Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/336

 314 THE FAITH PHILOSOPHY. freedom, be comprehended and proved? Demonstration rises along the chain of causes to the universe alone, not to a transcendent Creator; mediate knowledge is confined to the sphere of conditioned being and mechanical becoming. The intuitive knowledge of feeling alone leads us beyond this, and along with the wonderful, the inconceivable power of freedom in ourselves, which is above all nature, shows us the primal source of all wonders, the transcendent God above us. The inference from our own spiritual, self- conscious, free personality to that of God is no unauthor- ized anthropomorphism — in the knowledge of God we may fearlessly deify our human existence, because God, when he created man, gave his divine nature human form. Reason and freedom are the same : the former is theoretical, the latter practical elevation to the suprasensible. Neverthe- less virtue is not based upon an inflexible, despotic, abstractly, formal law, but upon an instinct, which, however, does not aim at happiness. Thus Jacobi attempts to medi- ate between the ethics of the Illumination and the ethics of Kant, by agreeing with the former in regard to the origin of virtue (it arises from a natural impulse), and with the latter in regard to its nature (it consists in disinterested- ness). Hence with the Illumination he rejects the impera- tive form, and with Kant the eudemonistic end. At the same time he endeavors to introduce Herder's idea of individuality into ethics, by demanding that morality assume a special form in each man. Schiller and the romantic school take from Jacobi their ideal of the "beautiful soul," which from natural impulse realizes in its action, and still more in its being, the good in an individual way. I