Thomas Wizenmann, who was befriended by Jacobi shortly before his
premature death and was Jacobi's guest at Pempelfort when he died, gives
us a vivid description of the beauty of the countryside, and of the
grounds of Jacobi's villa in particular. See Goltz, Thomas Wizenmann, der
Freund, Vol. i, pp. 2g8ff.
6 The friend is Elise Reimarus, the daughter of the deceased H. S. Reimarus.
See Introduction, p. 57 above. Elise's letter is not extant. See Briefwechsel,
1.3, #881.
7 23 March 1783, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #886.
8 21 July 1783, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #914.
592 Notes to Jacobi's Texts, pages 181—82
9 See Letter to Lessing, i June 1780; Briefwechsel, 1.2, #541. Jacob! had just read
Lessing's Education of Mankind.
10 See Lessing tojacobi, 13 June 1780; Briefwechsel, 1.2, #546. Jacob! is referring
to his "big trip" during the summer of 1780, details of which are re-
ported in his letter toj. J. W. Heinse, 20.23.24 October 1780, #582. See
Introduction, p. 59 above.
11 I.e., the prize essay of 1763, Ueber die Evidenz in Metaphysischen Wissenschaften
(ConcerningEvidence in the Metaphysical Sciences), pub. 1764. In
Mendelssohn's Werke, n, pp. 266ff. See David Hume, Jacobi's pp. 74-75
below. The proof from the "idea" has been known since Kant's Critique
of Pure Reason as the "ontological argument."
12 See Introduction, pp. 71-72 above. Reading this work occasioned Jacobi's
announcement to Lessing of his trip to Wolfenbuttel at the end of June
1780 and the despatch to him of a copy of his Ein Stuck Philosophie des Lebens
und der Menschheit: Aus dem zweiten Bande von Woldemar (A Piece of
Philosophy of Life and of Mankind: From the Second Volume of Woldemar), Deutsches
Museum, i (1779): 307-48; 398-427. See letter to Lessing, i June 1780,
Briefwechsel, 1.2, #541, and Lessing's reply on 13 June 1780, #546. According
to Altmann, the news that Lessing had said tojacobi before witnesses
that he had never discussed his system with Mendelssohn was the trump
card that Jacobi held and would eventually play, with the publication
of his Spinoza Letters, against Mendelssohn. The implication of this piece
of information was that Mendelssohn was not, after all, as privy to
Lessing's mind as everyone had assumed. Mendelssohn took Jacobi's report
precisely in this way and felt humiliated. See Altmann, Life of M.M,
pp. 703-04.
13 In the second edition this expression of astonishment is removed, I suspect
because in the controversy that followed Mendelssohn denied having
ever been surprised. Mendelssohn also explained the pointedness of his
questions tojacobi on the ground that he had, at the time, no idea that
Jacobi was reporting a piece of information allegedly obtained from Lessing
directly. He thought, rather, that Jacobi was reporting mere travellers'
tales. Mendelssohn complained about the many travellers who collected
written mementos from celebrities they met, and later used these to
suggest that they had actually engaged in deep discussion. See Moses
Mendelssohn an die Freunde Lessings (1786; M.M. to Lessing's Friends),
Scholz, Pantheismusstreit, pp. 294—96.
14 Opera Posthuma (Amsterdam: Jan Riewertsz, 1677). This edition included
the Ethica, the Tractatus, the De Emendatione Intellectus, and the Epistolae
& ad eas Responsiones. It also included, but with its own pagination, a Hebrew
grammar. For Mendelssohn's message tojacobi, see Elise Reimarus's
letter tojacobi, i September 1783, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #938.
15 The reference is to the article "Spinoza" in Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire
Historique et Critique, Quatrieme Edition revue, corrigee, et augmentee,
Notes tojacobi's Texts, pages 182—84 593
avec la vie de 1'auteur, par Mr. des Maizeaux, Tome Quatrieme (Q-Z)
(Amsterdam, 1730), pp. 253-71. A sixth edition identical to the fourth
was published in Basel in 1741. In this article Bayle flatly calls Spinoza an
atheist and offers six types of arguments to refute his "system," which
he characterizes as "the most monstrous hypothesis imaginable—the most
absurd and diametrically opposed to the most evident notions of our
mind" (Bayle's note N, p. 259).
16 As Altmann points out, by "others" Mendelssohn means himself, i.e. the
early attempt at interpreting Spinoza along Leibnizian-Wolffian lines
in his first philosophical work, Philosophische Gesprdche (Philosophical Writings;
Berlin: VoB, 1755). See Altmann, Life of MM, p. 617.
17 Briefwechsel, 1.3, #964.
18 I.e. Elise Reimarus.
19 The point of the metaphor seems to be that profundity of sense always
penetrates to the centre of an issue regardless of where it starts, whereas
sharpness helps to define ever new aspects of the issue without, however,
ever reaching to its centre. Hamann complained that the metaphor was
confusing. Briefwechsel, 1.3, Letter to Jacobi, i December 84, #1098,
PP- 394-95-
20 In the 17708, during the Wolfenbuttel tenure. See Introduction, pp. 55ff.
above.
21 Published in 1778, one of three short pieces with which Lessing first met
Pastor Goeze's attack on his Fragments. See Introduction, p. 57 above.
The Parable tells the story of a splendid royal palace built by a wise king
in his capital city. The palace had been built against all accepted canons
of architecture, yet managed to please all the king's subjects. The windows
were made of different sizes, and instead of one single majestic entrance
there was a multitude of doors, each intended to bring a visitor to the centre
of the palace by the shortest way possible, regardless of the point of
access. In spite of the differences in the style and size of the windows and
doors,.all rooms were equally illumined by a light shining from above.
The dwellers at the palace lived happily enough in it. In the course of time,
however, the king's subjects began quarrelling among themselves, with
different parties claiming to be in possession of the original plan of the
edifice. They were deaf to the few among them who did not worry about
the supposed original plan but were satisfied to enjoy the light and the
beauty that pervaded the place. One day the watchmen sounded a fire
alarm, and the subjects all rushed to save what they believed to be their
most precious possessions, as if the fire were in their own houses and
not in the palace. And instead of hurrying to save it, by whatever means
possible, they began arguing about the exact location of the fire, using
their many alleged original plans in proof of their opinion. Fortunately the
watchmen had mistaken the Northern Lights for fire.
22 18 May 1779: a short note from the "author of Nathan" to the "author of
594 Notes tojacobi's Texts, pages 184-91
Woldemar" with gratitude for the "instructive and sentiment-charged"

hours that the Woldemar provided. The note must have accompanied a copy
of the just published Nathan. Briefwechsel, 1.2, #510.
23 Letter to Lessing, 20 August 1779; Briefwechsel, 1.2, #516. Presumably, the
spirits to be conjured up are those of Spinoza and Leibniz.
24 English rendition by Jeremy Walker.
25 See Hamann tojacobi, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1098, 1-5 December 1784, p. 395:
"For all the beauty of the poem, I cannot find the application that
Lessing makes of it. Why should Jupiter not help himself to the soil and
the hut of the human potter? Jupiter was a slave of eternal Destiny, and
hence just as much to lament—not to curse or despise as Prometheus does.
Presumably, the 'first hand' referred to by Lessing was Aeschylus"; and
Jacobi's reply, #1107, 30-31 December 1784, p. 412: "With his first hand
Lessing might have meant the nature itself of things." Lessing definitely
did not mean that he had taken scandal directly from Goethe.
26 "One and all." "According to Lessing hen kai pan was the inscription on
a temple of the ancients": Jacobi to Hamann, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1107,
30—31 December 1784, p. 412.
27 "Nothing is made from nothing." See Bayle, Dictionnaire (4th. edition),
Vol. iv, note N.I: "Now Spinoza did not believe that anything could
be made from nothing" (p. 259).
28 Hebrew for "infinite."
29 A fresco in Rome.
30 G. E. Lessing, [Beitrdge] zur Geschichte und Literatur. Aus den Schdtzen der
herzoglichen Bibliothek zu Wolfenbiittel, Beitrag i, v 11: "Leibniz von den
ewigen Strafen" ("Leibniz on Eternal Punishment"; Berlin, 1773), p. 216.
See Lessing, Werke (Munchen: Hanser, 1976), Vol. vn, p. 180: "Er
[Leibniz] schlug aus Kiesel Feuer; aber er verbarg sein Feuer nicht in Kiesel"
("He struck fire from every flint, but did not hide his fire in flints").
31 There is an echo here of the cabbalist doctrine of the Zimzum (which is
the Hebrew word for God's self-contraction), as formulated by Isaak
Luria towards the end of the sixteenth century. The doctrine was in response
to the problem of how creation is possible, since nothing can exist out-
side God. Luria was led to believe that, in order to allow for creatures distinct
from him, the Infinite must subject himself to a contraction. It is as if
God cleared a space outside himself to make room for creatures. See
Gershom Scholem, "Die Wachtersche Kontroverse iiber den
Spinozismus und ihre Folgen," Spinoza in derFriihzeit seiner religiosen Wirkung,
ed. K. Griinder & W. Schmidt-Biggeman (Heidelberg: Lambert
Schneider, 1984), pp. 15-26, especially pp. 18-19.
32 See Monadologie, §47-
33 Jacobi apparently had a difficult time finding the passage in Leibniz, and
even enlisted the help of his friend Thomas Wizenmann. Briefwechsel,
Notes to Jacobi's Texts, pages 191-95 595
i.3, Jacob! to Wizenmann, Letter #1047, 17 July 1784, pp. 322-23. In the
second edition Jacob! here refers to Supplement vn for the resolution
of this puzzle. There, on p. 142, he cites from Leibniz's letter to Bourguet,
Opp. 11.1, p. 331-38: "[We should say that] God is in a constant state
of expansion and contraction: this is creation and preservation of the world."
Hamann thought that Lessing had actually got the image from Bayle.
Briefwechsel, 1.3, Letter #1098, 1-5 December 1784, p. 399; and Dictionnaire
Histarique (Article "Spinoza"), p. 263.
34 I.e. Principes de la nature et de la grace fondes en raison (1714).
35 Jacobi was convinced that all of Spinoza's writings fell into one consistent
whole. Herder, who had rejoiced at the news that Lessing was a
Spinozist, had suggested that Jacobi was not interpreting Spinoza correctly—
that he had made too much of the principle ex nihilo nihilfit, and that
Spinoza's system was based rather on quidquid est, illud est (whatever is, is).
Herder to Jacobi, 6 February 1784, Briefwechsel, Letter #992, p. 280.
Jacobi replied by saying that he had reread the Ethics and all of Spinoza's
other writings as well, and "Again was I struck by the inner consistency
of the philosophy of this man." Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's auserlesener
Briefwechsel, ed. F. Roth, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Fleischer, 1825—27), Vol. i,
#139, p. 377. In his letter (i.e. #992, above) Herder had also suggested that
the need of a salto mortale only arises when one conceives of God ab-
stractly in the manner of the speculative philosophers. There is no need
for any such leap in a Spinozistic world, provided that one understands
Spinoza in more positive terms.
36 The Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustiana) is the primary statement
of Evangelical beliefs.
37 In his translation of the passage, Vallee refers here to the motto on the
frontispiece of the book: "Give me a place to stand." Hamann had said
to Jacobi that, for him, the only dos moi pou sto was God's word. Hamann-
Briefwechsel, 22 January 1785, Vol. v, #801, p. 333.
38 Hamann, who had been kept informed of Jacobi's exchange of letters with
Mendelssohn, says concerning Jacobi's-salto mortale: "Sapere aude [Dare
to know]—to the Kingdom of Heaven there belongs no salto mortale. It is
like a mustard seed, a sour dough. . . . Woe to us if it depended on us
to become creators, discoverers, and forgers of our future happiness. The
first Commandment says: Thou shall eat (Gen. 2) and the last: Come,
all is accomplished." Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1098, p. 399. Jacobi could not of course
understand his friend's negative reaction. In an earlier letter Hamann
had proclaimed: "Experience and revelation are one and the same—the
crutches or wings of our reason if reason is not to remain lame and
crawl. Sense and history is the foundation and the ground, however still
deceptive the former or still naive the latter, I prefer them to any castle
in the air. Dos moi pou sto—Give me a place to stand, but no purified and
59^ Notes to Jacobi's Texts, page 195
stripped down and empty words: these I shy away from as from deep
still water or slippery ice." Ibid., #1091, 14-15 November 1784, p. 388.
But Jacobi's appeal to faith was based precisely on this claim that all
experience is revelatory in character. Since philosophers refuse to accept
this natural revelation but try to excogitate existence from their minds
instead, they ultimately fail to recognize the true nature of existence itself.
On this point Jacobi and Hamann were agreed. Yet in one respect
they differed radically, and Jacobi's mental set made it impossible for him
to recognize what lay behind the difference. Hamann had a trust in
the human body, and in all the activities associated with it, that Jacobi did
not share. Whether because of his peculiar temperament or because
he had after all accepted a mechanistic view of the body, Jacobi did not
believe that one could experience the presence of God on its basis
alone. For that kind of experience one needed a spiritual power satisfying
two apparently contradictory requirements. It had to be natural, since
it was an indispensable organon of all truth. Yet it also had to transcend
the limits of corporeity and could not therefore be available to those
given to the life of the body alone.
Jacobi was therefore given to an elitism of feelings, which was indeed
very much part of the sentimentalist culture of the day but which Hamann
would have nothing of. Like Lavater, Jacobi was looking for extraor-
dinary (albeit natural) revelations, for miracles, in other words, whereas
Hamann was interested in eating and socializing. Thus, to Hamann,
who had accused him of "a propensity to brooding," Jacobi replied that
he was not to be blamed for it. He had not chosen to be troubled by
an obsessive quest for "true sense." Nature had made him that way. And
he continues: "To philosophize our way to [the mysteries]—that we shall
not do with and from our common body. If there is for man certain knowl-
edge of God, a faculty must lie in his soul that will lead him to it organ-
ically [ihn . . . zu organizieren]. I believe—Lord, help my unbelief!" Ibid.,
#1084, 18-22 October 1784, p. 373. Hamann retorts with his claim
that "experience and revelation are one." But Jacobi insists: "Must not there-
fore a power lie in man—already lie in the natural man—whose impetus
makes him capable of receiving the Spirit, of Whom we do not know whence
It comes or whereto It goes, but Who however is Truth itself. . . . Truth
is actuality, it is being; and certainty is the feeling of truth." Johann Georg
Hamann Briefwechsel, Vol. v, 1783-85, #797, n January 1785, p. 320.
The dynamics of Jacobi's belief made for an obsessive effort of savouring
this feeling, and this is the attitude that Hamann could not accept.
For Jacobi's use of Organization and organizieren, see the relevant note to
David Hume, p. 127 of first edition. For Hamann's criticism of Princess
Gallitzin's spiritual perfectionism, see Introduction, p. 65 above. For
Lavater, see David Hume, p. 197 of the first edition, the note. It must
Notes tojacobi's Texts, pages 195-97 597
also be noted that the texts of the Hamann Jacob! letters published in Werkei
do not always correspond to the original. Jacobi must have edited them.
For Herder's reaction tojacobi's salto mortale, see p. 28 ofJacobi's text, and
the note re Herder. Kant indirectly parodies Jacobi's salto mortale in
Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloflen Vernunft (Religion within the Boundaries
of Mere Reason, 1793), Acad. ed. vi (Berlin: Reimer, 1907), p. 121.
39 1614—87, Cambridge neo-Platonist given to mysticism, the Cabbala, and
theosophy.
40 Jan Baptista van Helmont (1577-1644), a chemist and physician strongly
influenced by neo-Platonism and the hermetic tradition.
41 This book had been the occasion for Lavater's challenge to Mendelssohn,
either to refute Bonnet's scientific demonstration of Christian doctrine
or convert. See Introduction, p. 40 above.
42 "Can one possibly imagine the universe to be less harmonious, less organic
I almost said, than an animal?" The books referred to are Contemplation
de la nature (Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1764); La palingenesie
philosophique . . . (Amsterdam: M.-M. Rey, 1769).
43 Lettre sur la sculpture a M. de Smeeth (Paris, 1769). There are two editions
of Frangois Hemsterhuis's works, Oeuvres philosophiques de M. F.
Hemsterhuis (Paris: H. J. Jansen, 1790, i.e. two years after Hemsterhuis's
death); Oeuvres philosophiques de Francois Hemsterhuis, ed. L. S. P.
Meyboom, 2 Vols. (Leuwarde: W. Eekhof, 1846). A copy of the original
edition of Lettre sur Vhomme et ses rapports (Paris, 1772) bearing the hand-
written glosses of Diderot has been mechanically reproduced and critically
edited by Georges May (New Haven: Yale University Press; Paris: Presses
universitaires de France, 1964).
44 Letter Concerning Man and His Bearings (Paris, 1772); Sophyle, or Concerning
Philosophy (Paris, 1778); Aristee, or Concerning Divinity (Paris, 1779). The
dialogue Alexis (1787) was translated by Jacobi into German: Werke, vi,
pp. 465ff.
45 Jacobi met Hemsterhuis in person in February of 1781, when Princess
Gallitzin took him tojacobi's home in Diisseldorf, unannounced.
Diderot had stopped in Diisseldorf on his way from The Hague to Berlin
and eventually to Saint Petersburg in August of 1773 (see Introduction,
i, note 53). The two must have discussed Hemsterhuis at that time. See
Brachin, pp. 51, 54-55. For the scandal that Diderot's materialism
caused in Germany during his visit there, see Roland Mortier, Diderot en
Allemagne (1750-1850) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954),
pp. 32-33, 358, 391. For the Miinster Circle, see Introduction, pp. 45ff.
above. Diderot's first encounter with Hemsterhuis very likely took place
in 1773, when Diderot sojourned in the Netherlands for about three months
on his way to Russia, or perhaps on his way back in 1774. See Francois
Hemsterhuis, Lettre sur I'homme etc., ed. Georges May, p. 3.
59^ Notes tojacobi's Texts, pages igS—qc)
46 The Aristee can be read as a Spinozist work for at least three reasons. ( i ) It
claims that the concepts of order and disorder, good and evil, are rela-
tive, because they only have meaning with reference to individual beings
and the strivings for existence particular to each. (2) It also claims "ne-
cessity" to be a relative concept dependent upon "existence." All talk about
the necessity of a series of causes, or the necessity of actions and du-
rations, is ultimately reducible to assertions that there are (in actuality) cer-
tain causes, certain actions, and certain durations. (3) God exists per
se, and "space" (which is one and infinite) is one of his attributes. There
are other elements in the work, however, that hardly qualify it for the
title of Spinozist. For instance, according to Hemsterhuis, the universe does
not exist per se because it is essentially limited both as a totality and with
respect to its parts. The order of these is based on the interplay of two basic
forces, namely "action" and "reaction," which left to their own dynamics
would lead to perfect equilibrium and hence inertia. They are however kept
in a state of movement by the introduction of "directions" imposed
upon them from outside, i.e. from a cause (God) which must therefore
have intelligence.
47 See Lessing's letter to Jacobi, 18 August 1780, Briefwechsel, 1.2, #562.
48 I.e. Woldemar, cf. Lessing's letter, 4 December 1788, Briefwechsel, 1.2, #599.
49 See Introduction, pp. 7 iff. above.
50 The Education of Mankind, §73.
51 In a letter to Jacobi following the publication of the Spinoza Letters, Herder
said that he had seen Lessing's motto inscribed in Gleim's garden house
during a visit but had not been able to explain it to himself. He had not
questioned Gleim about it, for he had not thought that such a serious
subject as metaphysics would have been discussed in the home of that old
erotic poet. Otherwise he would have inscribed his own hen kai pan
"seven times under it, after the unexpected discovery that Lessing was a
fellow believer of [his] philosophical creed." Briefwechsel, 1.3, #992,
6 February 1784, p. 279. Dobbek, in his edition of Herder's letters, notes
to this passage that Lessing had actually written "hen ego kai pan" (i.e.
I am one and all), and that Herder had written under it, "Light, Love, Life."
Dobbek does not, however, give evidence for his claim. See Herders Briefe,
ed. Wilhelm Dobbek (Weimar: Volksverlag, 1959), p. 460, in note 4 to
Letter 88. That "hen ego kai pan" had been the formula used by Lessing
is accepted by Altmann as a possibility "not to be excluded." See Alexander
Altmann, "Lessing und Jacobi: Das Gesprach iiber den Spinozismus,"
Lessing Yearbook, in (1971): 41. Altmann's hypothesis is taken as author-
itative by Erwin Quapp, Lessings Theologie statt Jacobis Spinozismus (Bern:
Lang, 1992), p. 17. Both formulas, "hen kai pan" and "hen ego kai pan,"
have been attributed in antiquity to Hereclitus.
52 Marchese Girolamo Lucchesini (1751-1825), Prussian diplomat.
53 See p. 4 ofjacobi's text above, and note 15. Note N of Bayle's article begins
with a statement of Spinoza's central thesis. There is only one substance
endowed of an infinity of attributes, extension and thought among them.
It follows that all bodies are modifications of this substance qua exten-
sion, and all souls are modifications of it qua thought. It also follows that
all evils and imperfections are modifications of this one substance,
which Spinoza calls God. Bayle proceeds to object that "extension" is made
up of distinct parts; it does not have the simplicity of a mathematical
point. It follows that, if God were indeed one with its attribute of extension,
in as much as the latter is divided into distinct bodies, God's being would
collapse into an infinity of distinct parts. And a parallel argument can be
made with respect to the attribute of "thought." Spinoza must say that
there are as many persons in God as there are modifications of thought.
Bayle adds: "He (i.e. Spinoza) would undoubtedly make fun of the
Mystery of the Trinity; he would be amazed that an infinitude of people
dare to speak of a nature terminated by three hypostases—he who,
strictly speaking, has given as many persons to the divine nature as there
are people on earth." In the cited paragraphs of the preface to the
Theodicy and the Theodicy itself, Leibniz agrees in essence with Bayle's in-
terpretation of Spinoza. Spinoza grants "thought" in general to God,
but not "intellect." Leibniz wrote the Theodicy mostly in an effort to combat
the scepticism and fideism that motivated Bayle's Dictionnaire.
54 I.e. Mendelssohn. See above, p. 5, and note 16. Jacobi is insinuating that
Lessing's friendship with Mendelssohn was not as intimate as it was gen-
erally believed to be.
55 Elise Reimarus's letter to Jacobi, Briefwechsel, 1.3, 5 December 1783, #977.
56 Intended is Dr J. A. H. Reimarus, brother of Elise.
57 On p. 71 of the second edition, Jacobi enters a note in which he points
out that "this is not quite right." At the beginning of April 1784 Elise
had let him know that her brother had wished to read his report on Lessing
once more, and for that reason her brother had asked Mendelssohn
to send the original letter, or a copy of it, to him. (Brother Reimarus had
presumably read the report a first time when it was sent to Elise to be
conveyed to Mendelssohn). Mendelssohn had obliged by sending the orig-
inal, which to date had not been returned to him. Mendelssohn had
not missed it, because he was sick at the time. He eventually received it back.
See Briefwechsel, 1.3, 2 April 1784, #1030.
58 Jacobi's beloved wife, Helene Elisabeth, nee von Clermont, known to every-
one as Betty, died on 9 February 1784, not long after the death of the
third Jacobi son, aged eleven. See the death notice prepared by Jacobi,
Briefwechsel, 1.3, #995.
59 5 July 1784, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1055.
60 See Introduction, pp. 47ff. above.
600 Notes tojacobi's Texts, pages 202—16
61 Briefwechsel, 1.3., i August 1784, #1059.

