as it is called by some,
_inspiration_.

There have been those, in all ages, who have made all knowledge of
invisible, supersensuous, divine things, to rest upon an internal
_feeling_, or immediate, inward vision. The Oriental Mystics, the
Neo-Platonists, the Mystics of the Greek and Latin Church, the German
Mystics of the 14th century, the Theosophists of the Reformation, the
Quietists of France, the Quakers, have all appealed to some _special_
faculty, distinct from the understanding and reason, for the immediate
cognition of invisible and spiritual existences. By some, that special
faculty was regarded as an "interior eye" which was illuminated by the
"Universal Light;" by others, as a peculiar sensibility of the soul--a
_feeling_ in whose perfect calm and utter quiescence the Divinity was
mirrored; or which, in an ecstatic state, rose to a communion with, and
final absorption in the Infinite.

Jacobi was the first, in modern times, to give the "faith-philosophy,"
as it is now designated, a definite form. He assumes the position that
all knowledge, of whatever kind, must ultimately rest upon intuition or
faith. As it regards sensible objects, the understanding finds the
impression from which all our knowledge of the external flows, ready
formed. The process of sensation is a mystery; we know nothing of it
until it is past, and the feeling it produces is present. Our knowledge
of matter, therefore, rests upon faith in these intuitions. We can not
doubt that the feeling has an objective cause. In every act of
perception there is something actual and present, which can not be
referred to a mere subjective law of thought. We are also conscious of
another class of feelings which correlate us with a supersensuous world,
and these feelings, also, must have their cause in some objective
reality. Just as sensation gives us an immediate knowledge of an
external world, so there is an internal sense which gives us an
immediate knowledge of a spiritual world--God, the soul, freedom,
immortality. Our knowledge of the invisible world, like our knowledge of
the visible world, is grounded upon faith in our intuitions. All
philosophic knowledge is thus based upon _belief_, which Jacobi regards
as a fact of our inward sensibility--a sort of knowledge produced by an
immediate _feeling_ of the soul--a direct apprehension, without proof,
of the True, the Supersensuous, the Eternal.

Jacobi prepared the way for, and was soon eclipsed by