298 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



with this all the reasoning processes are merely trains of 

 thought without a beginning or an end, an endless suc- 

 cession of the " Conditioned " without any access to the 

 " Unconditioned." All demonstrable knowledge is, there- 

 fore, as Jacobi says, Spinozism, the doctrine of the me- 

 chanical necessity of the finite. Jacobi foresaw and 

 expressed clearly what has been more and more realised 

 in the course of the nineteenth century, that it is in the 

 interest of science that there be no god ; in fact, that a 

 Deity who could be known would not be God in the 

 sense of the faithful believer. But such scientific know- 

 ledge is only mediate ; all true knowledge is immediate, 

 rests on a conviction of certainty which cannot be 

 proved but only accepted ; such is given through our 

 senses in the lower or sensuous region of things and 

 through what Jacobi terms reason in the higher or 

 spiritual region of things. He thus proclaims a super- 

 natural sensationalism in which the great spiritual 

 verities, God, Freedom, The Good, and Immortality are 

 revealed to us. Jacobi thus asserts, though in a 

 different manner, the existence of a twofold order 

 of things ; but, instead of defining with Kant this two- 

 fold order as the opposition of the sensible and the 

 intelligible, he makes it the co - ordination of two 

 realities which are reached by a lower and by a higher 

 sense, both resting upon a feeling of immediate certainty, 

 or, as others might be inclined to say, on sight. With 

 this view Jacobi gives access to the more popular manner 

 in which spiritual things are usually treated. In fact, 

 he always remained with one foot firmly placed in the 

 popular philosophy of his age ; and if, as it has been 