62 Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1071, and #1071.3.
63 Blaise Pascal (1623-62): "Nature confounds the Pyrrhonists, and reason
the dogmatists." Pensees sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets, ed. Louis
Lafuma, 3 Vols. (Paris: Editions du Luxembourg, 1951), Vol. i, Fragment
#131, p. 85.
64 See letter of Jacobi to F. Hemsterhuis, Briefwechsel, 1.3, 7 August 1784, #1063.
In the Spinoza Letters Jacobi gives the French text and a German trans-
lation of it. I am translating the German text using the French as
control.
65 See letter of Hemsterhuis to Jacobi, 26 April 1784, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1032.
The letter is mostly to introduce a certain M. Adrien Gilles Camper,
who comes to Dusseldorf to recover from an unfortunate love affair while
visiting art galleries there. There is no mention in the letter of an ac-
companying article "Spinoza," but reference is made to a book that Jacobi
wished to have, Les Principes de la Pantosophie de M. de Kuffler disciple &
admirateur de Spinoza. Hemsterhuis promises to have it sent to Jacobi at the
earliest, "if possible accompanied by a portrait of Spinoza copied from
an original design." Hemsterhuis then goes on to express the sentiments
about Spinoza that Jacobi reports in the paragraph immediately follow-
ing. In a letter to Hamann of 12 September 1785, Jacobi says quite explicitly
that by the "article" he had only meant the lines from Hemsterhuis's
letter that he had quoted word for word. See Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi,
#870, p. 60. In the same letter Jacobi announces to Hamann that he
had sent him three copies of his Spinoza-buchlein ("Spinoza-booklet," p. 62)
eight days before (p. 59).
66 Also from the Aristee, p. 123.
67 Letter vn, 34ic-d; tr. L. A. Post, Collected Works of Plato, ed. E. Hamilton
and H. Cairas (Princeton, N.J.: University Press, 1961), my adaptation.
Jacobi cites in Latin.
68 5 September 1784, Briefwechsel, 1.3, #1071.1.
69 28 January 1785. Mendelssohn's letter is reproduced in full in the second
edition, pp. 159—61; Scholz, Pantheismusstreit, pp. 137—38.
70 1785.
71 The prefatory letter, dated Dusseldorf, 26 April 1785, is omitted in the first
edition but reproduced abridged in the second (pp. 162-63; Scholz,
Pantheismusstreit, pp. 139-40, who follows the slightly longer text of the third
edition). Also omitted in the first edition is the first paragraph of
Jacobi's comments, and much of the second. Here Jacobi accuses
Mendelssohn of prejudice against him. Mendelssohn had simply as-
sumed that Jacobi did not know Spinoza, without confronting his (i.e.
Jacobi's) claims with the original texts. In a footnote to the second edi-
tion Jacobi explains that he had left out these passages in the original edition
Notes to Jacobi's Texts, pages 229-31 601
because they seemed too harsh, and also because he had omitted the
original text of Mendelssohn's Memoranda, to which he was responding (see
below, pp. 35off.). Jacobi thought that these comments gave him a
stranglehold on his adversary, presumably because they demonstrated
Mendelssohn's failure to understand Spinoza. But since Mendelssohn
had thought otherwise and had made his comments public, Jacobi was now
ready to publish the full record (second ed., pp. 164-66; Scholz, ibid,
pp. 141-43). In the response to Mendelssohn that follows, Jacobi cites at
length from Spinoza, obviously in order to force a confrontation be-
tween his claims and Spinoza's own words.
72 P. 33 of Jacobi's text.
73 Leibnitz, Opera Omnia, Vol. vi, Sec. n, pp. 22-33. Jacobi cites m French.
All stresses are his.
74 Leibnitz, Opera Omnia, Vol. n, p. 226. "Concerning the Active Power of
the Body, the Soul, and the Soul of Irrational Animals."
75 See Hamann: "Since faith belongs to the natural conditions of our faculties of
knowledge and the fundamental inclinations of our soul, every universal prop-
osition rests on adequate faith, and every abstraction is and must be arbitrary."
Zweifel und Einfdlle uber eine vermischte Nachricht der allgemeinen deutschen
Bibliothek (Doubts and Incidental Thoughts Concerning an Assorted Report in the
"Universal German Library, "xxiv (1776): 288-96; Sdmtliche Werke,
Vol. 3, p. 190). See: "Poesy is the mother tongue of the human race. . . .
The whole treasure of human knowledge and happiness consists in im-
ages." Aesthetica in Nuce (1762), Vol. 2, p. 197. "The specific difference be-
tween Judaism and Christianity has to do ... exclusively with temporal
truths of history. . . . Hence the revealed religion of Christianity is with reason
and justice called faith, trust, confidence, trusting and child-like assurance
in divine utterances and promises." Golgotha und Scheblimini (1784), Vol. 3,
p. 305. Hamann to Jacobi, 14 November 1784, Hamann-Briefwechsel, v,
#782, especially pp. 264—65. Yet, despite apparent affinities between
Hamann's conception of faith and Jacobi's, Hamann was eventually to
take Jacobi to task for claiming that in the Spinoza Letters he (Jacobi) had
used "faith" in the same sense as Hume. If that was the case, then Jacobi
was operating at a philosophical level of reflection quite foreign to Hamann.
See below, p. 23 of David Hume, and footnote 17. For possible af-
finities with Herder, cf. Herder, Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend
(Letters Concerning the Study of Theology), 2nd ed., 1785; Herder's Sdmtliche
Werke, ed. Bernhard Suphan, 33 Vols. (Berlin: Weidmannsche
Buchhandlung, 1883-1917), Part 3, Letter 25.
76 Aristotle, Politics, 1.2.1253320.
77 Here Jacobi is practically quoting Helvetius. For the reference see below,
p. 192 of Jacobi's text, and footnote to Helvetius.
78 See Introduction, pp. 30—31 above.
79 See St John 14:6—7.

80 Hamann, Golgotha und Scheblimini, in Samtliche Werke, Vol. 3, p. 313.
81 See the parable of the unjust steward, Luke 16:3. Also, Hamann's letter
to Jacobi of 14 November 1784, Briefwechsel, 11.3., #1091, p. 388,
lines 20—21.
82 The Leipzig Fair was held annually at Easter and in September.
83 See Mendelssohn's letter to Elise Reimarus, 29 April 1785, Mendelssohn-
Briefwechsel, ed. Alexander Altmann, Vol. in, #692, Moses Mendelssohn.
Gesammelte Schriften (Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1977), Vol. xm.
84 26 April 1785; see above, Jacobi's text, p. 117, and the note to the title
of Mendelssohn's Memoranda.
85 In the actual letter there is added here: "Those of the party of the Archangel
are illumined by Wachter's Elucidarius cabalisticus"; see Scholz,
Pantheismusstreit, 140. The story of the battle between Satan and the
Archangel Michael comes from Jewish folklore. In the present context
"the party of the Archangel" are of course those who deny that Spinoza
is an atheist. The connection between Spinoza and the Cabbala was first
made for the learned world of the eighteenth century by a certain Johann
Georg Wachter, in a book written and published in German, Der
Spinozismus imjiidenthum, oder, die von dem heutigen Jiidenthum, und dessen
Geheimen Kabbala, vergotterte Welt. . . (Spinozism in Judaism, or, The World
as Deified by Contemporary Judaism and Its Secret Cabbala; Amsterdam, 1699).
Wachter's point was that the godlessness of Spinoza's philosophy had
its source in Jewish religious tradition. Later Wachter retracted this earlier
charge of godlessness, both as directed against the Cabbala and against
Spinoza, but still insisted on the identity of the two. He made his retraction
in a book that was written in Latin and therefore never enjoyed the pop-
ularity of the first, Elucidarius cabalisticus (Rome [Halle, in fact], 1706; this
is the book to which Jacobi is referring now). By the two parties, the
Archangel's and Satan's, Jacobi probably means the two interpretations of
Spinoza and the Cabbala as represented by Wachter's two books. For
the history of the reception of Spinoza and the connection made between
his philosophy and the Cabbala, see Gershom Scholem, "Die
Wachtersche Kontroverse iiber den Spinozismus und ihre Folge," cited at
note tojacobi's p. 22.
86 In this respect Jacobi proved to be successful. In retrospect, Goethe was
to describe the events that followed as an "explosion." Dichtung und
Wahrheit, v, Samtliche Werke, xvi, p. 681.
87 The friend is Hamann. The letter is dated 1-2 June 1785, #840 in the
Hamann-Briefwechsel; the reference to Mendelssohn is on pp. 447-48.
88 Morgenstunden, oder Vorlesungen iiber das Daseyn Gottes, Erster Theil (Berlin:
VoB, 1785). The second part was never produced.
89 Letter of 22—30 June 1785, #846 in the Hamann-Briefwechsel; the news is
on p. 466.
90 21 July 1785. The text is in the second edition, pp. 230-31; Scholz,
Pantheismusstreit, pp. 181—82.
91 I.e. Elise's brother.
92 Intended is Reimarus, the brother of Elise. Cf. letter to Hamann of
13 October 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. vi, #881, p. 94.
93 It was part of Mendelssohn's strategy not to have Jacobi see the book except
in print. See Mendelssohn's letter to Elise Reimarus of 24 May 1785,
reprinted in Scholz, Pantheismusstreit, pp. 319—21. As Altmann points out,
it is clear from this letter that Mendelssohn had given up trying to reach
a common ground of debate with Jacobi. With the publication of his
Morgenstunden—in which he granted that Lessing was a Spinozist, but
of a sort totally compatible with the spirit of the rational religion of the
Enlightenment—he was in fact stepping out of the fray. Mendelssohn
had no intention of writing a sequel to his book and confronting Jacobi
directly. It is also clear from the letter that Mendelssohn was irritated
by what he strongly suspected to be Jacobi's "self-conceit and obstinacy."
See Altmann, Life of MM, pp. 648-50.
94 The charge that Mendelssohn had not lived up to the terms of the contest
but was stealing a march on Jacobi is only thinly veiled. Altmann re-
marks: "[Mendelssohn] had studiously refrained from including [in his
Morgenstunden] any reference tojacobi's report on Lessing or to the
letter to Hemsterhuis, and thus there was no obligation on his part to submit
the manuscript to Jacobi. Mendelssohn had simply written a book on
the proofs for the existence of God and on Spinozism—nothing more."
Life of M.M, p. 647. This seems disingenuous to me. Mendelssohn had
in fact done much more. He had held Jacobi at bay by temporizing in the
debate, and in the Morgenstunden he was trying to pre-empt the possi-
bility of any scandal from an eventual announcement of Lessing's alleged
Spinozistic tendencies by fixing a totally innocuous meaning of
Spinozism in the mind of the public. However "self-conceited and obstinate"
Jacobi might have been (and no doubt he was), he had good cause to
feel that he had been made a fool of.
95 Copia obfugam vacui ("a copy for the sake of avoiding a lack") is an expression
Hamann repeatedly used in his correspondence with Jacobi whenever
he recorded the text of letters sent to third parties. (See, e.g., Hamann-
Briefwechsel, Vol. vii, Letter #1070, 2-3 June 1787, p. 222; Letter #1140,
4-10 March 1788, p. 427). It would be rendered nowadays as "for the rec-
ord." In the present context Jacobi perhaps has this meaning of fuga
vacui in mind, since he is literally pre-empting the possibility that his true
position remain unstated. However, see Jacobi's use of infugam vacui
in Jacobi toFichte (below, p. 39 of Jacobi's text) where the expression clearly
denotes horror in the face of a nothingness.
96 See the Preface to the first edition of the dialogue David Hume translated
below.
97 See Supplement vm, p. 435 of the second edition, and my note, p. 378
below.
98 Claude-Adrien Helvetius, 1715-71: a sensationist of the French Lockean
school, he tried to derive the whole of man's psychological and moral
character from environmental factors. De I'homme, de ses facultes intellectuelles
et de son education (London, 1781), especially Section i. See below, p. 192
of Jacobi's text and note about Helvetius. For Diderot, see Introduction,
p. 26 above.
99 Matt. 6:24, Luke 16:13; Matt. 6:21, Luke 12:34.
100 The reference is to John the Baptist; see Matt. 3:4.
101 The term is probably used here in the broad sense of "rebirth" or
"regeneration."
102 The reference is to Oeuvres completes de M. Helvetius, 2 vols. (London: 1781),
printed in octavo format; Vol. i: De Vesprit; Vol. n: De I'homme, de ses
facultes intellectuelles et de son education. See Section 2, ch. 4 of the second
volume, pp. 59—60, "On how spirit acts," or "That all its operations
are reduced to observation of similarities and differences, of the conform-
ities or the lack thereof of diverse objects between themselves or with
respect to us. That any judgment passed after comparison of physical
objects is nothing but a pure sensation. . . ."
103 Num. 21:8-9, Kings 18:4.
104 Mark 9:50, Luke 14:34.
105 "The wise of a nation are the fools of a foolishness common to all." The
reference is very likely to La Rochefoucauld. Maximes (1678), #27,
"Foolishness pursues us at every stage of life. If someone appears wise,
that's only because their follies are in proportion to their age and their
fortune."
106 Hamann, Wolken. Ein Nachspiel Sokratischen Denkwiirdigkeiten (Clouds. A
Postlude to Socratic Memorabilia; 1761), Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 2,
pp. 107-08. Jacobi is very free and selective with Hamann's text.
107 The following lines are from Job 28.
108 Jacobi is harking back to the theme of the "elastic place" that propels one
to the truth. See p. 33 of Jacobi's text. In the context of Lavater's earlier
attempt at converting Mendelssohn to Christianity, the implication of
Jacobi's words is that Mendelssohn cannot see the truth as proclaimed
by Jacobi for the same reason that he cannot be a Christian. One can ap-
preciate Mendelssohn's angry reaction tojacobi's writing.
109 Psalms 23:3; 25:4-5; 86:11; 143:8-10.
no Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem (1709-89), Betrachtungen uber die
vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Religion (Considerations Concerning the Main
Truths of Religion), 2nd improved edition (Braunschweig: Furstl.
Waisenshaus-Buchhandlung, 1760); Second Part, 1776; Second
Volume of Second Part, 1779. Jacobi's quote is from the 1776 volume,
pp. 119—20; the stresses are his. Jacobi was led to Jerusalem's
Betrachtungby the reading of Herder's Letters Concerning the Study of Theology.

See letter to Hamann, 11 January 1785, Hamann-Briefwechsel, Vol. v,
#797» P- 321. Jerusalem was a Lutheran theologian and a promoter of the
Enlightenment. The anonymous publication of the Betrachtungen made
him a foremost exponent of neology, i.e. a school of biblical interpretation
committed to the reading of Scripture in purely rational terms. The
section from which Jacobi is quoting is almost Kantian in tone. The purpose
of the biblical narrative about the origin of creation is to remind reason
in striking fashion of truths that are necessary to morality. There is no
attempt on the part of the Bible to explain just how the world is made.
Such explanation is the function of reason. Yet the biblical narrative pro-
vides a limit to reason. It is a reminder of truths that, though inherent
to reason, cannot ever be comprehended by it. According to Jerusalem,
the history of philosophy is full of the ruins of systems that collapsed
because they were the product of reason trying to overreach itself. It is
strange that Jacobi should here be appealing to the authority of
Jerusalem, since Jerusalem's thesis, namely that the Bible is concerned
with practical, not theoretical truths, is precisely the one that
Mendelssohn was enunciating against Jacobi. Jacobi apparendy met "the
old worthy Jerusalem" in Braunschweig during his visit to Lessing, and
was very impressed by him. See Jacobi to Heinse, Briejwechsel, 1.2, Letter
#200, 20.23.24 October 1780, p. 202.
111 Pontius Pilatus, oder, Die Bibel im Kleinen und der Mensch im Grofien (Pontius
Pilatus, or, the Bible Writ Small and Man Writ Large; Zurich, J.C. Fuessli,
1782-85), 4 vols, Vol. 11, p. 65; see Jacobi, Against Mendelssohn's Accusations,
Scholz, Pantheismusstreit, p. 364. The book is mentioned byjacobi's
young friend Thomas Wizenmann in a letter to Jacobi of 22 May 1783.
(Briejwechsel, 1.3, Letter #895, p. 150; also Letter #1054 of 4 July 1784,
p. 334, where Wizenmann notifies Jacobi of the publication of the third
volume of the work. See Goltz, Thomas Wizenmann, der Freund , Vol. I,
pp. 309-10.) Wizenmann wrote a short commentary on the book, which
he must have sent in manuscript form to Jacobi with the letter of
22 May 1783. Jacobi apparently dissuaded him from proceeding with the
project. (See Wizenmann's letter of 5 July 1783, #910, p. 169.) The
publication of this book caused a rift between Lavater and Goethe.
112 Pontius Pilatus (see note immediately above), Vol. n, pp. 71—72.
D A V I D HUME ON FAITH
1 Epicharmos' Trochaic Fragments, tr. E. O. Winstedt, as cited in Cicero, Letters

toAtticus, 1.19. Jacobi cites in the original Greek. Epicharmos (5th cen-
tury B.C.), author of comedies, was falsely reputed in antiquity to be the
author of a collection of sayings.
2 See above, Spinoza Letters, p. 180 of Jacobi's text, and footnote about Pascal.
3 Restoration English playwright, 1652-85.

4 Pensees sur Interpretation de la nature (London [Paris?], 1754), §57, De quelques
prejuges, p. 87. Jacobi cites in French.
5 See the title page.
6 Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751); Enquiry into the Human
Understanding (1748).
7 Prolegomena zu einerjeden kiinftigen Metaphysik (Prolegomena to Every Future
Metaphysics; Riga: Hartnock, 1783); see p. 260 (Academy ed.).
8 See Mendelssohn's "Memoranda to Herr Jacobi," Spinoza Letters, 2nd ed.,
pp. 85-86 (below, p. 353). See also Kant's essay, "What Does It
Mean To Orient Oneself in Thinking?" (1786), Academy Edition, vn.
9 Jacobi is very likely referring to Outlines of Pyrrhonism, i: 229—30, where Sextus
Empiricus distinguishes between two senses of "belief: according to one,
belief is accepting a position without any strong impulse or inclination,
as a boy is said to follow his tutor; according to the other, belief means,
on the contrary, declaring oneself for one side (i.e. following a certain di-
rection) with a sympathy due to strong desire. The second meaning
is the one that Jacobi is trying to defend. The allusion to Aristotle is more
difficult to pinpoint. It is possible that Jacobi has the Nichomachean Ethics
in mind, Book 1:3—4, wnere Aristotle insists that moral reasoning can only
be understood and accepted by someone who has had the right kind
of experiences and has developed proper inclinations. Here, as in the pas-
sage from Sextus Empiricus just cited, the "incontinent man" is adduced
as an example of someone whose beliefs are shaped by strong desires. For
Aristotle the "incontinent man" is someone to whom "knowledge brings
no profit" (iO95a. 10). For Sextus Empiricus the "incontinent man" is one
naturally inclined to believe in those who approve of an extravagant
style of life.
10 I.e. the edition of 1789.
11 I.e. the third week after Easter.
12 Epistulce morales, x x i x. i o.
13 This phrase had become almost a refrain in Hamann's letters to Jacobi.
Hamann had advised Jacobi, distraught by the violent reaction to his
Spinoza Letters coming from Berlin, to stay calm and not to hurry into too
precipitous a response: "et ab hoste consilium. Cura ut valeas et rideas
iiber die Berl. Klagweiber" ("and learn from your enemy. Make sure that
you keep well and laugh at the Berlin wailers"). The Berliners were
mourning Mendelssohn's sudden death. Letter of 15-16 February 1786,
Hamann-BrieJwechsel, Vol. vi, #933, pp. 269, 273. But there also was im-
plicit in Hamann's reaction a criticism of Jacobi, who kept on duelling with
the Berliners instead of letting the whole issue rest. Jacobi, at least,
sensed a criticism, and demanded from Hamann a clarification of his much-
repeated "ab hoste consilium." Letter of 28 February 1785, ibid., #937,
pp. 288-89. Hamann replied that he had totally forgotten what he had
said or how to justify it. But later in the same letter he went on saying
that Spinoza's system is not worth refuting. 15 March 1786, ibid., #944,
pp. 315, 318.
14 See Matt. 8:22. The Berlin philosophers had been burying Moses
Mendelssohn.
15 I.e. Anonymous, Vorldufige Darstellung des heutigen Jesuitismus, der
Rosenkreuzerei, Proselytenmacherei und Religionsvereinigimg (Preliminary
Exposition of Contemporary Jesuitism, of Rosicrucianism, Proselytism, and Religious
Sectarianism; Frankfurt: Hermann, 1786).
These remarks must be understood in the context of the Crypto-
Catholicism Dispute that broke out in the middle of the 17805 and re-
ceived much of its impetus from the Berlin rationalists. At the centre of
the dispute was J. A. Starck (1741-1816), Protestant theologian and
from 1781 preacher at the court of Darmstadt. Starck had also been an
active member of the Masonry since 1761 and at one point began to
advocate the establishment within the order of an "ecclesiastical branch"
that would incorporate in its ceremonials older rites going back to the
mediaeval Templars. He eventually became involved in a dispute with
Cagliostro regarding the purity of the Masonic ceremonial, and soon
found himself accused of being a Jesuit emissary infiltrated into the Masonic
Order for the sake of destroying it from within. What began as an in-
ternecine Masonic quarrel acquired, however, a new dimension in 1784,
when the issue of the desirability of secret societies within an enlight-
ened society became intertwined with the further issue of whether Catholic
practices (which many rationalists considered obscurantist) ought to
be tolerated. The occasion for this further dispute was the publication in
the Berlinische Monatsschrift (in [1784]: 180—92) of an anonymous ar-
ticle in which the practice in some German Protestant lands of allowing
Catholics to use the buildings of Protestant churches for their services
was condemned as false tolerance. The author of the article was very likely
Johann Erich Biester, one of the two editors of the journal and an op-
ponent of Starck. It was in the course of this dispute that the term "crypto-
Catholicism" began to be applied by the Berlin rationalists (notably
Biester and Friedrich Gedike, the other editor of the Berlin Monatsschrift)
to Lavater, Claudius, and in general to anyone opposed to the
Enlightenment version of Protestantism. Jacobi entered the dispute on the
side of Starck, not because he was in any way a papist sympathizer (on
the contrary, in 1800 he was to react much more negatively to F. L. Stolberg's
conversion to Catholicism than would Goethe, Herder, or Lavater; see
Brachin, pp. i I3ff.), but because he saw in the Berliners' defence of
Protestantism and rationalism an attempt to stifle all opposition. Jacobi
feared the tyrannical tendencies implicit in the religion of reason. Moreover,
608 Notes to Jacobi's Texts, pages 265—66
so far as he was concerned, rationalism was essentially antithetical to

Christianity.
Jacobi refers to the Crypto-Catholicism Dispute in his 1815 preface
to his Einige Betrachtungen iiber den frommen Betrugund iibereine Vernunft, welche
nicht die Vernunft ist, which was his contribution to the dispute (A Few
Comments Concerning Pious Fraud and a Reason Which Is No Reason, in Deutsches
Museum, 1.2 [1788]: 153-84; cf. Werke, n, pp. 457-59). For a brief but
very informative sketch of the dispute, see Valerio Verra, F. H. Jacobi, Dall'
Illuminismo all'Idealismo (Torino: Edizioni di "Filosofia," 1963),
pp. 180-82 and note 26. See also Jean Blum,/ A. Starck et la querelle du
crypto-catholidsme en Allemagne, 1785—1789 (Paris: Alcan, 1912). For
Jacobi's expression of hurt at Stolberg's conversion, see his letter to him,
10 August 1800, Aus Jacobi's Nachlafl, #176, Vol. n, pp. 229—30. Some
key contributions to the dispute waged in the Berlinische Monatsschrift have
been reproduced in Was ist Aufkldrung? Beitrdge aus der Berlinische
Monatsschrift, ed. Norbert Hinske (Darmstadt: Wissenschafliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1973).
16 Spinoza Letters, p. 163 of first edition.
17 Hamann was to comment that Mendelssohn had had perfectly good reason
to saddle Jacobi with Christian motives. "Which Jew and philosopher
could possibly imagine that pp. 162-164 [of the Spinoza Letters] have to
do with Hume's faith?" Hamann-Briefwechsel, vn, Letter #1060, Hamann
to Jacobi, 27 April~3 May 1787, p. 167. The whole context is relevant.
18 Spinoza Letters, p. 162 of first ed., pp. 91-92 of second ed.
19 Spinoza Letters, pp. 1636°. of first ed.
20 Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, n (April 1786), #100, pp. 181—83. This is a very
sympathetic anonymous review of Thomas Reid's book (Edinburgh,
1785). Together with his two philosophical "comrades in belief," Beattie
and Oswald, Reid is said to fight scepticism, which is the necessary con-
sequence of Lockes's idealism. He relies on the principles of common sense
(gesunder Verstand) and denies that ideas are the immediate objects of
thought. "[Reid] distinguishes (Essay i, ch. i, p. 16) Conception, which we
could translate as klare Vorstellung [clear representation] since he defines
it as an alteration of the soul accompanied with consciousness, from
Perception, which is perhaps best rendered as Empfindung [feeling or sen-
sation], for according to his definition it is the representation of a thing
bound up with belief [Glaube, also"faith"] in its external object"
(p. 182). But then the proof of the external reality of a corporeal world
becomes easy, for if Empfindung is a representation that has no object
internally, yet ought to have one, its object must be external. According
to the reviewer, however, Reid leaves untouched the problem of how
perceptions come into the soul and of how bodily alterations are turned
into representations.
21 See note 20.
Notes to Jacobi's Texts, pages 266—74 6°9
22 The reference is to an anonymous review of the Spinoza Letters in Allgemeine

