The Philosophy of F. H. JacoU. 149 



have no corresponding external objects behind them. Kant, on 

 the other hand, perceived [only phenomena, and knew nothing of 

 the things in themselves, which are manifest only in the phenom- 

 ena. For both alike objects were implied as the originals of the 

 images of the one, and as the principals behind the phenomena 

 of the other . Both alike have furnished a basis upon which log- 

 ical minds have built up systems that have violated the plainest 

 dicta of common sense. Every body but a few philosophers 

 thinks he knows that he walks in an actual physical world, and 

 among other men like himself, whilcj according to Locke and 

 Kant, pure reason teaches nothing of the sort; but rather that 

 the world which we see is within us, and that we may be dream- 

 log as truly in our waking as in our sleeping hours. Goethe ap- 

 preciates this situation very well when he makes Faust say that 

 this philosophy leaves him " as great a fool as he was before;" 

 and then, in despair of knowing anything, turn to the sensual en- 

 joyments of the world. 



From the particular error of Locke philosophy has largely, but 

 not altogether, recovered ; and from Kant's it is slowly recovering. 

 To this end Jacobi has contributed the earliest and best assistance, 

 by showing that sensation testifies not more positively of the 

 so-called secondary qualities of bodies than of their objective 

 actuality, as will be more fully shown in the proper connection. 



But Fichte contributed toward the correction of Kant's error 

 in a way similar to that in which Berkeley had exposed the 

 weakness of Locke. 'Fichte inquired whether it was true that 

 an actual objective world caused the subjective phenomena, as 

 Kant evidently assumed. In his investigation of this problem 

 he found in his consciousness the sensation, and from these in- 

 ferred the objective, not in the relation of cause, but as the effect 

 or product of the active mind. He accordingly gave a confident 

 negative to his own query, and adopted the full consequence 

 of the error in the central doctrine of his philosophy — that "all 

 cognition is a self-activity which perceives only its own self- 

 activity." 



When Scheliing replied to Fichte's reasoning, that we might 

 with equal propriety reverse his process, and suppose the sub- 



