OF THE SPIRIT. 



299 



said, he ventured to place the other beyond the line in 

 that free land of speculation discovered by the Idealists, 

 lie immediately drew it back again into its former posi- 

 tion ; he never crossed the Eubicon and settled in the 

 transcendental philosophy, which was loudly proclaimed 

 at that time as the new and promised land in which the 

 dilemmas of former systems of thought and of common- 

 sense were to disappear. His writings had a great 

 influence, and did much to stem the tide of abstract 

 speculation ; his language also was that of the best 

 literature of his age, and he did not indulge in that novel 

 and uncouth terminology introduced by Kant and further 

 developed by some of his successors. 1 



1 The position of Jacobi in the 

 history of philosophical, and especi- 

 ally of religious, thought is ex- 

 tremely interesting and well worth 

 studying in the present day when 

 the subject of religious experience 

 is so much discussed. Although 

 in systematic philosophy Jacobi's 

 writings are of subordinate and 

 mostly only of critical importance, 

 he himself was, as Goethe said, one 

 of the most interesting figures in 

 an extraordinary age. Talking to 

 Kckermann (' Conversations with 

 Goethe,' llth April 1827), Goethe 

 said that he had been reading the 

 Letters of Jacobi and his friends and 

 found it a most remarkable book, 

 not because one could learn some- 

 thing from it, but in order to get 

 an insight into the culture and 

 literature of the time, of which 

 even then one had no conception. 

 " One sees a number, as it were, of 

 important persons, but not a trace 

 of the same direction or of a com- 

 mon interest, rather every one 

 self-contained and marching his 

 own way, without in the least 

 taking any part in the endeavours 



of the others. They appear to me 

 like billiard balls which run blindly 

 about on the green cloth without 

 knowing anything of each other, 

 and which, as soon as they touch, 

 only diverge so much more." 

 Goethe then proceeds to explain 

 that Jacobi loved him personally 

 without taking any part in his 

 endeavours or perhaps even ap- 

 proving of them ; that it required 

 friendship to keep them together 

 whereas it was just the opposite 

 between him and Schiller. And, 

 confirming this, Jacobi had written 

 about Goethe, whom he first met 

 in the year 1774 : "Goethe is like 

 a man possessed, to whom it is in 

 no case permitted to act arbitrarily. 

 It is only necessary to be an hour 

 with him in order to find it in the 

 highest degree ludicrous to expect 

 from him that he should think 

 and act otherwise than he really 

 thinks and acts. Hereby I do 

 not wish to suggest that no change 

 for the more beautiful and better 

 is possible to him ; but it is not 

 otherwise possible than as the 

 flower unfolds itself, the seed 