Literatur-Zeitung, 1.36 (1786), columns 292-96; and to the first instal-
ment of an equally anonymous review of Thomas Wizenmann's Die Resultate
der Jacobischen und Mendehsohnischen Philosophic, kritisch untersucht von
einem Freywilligen (The Results of the Jacobian and the Mendelssohnian Philosophy,
Critically Assessed by a Neutral Party; Leipzig: Goschen, 1786), in the same
journal, 1.125 (1786), columns 377-84. The quote that follows is a medley
of words and phrases drawn from the two reviews but freely rearranged
and modified by Jacobi. The authors of the reviews both reproach him for
misusing the word "faith" when he applies it to "sense evidence." The
two cannot mean the same thing—witness the fact that a child might indeed
believe on external authority that sugar is bitter, but ceases to believe
and knows that sugar is sweet the moment he actually tastes it (381). In claim-
ing that all knowledge is based on a so-called "revelation of nature,"
which is to be accepted on "faith," Jacobi can mean no more than the old
nihil est in intellectu, quod non antea fuerit in sensu (nothing is in the in-
tellect which was not previously in the sense) (295, 380). Echoes of the
crypto-catholicism dispute can clearly be heard in the second of the
two reviews. (See above, page 15 of Jacobi's text and note 15). In a pas-
sage of Wizenmann's book (p. 60) and a parallel place in Jacobi's Wider
Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen (Against Mendelssohn's Accusations, 1786; Werke,
iv, p. 254), the author claims to detect a veiled accusation to the effect
that the reports of hidden activities by the Jesuits are fictitious and that they
have been dreamed up by F. Nicolai (the editor of the Allgemeine
Literatur-Zeitung and a central figure of the Berlin Enlightenment) in an
effort to hide the real plot being waged by him and his adepts to un-
dermine religious faith and replace it with a total "naturalism." This is what
is meant—so the author alleges—by Wizenmann's spectre of a society
governed by "secular priests" and by the " hyper-crypto-Jesuitism and philosophical
papism' of which Jacobi accuses Mendelssohn (383—84).
23 See George Berkeley (1685-1753), A Treatise Concerning the Principles of
Human Knowledge (1710), Introduction, §3: "We have first raised a dust,
and then complain that we cannot see."
24 Treatise, Book i, Section 3.
25 Charles Bonnet, Essai analytique sur les facultes de I'dme (Copenhagen:
Philibert, 1760); German tr.: Analytischer Versuch uber die Seelenkrdfte, aus
dem franzosischen ubersetzt und mit einigen Zusdtzen vermehrt von Christian
Gottfried Schiitz (Analytical Essay Concerning the Faculties of the Soul,
Translated from the French with Some Additions by Christian Gottfried Schiitz;
Bremen: Cramer, 1770-71). Bonnet does not, strictly speaking, say that
"the senses deceive us"; nor does he give a "list of limitations." What he
says is that our perception of the world depends very much on the ma-
terial composition of our sense organs and that "there can therefore be
beings for whom this world is quite different from that which appears
6io Notes tojacobi's Texts, pages 274-82
to us. To alter the view of the universe, its Author might just have altered
our viewing spectacles." Ch. xiv, §199. He also says that the "sense-
abstraction" by which we group particular objects by referring them to a
common sensible quality depends on "attention," i.e. on our favouring
some aspects of an immediate perception to the detriment of others, and
this process always entails an element of arbitrariness. Ch. xiv,
§§207-09; ch. xv., §225. When memory and the production of arbitrary
signs intervene in the decomposition of the original sense perception,
we have "intellectual abstraction," and this yields "general ideas." Ch. xv,
§229. Although through these ideas the soul can represent its object
as a thing existing on its own, i.e. as substance or subject, it actually knows
only its nominal essence, never its real one. Ch. xv, §§233—45.
26 See Spinoza Letters, p. 38 of first edition. In Hemsterhuis's dialogue Sophyle
the materialist philosopher Sophyle is refuted by the Platonist
Euthyphron. The passage referred to is in Oeuvres philosophiques, ed.
Meyboom, Vol. i, pp. 279—80.
27 Of course this is not what Jacobi believes. He is being sarcastic.
28 Last paragraph of ch. i.
29 There is an allusion here to Matt. 18:6.
30 F.-J. Durand (1727—1816), convert to Protestantism, cleric and renowned
preacher in the French evangelical community of Lucerne. In 1787
he became professor at the Academic de Lausanne.
31 Georges-Louis Le Sage (1724-1803) taught mathematics and physics in
Geneva. He is especially known for his Essai de chimie mecanique (1758)
and Traite de physique mecanique (1818).
32 WillemJacob's (van's) Gravesande (1688—1724), Introductio adPhilosophiam,
metaphysicam et logicam continens (Leiden: Verbeek, 1736). Gravesande
was a Dutch philosopher who taught at Leyden, where he defended the
teachings of Galileo and Newton.
33 I.e. in 1763.
34 I.e. Moses Mendelssohn. The title of his essay was Uber die Evidenz in
metaphysischen Wissenschaften (Concerning Evidence in Metaphysical Sciences),
published in 1764.
35 This was Kant's Essay, Untersuchungen uber die Deutlichkeit der Grundsdtze der
naturlichen Theologie und Moral (Enquiries Concerning the Principles of
Natural Theology and Morality), published in 1764. Jacobi was to recommend
it to F. F. Furstenberg, minister in the bishoprics of Miinster and
Cologne, as a statement on philosophical method—this in connection with
the educational reform that Furstenberg was introducing in his terri-
tories. Jacobi recommends an analytical method in metaphysics. See
Briefivechsel, 1.1, Letter to Furstenberg, #203, 17 July 1771, p. 121; and
Letter #224, 16 October 1771, p. 144.
36 Theod., §393.
37 §§671-722 of Wolffs Theologia Naturalis (and ed., Frankfurt & Leipzig,

1741), Part n, Sect. 11, ch. 4, contain Wolffs exposition and refutation
of Spinozism. These paragraphs, translated into German from the Latin,
were published together with a German translation of Spinoza's Ethics
in Herrn Christian Wolfs Widerlegung der Sitten-Lehre B-v-S aus dem andern Theile
seiner naturlichen Gottesgelehrheit genommen: B-v-S. Sittenlehre widerlegt von
dem beruhmten Weltweisen unserer Zeit, Herrn Christian Wolf (Mr C. Wolff's
Refutation of the Ethics of B. S., Taken from the Second Part of His Natural
Theology: B. S. 's Ethics Refuted by the Famous Philosopher of our Times, Mr C.
Wolff; Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1744). See C. Wolff, Gesammelte Werke, ed.
J. Ecole et al. (Hildesheim & New York: Olms, 1962), Vol. 8 of Section 2,
p. Ixxviii, note 119.
38 G. Fr. Meier (1718-77), professor at Halle from 1746, a typical "popular
philosopher," i.e. an exponent of a mixture of empiricism, rationalism,
and common-sense philosophy.
39 J. G. Daries (1714—91), philosopher, jurist, and professor at lena and
Frankfurt/Oder; his works are especially concerned with the Philosophy of
Right. Daries was an anti-rationalist of the school of Thomasius and Crusius.
40 Friedrich Nicolai, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Moses Mendelsohn, eds.
(anonymous), Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend (7759—7763J. Vier und
zwanzig Theile nebst doppelten Register (Letters Concerning the Most Recent Literature
(1759—7763). Twenty-four Parts together with a Double Index; Berlin &
Stettin: Nicolai, 1759-66; reprinted in 4 vols.: Hildesheim & New York:
Olms, 1974).
41 Cf. Spinoza Letters, 1789 ed., p. 354 (Supplement v), footnote; below,
p. 366.
42 Jacobi is referring to the work by Kant that earned second place after
Mendelssohn's Uber die Evident in the competition sponsored by the
Berlin Academy. See note tojacobi's p. 75 above.
43 Another name for the "principle of sufficient reason."
44 Politics, 1.2.1253320.
45 See note i, above.
46 Enquiry into the Human Understanding, Sect. vin.
47 See Spinoza Letters, pp. ggff. of first edition.
48 Famous family of dancers of Florentine origin.
49 See Kreuzziige des Philologen: #iv. Klaggedicht in Gestalt eines Sendschreibens uber
die Kirchenmusick (Crusades of the Philologist: #iv. A Poem of Lament in the
Form of an Open Letter Concerning Church Music; 1762), Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 2,
p. 150. Hamann calls a "being of reason" a "virginal child": "ein
Jungfernkind (ens rationis)."
50 Principes de la nature & de la grace, fondes en Raison, §§2 and 4, Opp. Tome 11,
Part i, p. 32, and "Letter to Wagner," 4 June 1710, ibid., p. 226. See
above, Jacobi's p. 161.
51 Johann Georg Sulzer, Vermischte Philosophische Schriften, aus den Jahrbuchern

der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin gesammelt (Miscellaneous Writings
Collected from the Yearbooks of the Berlin Academy of Sciences), Part i,
2nd ed. (Leipzig: Weidmanns, 1782; ist ed. 1758). Jacobi is referring
to the section entitled "Analysis of the Concept of Reason," pp. 246-83.
Sulzer argues that Descartes's claim that animals are machines is one
of the worse mistakes ever made in philosophy. The following discussion
of dreams by Jacobi depends very heavily on this section of Sulzer's book.
J. G. Sulzer (1720-79) was a Swiss aesthetician typical of the "popular phi-
losophers" of the German Enlightenment.
52 Jacobi's word is Organization, a very common expression in the scientific
literature of the day. Jacobi was certainly familiar with its use (and with
that of related expressions such as "mechanism of the organs" or "mech-
anism of the body") in the works of Charles Bonnet.
53 Sulzer, Vermischte Philosophische Schriften, p. 265.
54 Ibid., p. 255.
55 Ibid., especially pp. 258-59, but the whole section is relevant.
56 Leibniz, Unvorgreiffliche Gedancken Betrejfend die Ausiibung und Verbesserung
der Teutschen Sprache (Considerations Concerning the Use and Improvement
of the German Language), Opp., Vol. v 1.2, pp. 10-11.
57 See Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, p. 520: "In common
language, sense always implies judgment. A man of sense is a man of
judgment. Good sense is good judgment. Nonsense is what is evidently con-
trary to right judgment. Common sense is that degree of judgment
which is common to men with whom we can converse and transact business."
58 In Uber ein Weissagung Lichtenbergs (On a Prediction of Lichtenberg's, 1801)
Jacobi says that sensibility contains distinctions and that for this reason
it gives rise to the understanding (which is therefore not a priori but con-
nected with the senses). In other words, Jacobi rejects the idea of a
purely immediate, point-form sensation found in Hume and also in Kant.
As in the older scholastic doctrine, every sensation would have to con-
tain an implicit judgment: "A sense that was only sense would be a nonentity,
just as a cognition mediated through and through would be a nonentity."
Werke, Vol. in, p. 225.
59 Exod. 3:14.
60 New Essays on Human Understanding, Bk. 2, ch. 21, §73.1 am translating from
Jacobi's German translation, which is not literal. Cf. the translation of
Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, which is closer to the text: "created
minds and souls never lack organs and never lack sensations, as they
cannot reason without symbols" (Cambridge: University Press, 1981), p. 212.
All the stresses are Jacobi's. Jacobi's reference is to p. 171 of Oeuvres
philosophiques latines et franc_oises, ed. Raspe.
61 "For to have a true idea means nothing other than knowing a thing perfectly,
Notes tojacobi's Texts, pages 3/1-27 613
or in the best way. And of course no one can doubt this unless he thinks
that an idea is something mute, like a picture on a tablet, and not a mode
of thinking, viz. the very [act of] understanding." Ethics, 11:42, Scholion,
tr. Curley. Heidi Rawen, of Hamilton College, located this reference
for me.
62 Monadology, §7.
63 Pp. 151—52 of Jacobi's text.
64 Systeme nouveau de la Nature el de la Communication des Substances, aussi bien
que de I'Union qu'il a entre I'Ame & le Corps (New System of the Nature and
the Communication between Substances, as well as of the Union Extant between the
Soul and the Body), Opp., Vol. 11, Part i, §14, p. 54.
65 Semimentalia, i.e. half-mental. See Louis Guillermit, Le Realisme deF. H.Jacobi.
Dialogue sur I'idealisme et le realisme. Traduction et notes (N. p. p.: Universite
de Province, 1981), p. 470: "The rainbow, as an example of a 'true phe-
nomenon' as opposed to the true unity of substance, is frequently in-
voked by Leibniz during the period of his correspondence with Arnauld
(see for example the letter of 28.Nov./8.Dec.i686). In the synopsis
prepared for Des Bosses (18 [sic, in fact 19] August 1715) one finds the
expressions: semi-ens, semi-substantia, semi-accidens." Opp., Vol. n, Part i,
pp. 312, 506.
66 In Leibniz's correspondence with Father Des Bosses, the "monad" is dis-
cussed mostly with reference to the doctrine of the Eucharist. Leibniz
must show how transubstantiation, or the doctrine that in the Eucharist
the accidents of bread and wine remain while their underlying sub-
stance is replaced by that of the body and blood of Christ, can be possible
if the monad is the basic unit of all reality. Leibniz argues that a "com-
posite substance" such as bread and wine is only possible where, with respect
to a group of monads, there is one that dominates over the rest (monad
dominatrix) and thus indirectly provides them with a "substantial" bond. See
among other texts, the letter of 21 April 1714, Opp., Vol. n, Part I,
p. 307; 19 August 1715, ibid., p. 311.
67 See pp. 11 off. of Jacobi's text.
68 Gen. 2:7.
69 See Goethe's Werke, 3 Vols. (Cotta, 1806), Vol. i, Epigrams. Four Seasons.
Autumn, #56,
To people the world is all rational discourse

Impotent; nor is any work of art produced through it.
70 There is an echo of Lavater's doctrine on miracles here. Lavater and his

followers believed that man is created in the image of God and that
it is man's duty to bring the world back to him. But since God wants to be
recognized and adored by men, he must reveal himself to them as their
614 Notes to Jacobi 's Texts, page 329
Father—and this he does through miracles, like an earthly father showing

his power. Man can therefore expect miracles. When the church was
being established miracles in fact took place. Now there are no longer mir-
acles, and we should not demand any. But this does not mean that God
will not reveal himself again in his full power. On the contrary, God's Spirit
(his power) is promised to every Christian, and every Christian must
try to demonstrate the presence of this Spirit within him with extraordinary
action.
Thomas Wizenmann, Jacobi's young friend, found Lavater's doctrine
objectionable because of the impossible burden that it placed upon the
conscience of Christians. The believer finds himself in a constant state of
anxiety because God might not reveal himself to him, yet he must be
certain that he will. Scruples about the adequacy of one's faith inevitably
follow, and the whole church is left vacillating without an anchor. In
a letter to Jacobi of g November 1783, Wizenmann complains bitterly about
those of the Zurich school who had taken away his peace of mind. The
Lavaterians mistake means (i.e. miracles) for the substance (i.e. the effec-
tiveness of the actions and passions of Jesus). But if we seek the signs
and overlook the substance, we end up in despair. Wizenmann is surprised
that this is not already happened to Lavater. Goltz, Vol. i, pp. 204—05,
also pp. iggff. Briefwechsel, 1.3, Letter #967, 9 November 1783, pp. 250—51.
Wizenmann's reproach could actually have been directed to Jacobi
as well. Although a friend of Lavater, Jacobi did not of course consider him-
self a disciple of his. See Letter to Jean Paul, #69, 9 January 1800, Aus
Jacobi's Nachlafi, p. 237. Yet because of his radical positivism, Jacobi had to
base his knowledge of God on some direct revelation that, though nat-
ural, had something of the extraordinary about it none the less. But it is
precisely this juxtaposition of the natural with the extraordinary that
made for the confusion of conscience that Wizenmann was decrying. See
Spinoza Letters, p. 33 of the first edition, the note.
71 J. H. Pestalozzi (1745—1827), Lienhard und Gertrud, Ein Buck fur das Volk
(Leonard and Gertrude, A Book for Common Folk), in four parts (1781—86).
Hamann called the book to Jacobi's attention (Hamann-Briefwechsel, Letter
of 15 March 1786, Vol. vi, #944, p. 319). Born in Zurich and trained
first in theology and then jurisprudence, Pestalozzi eventually, upon reading
J.J. Rousseau's Emile, abandoned his legal career in order to dedicate
himself to the education of the young. Pestalozzi became convinced that
European civilization led to absurdity and that, of all professions, that
of the philosopher was the most unnatural. The theory and practice of ed-
ucation that he developed was based on the belief that the minds of
the young are naturally endowed with moral and spiritual forces that can
be effective quite independently of external circumstances. The aim
of education is to capitalize on these forces by placing the young in practical
situations where proper action (rather than erudition) is called for. This
dynamic approach differed radically from traditional practices that treated
the mind of the young as magazines, so to speak, to be filled with as
much information as possible.
Pestalozzi tried throughout his life to put his ideas into practice by
establishing colonies and institutes where poor children could be decently
brought up. These attempts were also motivated by the desire to alleviate
the terrible conditions of the many orphans left in Switzerland in the wake
of the French revolutionary wars. Unfortunately Pestalozzi was not him-
self a very practical man, and his projects routinely ended in failure. Leonard
and Gertrude, the first of his works, is a popular moral novel in which
he committed his pedagogical ideas to writing after his first such failure.
Pestalozzi eventually came under the influence of Fichte (who lived in
Zurich between 1788 and 1790, and married Lavater's niece there in 1793),
by whom he was told that with his "intuitive method" he had reached
the same results as Kant's Critique. Fichte introduced Pestalozzi to the phil-
osophical discussions of the day and helped him to gain some distance
from Rousseau. Fichte in turn adopted many of Pestalozzi's ideas on
education.
See E. Cooke, introduction to How Gertrude Teaches Her Children byJ.H
Pestalozzi, tr. L. E. Holland and F. C. Turner (London: Sonnenschein,
1924); K. Silber, Pestalozzi, The Man and His Work (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1960); X. Leon, Fichte et son temps, 2 Parts in 3 Vols. (Paris:
Armand Colin, 1954; first ed. 1902), Vol. i, pp. 61-71, 152-57.
Jacobi's interest in Pestalozzi is due to the latter's stress on the primacy
of action over abstract thought and his vitalist conception of the mind. Yet
Jacobi did not approve of what he thought was Pestalozzi's overly ma-
terialistic views of human needs. "Physical well-being remains his first prin-
ciple." See letter to Pestalozzi, #54, 24 March 1794, Aus Jacobi's Nachlafl,
p. 176.
72 Pestalozzi, Sdmtliche Werke, Lienhard und Gertrud, Part 3, 1785, ed. G. Stecher
(Berlin & Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1928), Vol. 3, §17, p. 50, lines 36—37.
73 §65, p. 168, lines 4—12.
74 §68, lines 24—28.
75 Lines 21-23.
76 §81 (A Lesson for Children), p. 232, lines 1—24.
77 Asmus (perhaps from the Greek or to asma=song) is a pen-name of Matthias
Claudius (1740-1815), student of theology and jurisprudence and
anacreonic poet. In 1771 he took over in the town of Wandsbeck the ed-
itorship of a local paper. Under the title of Der Wandsbecker Bothe (The
Wandsbeck Messenger), and from 1773 of Der deutsche, sonst Wandsbecker Bothe
(The German Messenger, formerly from Wandsbeck), the paper quickly
gained wide readership and notoriety throughout Germany. It attracted
contributions from the best-known representatives of the Sturm und

Drang movement on a wide range of topical issues, all of which were treated
with insight and humour, often deliberately in naive prose. Claudius
himself defended a pietistic and highly conservative form of Christian belief
and spirituality. In 1775 he published on his own initiative the first two
parts of a collection of his poems and prose writings, under the title of Asmus
omnia secum portans, oder sdmtliche Werke des Wandsbecker Bothen (Asmus
Carrying All His Things with Him, or The Collected Works of the Wandsbeck
Messenger). A third part followed in 1777, and five more after that (1782,
1789, 1797? 1802, 1812). The essay referred to byjacobi is a two-paragraph
review of Wieland's book SOKRATES MAINOMENOS oder Die Dialogen
des Diogenes von Sinope (Socrates Possessed, or The Dialogues of Diogenes from
Sinope; Leipzig, 1770), Part i, pp. 52-53 (p. 51 in the edition of Urban
Rodl, Stuttgart: Cotta, 1966). In the preface to the first edition of Concerning
Divine Things and Their Revelation (1811) Jacobi tells us that this writing
was begun as a review of Vol. vi of Asmus that he had intended for pub-
lication in 1798. Werke, in, pp. 257-58. See note immediately below.
78 See note immediately preceding. Diogenes of Sinope (404—323 B.C.), nick-
named "the dog" ("kuon" in Greek, whence "cynic"), was known for
his biting attacks on his contemporaries (Plato included), whom he accused
of moral corruption due to a life given to useless pursuits (philosophy
being one of them). He advocated self-mastery through renunciation of
all wants except the bare minimum. He is said to have taken up abode
in a barrel at one point. The following anecdote is also reported: "When
he had anointed his feet with unguent, he declared that from his head
the unguent passed into the air, but from his feet into his nostrils." See
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book ¥11.39, tr.
R. D. Hicks, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1925). In his review of Wieland's
book Asmus imagines himself approaching Diogenes with "feet heavy
with gout," unlike others who only show their "brilliant parts" to him and
hide the rest. In an obvious dig at Wieland he says, "The interpreter
[i.e. Wieland], however righteous and well spoken his mouth is (his feet
are under his cloak), preaches to the wind. There is certainly no man
in Athens who should not at times feel the staleness of needs artificially
devised and the thorns in the labyrinth of passions, and should not make
a sour face at it all and think of your barrel. But of what use is thought coming
merely from the head? Ointment to the feet, man from Sinope!"
79 See Hamann-Briefwechsel, Letter #1060, Hamann to Jacobi, 27 April-3 May
1787, p. 167. C. J. Kraus (1753-1807) was a close friend of Hamann
and an early student of Kant greatly respected by his master. In an letter
to Hamann announcing the publication of David Hume, Jacobi diplo-
matically hints at the possibility of Kraus's reviewing the book. Hamann-
Briejwechsel, Letter #1052, i April 1787. "Crispus" is the nickname used
by Hamann to refer to Kraus.
80 Jacobi's stresses.
81 See note i above.
C O N C E R N I N G T H E D O C T R I N E O F S P I N O Z A (1789)
1 Stoic teacher, c. 5O-c. 130.

2 Roman emperor (86-161), renowned for his rectitude, wisdom, and
moderation.
3 Jacobi cites in French. Voltaire, Mahomet, Act v, scene 4, at the very end.
Le Fanatisme ou Mahomet le Prophete was read by Voltaire to Frederick the
Great in 1740. The play portrays Mohammed as an unscrupulous tyrant
who plays upon the ignorance and superstition of the people, whom
he despises, in order to exercise arbitrary power over them. The thinly dis-
guised moral lesson is that established churches can use God for po-
litical ends. At the end of the drama Mohammed fails, however, to gain
Pamela, the woman whom he coveted and committed crimes to possess.
Pamela escapes him by committing suicide. It is at this point that Mohammed
realizes that there is, after all, a power superior to him and also (it is
implied) to the God of historical religions. "She's gone; she's lost; the only
dear reward / I wished to keep of all my crimes; in vain / I fought and
conquered; Mahomet is wretched / Without Pamela. Conscience, now I
feel thee, / And I feel thou canst rive the guilty heart. / . . . Vain was
all / My boasted power: I have deceived mankind; / But how shall I impose
on my own heart?" (Tr. William F. Fleming.)
4 See p. 14 of first edition. Mendelssohn's references are all to the first edition.
5 See Theodicy, §173; Mile Madeleine de Scudery, 1607-1701. Ludovico
Ariosto, Italian epic poet, 1474—1583.
6 Die Matrone von Ephesus (The Matron of Ephesus), first printed in 1784 but
documented as early as 1748; Act I, Scene 2. "Oh yes! Ghosts have their
fun! That's no real flame there. It only looks like a flame! It's not burning;
it only seems to burn! It's not shining; it only makes a show of shining.
There is no lighting a real light from such a ghostly one!" Lessing, Werke,
". P- 554-
7 Christian Wolff, Theologia naturalis, methodo scientifica pertractata. Pars
Posterior. 2nd ed. (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1741). Mendelssohn must be
referring to §§671-716, in which Wolff discusses Spinoza and Spinozism
extensively, and very likely to §706 in particular: "Infinite reality and,
in intentional form, infinite thought, is not made up of an infinite number
of finite realities." In §693 Wolff accuses Spinoza of confusing "imag-
inary" extension with "real" extension. Following Spinoza's alleged method
for demonstrating the possibility of "infinite extension," so Wolff argues,
one can also establish the possibility of "infinite colour" and "infinite
sweetness."
8 Op. Posth., pp. 83-85.
9 25 July 1675, Op. Posth., pp. 590-91.

10 Op. Posth., p. 46.
11 29 July 1675, Op. Posth., pp. 591-93.
12 23 July 1676, Op. Posth., pp. 597-98.
!3 15 JulY l6 7 6 > Op. Posth., pp. 598-99.
14 For Giordano Bruno and the seventeenth-century reaction to Descartes's
mechanism, see G. P. H. Pawson, The Cambridge Platonists (New York,
1930; mechanically reproduced, 1974); and Ernst Cassirer, Die Platonische
Renaissance in England und die Schule vom Cambridge (Leipzig & Berlin,
1932).
15 Hamann-Briefwechsel, Letter #800, 16 January 1785, p. 327.
16 Diokles and Dioteme stand, respectively, for Hemsterhuis and the Princess.
17 The relevant documentation is cited in Brachin, p. 58 and notes.
18 See Introduction, p. 108 above.
19 Wizenmann reports Jacobi saying of Herder that he was "the greatest mind
he knew but had doubts about his heart" (Goltz, Wizenmann, der Freund,
Vol. i, pp. 309—10). Lavater did not think much of Herder's God, whom
he described to Jacobi as "lightweight," a "genial display of magic" that
ultimately does not bring us any closer to God despite its pretensions to
religiosity. Letter to Jacobi, 23 June 1787, #29, Ausjacobi's Nachlaji, p. 92.
20 Johann Gottfried Herder, Gott, Einige Gesprdche (God, Some Conversations;
Gotha: Ettinger, 1787), p. 140.
21 Fichte was to exploit this image. Absolute being, or unrestricted freedom,
is what it is simply because it is. But this perfect coincidence with itself
makes it "blind." Accordingly, it must give itself an "eye," so to speak, in
order to allow for the distance between subject and object that makes
self-consciousness and "direction" possible. The "objectification" or "self-
externalization" that follows upon the introduction of the "eye" gives
freedom the appearance of a "world," ultimately of a "dead nature." See
footnote 101 to Introduction n, p. 106 above. See also Darstellung der
Wissenschaftslehre aus denjahren 1801/1802 (Exposition of the Science of
Knowledge (1801/1802), in Gesammtausgabe, n.6, pp. 150, 157. i67ff,
231, 251, 311.
ALLWILL
1 "Eduard Allwills Papiere," Iris, iv.3 (1775): 193-236.

