P. [129], § 66. Kant had said 'Concepts without intuitions are empty' It is an exaggeration of this half-truth (the other half is Intuitions without concepts are blind) that is the basis of these statements of Jacobi (and of Schopenhauer)—a view of which the following passage from Schelling (Werke, ii. 125) is representative. 'Concepts (Begriffe) are only silhouettes of reality. They are projected by a serviceable faculty, the understanding, which only comes into action when reality is already on the scene,—which only comprehends, conceives, retains what it required a creative faculty to produce.... The mere concept is a word without meaning.... All reality that can attach to it is lent to it merely by the intuition (Anschauung) which preceded it. ... Nothing is real for us except what is immediately given us, without any mediation by concepts, without our feeling at liberty. But nothing reaches us immediately except through intuition.' He adds, however, 'Intuition is due to the activity of mind (Sein): it demands a disengaged sense (freier Sinn) and an intellectual organ (geistiges Organ).'
P. [134]. Cicero: De Natura Deorum, i. 16; ii. 4, De quo autem omnium natura consentit, id verum esse necesse est; cf. Seneca, Epist. cxvii. 6. The principle is common to Stoics and Epicureans: it is the maxim of Catholic truth Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est—equivalent to Aristotle's ὄ πᾶσι δοκεῖ, τοῦτ' εἷναι φάμεν—But as Aristotle remarks (An. Post. i. 31) τὸ καθόλον καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσιν ἀδίνατον αἰσθάνεσθαι.
Jacobi: Werke, vi. 145. 'The general opinion about what is true and good must have an authority equal to reason.'
P. [136], § 72. Cf. Encyclop. § 400: 'That the heart and the feeling is not the form by which anything is justified as religious, moral, true, and just, and that an appeal to heart and feeling either means nothing or means something bad, should hardly need enforcing. Can any experience be more trite than that hearts and feelings are also bad, evil, godless, mean, &c.? Ay, that the heart is the source of such feelings only, is directly said in the words: Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, &c. In times when the heart and the sentiment are, by scientific theology and philosophy, made the criterion of goodness, religion, and morality, it is necessary to recall these trivial experiences.'
CHAPTER VI.
P. [145], § 80. Goethe; the reference is to Werke, ii. 268 (Natur und Kunst):
Wer Groszes will, muß sich zusammenraffen:
In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister,
Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben.
Such 'limitation' of aim and work is a frequent lesson in Wilhelm Meister's Wanderjahre, e.g. i. ch. 4. 'Many-sidedness prepares, properly speaking, only the element in which the one-sided can act.... The best thing is to restrict oneself to a handi-work.' And i. ch. 12: 'To be acquainted with and to exercise one thing rightly gives higher training than mere tolerableness (halfness) in a hundred sorts of things.' And ii. ch. 12: 'Your general training and all establishments for the purpose are fool's farces.'
P. [147], § 81. Cf. Fichte, Werke, ii. 37. 'Yet it is not we who analyse: but knowledge analyses itself, and can do so, because in all its being it is a for-self (Für:sich),' &c.