The Philosophy of F. U. Jacohi. 151 



The quest of philosophy has ever been, before all else, for the 

 -efficient cause of nature. Thi^ cause does not appear in the neb- 

 ular hypothesis, or in the atomic theory ; for science cannot 

 account for the first movements of either. Locke did not find it, 

 for he had no secure hold upon anything ^objective. Kant did 

 not find it in the pure reason, for pure reason could know nothing of 

 any thing in itself. Jacobi found a first cause, he was sure, but 

 only in his heart — there was not quite room enough for it in his 

 head. He claimed that this, together with some other knowledge, 

 is impressed upon the soul without the intervention, in any way, 

 of physical organs. The philosophy of Locke does not willingly 

 admit any impressions upon the tabula rasa of the mind apart 

 from the products of sensation and their combinations. Jacobi's 

 •claims must, accordingly, be positively refused, or some of the 

 principles abandoned which have been maintained, or tacitly ad- 

 mitted, by a multitude of philosophers. The tabula-rasa simile 

 has been convicted of fault in the implication that the mind is a 

 cold and dead slate, that simply holds, without addition or change, 

 whatever is committed to it. If this were so, there would be 

 for us no external world — all primary qualities of matter would 

 be forever shut out of the mind, for no sensation ever resembled 

 any one of them. Secondary qualities are purely subjective. 

 They not only do not resemble in the least their immediate phys- 

 ical causes, but even these do not reside in the bodies to which 

 we refer the qualities as by instinct, while the inferred concause, 

 which is in the body, is beyond the reach of our investigation. It 

 must be, then, that we are indebted to certain original energies of 

 the mind for all that we know of the external world, even after 

 sensation has revealed all that in the nature of the case is possible, 



Kant insists upon the testimony of sensation as essential to the 

 validity of mental products. Jacobi insists that he sees a light, 

 which to the physical eye is invisible. Is he mistaken ? or is 

 Kant's requirement unessential ? 



A sensation is a feeling awakened in the mind through the me- 

 dium of an organ of sense. This sensation becomes a perception 

 when referred to the external object which occasioned it; thus 

 do we acquire all our knowledge of the outward world. What, 