2 "Eduard Allwills Papiere," Der Teutsche Merkur, xiv.2 (1776): 14-75; xv -3
(1776): 57-71; xvi.4 (1776): 229-62.
3 It was included in Vermischte Schriften. Erster Theil (Breslau:J. F. Korn, 1781).
Included in this volume was also Der Kunstgarten, eventually incorpo-
rated in the Woldemar of 1794. For a publication history of Woldemar, see
above, Introduction, Part in, p. 117, footnote 2.
Notes to Jacobi 's Texts, pages 379-96 619
4 Friedrich HeinrichJacobis "Allwill, "critical edition with introduction and com-

ments byj. U. Terpstra (Groningen: Djakarta, 1957).
5 Jacobi cites in French. Dominique-Joseph Garat, 1749-1833 (younger
brother of Dominique), French politician, literary man, and popular
orator. He was politically active at the time of the monarchy but also held
public offices during the Revolution and the ensuing Empire. He was
one of the more prestigious editors of the Journal de Paris.
6 The verse immediately preceding reads, "Angels are bright still, though
the brightest fell." Allwill is like Satan, a creature especially endowed
by nature who has fallen but in his fallen state still retains the traces of former
glory. Hence the seductive, almost Satanic, power of Allwill.
7 Johann Georg SchloBer (1739-99), lawyer and literary man, sometime co-
editor of the Frankfurter Gelehrten Anzeigen, to which Goethe (SchloBer's
brother-in-law) was also a contributor. He was very active politically and
a promoter of juridical reforms. His second wife was Johanna Fahlmer,
the sister of Jacobi's stepmother and one year younger than Jacobi himself.
"Tantchen Johanna," as she was called, was brought up in the Jacobi's
household together with the Jacobi brothers, and at one point attracted
the attention of Goethe. For a portrait of this remarkable woman and
the extent to which her relationship with Jacobi is mirrored in Allwill and
Woldemar, see Frida David, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis "Woldemar" in seinen
verschiedenen Fassungen (Leipzig: Voigtlander, 1913), especially pp. 49ff.
8 Neither was ever published.
9 I.e. as "Eduard Allwills Papiere," Iris, iv.3 (1775): 193-236; and "Eduard
Allwills Papiere," Der Teutsche Merkur, xiv.2 (1776): 14-75; xv -3
(1776): 57-71; xvi-4 (1776): 229-62.
10 Not an exact quotation.
11 Tr. Charles E. Passage; Scene i according to the English division of the
text; lines 1098—99; 1103—05.
12 2i5c, tr. Michael Joyce (London: Dent & Sons, 1935). Jacobi normally cites
Plato first according to the pagination of the Henricus Stephanus edi-
tion (Paris, 1578), which has now become standard, and then according
to the pagination of the then recent edition of the Societas Bipontina,
which included on opposite pages the Stephanus Greek text and the Latin
translation by Ficino. Platonis Philosophi quae extant Greece ad editionem
Henrici Stephani accurate expressa cum Marsilii Ficini interpretatione, Studiis
Societatis Bipontince, 12 vols. (Biponti: ex typographia societatis,
1781-87).
13 See Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act iv, Sc. 2.
14 Matt. 26:75; Luke, 22:54; John, 18:12.
15 "In our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery
below may appear at first dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still at-
tentive to its own amusement, finds as we descend something to flatter and
please. Still, as we approach. . . ." Goldsmith, The Vicar ofWakefield

(Dublin: W. & W. Smith, 1766), Book i, ch. xvm. Mr Primrose is the vicar.
16 Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, Book i, ch. vi (the chapter heading).
17 Probably a reference to Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando" in Orlando furioso.
See below, p. 142 of Jacobi's text, and note. Orlando was a lover gone
mad.
18 See Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or the History of a Young Lady (1747-48);
and J.-J. Rousseau's Julie, ou la nouvelle Helo'ise, ou Lettres de deux amants
habitants d'une petite ville au pied des Alpes (1761). There is a "Clementine"
in Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison (1753—54): "She is pious, char-
itable, beneficent. . . . Her father used to call her 'The pride of his life';
her mother,'Her other self; her own Clementina" (Letter L V I I ) .
19 It is the belief of the Catholic church that the Virgin Mary was conceived
without original sin.
20 LeDeserteur, by Pierre Alexandre Monsigny (1729—1817), libretto by
Sedaine.
21 Lucile, by Andre Grety (1741 — 1823); libretto by Mormontel.
22 Francesco Albani or Albano, 1578-1660, Italian painter native of Bologna,
especially famed for his small idyllic paintings depicting enchanted
places or the legendary dances of Venus and her amoretti. The eroticism
of these paintings earned him in his own days the title of "Anacreon
of painting." Jacobi's use of his name is of course anachronistic.
23 See p. 193 of Jacobi's text.
34 Gen. 32:25-26.
25 Roman matron, wife of Cecina Paetus. Her husband and son both became
mortally ill. When the son died, she arranged the funeral rites but kept
the death hidden from her husband, wishing to make his dying days easier.
She feigned cheerfulness, and cried only in private. See Pliny, Letters,
Book in, 16.
26 Sylli's brother.
27 For the "bat" (bird-mouse) as the symbol of ambiguity, see Jean de la
Fontaine, Fables, "La Chauve-souris et les deux belettes" ("The Bat and
the Two Weasels"), Book 11, No. 5.
28 I.e. Sylli.
29 He castrated him; see Plato's Euthyphro, 4d-e.
30 See Introduction to the David Hume (1815), p. 37 and Jacobi's footnote.
31 Phaedrus, 25ia-c.
32 J. C. Lavater, Aussichten in die Ewigkeit, in Briefen an Hernnjoh. George
Zimmermann (Vistas into Eternity, in Letters to Mr J. G. Zimmermann), 4 Vols.
(2nd ed., Zurich, 1770-78; ist ed. 1768). See Vol. n, Letter 11, "On the
Perfection of the Heavenly Body," pp. 167-70. With respect to "mobility
and speed," Lavater says that we should expect the body to have the same
appearances in the future life as it has now, except that it will be glo-
rifled. It will move at will, and be at home with infinitely large things just
as well as with infinitely small ones. It will be made up of rays of light,
like the body of the glorified Christ. Lavater claims to be formulating his
views through extrapolation from scientific knowledge.
33 George Berkeley, Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713). The
vignette appeared in the French translation published in Amsterdam
(1750). It is reproduced in A. C. Eraser's edition of the works of Berkeley
(Oxford, 1871), Vol. i, p. 251. The full citation reads: "Quid rides?
Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur." ("What are you laughing at? Change
but the name, of you the tale is told.") It is taken from Horace, Satires,
1.1, tr. Conington.
34 Rinaldo is a legendary crusader in the army of Goffredo di Buglione in
Torquato Tasso's La Gerusakmme Liberata (1575). Before his final battle
against the infidels, Rinaldo must overcome many trials, among them the
allures of the enchantress Armida, who tries to hold him captive on
her magic island. At one point in the story Rinaldo is brought back to his
senses by seeing his countenance reflected in the lustre of his shield
(Canto xvi, 30—31).
Ruggiero is a character in Ariosto's Orlando furioso. Destined to give
rise to the house of Este through the marriage with Bradamante, Ruggiero
must first undergo many fantastic adventures. He overcomes the power
of a strange falcon by holding up to it his brilliant shield (Canto vin, 3—11).
35 Giovanni Francesco di Majo (1732—70), Italian opera composer. His Ifigenia
in Tauride was first produced in Mannheim, in 1764.
36 Ifigenia in Tauride.
37 Nicolo or Niccolo Jomelli (1714—61), Italian composer of operas and sacred
music.
38 Giovanni Battista Pergolesi or Pergolese, 1710—36, Italian composer of se-
rious and comic operas and of sacred music.
39 Saint patroness of musicians and artillery soldiers.
40 According to Terpstra, it is quite possible that the reference here is derived
from Sterne: "God's blessing, said Sancho Panza, be upon that man
who first invented this self-same thing called sleep—it covers man all over
like a cloak." Laurence Sterne (1713-68), The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Volume iv, ch. 15. Terpstra, Jacobi's "Allwill", p. 343,
note 58. Sancho Panza is a character in The Adventures of Don Quixote
de la Mancha, by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes (1547—1616).
The reference is to Book n, ch. iv, p. 68 of the translation by Peter
Motteaux, which Sterne knew.
41 An ancient figure in Greek mythology. It already occurs in the Odyssey, where
Circes advises Ulysses that before returning home he must journey to
the underworld to consult the spirit of Tiresias. Odyssey, x, 484-515.
42 Hamann, Samtliche Werke, Vol. n: Bracken (Scraps), p. 298, 19-20.
43 Ibid., p. 299, 28-29. There is an echo here of the Luther Bible, "Unser
Wissen ist Stuckwerk," i Cor. 13:9.
44 Hamann, Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. n, p. 299, 7—13.
45 Ibid., p. 299, 14-18.
46 Ibid., p. 305, 24—26.
47 Ibid., p. 305, 19-23. The words "The imperfect, the null and" are not in
the Nadler edition of the text.
48 Ibid., 308, 32-36.
49 Quoted in English by Jacobi, from Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Volume vin,
ch. 25. Widow Wadman's eye was "so fitted to rob my uncle Toby of
his repose."
50 Pindar, Pythian Odes, vni, 95ff.:
Men are day-bound. What is a man? What is

he not? Man is a shadow's dream. But when divine
advantage comes, men gain a radiance and a richer life.
Tr. Roy Arthur Swanson.
51 The Theages is now generally regarded as spurious. It was included in the

Bipontine edition, Vol. u.
52 See Matt. 12:39.
53 See 12yb-1306. Jacobi's citations are free adaptations of the text.
54 See Phaedrus, 227a-245c. Jacobi's citations are free adaptations of the
text.
55 Carlo Maratta or Maratti (1625-1713), painter of the Roman School and
famous portraitist.
56 F. Fenelon (1651 — 1715), Demonstration de I'existence de Dieu, tiree de la con-
naissance de la Nature, & proportionee a la foible intelligence des plus simples
(Paris: 1713, published anonymously), ch. 92, pp. 310—11. Jacobi's trans-
lation is somewhat free.
57 Sophocles, Antigone, 555.
58 A name given to those whose devotional exercises were accompanied by
trembling, quaking, or shaking. The Oxford Dictionary gives 1689 for
the first recorded use.
59 There is an oblique reference here to Gierigstein. See above, p. 111 of
Jacobi's text, and note.
60 Influential teacher of Stoicism, c. 5O-c. 130.
61 Shakespeare, Othello, Act v, Sc. 2, lines I22ff.
62 Appius Claudius Pulcher (d. 48 B.C.) was a Roman politician opposed to
Julius Caesar and known for his shady financial dealings. Brutus was,
by contrast, portrayed in antiquity as of noble and generous character.
63 According to Terpstra, this portrait is drawn from Jacobi's own family circle.
Wigand Erdig is the figure of Jacobi's brother-in-law, Johann Arnold
von Clement. Jacob! had the greatest respect for the family of his wife Betty.
At the death of Betty's mother, the Jacobis inherited a considerable for-
tune, which came at a very propitious time because the recent business fail-
ure of Jacobi's own father was threatening their financial security. See
Terpstra, Jacobi's Allwill, p. 35, note 93.
64 Portia, cousin and wife of Marcus Brutus, daughter of Cato the Younger
by his first wife. While her husband was preparing to kill Caesar, in order
to demonstrate that she was superior even to pain and thus gain his con-
fidence, she inflicted a deep gash on her thigh. See Plutarch's Life of
Brutus, Lives, xin, 989—90; also Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act n, Sc. i,
lines aggff.
65 Les Essais de Michel de Montaigne, ed. Pierre Villey (Paris: Presses
Universitaires, 1965); see Book in, ch. i, pp. 79iff.
66 Ibid., Book n, ch. 36, p. 757.
67 Ibid., Book in, ch. i, pp. 801-02. Jacobi adapts the text freely.
68 Erotikos (Discourses on Love), 76/j.cff. Jacobi cites in the French byj. Amyot
(1572).
69 Plato, Symposium, 2O3a; tr. Michael Joyce, my adaptation. Jacobi cites in
Greek.
70 Jacobi cites in Latin. Laws, tr. C. W. Keyes (London: Heinemann, 1928).
71 Jacobi cites in Greek. Philebus, 28e-2ga; the "i.e." phrase is from 28d; tr.
R. Hackforth (Cambridge: University Press, 1945).
72 Gen. 7:8.
73 Werther is the tragic hero of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774).
He commits suicide.
74 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act iv, Sc. 3, line 287; Act v, Sc. 5, lines 16-19.
See also Plutarch's Life of Caesar, Lives, LXIX, 741. Plutarch tells the
story of unnatural events that occurred after the slaying of Caesar. One was
the appearance to Brutus during the night of a man of unnatural size.
Upon being questioned about his identity, the figure replied: "I am the
evil genius, Brutus, and thou shall see me at Philippi." The same figure
appeared to Brutus at Philippi, after the first battle against Marc Antony.
Thereupon Brutus committed suicide.
75 Dio Cassius attributes these words to Cassius (Brutus's partner against Marc
Antony) as Cassius commits suicide at Philippi:
O wretched Valour, thou wert but a name,

And yet I worshipped thee as real indeed;
But now, it seems, thou wert but Fortune's slave.
Dio's Roman History, XLvii.49; tr. Earnest Gary, based on H. B. Foster,

9 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1914-27).
76 I.e. Paris.
77 Journal de Paris, #14, Friday, 14 January 1791, "Report of the Meeting of

the National Assembly of Thursday 13," pp. 55-56. Since there is noth-
ing much to report, the author allows himself some reflections on the nature
of a free constitution. He has just read Mr Burke's essay on the subject,
in order to consult the views of an Englishman. He was surprised to see
that Mr Burke "would rather have our virtues founded on our illusions."
This might have been acceptable in an age of errors, when in order to govern
one had to rely on the most propitious illusion, just as in a storm one
must rely on the most favourable wind. But now we are in an age of "lights,"
and virtues ought to be founded on these. Mr Burke should have read
Locke before writing his book. "The moment Locke appeared on the scene,
no illusion has been solid enough to serve as foundation to anything:
henceforth nothing will stand that is not founded upon immutable prin-
ciples, upon these eternal rocks of nature, somehow stripped naked
through the rigorous demonstrations of reason."
78 See Aristotle, Politics, i.2.i253a2O.
J A C O B I TO FICHTE
1 Jacobi cites in French. Demonstration de I'existence de Dieu, Part i, ch. 2,

§47 (Paris, 1712); see Oeuvres de Fenelon, 34 Vols. (Versailles: Lebel,
1820—29), Vol. i, p. 74. See Augustine, De anima et ejus origine, Book 4,
ch. 6, §7.
2 Actually Schiller, as corrected in the 1816 edition. Genialitdt, Schillers Werke,
Nationalausgabe, Vol. n.i, ed. N. Oellers (Weimar: Bohlaus, 1985),
p. 317.20-25.
3 The reference is to Immanuel Kant.
4 See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 11.21-23: "At all events
he [Socrates] served on the expedition to Amphipolis; and when in
the battle of Delium Xenophon had fallen from his horse, he stepped in
and saved his life" (tr. R. D. Hicks). Xenophon was about forty years
younger than Socrates and his disciple.
5 I.e., since the reception of Fichte's letter of 18 January 1799, Fichte-
Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 111.3, #4°5)> accompanying his Appeal to the Public,
in which Fichte defended himself against the charge of atheism. Appellation
an das Publikum (Jena & Leipzig: Gabler, & Tubingen: Gotta, 1799),
Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, 1.5, pp. 415—35-
6 I.e. Fichte's Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre als Handschrift fur seine
Zuhorer (Leipzig: Gabler, 1794^95]).
7 See Matt. 3.
8 See Matt. 39-40. Jonas is the sign of death and resurrection, in this case
the death of materialism and idealism and their resurrection in the
Transcendental Idealism of Fichte.
9 See Gal. 5:6; 2 Cor. 5:17.

10 See Rom. 9:33.
11 I.e. Karl Leonhard Reinhold. See John 1:47. The "Israelites" are the
Kantians. Just as Nathanael (an Israelite "in whom is no guile") was able
to recognize the Messiah, so too Reinhold (a Kantian for the sake of truth)
was able to recognize in Fichte the fulfilment of Kantianism.
12 See Jacobi's letter to Reinhold of 22 February 1797, where Jacobi reacts
to the news of Reinhold's forthcoming public declaration that he has
become a Fichtean. He doubts that he will ever rejoice at his friend's con-
version. Nevertheless, "the closer you (Reinhold) come to Fichte, the
closer you come to me." What Jacobi means, I suppose, is that Reinhold
is giving witness to the fact that philosophy necessarily leads to Fichte.
Reinhold's Leben, pp. 240—41.
13 I.e. Jacobi had never been a Kantian, though like Nathanael he sought truth
"without guile."
14 K. W. F. Schlegel (1772-1829).
15 The reference is to Schlegel's scathing anonymous review of Jacobi's 1796
edition of Woldemar, in Deutschland, in.8 (1796): 185-213; 202.
Schlegel accuses Jacobi of hating "philosophical reason" (p. 205).
16 Schlegel, "Review of Woldemar" pp. 210—11.
17 Ibid.
18 See Hamann, whose proofs were like "grasshoppers." Wolken (Clouds), in
Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 2, p. 107.
19 See Fichte's Zweite Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre (Second Introduction into
the Science of Knowledge^ 7§*]}, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 1.4, pp. 210—11.
20 See above, p. 7 of Jacobi's text, and his note on Schlegel.
21 The Danaides were the daughters of the mythological Danaos, the brother
of Egypt, whose sons they married. During the wedding night, at the
order of their father Danaos, they cut the throats of their newlywed hus-
bands. According to one version of the legend, because of this crime
they were eventually killed and condemned in Hades perpetually to fill a
leaky water barrel. Ixion is a mythological figure. Because of his crimes
he was condemned by Zeus to be tied with serpents to a wheel perpetually
in motion.
22 Christian Huyghens, 1629—95.
23 Isaac Newton, 1643—1727.
24 Plato, Timaeus, 30.3.
25 Shakespeare, Othello, Act v, 2.125. Just before she dies Desdemona claims
to have killed herself in order to shield her husband Othello, the real
killer.
26 Pylades, legendary friend of Orestes; their names became proverbially
associated. Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, avenged the death of his fa-
ther by killing Aegis thus (the murderer of Agamemnon and usurper of his
throne) and Clytemnestra (Orestes' own mother and Aegisthus' ac-

complice). According to the legend, Pylades reminded Orestes of Apollo's
command to avenge his father when Orestes wavered in his decision
to kill Aegisthus. Pylades also accompanied Orestes on his trip to Tauris
to steal the statue of the goddess Diana. The legend of Orestes and his
two sisters, Electra and Iphigenia, was developed in classical times by
Aeschylus and Euripides, and became popular again as a dramatic
theme in the eighteenth century. See Voltaire's Oreste, Gluck's libretto
Iphigenia in Tauris, and Goethe's play by the same title. Goethe portrays
Pylades as a man of action aware of the fact that in real life innocence is
impossible. He has him say: "And I must confess, I do not think that
trickery and cunning disgraces any man bent on bold deeds" (Act u,
765-68); "Life teaches us, and you will learn it too, to be less rigorous
with ourselves and others. Mankind is of such strange complexity, so var-
iously made up and interwoven, that to remain pure, to avoid confusion
within ourselves or in our dealings with our fellow men, is possible to no
one" (Act iv, 1654—60).
27 Corinthian general who, with very weak means, freed many Sicilian cities
from their tyrants between 346 and 337 B.C. He saved the life of his
brother Timophanes in a battle, but then killed him when he tried to
become tyrant of Corinth.
28 42OC.-362. Theban military general and leader of the Boeotian League.
At one point he retained the supreme command of the army against
the law and the explicit command of his city. In Woldemar (1796) Jacobi
has Woldemar use this episode, drawn from Plutarch, to illustrate the
right of the virtuous man to rely on the subjective guidance of his conscience
to adjudicate questions of right and wrong. Werke, v, pp. 84—86.
29 Johan de Witt (1625-72), Dutch political leader. He opposed the Orangeist
party and was faced by strong opposition in the official Calvinist min-
istry. He was eventually murdered by an Orangeist mob.
30 Marcus Salvius Otho (32—69), Roman emperor who committed suicide after
reigning only three months. To his soldiers who entreated him to let
them die for him he replied: "My comrades, your noble conduct and your
loyal devotion make this a happier day to me than that on which you
elected me your emperor. Yet do not deprive me of the still greater happiness
of dying for so many and such noble friends. If I am worthy to be an
emperor of Rome, I ought not to grudge my life to my country." Plutarch,
Life of Otho", Lives, xv, xvii, tr. A. Stewart & G. Long (London, 1880).
31 i Sam. 21:2-7; Lev. 24:5-9.
32 Mark 2:23—28.
33 I.e. the special claim to immunity.
34 I.e. the 1789 edition; translated in this volume.
35 I.e. the 1792 edition; translated in this volume.
36 I.e. the 1796 edition. See pp. 533-34 below.

37 Second edition; see pp. 23-24 of third edition, Werke, iv.i.
38 Einige Varlesungen iiber die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (Jena & Leipzig, i794)>
Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 1.3, pp. 23ff. For an English tr., see Fichte, Early
Philosophical Writings, tr. ed. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca & London: Cornell,
1988), pp. I44ff. In this text Fichte stresses the value and the freedom
of the individual.
39 See the note to this expression in the Spinoza Letters, p. 177 of Jacobi's text
above.
40 The reference is to Fichte's printed letter to August Wilhelm Schlegel
(16 January 1799, #403) that Fichte sent to some personalities along
with the text of his Appeal to the Public. In the lines he added to the text sent
to Jacobi, Fichte concludes by saying: "I seek your friendship." Cf. Letter
#405, 18 January 1799.
41 "And among the philosophers you, noble Jacobi, whose hand I grasp full
of confidence, however differently we might think as regards mere
theory, have long since already said that on which all depends here, exactly
as it is in my mind; and have said it with a force and warmth with which
I could never say it; have made it the soul of your philosophizing: 'Through
a divine life does man become aware of God.'" Appeal to the Public, Fichte-
Gesamtausgabe, 1.5, p. 447.
42 Wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen betreffend die Briefe iiber die Lehre des Spinoza
(Against Mendelssohn's Accusations with Respect to the Letters Concerning the
Doctrine of Spinoza; Leipzig, 1786), in Scholz, Pantheismusstreti, p. 297.
43 Francois de Salignac de la Mothe (1651-1715), archbishop of Cambray,
suspected within the church of quietism.
44 Gen. 1:27.
45 Jean n, called "the Good" (c. 1319—64).
46 "The Friend of God and the Enemy of All Men." According to the editors
of the Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, reference to this commander is made in a
fourteenth-century chronicle by Simeon Luce. See 111.3, P- 25°> note 52.
47 The excerpt is from Von den Gottlichen Dingen und ihre Offenbarung (Of Divine
Things and Their Revelation, intended for 1798 but first published only
in 1811). See Werke, in, pp. 276—79.
48 Appeal to the Public, Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, 1.5, pp. 435. Fichte is saying that
the wise man can tolerate material representations of God, "provided
that He is a moral Being, and one believes in Him with pure heart." Fichte's
fundamental message is that "religion without morality is superstition"
(ist ed., pp. 40—41; Gesamtausgabe, p. 428).
49 "Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre" ("Attempt at
a New Exposition of the Science of Knowledge"), Philosophisches Journal,
v
(*797): !~49; vni (1797): 1-20. See Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, 1.4, p.
!95-
50 Reprinted in Werke, 11 (1815), pp. 31 off. under title of "On the Inseparability
of the Concept of Providence and Freedom from the Concept of
Reason."
51 See Spinoza Letters, second edition, pp. 422ff.
52 Immanuel Kant, Die Metaphysik der Sitten (Metaphysics of Morals; Konigsberg,
1797), Part 11, "Metaphysical Foundations of the Doctrine of Virtue."
53 Alexander the Great was always saddened at the news of Philip's conquests.
"He feared that his father's conquests would be complete, as to leave
him no more battles to fight." Plutarch, "Life of Alexander," Lives, v, tr.
Stewart & Long.
54 Exod. 3:5.
55 Woldemar, Part n, new improved edition (Konigsberg, 1796), pp. 138-41.
56 Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon (1707-88), Histoire naturelle, Vol. in (Paris,
1749), pp. 364ff. See Gen. 2:22-23.
57 "Kings of Sparta, who, like the Gracchi, increased the power of the people
and endeavoured to restore an admirable and just constitution which
had fallen into desuetude; but who, like them, incurred the hatred of the
governing class, who were unwilling to relinquish their encroachments
and privileges." Plutarch, "Life of Agis," Lives, n, tr. Stewart & Long. Jacobi
introduces a long excerpt from the Plutarch story in part n of Woldemar,
as part of a lecture by Woldemar on the strength of virtue and its power
to overcome the inconstancy of fortune. Werke, v, pp. 392—417.
58 See preceding note.
59 Grundlegung zur Metaphysic der Sitten (Groundwork of a Metaphysics of Morals;
Riga, 1785), p. 52.
60 Ibid., p. 52.
61 Ibid., p. 66.
PREFACE TO THE D A V I D HUME
1 Jacobi cites in French. See p. 180 of the text of the Spinoza Letters, and
the footnote there on Pascal.
2 59e-6oa, tr. R. Hackforth; Jacobi cites in Greek.
3 Jacobi is not being altogether candid. He introduced in the text of this sec-
ond edition a few, but significant, changes. We have noted them in our
translation of the first edition text.
4 Jacobi came close to doing just that. See p. 124 of the text of the first edition
of David Hume.
5 The Merovingians were a Prankish dynasty (5th-8th century) whose realm
finally expanded to include the modern equivalent of western Germany,
the whole of France, and Switzerland. By the end of the seventh century
a series of inept kings created a power vacuum that was filled by the
head stewards (majores domus) of the palaces where the various regions were
governed. In 687 the Austrian steward Pepin 11 gained dominance. His

