OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 619 



In Kant this problem assumed a different aspect. He 

 prepared the way from the metaphysical to the psycho- 

 logical treatment of the religious problem. Although, 

 in the sequel of his investigations, he dealt with such 

 conceptions as efficient and final causes, the Universal 

 Order, the Divine Being, Freedom of the Will, Im- 

 mortality of the Soul, and the existence of Evil and Sin, 

 he did not set out with a metaphysical analysis of these, 

 but with the object of defining wherein consisted the 

 mental process of acquiring Knowledge and the mental 

 process and function of Belief. He reduced both 

 to immediate evidence, but to evidence of a different 

 kind ; the one being the evidence of the physical senses, 

 the other the evidence of the moral sense, the law of 

 conscience. 



Before Kant published his critical examination into 

 the processes of theoretical and practical reasoning and 

 advanced to a suggestion how the two might be brought 

 together and admit of a reasoned religious as well as 

 scientific creed, another thinker had independently taken 

 up the problem from a similar — i.e., from the psycho- 

 logical — point of view. This was F. H. Jacobi, who 

 through his clear and finished style acquired a con- 

 siderable influence in a wide circle of readers to whom 

 Kant's severe and formal discussions would otherwise 

 have remained inaccessible and repellent. 



Jacobi's writings occupy an important place in the 

 history of philosophical though not of systematic thought. 

 It is mostly through his criticism of the Kantian doctrine 

 that he succeeded in defining his own position and 

 acquired considerable popularity. But, like Fichte after 



