ong the
chain of causes to the universe alone, not to a transcendent Creator;
mediate knowledge is confined to the sphere of conditioned being and
mechanical becoming. The intuitive knowledge of feeling alone leads us
beyond this, and along with the wonderful, the inconceivable power of
freedom in ourselves, which is above all nature, shows us the primal source
of all wonders, the transcendent God above us. The inference from our
own spiritual, self-conscious, free personality to that of God is no
unauthorized anthropomorphism--in the knowledge of God we may fearlessly
deify our human existence, because God, when he created man, gave his
divine nature human form. Reason and freedom are the same: the former
is theoretical, the latter practical elevation to the suprasensible.
Nevertheless virtue is not based upon an inflexible, despotic, abstractly,
formal law, but upon an instinct, which, however, does not aim at
happiness. Thus Jacobi attempts to mediate between the ethics of the
Illumination and the ethics of Kant, by agreeing with the former in regard
to the origin of virtue (it arises from a natural impulse), and with the
latter in regard to its nature (it consists in disinterestedness). Hence
with the Illumination he rejects the imperative form, and with Kant the
eudemonistic end. At the same time he endeavors to introduce Herder's idea
of individuality into ethics, by demanding that morality assume a special
form in each man. Schiller and the romantic school take from Jacobi their
ideal of the "beautiful soul," which from natural impulse realizes in its
action, and still more in its being, the good in an individual way.

%PART II. FROM KANT TO THE PRESENT TIME.%

CHAPTER IX.

KANT.

The suit between empiricism and rationalism had continued for centuries,
but still awaited final decision. Are all our ideas the result of
experience, or are they (wholly or in part) an original possession of the
mind? Are they received from without (by perception), or produced from
within (by self-activity)? Is knowledge a product of sensation or of pure
thought? All who had thus far taken part in this discussion had resembled
partisans or advocates rather than disinterested judges. They had given
less attention to investigation than to the defense of the traditional
theses of their schools; they had not endeavored to obtain results, but
to establish results already determined; and, along with real arguments,
popular ap