grandson Pepin in deposed the last Merovingian king in 751, with the
approval of the then reigning Pope Zachary.
6 "There is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses."
This commonplace is actually a scholastic gloss on an Aristotelian point
of doctrine. See Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 11.19, 10034-8; On the Soul,
in.8, 43236-8; Metaphysics, 1.1, gSiai-5.
7 Rev. 21:5.
8 Von den Gottlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung.
10 See the Supplement to David Hume (1787), p. 223.
12 See below, p. 63 ofjacobi's text, and note.
13 Erdichteter Begriff. There is here a hidden reference to Bouterwek, who
claimed "schaffende Freiheit ist ein erdichteter Begriff in his Lehrbuch
der philosophischen Wissenschaften (2nd ed., Part i, p. 191, as cited by W.
Meyer). Bouterwek had complained about Jacobi's implicit criticism.
Jacobi responded by saying that he had deliberately avoided using his name
because Bouterwek understood him better than anyone else, and was
his co-witness and co-worker. He did not want to mislead the public on this
score. See Bouterwek Briefwechsel, 16 November 1814, 9 February 1815,
##26, 27, pp. 153—54, 1 57~6i, and the relevant notes in Meyer.
14 David Hartley (1705—57), English physician known for advocating a psy-
chology based on physiological data alone.
15 Erasmus Darwin (1731 — 1802), English scientist, physician, and poet; grand-
father of the more famous Charles Robert Darwin (1809-82). He was
a convinced materialist and deist in the tradition established by Locke.
16 Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715—80), French philosopher, greatly in-
fluenced by the works of Newton and Locke, and best known for his
Traite de sensations (1754). In this work Condillac tried to determine the
origin and the extent of experience by analysing its content into its sim-
plest elements (sensations) and then methodically reconstructing it using
these as building blocks. To facilitate the process, Condillac undertook
an imaginary experiment. He assumed a marble statue internally structured
like a living human body but with a mind still lacking in ideas and with
the senses still closed. He also assumed the statue to be rigid, without contact
with anything external. Condillac then proceeded to open each sense
individually, thus establishing the minimum that had to be introduced
through each before experience as we normally understand it is
achieved. Belief in an external world is elicited in the statue only when the
statue is made to move, and its mind begins to register the difference
between the double sensation of contact that follows upon the hand's touch-
ing the chest, and the single sensation that occurs on other occasions
(i.e. when the hand touches something external, or the chest is touched
by something external).
17 Charles Bonnet (1720-93); in his Essai analytique sur les facultes de I'dme
(1760) he tried to reconstruct the emergence of human consciousness
genetically, following Condillac's strategy.
18 See Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, conclusion, pp. 161-62.
19 See Gen. 3:5.
20 See Kant's distinction between empirical intuitions and the a priori intuitions
of space and time.
21 John 1:1.
22 Jacobi's gloss.
23 Theaetetus, i77.b-c.
24 Johann Georg Sulzer (1720-79), Swiss aesthetician and popular philoso-
pher. His subjectivist theory of beauty and his notion of "genius" in-
fluenced the aesthetic theories of Kant and Schiller.
25 Polyphemus was one of the Cyclops, mythological giant shepherds endowed
with only one eye. In Book ix of Homer's Odyssey Ulysses blinds
Polyphemus and then escapes from his cave.
26 See below, p. 100 of Jacobi's text, and also David Hume, pp. 106-08 of the
1787 edition.
2 7 What follows is a repeat of the attack on the pantheism of Schelling originally
launched byjacobi in 1811, with Of Divine Things and Their Revelation.
The attack precipitated a controversy known in the literature as the
Pantheismusstreit. It can be considered the third episode in the story of
Jacobi's campaign against philosophy, the first being the Spinozismusstreit
occasioned by his Spinoza Letters and the second his condemnation of
Fichte's idealism at the climax of the 1789 Atheismusstreit. Jacobi's 1811 writ-
ing included earlier materials that he had reworked for his move against
what he saw as a new form of the old Spinozist pantheism now hiding behind
Schelling's Philosophy of Nature. Schelling replied in 1812 with his
Memorial for Herr Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Writing "Of Divine Things etc."
(Denkmal der Schrijt "von den gottlichen Dingen u. " des Herrn Friedrich
Heinrich Jacobi), in Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sdmtliche Werke,
14 Vols. in 2 Sections (Stuttgart & Augsburg: Cotta, 1856-61), Vol. 1.8.
Both texts are reprinted with a historical introduction in Wilhelm
Weischeidel, Streit um die Gottlichen Dinge, die Auseinandersetzung zwischen
Jacobi und Schelling (The Conflict concerning Divine Things, The Dispute between
Jacobi and Schelling; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
i9 6 7)-
Although the dispute became open only in 1811, its origins went back
to a gala lecture given by Schelling in 1807 at the Munich Academy of the
Sciences, of which Jacobi was the president and Schelling a member.
The title of the lecture was "Concerning the Relation of the Fine Arts to
Notes tojacobi's Texts, page 571 631
Nature" ("Uber das Verbaltnis der bildenden Kiinste zur Natur,"

Samtliche Werke, Vol. 1.7). The divinization of nature implicit in its message
upset Jacobi and directed his attention to Schelling's philosophy and
its influence over the young. Jacobi saw in it an impossible synthesis of
Platonism and Spinozism that passed off the pantheism of Spinoza un-
der false Platonic pretences (see letter to Goethe, 19-23 February 1808,
Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Fr. H. Jacobi, #114, p. 244; see also
Weischeidel, pp. 21-22).
The stridency of this section of Jacobi's text reflects the caustic tone
that the controversy assumed from the beginning. See for instance this pas-
sage in Schelling's Denkmal: "that a man [i.e. Jacobi] who talks so much
about truth should have stooped to preaching lies at the end of his life simply
in order to assert his honour as prophef (p. 53). Jacobi complained bit-
terly with Bouterwek about the dirt being thrown at him (letter of i February
1812, Bouterwek Briefwechsel, #23, pp. 139-40). Fries came out strongly
on the side of Jacobi with his Von deutschen Philosophic, Art und Kunst. Ein
Votum fur Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi gegen F. W. J. Schelling (Of Geramn
Philosophy, Style and Art. A Vote for F. H. J. Against F. W. J. S.; Heidelberg:
Mohr und Zimmer, 1812).
28 Here as elsewhere one can hear echoes of Schelling's Philosophy of Identity
first explicitly formulated in Bruno oder tiber das gottliche und natiirliche
Princip der Dinge. Ein Gesprdch (1802), Samtliche Werke, 1.4. See Bruno, or On
the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things, tr. Michael G. Vater (Albany:
SUNY, 1984). Schelling tried to overcome Fichte's ideal subjectivism by
positing a point of equivalence or indifferentiation (Indifferenz) in the
Absolute, within which all oppositions—notably that between subjectivity
and objectivity—are resolved. This point of indifferentiation can be
grasped in immediate intellectual intuition but cannot be expressed reflec-
tively (i.e. conceptually), since reflection means abstraction and deter-
mination, and hence (even when it is only intended to express the Absolute
as pure Unity) also opposition. Strictly speaking, therefore, the Absolute
cannot be known but can only be spoken of in purely negative terms such
as "indifferentiation" or "the neither-nor." But now, the reflective act
by which we transform what would otherwise be a purely pre-conscious and
unstructured intuition of the Absolute into a conscious and structured
human world is taken by Schelling as a type of the original reflection by
which the Absolute—in a purely unmotivated act of creative freedom—
gives rise to oppositions and, with them, to the series of forms that make
up the universe. In these forms the Absolute begins to exist, at a distance
from itself or alienated from itself, so to speak, and thereby acquires con-
sciousness of itself. Yet none of these forms really goes beyond the ab-
solute equivalence, the nothingness of all oppositions, that lies at their basis.
Defined in reflective terms, history is the process by which the Absolute
632 Notes tojacobi's Texts, page 573
acquires determinate form and hence reveals itself, yet to the extent that
it does so it also reveals the nothingness of these forms and thus brings
them back to itself.
Jacobi would of course agree that God, the Absolute, escapes the re-
flective grasp of the understanding. This was indeed the central point of
his "non-philosophy" from the beginning. But he cannot accept
Schelling's "non-knowledge," because it is tailor-made to suit the needs of
the understanding. It is the product of abstraction, hence a denial of
true existence. And in fact the conceptual system built on it ends up denying
personality and freedom, the two pillars of Jacobi's humanism.
For Schelling's view, see the following representative texts: "Since we make
the identity of all opposites our first principle, 'unity' itself along with
'opposition' will form the highest pair of opposites. To make unity the su-
preme principle, we must think of it as comprehending even this highest
pair of opposites, and the unity that is its opposite as well, and we must
define this supreme unity as one in which unity and opposition, self-
equivalence [sich selbst Gleich] and non-equivalence, are one" (Bruno, p. 236,
my translation). See also the text from pp. 22—23 of Philosophy and
Religion (Philosophic und Religion [1804], Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 1.6) cited
in the note to p. 90 of Jacobi's text, and from the same work, pp. 56—57:
"God is the equivalence [das gleiche An-sich] of necessity and freedom; for
the negation, in virtue of which necessity appears to the finite soul as
independent of freedom and opposed to it, disappears in Him. But He is
equally essence of freedom and necessity, [. . .] not only with respect
to the individual soul who attains to reunion with Him through morality
[ . . . . ] but with respect to the species as well. God is therefore the im-
mediate substance [An-sich] of history [. . . . And] since God is the absolute
harmony of necessity and freedom, yet this harmony can only be ex-
pressed in the whole, not in individuals, so history too occurs only as a
whole—and only as a successive self-unfolding revelation of God." This
is, incidentally, precisely the kind of notion of history that Kierkegaard was
to satirize. See also: "So we have exhibited the precise point of the sys-
tem where the concept of indifferentiation is indeed the only possible con-
cept of the Absolute. If it is now understood in a common sense, the
whole is distorted. It also follows that this system suspends the personality
of the highest Being." Philosophische Untersuchungen iiber das Wesen der
menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhangenden Gegenstdnde
(Philosophical Enquiries concerning the Essence of Human Freedom and the
Objects Connected with It; 1809), Sdmtliche Werke, 1.7, p. 412.
29 See Schelling, "Concerning the Relation of the Fine Arts to Nature," Sdmtliche
Werke, 1.7: "Is not indeed the case that all recent theory proceeds from
the definite principle that art ought to be the imitator of nature? [. . . .
Yes, but all depends on what one means by nature, whether one takes
it as something alive or a mere aggregate of dead things.] To the inspired

researcher alone [is nature] the holy, eternally creating, primordial
force of the world that begets and laboriously brings forth all things from
itself (p. 293); "It has long since been recognized that in art not every-
thing is executed with consciousness; that an unconscious force must join
conscious activity; and that the perfect unity and interpenetration of
the two begets the highest [work] of art" (p. 300). See also Schelling's theory
of art as an organon of philosophy in his System des Transcendentalen
Idealismus (1800), Sdmtliche Werke, 1.3, pp. 612-35; tr- Peter Heath, System
of Transcendental Idealism (1800) (Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1978).
30 See Schelling, Philosophy and Religion, Sdmtliche Werke, 1.6, pp. 58—59.
31 See Schelling, Philosophical Enquiries Concerning the Essence of Human Freedom,
Sdmtliche Werke, 1.7, pp. 359-60: "After the eternal deed of the self-
revelation [of the Absolute] everything in the world as we now see it is Rule,
Order, and Form; yet the Unruly still lurks at its ground, as if it could
break through once more, and nowhere do Order and Form appear original;
it is rather as if at the beginning there was Something Unruly which
was then brought to Order. In things this Unruly is the incomprehensible
basis of their reality—an irremovable residuum, something that will not
let itself be dissolved into understanding in spite of the most strenuous ef-
forts but abides by the ground eternally. Understanding is born of this
lack-of-understanding, quite literally." Schelling had complained that Jacobi
had not taken into account his latest and deepest work, i.e. his treatise
on human freedom. Jacobi pointed out to Bouterwek that, on the contrary,
his exposition of Schelling's thought had been taken from that treatise
word for word. See letter of 9 August 1815, Bouterwek Briefwechsel, #28,
pp. 164-65.
32 See Rev. 2:1—5; i Cor. 15:24—28.
33 See Schelling, Philosophy and Religion, Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. 1.6: "One can
tell them [i.e. the theists] one hundred times over: there is nothing
subjective and nothing objective for us; and the Absolute, being for us the
Negation of those oppositions, is the absolute identity of both" (p. 22).
"It no less escapes them how the forms that can be attributed to the Absolute
in speech and are actually so attributed to it are all modelled after the
three forms of inference, and that only immediate intuitive cognition infinitely
surpasses every conceptual determination. The first form of positing
absoluteness is the categorical, and this form can be expressed in reflection
only negatively, through a Neither-Nor. It is clear that no positive cog-
nition is present here at all, and that only the advent of productive intuition
fills this emptiness and guarantees the positive in that Neither-Nor"
(P- 23).
34 i Cor. 15:24-28; Rom. g^ff.
35 See above, pp. 4gff. of Jacobi's text.

36 See Psalms 94:9.
37 Gen. 2:21—25.
38 Gen. 1:3.
39 John 1:1.
40 See above, pp. 76-77 of Jacobi's text.
41 See pp. 78-79 of Jacobi's text.
42 This statement could also define what had been from the beginning the
program of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. "The Facts of Consciousness"
("Die Tatsachen des Bewufitseyns") was the title that Fichte gave to his Berlin
winter-semester lectures in 1810—11 (published in 1817; Stuttgart &
Tubingen: Cotta).
43 First published in 1799, as Supplement n of Jacobi's letter to Fichte.
44 In Wolken, Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. n, p. 107, lines 18—26. Hamann says that
his proofs are like grasshoppers: "They hop, and do not creep along
the pre-established way."
Notes tojacobi's Footnotes
1 Jacob! actually had the poem printed on a loose sheet that was inserted,
but in an easily detachable fashion, between pp. 48 and 49. In a note
he explained that he did not wish to risk the confiscation of the whole work
by the censors because of the poem, which could therefore be easily
removed as circumstances dictated. In the event of its excision, he gave in-
structions to cut from the book p. 11/12, which contained a note re-
ferring the reader to the loose sheet attached to p. 48, and let stand in its
place another p. 11/12, included in the text for just this eventuality
and containing the note above. For the details, see Scholz, Pantheismusstreit,
pp. i i*-i2*. It is clear from the tone of Goethe's letter to Jacobi, writ-
ten upon reception of the book, that he did not appreciate the liberty that
Jacobi had taken with his poems. While he praises the "historical form"
of Jacobi's book, he comments that it would have been better if his name
had been attached to the Prometheus and if Jacobi had not made so much
fuss about the possibility of confiscation by the censors. He had no wish,
however, to dwell on the subject. See letters of 11 September 1785 and
26 September 1785, ##35 and 36 in Briefouechsel zwischen Goethe und
Fr.H.Jacobi, ed. Max Jacobi (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1846).
2 Essais de theodicee sur la bonte de Dieu, la liberte de I'homme et I'origine du mal,
first ed. (Amsterdam: Troyel, 1710).
3 Spinoza, Op. Post. Epistola L, p. 558.
4 Philosophische Gesprdche (Berlin: VoB, 1755) and Moses Mendelssohn's
philosophische Schriften (Berlin: VoB, 1761). Of course Jacobi could not
know, since the relevant literature was not available at the time, that during
his Breslau years, in a letter to Mendelssohn (17 April 1763), Lessing
had explicitly rejected his friend's claim that Leibniz's pre-established har-
mony is in Spinoza, on the ground that in Spinoza's monistic system
there is no need for it. See Allison, p. 68.
636 Notes to Jacobi's Footnotes, pages 192—220
5 Jacob! must mean the 62nd letter, Spinoza, Op. Post., p. 585. The letter
is dated October 1674; stresses are added byjacobi.
6 Georg Bernhard Bilfinger, Dilucidationes Philosophicae deDeo, Anima Humana,
Mundo et Generalibus Rerum Affectionibus s (Tubingen: Cotta, 1768), §341,
pp. 268-69. Bilfinger's point is that a'utomaton means "a being that desires
itself, or whose alterations are sought by it spontaneously," and that
therefore the term is wrongly applied, as in contemporary usage, to "me-
chanical works that only appear to move on their own, such as clocks."
7 "I do not presume to have found the best philosophy; but I know that I
understand the true one."
8 Spinoza, Op. Post., Epistola L X X I V (end of 1675), p. 612; stresses are
Jacobi's.
9 See Supplement i to the second edition, where Jacobi quotes extensively
from a work of Giordano Bruno's. Bruno's claim is that the soul of the
world is also its formal principle and, as such, dependent upon (i.e. an effect
of) a material principle.
10 Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim (1719-1803), poet and religious figure, one of the
earliest practitioners in Germany of the cult of sentiment. Herder had
apparently been invited to this meeting also but later regretted not having
been able to attend. See Briefwechsel, 1.3, #902, 29 May 1783,
pp. 225—26.
11 "Peu de tetes sont fait pour une abstraction absolue" ("Few heads are made
for an absolute abstraction"). Hemsterhuis is saying that we are inclined
to doubt the immortality and indestructibility of the soul, despite clear dem-
onstrations to the contrary, because we do not sense or see ourselves
except among things outside us. Few people are capable of abstracting from
these completely and detect the special character of the soul inwardly.
12 The last sentence is a direct quotation from Hemsterhuis's text.
13 The parenthesis is Jacobi's gloss.
14 R. H. M. Elwes's translation (New York: Dover, 1955), Vol. 11, pp. 167-68.
15 See On the Improvement of the Understanding, Elwes's tr., Vol. n, pp. 39—40,
where Spinoza defines the understanding according to its properties.
16 See Part i and n of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy . . . To which are added
his Metaphysical Thoughts, etc., Part I, ch. i, in The Collected Works of Spinoza,
2 Vols., tr. & ed. Edwin Curley (Princeton, N.J.: University Press, 1985),
Vol. i, pp. 300-01.
17 Jacobi has rearranged the sentence structure of the Latin text. Elwes's tr.
reads: "This determination (i.e. figure) therefore does not appertain
to the thing according to its being, but, on the contrary, is its non-being.
As then figure is nothing else than determination, and determination
is negation, figure, as has been said, can be nothing but negation." Vol. 11,
p. 370.
18 On the Improvement of the Understanding.
Notes tojacobi's Footnotes, pages 220-40 637
19 Op. Posth., p. 53.

20 Jacob! must mean Prop, xxxii. Op. Posth., p. 29.
21 Stresses added by Jacob!.
22 Op. Posth., pp. 50-52.
23 Op. Posth., p. 591.
24 Op. Posth., p. 52.
25 Op. Posth., p. 61.
26 Op. Posth., p. 121.
27 Op. Posth., p. 63.
28 Jacob! must mean xxin.
29 See Elwes's tr., Vol. n, pp. 185-86, "General Definition of the Emotions."
30 Op. Posth., p. 255, Jacobi's stresses.
31 See Elwes's tr., Vol. n, pp. 87-88.
32 See Elwes's tr., Vol. n, pp. 88-89.
33 Letter iv to Henry Oldenburg.
34 See Mendelssohn's Memoranda, pp. 956°. of the second edition.
35 The work referred to in the title is J. Gironnet, Philosophic, vulgaris refutata.
Opusculum de colenda theologis philosophia (Parisiis, 1670).
36 This passage is replaced in the second edition with a text from Lucretius's
De rerum natura (iv.5.467—83) because, Jacobi says, the original quo-
tation had caused too much of a scandal. In the third edition the note is
omitted altogether. The passage appears to be a paraphrase of Pontius
Pilatus, Book i, Comments on the Gospel Passages Concerning Pontius
Pilatus, #3. See Johann Caspar Lavaters ausgewdhlte Werke, 3 vols, ed. Ernst
Stahelin (Zurich: Zwingli, 1943), vol. in, p. 92.
37 According to modern editions the quote is actually made up of two different
fragments: "Nature confounds the Pyrrhonists, and reason the dogma-
tists" (Fragment #131, p. 85); "We have an incapacity of proof that no
dogmatism can overcome. We have an idea of truth that no Pyrrhonism
can overcome" (Fragment#406, p. 231). Cf. Blaise Pascal (i632-62), Pensees
sur la religion et sur quelques autres sujets. "Pyrrhonism" (from the first great
sceptic, Pyrrho, c. 360-270 B.C.) is a form of scepticism achieved by op-
posing different sources of evidence until they balance each other and
their force of conviction is thereby neutralized.
38 Jacobi must mean chapters 133-36. See: "Bulis and Sperchis of Sparta went
as volunteers to Xerxes, King of the Persians, to render satisfaction
which Sparta owed according to an oracle, because the people had killed
the heralds sent to them by the Persian." Plutarch, Moralia, The Sayings
of Spartans, 63.235-36, tr. F. C. Babbitt (London: Heineman, 1927; Loeb
Greek Authors).
39 See Diodorus, Book xv, 87. Epaminondas of Thebes, famous general and
statesman, and founder of the Theban League. He was killed by the
Spartans at the battle of Mantineia, in 362 B.C.
638 Notes to Jacobi's Footnotes, pages 241-48
40 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Edinburgh, 1767);

Jacobi's quote is in German; see Adam Ferguson, Versuch uber die
Geschichte der burgerlichen Gesellschaft; aus dem Englischen (Leipzig, 1768);
the translator was Christian Garve. In a letter to Bouterwek, 8 January
1804, Jacobi reproved Bouterwek for not having noticed that Butler had
refuted Shaftesbury and that Ferguson had continued in Butler's spirit
by exposing the mistakes and incoherences in Adam Smith. Bouterwek
Briefwechsel, #8, p. 59.
41 Johann Gottfried von Herder, Briefe, das Studium der Theologie betreffend, in
iv Parts (Weimar: Hoffmann, 1780-81), Part n, p. 273. Nicholas
Saunderson (1682-1739) was a lecturer in mathematics and physics at
Cambridge, where he achieved high distinction in spite of the blindness
that he had incurred at the age of twelve months. He figures prominently
in Diderot's Lettre sur les aveugles (Letter Concerning the Blind; London,
1749), where Diderot uses the supposed experiences of the blind in support
of his materialistic views. His claim is that the state of our organs and
senses has a great influence on our metaphysics and morality. Even the most
intellectual ideas are closely dependent on the way our bodies are
formed. According to Diderot, blind people are less likely to be given to
wonder just because they are not exposed to such naturally striking phe-
nomena as that of a luminous body periodically making its course across
the sky. A blind Cartesian philosopher would locate the site of the soul
at the extremities of his fingertips. See Oeuvres completes, ed. H.Diekmann
et al., 25 vols. (Paris: Hermann, 1975—86), Vol. iv, pp. 28, 31.
42 Philip Vellacott, Sophocles and Oedipus. A Study of Oedipus Tyrannus with a
New Translation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971), p. 56.
43 Alteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, Vol. i (Riga: Hartnoch, 1774); Vol. 2
(Riga: Hartnoch, 1776). The reference to the "old Luther" is in Luthers
Werke, ed. Otto von Gerlach, 22 Vols. (Berlin: Wiegandt, 1848), Vol. 17,
Auslegung des ersten Bucks Mosis (Interpretation of the First Book of Moses),
p. 68; see Gen. 32:9; Luther's text is freely adapted by Herder.
44 Matt. 6:22, Luke 11:34.
45 Philosophische Vorlesungen uber das sogenannte Neue Testament. Vor Gelehrten,
fur nichtgelehrte Denker ohne Glauben und Unglauben, Von K. K. S. (in fact,
Johann C. Pfenniger, pastor in Zurich and friend of Lavater; Leipzig: Junius,
1785), Vol. i. The first quote is from §245, p. 167; the second, from
§256, p. 172, with the first sentence imported from §251, p. 170. The book
begins with the doxology "In the name of Common Sense, of
Righteousness, and Industry, Amen." The book then proceeds with a word-
by-word explanation of the Gospel, in which everything is interpreted
in down-to-earth terms, without appeal to anything miraculous. At the end
of each chapter, new words that have been introduced are listed and
defined. Hamann had been the one who had recommended the book to
Jacobi. Hamann-Briefwechsel, 22 July 1785, Vol. vi, #856, p. 21. Kant

