150 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



jective to result from the objective, then the claims of both to 

 priority were recognized as equal ; and both Fichte, in his latter 

 days, and Schelling, admitted that an absolute existence underlies 

 all phenomena. 



A very important further modification of the philosophy of 

 knowledge was achieved by Hegel, and still attracts great atten- 

 tion. He united the subjective and the objective into such a 

 union that the latter was implied in the former. The phenomena 

 which we perceive were regarded as having the same character 

 objectively as subjectively. " The ground of their being," said 

 Hegel, "is not an unknown essence immediately behind the phe- 

 nomena, but the absolute idea." Thus constituted, absolute 

 idealism makes a radical contrast with the subjective idealism 

 of Fichte. 



This system of Hegel, first offered for publicatfon in Jena, 

 during the bombardment of that city by Napoleon, is a little 

 later in its origin than the faith philosophy of Jacobi ; never- 

 theless, Jacobi is, in a certain sense, the representative of an 

 elementary form of the latest philosophic thought. What the 

 philosophy of the future is to be, no man can confidently tell ; 

 but it may not be too bold to predict that what Jacobi felt, but 

 dared not say he knew, will yet find many to recognize its philo- 

 sophical validity. 



The chief claim of Jacobi to recognition among philosophers 

 rests upon his doctrine that we have a direct intuitive knowledge 

 of the suprasensible — that we see it with the "reason " as truly 

 as we see physical objects with the eye. This doctrine has 

 usually been regarded as enthusiastic, and its author sometimes 

 set down among the Mystics of Germany. The degree of re- 

 proach implied in the terms enthusiastic and mystic varies with the 

 persons who use them. When enthusiam is charged as equiva- 

 lent to fanaticism, and mysticism as implying obscurity and error, 

 they simply beg the question at issue. A legitimate enthusiasm 

 is what Jacobi claimed ; and if we translate the G-reek elements 

 of the word (iv <9£oc) as "God within," the meanmg is rescued 

 from all implication of error. Fanaticism is as far from the best 

 sense of enthusiasm as rage from anger — to borrow a simile from 

 Yoltaire. 



