156 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



its approacli to the center of thought and feeling. Accordingly, 

 Jacobi can say that " God himself is present to man in the 

 heart," and that the human spirit contains " a shadow of the 

 divine knowledge and will." 



In this light we can understand our philosopher's meaning 

 when he maintains that man reveals Grod, while nature conceals 

 him : 



" But is it unreasonable to confess that we believe in God, not by reason of 

 the nature which conceals him, but by reason of the supernatural in man, 

 which alone reveals and proves him to exist? Nature conceals God; for 

 through her vphole domain nature reveals only fate, only an indissoluble 

 chain of mere efficient causes without beginning and without end, excluding 

 with equal necessity both providence and chance. . , . Man reveals God; 

 for man, by his intelligence, rises above nature, and in virtue of this intelli- 

 gence is conscious of hims If as a power not only independent of but opposed 

 to nature, and capable of resisting, conquering and controlling her. As man 

 has a living faith in this power, superior to nature, which dwells in him; so 

 has he a belief in God, a feeling, an experience of his existence." 



This doctrine is perfectly consistent, as Jacobi claims, wjth the 

 criticism of Kant, though it cannot be harmonized with the doc- 

 trines of Spinoza. Indeed, Kant's demonstration that the pure 

 reason finds no certainty in practical things, not only admitted 

 but even called for Jacobi's doctrine of a direct intuitive cogni- 

 tion of things-in-themselves. This intuition tramples upon the 

 mechanism theory of the universe, and, rising above the defects 

 of demonstration, gazes boldly upon the revealed face of the one 

 great Cause that reason had long ago declared to be immanent in 

 all forms of being and becoming. 



This noblest function of the soul Jacobi did not uniformly de- 

 nominate " faith," especially in his later writings. This term was 

 too liable to be understood to imply a blind, irrational belief on 

 the mere authority of others. To avoid so great a misconception 

 of his doctrine Jacobi used the term "reason " ( Vernu7ift), mean- 

 ing, not the logical faculty, but the power to perceive directly in 

 contrast with the understanding which is confined to the range of 

 the demonstrable. The term " faith," therefore, when used by 

 Jacobi, implied the surest possible kind of knowledge, but a 

 knowledge which in its very nature cannot be communicated to 