refers to Pfenniger in a footnote to Religion within the Boundaries of Mere
Reason, Academy ed., vi, p. 85
DAVID HUME ON FAITH
1 Fragmente (1753), "Wie kommt es, daB ein Geist" ("How is it that a spirit"),
Werke, 8 vols., in co-operation with Karl Eibl, et al, ed. H. G. Gopfert
(Munchen: Hanser, 1970-79), Vol. i, p. 155.
2 "How can we fail to be aroused by the account of the impious effrontery
of Publius Claudius during the First Punic War? He dared to mock and
jeer the gods; for when the chickens, released from their coop, would not
eat, he commanded that they be thrown into the sea, so that having
disdained food, they might have their fill of drink. That jest overwhelmed
Claudius with sorrow and tears and brought a dreadful calamity upon
the Roman people, for the fleet suffered a tragic defeat." Tr. H. M. Poteat
(Chicago: University Press, 1950).
3 Tr. C. D. Yonge, 4 vols. (London: H. G. Bohm, 1851-52). Vol. i includes
Oration for R. A.
4 Bacon, Advancement of Learning, in The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. J. Spedding,
Vol. in (London, 1870), p. 291. Jacobi quotes the Latin text, De augmen-
tis scientiarum (1623).
5 J. S. Putter, Litterature des deutschen Staatsrechts, 3 Parts (Gottingen:
Vandenhoek, 1776—1783)^. C. G. Heine (Heinneccius) Corpus juris
germanici antiqui, &c., consilio et prcefatio Heineccii (Halle, 1738). Hermann
Conring (1606—81), the author of De origine juris germanici (1643), is
considered the founder of the history of German jurisprudence.
J. P. Gundling (1673—1731), educated in the school of Thomasius, be-
came an influential jurist and historian. J. O. Tabor (1604—74) was a jurist
and eventually chancellor of the university at GieBen.
6 The Complete Essays of Montaigne, tr. Donald M. Frame (Stanford, California:
Standford U. P., 1965), Book i, ch. 9, "Of Liars," p. 23. The other ref-
erence is to Deutsches Museum, January 1787, p. 49, a three-page anecdote
authored by Jacobi himself, "Die beste von den Haderkiinsten. Fine
Erzahlung" ("The Best of the Litigious Arts. An Anecdote"). Jacobi tells
the story—apparently a true one—of an author who intentionally in-
troduced two false claims into a published essay on the ground that falsities
can always be upheld simply by repeating them at the appropriate times
and in the appropriate language, and that there is nothing that hurts an
opponent more than being presented with patent untruth.
7 Moses Mendelssohn, Morgenstunden. Mendelssohn actually says: "The more
however men agree with me in finding things to be so, the greater the
certainty becomes that the ground of my faith is not to be found in my par-
640 Notes tojacobi's Footnotes, pages 267—97
ticular situation. It must either lie in the positive power of thought, and
hence be true representation, or in the common limitations of all human
cognition."
8 Jacobi cites in Latin, Letter to Mersenne, 30 September 1640.
g Jacobi cites in Latin from Bilfinger, Dilucidationes philosophicae de deo,
1768.
io Einleitung in die spekulative Philosophic oder Metaphysik zum Gebrauch der
Vorlesungen (Introduction to Speculative Philosophy or Metaphysics, for Use in
His Lectures).
11 Jacobi cites in French from Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon, Histoire
naturelle, generale et particuliere, avec la description du cabinet du roy (Paris:
De I'imprimerie royale, 1749-1803), 44 vols., Vol. 2, Histoire generale des
animaux. Histoire naturelle de I'homme. Par M. de Buffon (1749).
12 The current translation that Jacobi is referring to must be the one by
Hermann Andreas Pistorius, Hume, vermischte Schriften (Hamburg,
1754). A new translation appeared soon after, Untersuchung iiber den men-
schlichen Verstand, aus dem Engl. von W. G. Tennemann, nebst einer
Abhandlung uber den philosophischen Skepticismus von K. Lh. Reinhold
(Enquiry . . ., tr. from the English by W. G. Tennemann, together with an Essay
on Philosophical Scepticism by Karl Leonhard Reinhold; Jena: Akad. Buchh.,
1793)-
13 "Nouveaux essais sur 1'entendement humain," Oeuvres Philosophiques Latines
& Francoises de Seu MR de Leibniz, ed. Rud. Eric Raspe (Amsterdam &
Leipzig: Jean Schreuder, 1765), Book n, ch. xxi, §14.
14 The Elements of Euclid, viz. The First Six Books Together with the Eleventh and
Twelfth, &"c., ed. with comments by Robert Simson (Glasgow: R. &. A.
Foulis, 1756). A German translation by I. C. Schwab was published in 1780
(Stuttgart: Cotta).
15 Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect; Letter LXIV.
16 Vol. 3, Letter 280 (Berlin: Nicolai, 1764).
17 "Eloge du Pere Malebranche," Oeuvres de Monsieur deFontenelle, 6 vols. (Paris:
Brunei, 1762). The episode just referred to is narrated on pp. 429-30.
18 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Anti-Goeze . . . D.i. Nothgedrungener Beytrdge zu
den freywilligen Beytrdgen des Hrn Pastors Goeze (Anti-Goeze . . .I.e.
Necessitated Contributions to the Voluntary Contributions of Pastor Goeze;
Braunschweig, 1778). Lessing wrote these "Anti-Goeze Supplements"
in order to defend his publication of the fragments of J. A. H. Reimarus,
on the toleration of deists and on revelation, against the attacks of the
orthodox Lutheran pastor Goeze.
19 See Spinoza Letters, p. 38, notes. Jacobi cites in French.
20 Ethics, Props. 37—44.
21 Vol. in, pp. 1409—21.
22 Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Grundsdtze der allgemeinen Logik (Helms tadt:
Fleckeisen, 1802); Jacobi, "Ueber das Unternehmen des Kriticismus,

die Vernunft zu Verstande zu bringen . . .", Beytrdge zur leichtern Ubersicht
des Zustandes der Philosophie beym Anfange des 19. Jahrhunderts
(Contributions to an Easier Overview of the Situation of Philosophy at the Beginning
of the igth Century), ed. C. L. Reinhold (Hamburg, 1802). Both Schulze
and the reviewer of his book on logic in the Gottingen Erudite Notices echo
themes from Thomas Reid's "common sense" doctrine. The reviewer
praises Schulze for having cleansed logic of all the transcendental principles
with which the Kantians have tried to burden it, thus reducing it once
more to the plain theory of inference that it ought to be. He also agrees
with Schulze's beloved theory, viz. that cognition called "intuition" or
"perception" is thoroughly immediate, "so that there is absolutely no dis-
tinction [in it] between the object itself and the representation that
mediates the object with the subject" (1412—13). Yet one cannot speak of
the truth of an intuition without introducing such distinctions as "sub-
jective modification," "object," and the like, and the question arises whence
these distinctions come. Since they cannot come from immediate cog-
nition, they must derive from reason. But then we already have within natural
consciousness the connection between intuition and reason that the
Kantians seek in their transcendental principles, for there would not be
in intuition the distinctions that make for its truth unless reason did
not already mingle with sensation (Empfindung). Schulze is therefore right
in juxtaposing intuitive and discursive cognition, in order to tie together
the threads of logic within natural consciousness itself. "We then immedi-
ately stand on logical ground and soil, as by a leap and yet without dan-
ger" (1413). The reviewer criticizes, however, Schulze's doctrine of faith.
23 Letter to Des Bosses, 16 October 1706.
24 "I absolutely do not admit that there are souls totally separate by nature,
nor that there are spirits created totally detached from any body."
Considerations sur les Principes de Vie, & sur les Natures Plastiques, par VAuteur
du Systeme de VHarmonie preetablie (1705).
25 Leibniz, Letter to Wagner, 4 June 1710. Opp., Vol. n, Part i, p. 227.
26 Leibniz, An Essay on the Souls of Animals (Commentatio de Anima Brutoruni).
Opp., Vol. n, Part i, p. 232. Stresses are added by Jacobi.
27 Reply to the comments contained in the second edition of the Dictionnaire
Critique of M. Bayle concerning the system of preestablished harmony,
in the article "Rorarius."
28 Letter to Wagner, 4 June 1710. Stresses are added by Jacobi.
29 The note is by Duten, the editor.
30 Letter to Father de Bosses, 8 September 1709. Stresses are Jacobi's.
31 Letter to Wagner, 4 June 1710. Stresses are Jacobi's.
32 Leibniz, Opp., Vol. II, Part. I, pp. 32-33, 34-35. Instead of "human sper-
matic animalcules" Leibniz has "the souls of spermatic animalcules."
33 Lettre a I'Auteur de I'Histoire des Ouvrages des Scavans (Letter to the Author of
the History of the Works of the Learned; 1689).
34 Letter to Des Bosses, 16 October 1706.
35 Opp., Vol. n, Part i, p. 27.
36 Jacob! is referring to the article "What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in
Thinking?" which was Kant's contribution to the Spinoza debate. "Was
heiBt sich im Denken orientieren?" Berlinische Monatsschrifi vm (1786):
304-30, Academy Ed., Vol. 8, p. 143, note.
37 Second reply to Bayle. Stresses added by Jacobi.
38 Stresses added by Jacobi.
39 The last stress is Jacobi's.
40 I.e. the first edition.
41 Letter to des Bosses, 16 October 1706.
42 Phaedon, oder Uber die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, in drey Gesprdchen (Phaedon, or
Concerning the Immortality of the Soul, in Three Dialogues; 1767). See, among
other passages, Second Dialogue, pp. 233-35; Third Dialogue, pp. 250-53.
1 Immanuel Kant, Der einzig mogliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des

Daseins Gottes (Konigsberg: Kanter, 1763). English tr. by Gordon Treash:
The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God (New York:
Abaris Books, Inc., 1979), p. 91.
2 The One Possible Basis for a Demonstration of the Existence of God, p. i o i.
3 Leibniz, Opera omnia, Vol. n, Part i, "xxx. Epistolae Leibnitii ad P. Des-
Bosses, S.J.," p. 314.
4 Letter LXX ( L X X X I ) to Tschirnhausen, 5 May 1676.
5 Letter LXX 11 ( L X X X I I I ) to Tschirnhausen.
6 Letter L V I I I of the new ordering, to G. H. Schaller, October 1674.
7 J. B. Bossuet, Einleitung in die allgemeine Weltgeschichte bis aufCarl den Groflen.
Aus d. Franzos. iibersetzt und fortgesetzt vonjonann Andreas Cramer. Von der
Scholastischen Theologie, Fortsetzung des Bossuet (1732—1788), 7 vols.
(Introduction to the History of the World up to Karl the Great, translated from
the French and expanded byJ.A Cramer. Concerning Scholastic Theology,
Continuation of Bossuet, 1732—1788; Leipzig, 1748—86).
8 See Fragmentarische Beytrdge zur Bestimmung und Deduction des Begriffes von
Causalitdt und zur Grundlegung der natiirlichen Theologie in Beziehung auf
die Kantische Philosophic (Fragmentary Contributions to the Determination and
Deduction of the Concept of Causality, and to the Foundation of Natural
Theology, with Reference to Kantian Philosophy; Leipzig: Crusius, 1788).
9 Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob, Grundriss der allgemeinen Logik und kritische
Anfangsgrunde der allgemeinen Metaphysik (Outline of General Logic and
Critical Foundations of General Metaphysics; Halle, 1788).
ALLWILL
1 "Nature had been prodigal in her gifts to my father beyond measure, and
had sown the seeds of verbal criticism as deep within him, as she had
done the seeds of all other knowledge—so that he had got out his penknife,
and was trying experiments upon the sentence [of Erasmus] to see if
he could not scratch some better sense into it—I've got within a single letter,
brother Toby, cried my father, of Erasmus his mystic meaning."
2 J. F. Kleuker (1749-1827), Platan: Werke, translated from the Greek (Lemgo,
1778-97), 6 vols., Vol. in (1783), p. 194.
3 Jacobi cites in Latin. Italics are his. The passage is actually found at the
end of ch. 27, Book i: Tusculan Disputations; tr. J. E. King (London:
Heinemann, 1927).
4 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols.
(London, 1776—88), Vol. i, ch. 2, p. 31. The words in parentheses are
Jacobi's gloss, as are the stresses.
5 See Hesiod, Theogony, lines 123—25.
6 Qohelet or Ecclesiastes 10:5. The King James tr. reads: "There is an evil
which I have seen under the sun, as an error which proceedeth from
the ruler."
7 Jacobi cites in French. In the more recent critical editions, ch. XL becomes
ch. xiv. Cf. the Villey edition, p. 53.
8 "The noblest souls know this truth by intuition, while the vilest souls deny
it, but the intuitions of the godlike are more valid than those of other
men" (31 ic-d, tr. L. A. Post). The Latin text, which is given in German in
the 1812 edition, does not correspond to the Ficino translation in the
Bipontine edition.
9 See 33C ff-
10 Jacobi is nowhere quoting verbatim. See 27b-c; 3oa-b; 31 a; 66a-d.
11 The Comedy of Errors is an adaptation of Plautus's Menaechmae. The
menaechmi were twin brothers, authors of much mischief and confu-
sion. Cf. also Les Menechmes ou les jumeaux, by Jean-Francois Regnard
(1655—1709). An English edition of Plautus's play appeared in 1779:
Six Old Plays on which Shakespeare founded his Measure for Measure, Comedy of
Errors, Taming the Shrew, King John, King Henry i v and King Henry v, King
Lear, ed. J. Nichols, in 2 Volumes (London, 1779).
J A C O B I TO FICHTE
1 Uber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre (Weimar: Comptoire, 1794).

2 Sendschreiben an I. C. Lavater undj. G. Fichte ilber den Glauben an Gott.
3 See the note in Fichte-Gesamtausgabe, 111.3, P- 22 9 : F. Nicolai, Uber meine
gekhrte Bildung, uber meine Kenntnifl der kritischen Philosophie und meine
schriften dieselbe betreffend d . . . (Concerning My Academic Formation, Concerning

My Knowledge of Critical Philosophy and My Works Dealing with It, etc.; Berlin
& Stettin, 1799).
4 I.e. 1796. See Schlegel's review of Woldemar, already cited, and on pp.
241—56 of the same volume of Deutschland the review of Jacobi's
Incidental Outpourings of a Solitary Thinker, in Letters to Trusted Friends.
5 I.e. Schlegel's novel (ist Part, 1799).
6 Werke, in (1816).
7 See the Second Introduction into the Science of Knowledge, Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 1.4,
p. 257: "In the Science of Knowledge the relation is exactly the reverse.
There reason is the only thing which is in itself, and individuality only some-
thing accidental; reason is the goal, and personality the means."
8 Of the 1792 edition. In the 1816 edition of the L^terJacobi refers to p. 244
of the 1812 edition of Allwill.
9 Scholz, pp. 297-98.
10 Scholz, p. 298, footnote. This paragraph differs substantially from the text
of Against Mendelssohn.
11 Of the 1786 edition. Scholz, pp. 298-99, footnote.
12 Line 16; tr. C. Walker Keyes.
PREFACE TO THE DAVID HUME
1 J. F. Fries (1773-1843), Neue Kritik der Vernunft, 3 Vols. (Heidelberg: Mohr

& Zimmer, 1807), §54 (stresses added byjacobi). On p. 202 Fries goes
on to say that Jacobi finally put things right: "he showed the inadequacy
of a speculation merely intent on demonstration; he stripped Spinoza
of his logical form, and thus directed us straight back to Platonism, which,
in opposition to reflection, had then to be transformed into the phi-
losophy of intellectual intuition. . . . Kant made the same discovery at the
same time as Jacobi, but in a different way."
2 §54. Jacobi is only reproducing the sense of Fries's comment on Kant.
3 Jacobi is only paraphrasing Kant's text.
4 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Anthropologie in pragmatischer
Hinsicht, Konigsberg: Friedrich Nicolovius, 1798), §5; cf. Academy
Edition, Vol. VH, pp. 135-36.
5 Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann (1761-1819), Grundrift der Geschichte der
Philosophic (Leipzig: Earth, 1812).
6 See the Critique of Pure K, B xxx ff. Jacobi's citations are mostly paraphrases.
7 Jacobi is not citing any single Kantian text.
8 The reproach is found in Tennemann, Grundrifi der Geschichte, §380, p. 356.
9 Of the 1812 edition; cf. pp. 163-66 of the 1792 edition.
10 Prolegomena zu einer jeden kiinftigen Metaphysik, §13, Anm. 3.
11 Die Bestimmung des Menschen (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1800), cf. pp. 209-10:
"In short, there is for me absolutely no being as such which has no re-
Notes to Jacobi's Footnotes, pages 557—68 645
lation to myself [i.e. as assumed theoretically], and which I can intuit merely
for the sake of intuiting it; whatever exists for me exists only through
its relation to my own being. But there exists, in the highest sense, only
one relation to me possible, all others are but subordinate forms of my
vocation to moral activity." Gesamtausgabe, 1.6, p. 263.
12 See Gottlob Ernst Schulze, Encyklopddie derphilosophischen Wissenschafien, zum
Gebrauche fur seine Vorlesungen (ist ed., Helmstadt: Fleckeisen, 1814; 3rd,
much improved ed., Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1824). IR tne
first edition the passage referred to is in §40, Remark 2; in the third,
in §47, pp. 98-99.
13 Third edition, §58, pp. 125-26. Schulze (1761-1833) is discussing the
nature of materialism and determinism in general.
14 John 4:23—24.
15 Populdren Vorlesungen iiber die Sternkunde (Heidelberg: Mohr & Zimmer,
1813). The second edition (Heidelberg: Winter 1833) is reproduced
in J. F. Fries, Sdmtliche Schriften, ed. G. Koning and L. Geldsetzer, 20 Vols.
(Aachen: Scientia Verlag, 1969-); see Vol. xvi (1973), pp. igiff.,
2o8ff., 16.
16 Stewart is citing verbatim from David Hartley's Observations on Man, His Duty
and His Expectations, In Two Parts (London: Richardson, 1749), Vol. i,
p. 35. Stewart's Account was, first read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh
in 1802 and then published independently in 1803, in the edition cited
byjacobi. Jon Wilkin (1614—72) was the bishop of Chester. The reference
is to his An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language,
to which was appended "An Alphabetical Dictionary wherein all English
Words according to their various significations are either referred to
their places in the Philosophical Tables, or explained by such Words as are
in those Tables," 1668.
17 G. E. Schulze, Grundsdtze der allgemeinen Logik (ist ed., Helmstadt:
Fleckeneisen, 1802); see p. 6 of the revised fourth ed., 1822. A review
of this book appeared in the Gottingen Erudite Notices (Gottingsche gelehrte
Anzeigen), 111.142 (1802): 1409-21. See Jacobi's footnote to the David
Hume, No. 25, and the relevant explanatory notes.
18 The reference is to a review of J. Salat, Vernunft und Verstand (Reason and
Understanding), 2 Parts (Tubingen: Cotta, 1808), in Gottingischegelehrte
Anzeigen, 111.207 (1809): 2057-64. According to the reviewer, Salat was
zealously spreading the philosophy of Jacobi but added Fichtean ele-
ments to it (2059-60). The passage cited is on p. 2061. Jakob Salat
(1766-1851), professor in Landshut, defended Jacobi in the dispute
with Schelling.
19 i52d-e; tr. F. M. Cornford, adapted to fit Jacobi's text. See F.
Schleiermacher, trans. Platons Werke, 3 Parts in 6 vols. Berlin:
Realschulbuchhandlung & Reimer, 1804-28).
20 5 i8c. Jacobi's translation is rather free.
646 Notes tojacobi's Footnotes, pages 568—82
21 Pp. 212-22; second edition, 1816, Werke, in, pp. 450-60.

22 This is not an exact quote, but see B xxi.
23 5i8b-c. The passage is an adaptation of Plato's text rather than a citation.
24 Tradition, Mysticismus und Gesunde Logik, oder Uber die Geschichte der Philosophic,
3 Treatises, in Studien ed., C. Daub and F. Creuzer, vi (1811): 1-73,
331-446. Reproduced in Schriften, , Vol. xx (1969).
25 Pp. 193-208, first edition. See F. Bouterwek, ed., Neues Museum der
Philosophie und Litteratur, 3 Vols. (Vol. i, Leipzig: G. Martin, 1803): "Was
heifit Denken?" Vol. 1.1, pp. 41-80; "Vom Ideal-Objekt des vernunftigen
Verlangens," Vol. 1.3, pp. 1—53.
26 See above, p. 79 of Jacobi's text.
27 Theaetetus, 1796-1 Sob; tr. F. M. Cornford. The stresses are added byjacobi,
who cites Schleiermacher's translation: Platons Werke, Vol. 2.1,
pp. 260—61.
28 i8ob-c. Stresses added byjacobi.
29 Hamann, Kreuzzuge des Philologen (Crusades of a Philologist): Aesthetica in Nuce
(1762), Sdmtliche Werke, Vol. n, p. 206, lines 16—19. Jacobi's reference
is to the first edition of Crusades (1762, no place of publication or publisher
given).
30 Bouterwek, Idee einer Apodiktic. Ein Beytrag zur menschlichen Selbstverstdndigung
und zur Entscheidung des Streits uber Metaphysik, kritische Philosophie und
Skepticismus (Idea of an Apodeictic. A Contribution to Human Self-Understanding
and the Resolution of the Dispute over Metaphysics, Critical Philosophy and
Scepticism), 2 Vols. (Halle: Renger, 1799).
31 Tenneman, Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol. i, p. 164, note 24. The verses are
from Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, A.224.15—20; tr. R. G.
Bury. The sceptic in question is Timon of Phlius, an admirer of Pyrrho,
whose scepticism he popularized in many writings, both in prose and
in poetry. He wrote three books of satire in which he lampooned the teachers
of philosophy. The second and third were in the form of a dialogue
between Timon and Xenophanes "in which the latter expresses his contempt
for nearly all the rival schools of thought." See Sextus Empiricus, in Four
Volumes (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1955), Introduction by R. G. Bury,
Vol. i, p. xxxii. Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 520 B.C.) was the first
of the Eleatic school. "He was less a philosopher than a religious reformer
who declaimed against traditional mythology and preached a pantheism
which identified the One Universe with God." Ibid., p. viii.
32 Cf. Demonstration de I'existence deDieu, in Oeuvres de Fenelon, Vol. i. The quote
is nowhere to be found in Part n, ch. 2, though echoes of it can be
heard in §§29-30. The Demonstration is a work Fenelon never intended for
publication. Part i was published without the author's knowledge in
1712, and the complete work only in 1718, after Fenelon's death. Many
editions and translations immediately followed. However, as the editors
of the 1820 edition remark (pp. xvii-xxi), none of them was faithful to
Fenelon's manuscript. This is especially true of Part n (and notably
ch. 2), which was adulterated with glosses and omissions.
33 First edition. Cf. §108, p. 179 of the fourth ed.
34 Pp. 1409—21, a review of Schulze's Principles of General Logic.
35 §22, pp. 75—76: "The word 'feeling' has several meanings according to com-
mon usage. . . . Moreover one also speaks often of a 'feeling of truth,'
an 'aesthetic and moral feeling' . . . , and this feeling is then attributed to
the inner sense. But this too is a mistake [of the kind that Hutcheson,
Smith, and others have been guilty]. . . . The feelings last mentioned are
not 'sense' at all but faculty of judgment; they do not belong to sen-
sibility but to reflection. 'Feeling' stands to 'inference' as the immediate
generation of a judgment of mediated terms, and thus belongs with
these to reflection." In §85, pp. 342—42, Fries claims that the greatest mis-
take of the English opponents of Hume and their German followers
was to understand moral and aesthetic feelings as a kind of sense, whereas
they are to be related to "inference." "'Inference' entails the generation
of a judgment through the medium of another, in such a way that I become
reflectively aware of the act of this mediated representation. 'Feeling'
on the contrary generates its judgments immediately. Hence 'feeling' be-
longs to the same faculty to which 'judgment' and 'inference' also per-
tain, except that in its case the faculty in question performs its activity without
mediation."
36 See p. 89 of David Hume, the note to "Reimarus."
37 Theaetetus, I76c; Jacobi's stresses.
38 See Diderot, Oeuwes Completes, Vol. xvn, p. 143. Diderot was closely asso-
ciated with d'Alembert in the production of the Encyclopedic. In
D'Alembert's Dream (1769) he clearly gives expression to his monistic theory
of the universe, which was materialistic yet dynamic. He repudiates "will"
and "free will" as meaningless terms—the products of abstraction that, like
all abstractions, only obscure facts. The "nobleman" from northern
Germany referred to by Jacobi may well be a certain Ludwig Wehrklin, en-
thusiastic propagandist in Germany of Diderot's creed. See Roland
Mortier, Diderot en Allemagne (1750-1850) (Paris: Presses universitaires de
France, 1954), pp. 360-61.
Bibliography
J A C O B I S WORKS
/. Publications thatjacobi himself oversaw, in chronological order of publication
Preface for Traductions deDiverses Oeuvres, Composees en AUemand en Vers & en Prose,
par Mrjacobi, Chanoine d'Halberstat. Paris, 1771: iii-xvi.
[W. S. I.] "Betrachtung iiber die von Herrn Herder in seiner Abhandlung vom
Ursprung der Sprache vorgelegte Genetische Erklarung der Thierischen
Kunstfertigkeiten und Kunsttriebe." Der Teutsche Merkur, 1.1 (1773): 99-121.
[W. S. I.] "Briefe an einejunge Dame." Der Teutsche Merkur, n.i (1773): 59—75;
11.2: 113-19; 11.3: 235-47.
[W. S. I.] "Briefe iiber die Recherches Philosophiques sur les Egyptiens et les
Chinois, par Msr. de p***." Der Teutsche Merkur, iv.2 (1773): 175-92; v-3
(1774): 259-86; V I . l (1774): 57-75; V I I . 2 ( 1 7 7 4 ) : 228-51.
"Eduard Allwills Papiere." Iris, iv.3 (1775): 193-236.
"Eduard Allwills Papiere." Der Teutsche Merkur, xiv.2 (1776): 14—75; xv -3
(i77 6 ) : 57-71: XVI : 4 (1776): 229-62.
"Briefe des Konigs von PreuBen an D'Alembert." Der Teutsche Merkur, xvm
(!777): !54-65-
"Freundschaft und Liebe. Eine wahre Geschichte, von dem Herausgeber von
Eduard Allwills Papieren." Der Teutsche Merkur, xvm (1777): 97—117; xix
(1777): 32-49, 229-59; xx (i777) : 246-67.
Woldemar. Eine Seltenheit aus der Naturgeschichte. Vol. i. Flensburg and Leipzig,
!779-
"Ein Stuck Philosophic des Lebens und der Menschheit: Aus dem zweiten Bande
von Woldemar." Deutsches Museum, i (1779): 307-48; 393-427.
"Eine politische Rhapsodic. Aus einem Aktenstock entwendet. Ein eingesandtes
Stuck." Baierische Beytrdge zur schonen und nutzlichen Literatur, 1.5 (1779):
407-18.
650 Bibliography
"Noch eine politische Rhapsodic, worinn sich verschiedene Plagia befinden;

betitelt: Es 1st nicht recht, und es 1st nicht klug." Baierische Beytrdge zur schonen
und nutzlichen Literatur, 1.5 (1779): 418-58.
Vermischte Schriften. Enter Theil Includes Der Kunstgarten, which is a revision of
"Ein Stuck Philosophic des Lebens und der Menschheit" (1779). Breslau:
J. F. Korn, 1781.
"Ueber Recht und Gewalt, oder philosophische Erwagung eines Aufsazes von
dem Herrn Hofrath Wieland, iiber das gottliche Recht der Obrigkeit, im deut-
schen Merkur, November 1777." Deutsches Museum i (1781): 522—54.
Etwas das Lefling gesagt hat. Ein Commentar zu den Reisen der Pdpste nebst
Betrachtungen von einem Dritten. Berlin: George Jacob Decker, 1782.
"Gedanken Verschiedener bey Gelegenheit einer merkwurdigen Schrift."
Deutsches Museum, 1.1 (1783): 3—9.
"Erinnerungen gegen die in den Januar des Museums eingeruckten Gedanken
uber eine merkwurdige Schrift." Deutsches Museum, 1.2 (1783): 97-105.
"Ueber und bei Gelegenheit des kiirzlich erschienenen Werkes, Des lettres de
Cachet et prisons d'etat." Deutsches Museum, 1.4 (1783): 361—94; 1.5: 435—76.
Zilima u. Kursa; e. Skizze nach Raphael. Berlin, 1783.
Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn. Breslau: Gottl.
Lowe, 1785.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen betreffend die Briefe iiber
die Lehre des Spinoza. Leipzig: Georg Joachim Goeschen, 1786.
David Hume uber den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus. Ein Gesprdch. Breslau:
Gottl. Lowe, 1787.
Translation of Hemsterhuis, F. Alexis oder Von dem goldenen Weltalter. Riga, 1787.
"Die beste von den Haderkiinsten. Eine Erzahlung." Deutsches Museum, 1.1
(1787): 49-51-
"Einige Betrachtungen uber den frommen Betrug und iiber eine Vernunft,
welche nicht die Vernunft ist, von Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in einem Briefe
an den Herrn geheimen Hofrath Schlosser." Deutsches Museum, 1.2 (1788):
153-84.
"Eine kleine Unachtsamkeit der Berliner Monatsschrift, in dem Aufsatze: 'Ueber
die Anonymitat der Schriftsteller.' Febr. 1788. S. 137-47." Deutsches Museum,
1.4 (1788): 293-98.
Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn. Neue vermehrte
Ausgabe. Breslau: Gottl. Lowe, 1789.
"Swifts Meditation iiber einen Besenstiel, und wie sie entstanden ist." Neues
Deutsches Museum, 1.4 (1789): 405-17.
An edition of Die Geschichte Jesu nach dem Matthdus, als Selbstbeweis ihrer
Zuverldssigkeit betrachtet; nebst einem Vorbereitungsaufsatze uber das Verhdltnis der
israelitischen Geschichte zur christlichen; ein nachgelassenes Werk von J. F. Kleuker.
Leipzig, 1789.
Eduard Allwills Briefsammlung, herausgegeben von Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, mil einer
Zugabe von eigenen Briefen. Vol. i. Konigsberg: Nicolovius, 1792.
Bibliography 651
Woldemar, 2 Theik. Konigsberg: Nicolovius, 1794.

"Zufallige ErgieBungen eines einsamen Denkers in Briefen an vertraute
Freunde." Die Harm, monthly journal edited by F. Schiller, in.8 (1795):
!-34-
Woldemar, 2 Theile, Neue verbesserte Ausgabe. Konigsberg: Nicolovius, 1796.
Introduction for Jacobi, Georg Arnold. Briefe aus der Schweiz und Italien.
Vols. i-n. Liibeck and Leipzig, 1796-97. Vol. i: v-vi.
Jacobi an Fichte. Hamburg: Perthes, 1799.
"Wird iiberschlagen!" Introduction for Ueberflujtiges Taschenbuch fur das Jahr
1800, edited byjohann Georg Jacobi. Hamburg, 1800: 1—37.
"Ueber das Unternehmen des Kriticismus, die Vernunft zu Verstande zu
bringen, und der Philosophic iiberhaupt eine neue Absicht zu geben." Beytrdge
zur leichtern Uebersicht des Zustandes der Philosophic beym Anfange des 19.
Jahrhunderts, edited by C. L. Reinhold. Vols. i-vi. Hamburg, 1801-03. in
(1802): 1-110.
"Ueber eine Weissagung Lichtenbergs." Taschenbuch fur das Jahr 1802, edited by
Johann Georg Jacobi. Hamburg: Perthes, 1802. 3—46.
"Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, uber drei von ihm bei Gelegenheit des
Stolbergischen Ubertritts zur Romisch-Katholischen Kirche geschriebenen
Briefe, und die unverantwortliche Gemeinmachung derselben in den Neuen
Theologischen Annalen." Der Neue Teutsche Merkur, in (1802): 161—71.
Was gebieten Ehre, Sittlichkeit und Recht in Absicht vertraulicher Briefe von Verstorbenen
und noch Lebenden ? Eine Gekgenheitsschrift. Leipzig: Goschen, 1806.
Ueber gelehrte Gesellschaften, ihren Geist und Zweck. Eine Abhandlung, vorgelesen bey der
feyerlichen Erneuung der Koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Munchen von
dem Prdsidenten der Akademie. Munchen: E. A. Fleischmann, 1807.
Von den Gottlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung. Leipzig: G. Fleischer, 1811.
"Fliegende Blatter." Minerva. Taschenbuch fur das Jahr 1817. Leipzig, 1817.
259-3°°-
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's Werke, edited by J. F. Koppen and C. J. F. Roth.
Vols. i-vi. Leipzig: Gerhard Fleischer, 1812-25. Reproduced, Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968.
//. Later editions of Jacobi's works, in chronological order
"Blatter aus F. H. Jacobi's Nachlafi." Minerva. Taschenbuch fur das Jahr 1820.
Leipzig, 1820. 343—68.
"Letzte Blatter aus F. H. Jacobi's NachlaB." Minerva. Taschenbuch fur das Jahr
1821. Leipzig, 1821. 1-18.
F. H. Jacobi v. d. gottl. Dingen u. ihrer Offenbarung. 2nd edition. Leipzig: Fleischer,
1822.
EduardAllwillsBriefsammlung, mite. Zugabev. eigenen Briefen. 2nd edition. Leipzig:
Fleischer, 1826.
Woldemar. 3rd edition. Leipzig: Fleischer, 1826.
652 Bibliography
Geist aus den philosophischen Werken F. H. Jacobi's. Meyer's Groschen-Bibliothek der

Deutschen Classikerfur alle Stdnde. Vol. 129. Hildburghausen and New York, n. d.
[c. 1844].
F. H. Jacobi's ausgewdhlte Werke. Vols. i—in. Leipzig: Fleischer, 1854.
Aus dem Leben undfiir das Leben. Weisheitsspruche von Fr. H. Jacobi, edited by Julius
Hamberger. Gotha: Perthes, 1869.
"Acta die von Ihro Churfurstln. Durchlaucht zu Pfaltz etc. etc. Hochstdero
HofCammerrathen Jacobi gnadigst aufgetragenen Commission, das
Commerzium der beyden Herzogthumer Giilich und Berg zu untersuchen,
betreffend," edited by W. Gebhard. Zeitschrift des Bergischen Geschichtsvereins,
xvn (1882): 1-148.
Jacobis Spinoza-Buchlein, nebst Replik und Duplik, edited by Fritz Mauthner.
Munchen: Georg Miiller, 1912.
Sulla Dottrina dello Spinoza. Lettere al Signor Mose Mendelssohn, translated into
Italian by Francesco Capra. Bari: Laterza & Figli, 1914.
Die Hauptschriften zum Pantheismusstreit zwischenJacobi und Mendelssohn, edited with
an introduction by Heinrich Scholz. Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1916.
Die Schriften Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's, selected with an introduction by Leo
Matthias. Berlin, 1926.
Oeuvres philosophiques de F.-H. Jacobi, translated into French with an introduction
and notes byJ.-J. Anstett. Paris, 1946.
Davide Hume e lafede o idealismo e realismo, translated into Italian with an introduc-
tion and notes by Norberto Bobbio. Torino: Francesco de Silva, 1948.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis "Allwill, " critical edition with introduction and notes by
J. U. Terpstra. Groningen: Djakarta, 1957.
Eduard Allwills Papiere, facsimile print of 1776 version in Der Teutsche Merkur, with
an afterword by Heinz Nicolai. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1962.
Fliegende Blatter und Sentenzen aus seinen Werken und Briefen, excerpted with an
afterword by Ruth Gumpert. Heidelberg: Sauer, 1965.
Streit urn, die gottlichen Dinge. Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Jacobi und Schelling. It
includes: "Von den Gottlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung," and "Ueber
eine Weissagung Lichtenbergs," edited with an introduction by Wilhelm
Weischedel. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967: 91-356.
"Brief uber Spinoza." Philosophisches Lesebuch 2, edited with an introduction and
comments by Hans-Georg Gadamer. Frankfurt/Main and Hamburg, 1967.
268-84.
Facsimile reproduction of Werke, edited by Roth and Koppen (1812-25).
Vols. i-vi. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968 (reprinted,
1976, 1980).
Facsimile reproduction of Woldemar (1778), edited with an afterword by Heinz
Nicolai. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1969.
Nihilismus. Die Anfdnge von Jacobi bis Nietzsche. It includes "An Fichte," and "Uber
eine Weissagung Lichtenbergs," edited with an introduction by Dieter Arendt.
Koln: Hegner, 1970. 107-33; 166-89.
Bibliography 653
Freundschaft und Liebe. Eine wahre Geschichte. Von d. Hrsg. von Eduard Allwills
Papieren, edited with an afterword by Giinter Schulz. Bremen: Jacobi-Verlag,
1970.
"Eduard Allwills Papiere." Sturm und Drang. Dichtungen und theoretische Texte,
edited by Heinz Nicolai. Vols. i-n. Miinchen, 1971. Vol. i: 502-67.
Le Realisme de F. H. Jacobi: dialogue sur I'idealisme et le realisme, translated into
French with introduction and notes by Louis Guillermit. Aix-en-Provence:
Universite de Provence; Marseille: J. Laffitte, 1982.
Facsimile reproduction of David Hume uber den Glauben, oder Idealismus
und Realismus (1787) and the Vorredeto the 1815 edition, with a new English
introduction by Hamilton Beck (vii-xix). New York and London: Garland,
i983-
The Spinoza Conversations between Lessing and Jacobi: Text with Excerpts from the
Ensuing Controversy, translated by G. Vallee, J.B. Lawson, and C.G. Chappie;
with an introduction by Gerard Vallee. Lanham, New York: University Press of
America, 1988.
///. Editions ofjacobi's letters
Valerio Verra has assembled a catalogue of letters in his Dairilluminismo

all'idealismo (see below, under Secondary Works), pp. 3i7ff.
Aus F. H. Jacobi's Nachlafl. Ungedruckte Briefe von und an Jacobi und andere. Nebst
ungedruckten Gedichten von Goethe und Lenz, edited by Rudolph Zoeppritz.
Vols. i—ii. Leipzig: Engelmann, 1869.
Briefe von Wilhelm von Humbold an Fr. H. Jacobi, edited by Albert Leitzmann. Halle:
Niemeyer, 1892.
Briefwechsel mit F. H. Jacobi, edited by Friedrich Roth. Vol. iv/3 ofjacobi's Werke,
edited by Roth and Koppen.
Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Fr. H. Jacobi, edited by Max Jacobi. Leipzig:
Weidmann, 1846.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's auserUsener Briefwechsel, edited by Friedrich Roth.
Vols. i-n. Leipzig: Fleischer, 1825-27. (Auserlesener Briefwechsel)
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Briefwechsel, edited by Michael Briiggen and Siegfried
Sudhof. Stuttgart-Bad Constatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1981- (Volumes pub-
lished to date: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, n.i). (Briefwechsel)
Fried. Heinr. Jacobi's Briefe an Friedr. Bouterwek aus demjahren 1800 bis iSicj, edited
by W. Meyer. Gottingen: Deuer, 1868. (Bouterwek Briefwechsel)
Hamann, Johann Georg. Briefwechsel, edited by Arthur Henkel. Vols. i-vn.
Wiesbaden & Frankfurt am Main: Insel-Verlag, 1955-79. (Hamann-
Briefwechsel)
Jens Baggesens Briefwechsel mit Karl Leonhard Reinhold und Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi,
edited by Karl and August Baggesen. Vols. i-n. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1831.
Mendelssohn-Briefwechsel, edited by Alexander Altmann. Gesammelte Schriften,
654 Bibliography
Jubildumsausgabe. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1929. Reprint: Stuttgart-Bad

Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1971.
Schettings Lehre oder das Ganze der Philosophic des absoluten Nichts, Nebst drey Briefen
verwandten Inhalts von Friedr. Heinr. Jacobi, edited by Koppen. Hamburg:
Perthes, 1803.
JACOBI'S REFERENCES
Editions of texts either directly or indirectly cited by Jacobi, or immediately

relating to Jacobi's discussions:
Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. Jena & Leipzig, 1785-1803.

Asmus. (Pen-name of Matthias Claudius, 1740—1815). Asmus omnia secum par-
tans, oder sdmtliche Werke des Wandsbecker Bothen, edited by Urban Roedl.
Stuttgart: Gotta, 1966. Includes "Reviewof Wieland's SokratesPossessed" (p. 51).
Bacon, Francis. Advancement of Learning. The Works of Francis Bacon, edited by
J. Spedding. Vol. in. London, 1870.
- De augmentis scientiarum. 1623.
Bayle, Pierre. Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, 4th edition, corrected and
augmented, with a life of the authour, by M. des Maizeaux. Vol. iv (Q—z).
Amsterdam, 1730.
Berkeley, George. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. 1710.
- Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. 1713. Reprint edition of this edi-
tion, including facsimile of title page, Chicago: Open Court, 1906.
- Three Dialogues, anonymous translation into French. Amsterdam, 1750.
- Works. Selections from Berkeley with an introduction and notes for the use of
students in the university by Alexander Campbell Fraser. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1871. Fourth edition, 1891.
Bilfinger, Georg Bernhard. Delucidationes Philosophicae de Deo, Anima Humana,
Mundo et Generalibus Rerum Affectionibus. Tubingen: Cotta, 1768.
Bonnet, Charles. Essai analytique sur les facultes de I'ame. Copenhagen: Philibert,
1760.
- Contemplation de la nature. Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1764.
- La Palingenesie philosophique, ou I dees sur I'etat passe et sur I'etat futur des etres vi-
vants. Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1769.
- [Bonnet's] Analytischer Versuch uber die Seelenkraft, translated into German with
some additions by C. G. Schiitz. Bremen: Cramer, 1770-71.
Bouterwek, F. Idee einer Apodiktic. Ein Beytragzur menschlichen Selbverstdndigung und
zur Entscheidung des Streits uber Metaphysik, kritische Philosophie und Skepticismus.
Vols. i—ii. Halle: Renger, 1799.
- Anfangsgriinde der speculativen Philosophie. Versuch eines Lehrbuchs. Gottingen:
Johann Christian Dieterich, 1800.
- Editor. Neues Museum der Philosophie und Literatur. Includes Bouterwek's essays
Bibliography 655
"Was HeiBt Denken?" 1.1 (1803): 41-80; "Vom Ideal-Objekt des Vernimftigen
Verlangens," 1.3 (1803): 1-53.
- Immanuel Kant. Ein Denkmal. Hamburg: B. G. Hoffmann, 1805.
- Lehrbuch derphilosophischen Wissenschaften. Gottingen: Rower, 1813. Second re-
vised edition, 1820.
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de. Histoire naturelle, generate et particuliere,
avec la description du cabinet du roy. Vols. I-XLIV. Paris: The Royal Press,
1*749—1803. Vol. ii includes Histoire generate des animaux. Histoire naturelle de
I'homme, 1749.
Claudius, Matthias. SeeAsmus.
Conring, Hermann. De origine juris Germanici. 1643.
Cramer, J. A./. B. Bossuet, Einleitung in die allgemeine Weltgeschichte bis aufCarl den
Grofien, translated from the French and augmented by Johann Andreas
Cramer. Vols. i—vn. Leipzig, 1748—86.
Curley, Edwin. Editor and translator. The Collected Works of Spinoza. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.
Descartes, Rene. Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings, translated by John
Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch; with an Introduction by
John Cottingham. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Includes "Rules for the Direction of Our Native Intelligence."
Diderot, Denis. Lettre sur les aveugles. London, 1749.
- Oeuvres completes. Annotated critical edition, published under the direction of
Herbert Dieckmann, Jean Farbre, and Jacques Proust, with the advice of Jean
Varloot. Vols. i-xxv. Paris: Hermann, 1975-86. Vol. xvn includes Le Reve
d'Alembert.
Empiricus, Sextus. Sextus Empiricus: Works, translated from the Latin by R. G.
Bury. Vols. i—iv. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard, 1939—53- Vol. i: Outlines of
Pyrrhonism.
Estienne, Henri. Editor. [Plato, Works in Latin and Greek] PLATONOS HAP ANT A
TA SOZOMENA: Platonis opera quae extant omnia etc. [Geneva]: Henr.
Stephanus, 1578.
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Index of Names
Aeschylus, 594 Caesar, J., 622

Albani (or Albano), F., 620 Camper, A. G., 600
Alembert, J. d', 26, 589, 647 Cassius, 623
Altmann, A., 592, 593, 603 Catullus, 240
Anaxagoras, 562 Cicero, 484, 486, 526
Antoninus, 346 Claudius, M. ("Asmus"), 7, 8,41, 45, 59, 82,
Archimedes, 173, 591 157. 33°. 6°7. 615-16
Ariosto, L., 617 Claudius, P., 260, 622
Aristotle, 35, 139, 149, 159, 259, 288, 360, Clement, J. A. von, 623
53*. 541. 545' 568> 6o6 Clermont (family), 10
Arnauld, A., 46, 613 Clermont, Elisabeth ("Betty") von, 6, 52,
Asmus: see Claudius, M. 599. 6 23
Augustine, 44 Condillac, E. B. de, 26, 27, 560, 568, 629
Avila, St Theresa of, 44 Conring, H., 262
Copernicus, 559
Basedow, J. B., 52 Cromwell, 487
Bayle, P., 27, 74, 201, 312, 352, 593, 594, Cross, St John of the, 44
599 Crusius, C. A., 44
Beattie.J., 608
Beiser, F., 85 Daries, J. C., 284, 611
Berkeley, G., 160, 553, 570 Darwin, C. R., 629
"Betty": see Clermont, Elisabeth von Darwin, E., 560, 629
Biester, J. E., 607 David, 516
Bilfinger, G. B., 268, 636 David, Frida, 148
Bonnet, C., 5, 26, 27, 39, 40, 45, 197, Democritus, 360
2
74-75. 56°. 568' 597.6°9 Descartes, R., 22, 26, 174, 200, 267, 282,
Bouterwek, F., 10, 11, 29, 35, 161, 583, 285, 367, 368, 542, 553, 580, 612, 618
629, 638 Diderot, D., 6, 45, 47, 197, 257, 329, 589,
Bruno, G., 359-60, 619 597, 638, 647
Brutus, M., 622 Diogenes of Sinope, 616
Buddeus, J. F., 44 Dobbek, W., 598
Buffon, G., 268, 534 Dohm, C. W., 6
Bulis, 238 Durand, F/J., 279, 610
Burke, E., 21, 36, 45, 624
Butler, J., 33, 638 Eberhard, J. A., 56
676 Index of Names
Empedocles, 567 179, 197, 198, 202-04, 215, 228,

Epaminondas of Thebes, 516, 560, 637 274-75. 291, 295, 360-61, 597, 598,
Epicharmus, 567, 605 600, 610, 618, 636
Epictetus, 239, 346 Heraclitus, 567
Epicurus, 313, 549 Herder, J. G., 6, 8, 23, 40, 41, 45, 48, 66,
81, 82, 84, 86, 100, 145, 245, 248,
Fahlmer, Johanna, 619 325. 363-67. 595. 597. 598. 601, 605,
Fenelon, F., 45, 46, 497, 581, 627, 646-47 607, 618
Ferguson, A., 33, 35, 45, 516, 638 Hobbes, T., 12, 16, 313
FichteJ. G., 9, 10, 32-34, 94, 103, 106-16, Holderlin, F., 73
124, 127, 158, 161, 165, 361, Homer, 561, 567
499-5°°. 5°3-°4> 5°6ff., 512-i3. 5!9> Hontheim.J. N. von ("Justinus Febronius"),
531, 554, 615, 618, 624-27 passim, i?
631 Humboldt, W. von, 6, 132
Ficino, M., 450 Hume, D., 23, 27, 28, 33, 45, goff., 93, 104,
Flatt.J. F., 372 258ff., 267-74, 278, 2giff., 297, 331,
Fontenelle, B., 285 570, 601, 612
Forster, G., 6 Hutcheson, F., 33, 647
Frederick the Great, 13, 24, 26 Huyghens, C., 513, 625
Frederick William i, 13, 44
Fries, J. F., 10, 29, 543, 546, 560, 571, 644, Jacobi, G., 5, 7, 36
647 Jacobi, Helene, 59
Furstenberg, F. F. von, 6, 24, 41, 47ff., 202, Jean II, King of France, 523, 627
610 "Jean-Paul": see Richter
Jenisch, D., 31
Galilei, G., 610 Jerusalem, J. F., 249, 6o4ff.
Gallitzin, Amalie von, 6, 24, 41, 47ff., 61, Jomelli, N., 621
6sff., 105, 202ff., 360, 596, 597 "Justinus Febronius": see Hontheim
Garat, D.-J., 379, 619
Garve, C., 638 Kames, Lord H. H., 33
Gassendi, P., 559 Kant, I., 9, 10, 14, 23, 31-33 passim, 45, 66,
Gedike, F., 607 87, 88, 93, 95, 100-03, 107. 153~&1
Gleim, W. L., 59, 197, 199, 598, 636 passim, 165, 218, 256, 284ff., 297, 299,
Goethe, W., 4, 6, 8, 11, 23, 37, 38, 40, 42, 310, 331, 363, 367, 385, 496, 499,
49, 5iff., 59, 60, 67, 68ff., 73, 82, 86, 513, 528, 529, 531, 535, 538, 543-56
88, 113, 118, 120, 132-36 passim, 144, passim, 568ff., 597, 611, 612, 624, 630,
M5- 177. S86, 497. 591. 594. 605, 639, 642, 644
607, 619, 626, 635 Kepler, J., 559
Goeze,J. M., 57, 83, 593 Kierkegaard, S., 40, 60
Gravesande, W. J. van S', 280 Kleuker, J. F., 450, 643
Grotius, H., 44 Klopstock, F.J., 59, 531
Gundling.J. P., 262, 639 Koppen, F., 10, 153, 165
Kraus, C. J., 103, 331, 616
Hamann, G., 6, 8, 24, 50, 51, 6off., 82,
85-89, 95, 98-105 passim, 115-16, Laharpe, J.-F., 19, 20, 21
143, 298, 331, 360, 363, 580, 583, Lalande, A., 560
593—96 passim, 601—08 passim, 608, Laplace, P. C., 559, 561
616 La Roche, Sophie, 6, 26, 36, 52
Hartley, D., 560, 629 La Rochefoucauld, F., 604
Hegel, G. W. F., 20, 34, 152-54, 165-67 Lavater, J. K., 6, 20, 40, 41, 45, 49, 51, 52,
Heinse,J.J. W., 6 67, 82, 86, 88, 89, 99, 100, 250, 439,
Helmont, F. M. von, 195, 233-34 596, 597, 604, 605, 607, 613-14, 615,
Helvetius, C.-A., 239, 601, 604 638
Hemsterhuis, F., 6, 16, 41, 45, 47ff., 61, Leibniz, G. W., 13, 22, 27, 56, 71, 77ff., 83,
Index of Names 677
96, 160, igoff., 201, 229-30, 277, Pergolese (or Pergolesi), G. B., 621
282, 295, aggff., 335, 352,353, 365, 367, Pestalozzi, J. H., 614-15
368, 371, 545, 548-49, 561, 568, 598, Petronius, 240
613, 635; as mentioned injacobi's expo- Pfenniger, J. C., 638-39
sition of his philosophy, 307-17, 320 Phidias, 561
Lesage, G.-L., 5, 45, 279ff., 610 Pindar, 531
Lessing, G. E., 8, 17, 51, 548., 68ff., 81, 83, Pistorius, H. A., 640
181-203, 260, 350-56 passim, 363, Plato, 131, 159, 180, 214, 360, 386, 445,
365, 371, 587, 592, 594, 595, 599, 603, 484, 490, 492ff., 531, 537, 548-9,
605, 635 560, 566ff., 568ff., 570, 576, 588, 590
Lichtenberg, G. C., 153 Plautus, 496
Locke, J., 23, 28, 45, 299, 487, 549, 568, Plutarch, 483, 623
624, 629 Protagoras, 567
Lucchesini, G., 199, 598 Pyrrho, 646
Luria, I., 594
Luther, M, 49, 638 Quapp, E., 598
Maimon, S., 103 Rawen, Heide, 613

Majo, G. F. di, 621 Rehberg, A. W., 85, 90, 362
Malebranche, N., 160, 285, 553 Reid, T., 28-30 passim, 45, 266, 608, 641
Maratta (or Maratti), C., 622 Reimarus (family), 59
Marc Antony, 623 Reimarus, Elise, 10, 57, 591, 593, 599, 603
Martial, 240 Reimarus, H. S., 57, 591, 603
Mayer, L., 200 Reimarus, J. A. J., 17-18, 286-87, 640
Meier, G. F., 284, 611 Reinhold, C. (or K.) L., 10, 31, 32, 86, 94,
Mendelssohn, M., 8, 17, 30, 31, 50—51, 56, 103, 297, 499-500, 503, 625
62, 66, 72ff., 80, 82, 86-89, 1O4> 1 79> Richter,J.-P., 41
181-83, 201-03, 215-16, 230, 232-35, Roth, F., 153
256, 265, 266, 278, 289, 291, 335, Rousseau, J.-J., 5, 33ff., 45, 614
350, 366, 369, 592, 593, 597, 599-608 Rudiger, A., 44
passim, 610, 611, 635, 639
Mettrie, J. la, 26-27 Salat, J., 10, 645
Milton, J., 486 Saunderson, N., 243, 638
Mirabeau, G.-H., 19, 21 Schelling, F. W. J., 11, 94, 107, 113, 153,
Montaigne, M. de, 27 157, 161, 630-33 passim
More, H., 195 Schiller, F., 630
Moser, J., 60, 84 Schlegel, K. W. F., 49, 148, 163, 625, 627,
Moses, 233 644
Muller, J. von, 15 Schleiermacher, F., 567, 588
Schlo6er,J. G., 380, 619
Napoleon, 3 Schulze, G., 29, 297, 557, 562, 583, 641
Newton, I., 513, 542, 548, 559, 561, 610, Schiitz, C. G., 268
625, 629 Scudery, Madeleine de, 352, 617
Nicolai, F., 30, 504, 609 Seneca, 259
Sextus Empiricus, 259, 606
Oetinger, F. C., 44 Shaftesbury, F., 638
Ossian, 27, 531 Shakespeare, W., 27, 496
Oswald, J., 608 Smith, A., 33, 647
Otho, M. S., 516, 526 Socrates, 149,447ff., 484, 493, 500, 503,
Otway, T., 257 560, 566ff., 569, 576, 588, 590
Ovid, 240 Sophocles, 531, 561
Sperchis, 238
Parmenides, 566 Spinoza, B., 8, 12, 14, 22, 53, 60, 68, 73,
Pascal, B., 27, 45, 46, 204, 237, 254, 537 101, 104-05, 113, 114, 116, 119, 143,
678 Index of Names
145, 159, 160, 161, 232, 233, 282, 289, Voltaire (F.-M. Arouet), 13, 24ff., 27, 39,
292, 297, 299, 325, 350-59 passim, 82
365—71 passim, 385, 502, 52off., 538,
557, 586ff., 593, 599-602 passim, 607, Wachter, J. G., 234, 602
617, 635, 644; as mentioned injacobi's Walker,]., 591, 594
exposition of his philosophy, 74-98 Wehrklin, L., 647
passim, iSyff., iggff., 204—15 passim, Wieland, C. M., 6, 13—16 passim, 36ff., 45,
216—30 passsim 52, 616
Starck, J. A., 607 Wilkin, J. J., 560, 645
Stolberg, F. L., 6, 41, 49, i4gff., 607-08 Witt,J. de, 516, 626
Stolberg, Sophie, i48ff. Wizenmann, T., 30, 41, 45, 75, 103, 594,
Sulzer, J. G., 568, 612, 630 605, 609, 614, 618
Wolff, C., 13, 22, 23, 44, 74, 191, 284, 356,
Tabor, J. O., 262, 634 543, 611, 617
Tennemann, W. G., 549, 581
Thomasius, C., 44, 639 Xenophanes, 581, 646
Timon of Phlius, 646 Xenophon, D., 624
Vallee, G., 595 Zachary, pope, 542

Vestris (family), 291 Zinzendorf, N. L. von, 44
Index of Subjects
absolutism, 9, 12, 16, 49 sim; as one with soul in Spinoza and

abstraction (ism), 19, 25, 49ff., 83, 105, Leibniz, 368-69
112, 128, 137, 347, 370, 383, 509, "broad ugly ditch," 58, 83ff.
57iff., 577, 610, 647
act(ion, also "deed"), 98, 105, 109, 126, Cabbala, 65, 195, 233, 513, 597, 602
213, 2giff., 294ff., 336, 343, 377, 531, causality, 188, 200, 206-14, 29iff., 336,
535. 557. 579. 589. 598: possibility or 35off., 571; causa sui, 98, 360; cause-
condition of, 77; primacy over theory, effect relation, 93, 289; consciousness of,
114, 239ff.; pure act (Tat-Tat; deed = 377; final causality, 192; and
deed), 116, 507; self-activity, 383; self- Giordano Bruno, 359-60; mechanistic,
contemplating, 511; self-directed activ- 366ff.; reduced to logical relation,
ity, 510 37 iff.
anthropomorphism, 495 Christianity, 43, 51, 58, I49ff., 604;
anti-rationalism (-ist), 33, 40, 61 Jacobi's, 86; rational, 55
art, 37, 120, 294ff., 564, 585; Schelling's circle: of becoming, 575ff.; magic, no
theory of, 632—33 common sense, 28, 30, 31, 105, 612
atheism, 38, 88, 233, 361, 500, 524 conscience, 12, 565; see also "Spirit certain
atheism dispute (Atheismusstreit), 10, no, of itself
116 conscious (ness), 6gff., 93, 98, 105, io6ff.,
attribute: see Property (Eigenschaft) 277. 294, 530, 531, 562, 564, 573,
Aufklarer (the Berliners), 20, 30, 37, 62, 584, 588; of causality, 377; facts of, 634;
88ff., 127, 150, 606, 607 form of life, 96, 305, 318, 321; of free-
Aujkldrung: see Enlightenment dom, 347, 536, 572; genesis of, 94ff.;
authorship, Jacobi's literary, n8ff., 128 and personality, 363ff., 536; and
autonomy, i n , 135, 141; as autonomous Providence, 583; self-, 383, 573, 589; in
activity, 344ff. Spinoza, 224ff., 364ff.; transcenden-
tal, 337
becoming, 2i7ff., 37off., 377, 567ff., critique: Jacobi's criticism of Kantian
57 iff-, 575 Critique, 100-03, 1 54~^i; Kantian, 9,
belief, 49, 55, 361, 606, 608; see also Faith 555-56; of language, 496; of reason,
believer, 31, 614 546ff.
Berliner(s): see Au/kldrer crucifixion of Woldemar: see Ettersburg Park
Bildungsroman, 120, 132 "crypto-Catholicism," 20, 40, 89, 607-09
body, 26, 122, 148, isgff., 224ff., 229-30, culture, 33, 136, 149
231, 279, 295, 300-01, 566, 612, 629;
as glorified, 439; in Leibnitz, 304-16 pas- deed: see Act(ion)
68o Index of Subjects
despotism, 14, 16, 18, 21 fatalism, 31, iSgff., 2i2ff., 234, 587
determination: of experience, 155^; lack fate, 558ff., 570
of, 57iff.; self-, 377; in Spinoza, 2i8ff. feeling(s), 30, 32, 33, 42, 65, 91, 105, log,
discern (ment): see Taking hold of 123ff., 127, 138, 140, 146, 207, 211,
(Vernehmen) 214, 542, 560, 570, 585, 588; of being
Doctrine of Knowledge: see free, 112; feeding upon itself, 125; ac-
Wissenschaftslehre cording to Fries, 647; of one's own
dream (ing), 3O4ff. power, 2g2; pure, the beginning of
philosophy, 563ff., 584; rational, 572; as
education, 33, 120; of mankind, 71 reason, 4&g ff.; of spirit, 563; of truth,
either-or, 569 305; vs manners, I36ff.
empiricism, 24, 30, 33ff., 37, 164 finite(-tude), 113, 2i7ff., 35off., 377, 493
energy (-ies), 12, 16,33, 139> 208, 383, 5*3 formalism, 23
Enlightenment, 5, 12, 13, 37, 42, 48ff., 60, "free," the, ssSff.
61, 66, 84, 151, 164, 603, 609; freedom, 53, 105, 114, 140, 159, 21 iff.,
German, 4, 55, 59; inconsistencies of, 22, 341, 344-49. 353. 529ff-, 536- 549ff->
27, 30, 41; sentimentalism of, 7 556ff., 56iff., 563ff., 57 2ff., 582, 586,
enthusiasm, logical, 109-10, 504, 511, 549 589; creative, 556ff.; false, 14; and
enthusiast(s), 505; see also Schwdrmer Fichte, 108-13; and necessity, i63ff.;
Ettersburg Park, 53, 132 source of individuality, 77; as sponta-
evidence, 31, 64, goff., 104, 108, 264, 609 neity, 77; vs nature, 14
existence, 255, 34iff., 348, 493, 571, 577, French Revolution, 4, 6, 18, 20, 21, 25, 36,
598; and explanation, 78, 85-86; and 37. 487. 591
individuation, gaff., 143; in Kant, 285ff.; friendship, 123, 135, 142, 148, 152
natural, 128; non-, 500; personal, 383;
potential, 573; and reflection, 98, genius, 53, 497, 589, 630; cult of, 7
106—13; of temporal world, 373 God, 82, 84, 130, 139, 145, 149, 152, 160,
experience, 45, 64, 109, 116, 237, 275, 199, 212, 231, 233, 243ff., 302, 306,
291, 521, 550, 557, 577, 595; and rev- 322ff., 326ff., 347ff., 361, 363ff., 495,
elation, 64, 595—96 500, 512, 515, 52off., 530, 540, 549,
explanation, 109, ig$f£.', principles of ex- 551. 556. 559ff- 573ff-. 5^5s-> 588ff.,
planation vs principles of existence, 78 594. 595. 613-14; anonymous, 53; ex-
extension: attribute of Spinoza's substance, istence of, 31, 97, 28iff., 376-77, 555,
96, 111, 159, 2i8ff., 357-58, 599. 598; knowledge of, 99, 158; personal
617; in Descartes, 367; only object of relation to, 31, 466°., 60, 68ff., 72ff., 81,
thought, 354; as revealed in conscious- 99, 143; and personality, 363—7, 520,
ness, 2g4ff. 577ff.; presence of, 43, 65ff., 87; self-
"eye," 96, g8ff., 106, 365, 486, 515, 569, knowledge of, 71; as sensed, 328;
577, 584, 618 slumbering, 574; soul of all, 196; in
Spinoza, 2igff., 355, 357~58. 369.
faith, 85-7, 104, 115, 162, 234, 246, 5gg; transcendence of, g8
255-56, 292, 495, 500, 538, 541,
544ff., 561, 609; artificial, 500; blind, hen kaipan, 187, 488, 588, 5g4; and hen ego
263ff., 538; Christian, 38ff., 44, 57, 65, kai pan, 5g8; and ouden kai panta, 5g8
86, 23iff.; Fichte's, logff.; as Glaubevs Herzensmensch, 5, 118, 120, 132!!., 137, I3g,
the English "belief," 90—92; ground of 141-42, 146
knowledge, 5&3ff.; Hume's, 258ff., heteronomy, 111
267-72; immediate knowledge, 80, historicism, 84-85
81, 23off., a66ff.; Kant's, 101, 555ff.; nat- history, 31, 49, 58, 2386°., 521; contingent
ural, 552ff.; perverted, 562; philoso- facts of, 83; of humanity, 561
phers', 116, 117, 131, 151; religious, 31, humanity, 15, 109, 117-18, 141, 561
49, 60, 64ff., 105, 114, 150, 164; so-
cial, 131, 142, 147ff.; as trust, 561; see also '%" 73. 76-77. 108-13, 12 7> 294ff-. 297,
Belief 3i6ff., 501, 505, 507, 509, 519, 535,
553; "more than," 147, 300, 515, 534 I and the not-I, 519; of nature, 53off.,
"I and Thou," 9, 50, 67, 81, 93, 105, 125, 55°, 557, 57 J ; of the soul. 42~43
165, 231, 277, 325ff., 524, 554 metacritique of reason, 496
idea(s), innate, 307, 314, 317, 551 metaphor, and representations of God, 81
ideal(ism, -st), 104, 164, 256, 502, 553ff., metaphysics, 8, 31, 64, 79, 83, 113, 360,
583, 631; Fichte's, 114; half-way and 543> 556- 56a
universal, 553, 570; as inverted might, 559; political, 14
Spinozism, 112; new, 10, 153; refuta- mind, 23, 114, 223, 378, 55off., 552, 572
tion of, 93, 331; as scepticism, 92, 272ff.; miracle(s), 49, 99, 149, 272ff., 300, 327,
transcendental, g, 107, 153^, 256, 526, 530, 556, 585, 596, 615-16
298. SSi-S8' 5°2, 544. 554ff-> 624 mode(s) (modification), in Spinoza,
idolatry, 561 74-77, 206, 2i8ff., 351, 37off., sgg
individual(s), 14, 16, 19, 20, 49, 69, 84, modification(s): seeMode(s)
g2ff., 108, 113, 141, 145, 150, 165, monad (s), 78, 191, 229, 304-16 passim,
294ff., 317, 344, 355-56, 369 368, 613
individuality, 73, 92ff., 113, 137, 143-44, monarchy, 21
199; in Leibniz, 304-17 passim monism, 8g
infinite, 31, 81, ig7ff., 2i7ff., 290, 35off.,
494, 510, 569, 588 naturalism, 14, 163
insight, 76, 79 nature, 12, 127, 128, 306, 376, 385, 484!^,
inspiration, 49 487, 48g, 495, 52off., 556, 562, 573,
intuition, 82, 85, io7ff., 156, 290, 300, 334, 574ff., s87ff., 589, 596, 609, 618; ani-
55off., 565; of reason, 563; of senses, mal, 146; and art, 37, 120; and cul-
580 ture, 33ff.; and Fichte, 111-12; and
Iris, 36 freedom, 14, 53iff., 550; as organic to-
irrational (ism, -ity), 48, 60, 79, 100, 325, tality, 294ff., 301; in Spinoza, 22iff.,
375- 531 364ff., 37off.; true light of, 327; un-
conscious force, 129; vs flux, 127; vs mir-
Jansenism, 46ff., 65 acles, 149; vs spirit, 51; worship of, 49,
127,136
language, 95, 137, 290, 298, 303, 370, 374, neither-nor, 575, 587
588; critique of, 496; of personality, Newtonian, 13, 84
112-13 nihilism, 115, 519, 583
leap, 60
liberal(ism), 13, 14, 21, 24, 84, 113 "One," the, 77, 360, s67ff., 569, 573
life, 96, 98, 231, 305, 369, 485, 566, 574, organic, in Leibniz, 304-17 passim
584, 598; identical with consciousness, organism, 578, 584
318, 321; in itself, 495; as principle of orthodoxy, 55
cognition, 370, 377; as principle of
perception, 277ff., 301; self-directed, pantheism, 145
490; standpoint of, no; see also pantheism dispute (pantheismusstreit) , 1 1 ,
Vitalism !53> 630-31
light, 19, 79-80, 193, 236, 327,365, 57gff., Pempelfort, 6, 52, 105, 179, 380, 591
598; of reason, 152 perception, 19, 90, 273, 277ff., 298, 301,
love, 141-42, 231, 344, 347ff., 517, 520, 370, 43gff., 531, 608; as degree of con-
556> 574- 576, 577ff- 586, 598 sciousness, 320; and feeling of truth,
305; "in the strongest sense," 55iff.; in
machine, 17, 26, 33, 612 Leibniz, 304-16 passim; and reflection,
materialism, 31, 158, 161, 361, 502, 544ff., 541; sense-, 572; as "taking hold of the
57° true," 514
mechanism (mechanics), 22, 341, 345, person(s), 19, 84, 113, 130, 342, 344, 577,
346, 366, 373, 377,495ff., 528, 612, 599; "otherness" of, 141
618; "first order," 213; of the heavens, personalism, 10, 73, 81, 110, 113
55gff.; of the human spirit, 560; of the personality, 6gff., 112, 137, 159, 536, 57
682 Index of Subjects
as excluding person and existence, and freedom, 53off., 559; God's, 300; as
383; of God, 363-67, 575; as imper- historical, 50, 66, 831!"., 85ff., 90;
sonal, 516, 577ff.; of providence, 583; inward sense, 583; in Leibniz, 304-16
as unity of self-consciousness, 363, 383 passim; and logical necessity, 373ff.;
phenomenalism, 124—26 metacritique of, 496; natural, 520; orig-
philosophe(s), 5, 25, 27, 38 inal art, 138; in possession of man or
philosophy, 105, 114, 137, 159, 193, 2^8ff., as possessed by man, 375ff., 528ff.; pure,
5Ooff., 507, 561; of the 298, 383, 488, 507, 517; purismus of,
Enlightenment, 25, 28, 151; of Identity 95; speculative, 232, 501; subordinated
(Schelling's), 631-32; of Nature to understanding, i54ff.; as "torch,"
(Schelling's), 153, 157, 158, 630-31; 3igff.; unaided, 55; universal truths of,
non-, 501; in "Plato's sense," 562; 83; vs understanding, 43, 161,
quintessential, 505; as science of the 298-99. 538-49. 566, 568ff-. 580,
senses, 555; speculative, 501; tran- 584
scendental, 500 reflection (reflectivity), 32, 98, 106—14,
pietism, 44-50 150, 213, 299, 531, 541, 552ff., 565,
pietist(s), 6, 49 577. 584
piety, 3gff., 48, 86 religion, 48, 64, 152, 318, 52off.; Christian,
poetry, the mother of reason, 6iff. 38ff., 23iff., 603; natural, 62; of rea-
prejudice(s), 105; of human understand- son, 38ff., 58, 89, 607
ing, 2g6ff. representation, giff., 143, 192, 209, 264,
prihcipium compositionis, 287ff. 273. 275ff., 277ff., 323, 334-37 pas-
principium generationis, 287!^ sim, 365, 367, 552ff., 583, 608; copies of
principle of ground: see Principle of suffi- actual things, 3O4ff.; non-mechanistic,
cient reason 377
principle of sufficient reason (or of Restoration, 3-4
ground), 287!!., 337, 360 revelation, 29-31, 45, 55, 64, 81, 231,
Promethean, 116-18, 144, 145 272ff., 327ff., 538, 574, 595, 609; self-
Prometheus, 53ff., 5gff-, 68ff., 73, 113, 594 revelatory, 296
properties (attributes, Eigenschaften), of
Spinoza's substance, 74-77, 205, sacramentalism, 65
22off., 599 salto mortale, 32, 60, 64, 79, 83, 87, 189,
prophesy, 83, 116 195. 366, 595. 597
providence, 242, 530, 556!!, 570, 582ff., scepticism (sceptics), 27, 31, gaff., 292,
589; blind, 586; personal, 583 581; "twin- scepticism," 93
Schwdrmer(ei) (enthusiasts, enthusiasm),
rationalism, 43, 150, 164, 607; Cartesian, 40, 46, 4g, 82
22, 23, 27, 34; false and genuine, 551; science(s), 128, ifjSff., f i62ff., 502, 505,
Spinoza's, 85 5°9. 5!9. 529. 551. 555. 584ff-. 589>
rationality, 104; abstract, 84; degree of con- as games, 511
sciousness, 319; principle of morality, Science of Knowledge: see Wissenschaftslehre
535 Scripture (s), 58, 249, 574, 605
realism (realist), 28, 30, 92, 104, 125, 164, semimentalia, 314, 613
256, 332 sensation (s), 28, 90, 95, 115, 126, issff.,
reason, 16, 48, 80, 99, 104, 105, 115, 151, 256, 264, 277, 300, 321, 494, 553,
i62ff., 256, 289, 322, 325, 370, 489, 612, 629
5i 3 ff., 52iff., 549ff., 555, 558> 5 6lff " sensationism, 28
578, 582, 595, 607; absolute laws of, sense(s), 30, 31, 42, 104, 158, 164, 264,
327; as abstractive power, 19, 49, 347; 272, 297, 4g3, 514, 535, 543ff-. 549.
Cartesian, 60; classical, 21; degener- 55iff., sssff., s63ff., s66ff., s68ff.,
ate, 232; as degree of representation, 57iff., 577, 580, sSsff., 6og, 629;
30off.; as "eye" of spirit, 56gff.; and inner and outer, 587; in Leibniz, 304-16
feeling, 584; formed in the course of passim, 547; as perception in general,
time, 324ff.; as form of life, 96, 3oiff.; 321; as Sinn, 303, 514, 531
sentiment, 33-8, 123, 138, 238ff., 542; system, 85ff., 96, 99, 105, 107, no, i n ,
orgy of, 132; purism of, 21 116, 20off., 216, 298, 356, 520, 562,
sentimentalism, 7, 53 593, 594, 607; of absolute identity, 566;
society, 4, 20; German, 3; as social bonds, of ends, 84; of experience, 154; histor-
iSoff. ical, 84; of impulse, 557; of reason, 507,
soul(s), 39, igiff., 23311"., 229-30, 295, 517; sin against, 499
300-01, 354, 375, 486, 495, 535, 561,
566-69, 572, 636; of the animal, 349, taking hold of (vernehmeri), 507, 513; as
584; as automates spirituels, 192; "beau- perception, 514; see also Discernment
tiful soul," 122; in Leibniz, 306-16 pas- Tat: see Act(ion)
sim; one with body, 368-69; of the terror, 18, 34
world, 360 Teutscher Merkur, 36, 52
space-time, 156, 218, 333ff. thought(s), 95, 115, 209, 351, 354,
speculation, 298-99, 510; "Jacobi's mis- 357-58, 502; accident of substance,
hap," 42 98, ig2ff.; attribute of Spinoza's sub-
Spinozism, 10, 45, 88, 99, 200, 329, 353ff., stance, 96, i n , 159, 22iff., 364ff.,
364, 549, 603, 611, 617; as defined by 508, 566, 584, 599; confused and dis-
Jacobi, 74-98 passim, 204-15, 216-300, tinct, 301; form of life, 98; goal-
232-34; exaggerated Cartesianism, oriented act, 98; reflective activity, 155,
282; Fichte's, 112; Herder's, 49, 81, 145; 160
inverted, 502; Lessing's, 17, 51, 7iff., Trinity, 56, 71, 599
18 iff., 200, 365; as misunderstood by "true," the, 58off., 585, 588, 596
Kant, 310 truth, 55, ygff., 82, 88, 118, 158, 190, 236,
Spinozism Dispute (Spinozismusstreit), 8, 49, 247, 440, 485, 493, 504, 514, 545, 551
60, 642
spirit, 51, isgff., 223, 242ff., 299, 347,495- unconscious (ness), 145, 573, 578, 586,
559, 560, 565, 576, 577, 588ff., 596, 589; of oneself, 577
604, 614; as conscience ("spirit certain understanding, 43, i54ff., i6iff., 248, 275,
of itself), 556, 585; and the flesh, 296, 299, 351, 377, 544ff., 548, 55off.,
i46ff., 52off., 52gff.; image of God, 148; 557, 577ff-> 588; and abstraction, 57iff.;
of spirits, 573 animal, 564; infinite, 75; philosophi-
spirituality, 44ff. cal, 508; and reflection, 565, 582, 584;
stoic(ism), 13, 486 and the senses, 158, 303, 547, 567,
Sturm undDrang, 8, 37, 120, 127, 132, 146, 569; uncultivated, 561; void of, 589; see
616 also Reason
subject(ivity): of action, 6gff., 128; "as
cause and principle of all ends in gen- virtue(s), 120, 148, 348, 521, 529, 561,
eral," 535; object-subjectivity, 159 563ff-> 585> 589
subjectivism, 10, 101; subjective interest, 91 vital(ism), 23, 82, 96, 100; see also Life
substance: in Leibniz, 229-30, 304—16^05-
sim, 368; precedes thought, 98, 354; will, 292, 348, 377, 647; affected by senses,
reduced to thought, 112; Spinoza's, 535; arbitrary, 352; free, 194, 345;
6off., 74-77, 85, 108, 159, 190, 2igff., general, 35; infinite, 75; pure, 383; void
35 iff., 356, 370, 599 of, 589
supersensible (supra-sensible), 540, 543ff., Wissenschaftslehre (Doctrine of Science,
549, 55 L 5 6lff -, 57° Science of Knowledge), 32, 107-13,
superstition(s), 55, 525, 549, s6iff. 506, 634, 644
supra-sensible: see Supersensible

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THE MAIN PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS

AND THE NOVEL ALLWILL

This scholarly edition of Jacobi's major works is the first extensive

George di Giovanni is professor of philosophy, McGill University.

2 The Development of the Idea of History in Antiquity

3 Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid:

4 Schiller, Hegel, and Marx:

5 John Case and Aristotelianism in Renaissance England

6 Beyond Liberty and Property:

7 John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and Mind

8 Coleridge and the Inspired Word

10 Consent, Coercion, and Limit:

11 Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768-1800:

12 Paine and Cobbett:

13 Descartes and the Enlightenment

15 The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought

16 Form and Transformation

17 From Personal Duties towards Personal Rights

18 The Main Philosophical Writings

Translated from the German, with an

McGill-Queen's University Press

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 1743—1819

This book was typeset by Typo Litho Composition Inc.

I Jacobi and His Spiritual Landscape: An Essay in Synthesis 3

II Philosophical Arguments: An Essay in Analysis 67

III Literary Witnesses: An Essay in Interpretation 117

IV The Last Word: Jacobi on Jacobi 152

Note on the Texts 169

Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Herr Moses Mendelssohn

David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, A Dialogue (1787) 253

Concerning the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn

Edward Allwill's Collection of Letters (1792) 379

Jacobi to Fichte (1799) 497

David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism, A Dialogue: Preface and

Notes to Jacobi's Texts 591

Notes to Jacobi's Footnotes 635

Index of Names 675

Index of Subjects 679

W H E N I A P P R O A C H E D Emil Fackenheim—it is now a quarter-century

first-rate philosopher. Yet his polemic against abstract reason on behalf

to the Enlightenment, that this translation of German texts into English

Jacobi and His Spiritual Landscape.

Diisseldorf by French troops, he moved north, first to Wandsbeck as the

the absolutism of the princes vehemently (just as he would eventually at-

11. See below, Spinoza Letters, p. 163.

who, ironically, had drawn his inspiration fromjacobi's personalismjust

17. Jacobi's inaugural address is included in Vol. vi of Werke. Ubergelehrte Gesellschaften,

5. So much for a sketch of Jacobi's figure. Now, to the landscape. The

because of the continued widespread appeal of classical (essentially

24. For some striking examples, see Rilla, p. 262.

as he is by private interest, can fairly recognize the welfare of a whole

of energy seeking their discharge blindly. Reason's function in this con-

36. "Gedanken Verschiedener iiber eine merkwiirdige Schrift" (anonymous;

H. Reimarus for publication in Hamburg because it might offend the

It is interesting that Jacobi's objection to Laharpe is essentially the

45. See below, footnote to p. 15 of David Hume.

So far as Jacob! was concerned, both the tyranny of the French

THE LANDSCAPE: PHILOSOPHY

4. Many ingredients had gone into the making of the characteristically

50. Spinoza Letters (1789 ed.), p. 355.

petus for the emergence of early Romanticism because of his quasi-

tique, moreover, was intended to restrict science to empirical knowl-