(N. M.)
1“In the literature of his country Jacob holds much the same place as Jerome among the Latin fathers” (Wright,Short Hist. of Syr. Lit.p. 143).2Merx infers that the fact of Jacob’s going to Alexandria as a student tells against the view that the Arabs burned the great library (Hist. artis gramm. apud Syros, p. 35). On this question cf. Krehl inAlli del iv. congr. internaz. degli Orientalisti(Florence, 1880), pp. 433 sqq.3Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahrē says 677; but Athanasius was patriarch only 684-687.4According to Merx (op. cit.p. 43) this may be the celebrated convent of Eusebius near Apamea.5Assemani tried hard to prove him orthodox (B.O.i. 470 sqq.) but changed his opinion on reading his biography by Barhebraeus (ib. ii. 337). See especially Lamy,Dissert. de Syrorum fide, pp. 206 sqq.6Text at Leipzig 1889 (Das Buch der Erkenntniss der Wahrheit oder der Ursache aller Ursachen): translation (posthumously) at Strassburg 1893.7The surviving fragments were published by Wright (London, 1871) and by Merx,op. cit.p. 73 sqq. of Syriac text.8An affirmative answer is given by Wiseman (Horae syr.pp. 181-8) and Wright (Catalogue1168;Fragm. of the Syriac Grammar of Jacob of Edessa, preface; Short Hist. p. 151 seq.). But Martin (inJour. As.May-June 1869, pp. 456 sqq.), Duval (Grammaire syriaque, p. 71) and Merx (op. cit.p. 50) are of the opposite opinion. The date of the introduction of the seven Nestorian vowel-signs is also uncertain.
1“In the literature of his country Jacob holds much the same place as Jerome among the Latin fathers” (Wright,Short Hist. of Syr. Lit.p. 143).
2Merx infers that the fact of Jacob’s going to Alexandria as a student tells against the view that the Arabs burned the great library (Hist. artis gramm. apud Syros, p. 35). On this question cf. Krehl inAlli del iv. congr. internaz. degli Orientalisti(Florence, 1880), pp. 433 sqq.
3Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell-Mahrē says 677; but Athanasius was patriarch only 684-687.
4According to Merx (op. cit.p. 43) this may be the celebrated convent of Eusebius near Apamea.
5Assemani tried hard to prove him orthodox (B.O.i. 470 sqq.) but changed his opinion on reading his biography by Barhebraeus (ib. ii. 337). See especially Lamy,Dissert. de Syrorum fide, pp. 206 sqq.
6Text at Leipzig 1889 (Das Buch der Erkenntniss der Wahrheit oder der Ursache aller Ursachen): translation (posthumously) at Strassburg 1893.
7The surviving fragments were published by Wright (London, 1871) and by Merx,op. cit.p. 73 sqq. of Syriac text.
8An affirmative answer is given by Wiseman (Horae syr.pp. 181-8) and Wright (Catalogue1168;Fragm. of the Syriac Grammar of Jacob of Edessa, preface; Short Hist. p. 151 seq.). But Martin (inJour. As.May-June 1869, pp. 456 sqq.), Duval (Grammaire syriaque, p. 71) and Merx (op. cit.p. 50) are of the opposite opinion. The date of the introduction of the seven Nestorian vowel-signs is also uncertain.
JACOB OF JÜTERBOGK(c.1381-1465), monk and theologian. Benedict Stolzenhagen, known in religion as Jacob, was born at Jüterbogk in Brandenburg of poor peasant stock. He became a Cistercian at the monastery of Paradiz in Poland, and was sent by the abbot to the university of Cracow, where he became master in philosophy and doctor of theology. He returned to his monastery, of which he became abbot. In 1441, however, discontented with the absence of strict discipline in his community, he obtained the leave of the papal legate at the council of Basel to transfer himself to the Carthusians, entering the monastery of Salvatorberg near Erfurt, of which he became prior. He lectured on theology at the university of Erfurt, of which he was rector in 1455. He died on the 30th of April 1465.
Jacob’s main preoccupation was the reform of monastic life, the grave disorders of which he deplored, and to this end he wrote hisPetitiones religiosorum pro reformatione sui status. Another work,De negligentia praelatorum, was directed against the neglect of their duties by the higher clergy, and he addressed a petition for the reform of the church (Advisamentum pro reformatione ecclesiae) to Pope Nicholas V. This having no effect, he issued the most outspoken of his works,De Septem ecclesiae statibus, in which he reviewed the work of the reforming councils of his time, and, without touching the question of doctrine, championed a drastic reform of life and practice of the church on the lines laid down at Constance and Basel.His principal works are collected in Walch,Monimenta med. aev.i. and ii. (1757, 1771), and Engelbert Klüpfel,Vetus bibliotheca eccles. (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1780).
Jacob’s main preoccupation was the reform of monastic life, the grave disorders of which he deplored, and to this end he wrote hisPetitiones religiosorum pro reformatione sui status. Another work,De negligentia praelatorum, was directed against the neglect of their duties by the higher clergy, and he addressed a petition for the reform of the church (Advisamentum pro reformatione ecclesiae) to Pope Nicholas V. This having no effect, he issued the most outspoken of his works,De Septem ecclesiae statibus, in which he reviewed the work of the reforming councils of his time, and, without touching the question of doctrine, championed a drastic reform of life and practice of the church on the lines laid down at Constance and Basel.
His principal works are collected in Walch,Monimenta med. aev.i. and ii. (1757, 1771), and Engelbert Klüpfel,Vetus bibliotheca eccles. (Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1780).
JACOB OF SĔRŪGH,one of the best Syriac authors, named by one of his biographers “the flute of the Holy Spirit and the harp of the believing church,” was born in 451 at Kurtam, a village on the Euphrates to the west of Ḥarrān, and was probably educated at Edessa. At an early age he attracted the attention of his countrymen by his piety and his literary gifts, and entered on the composition of the long series of metrical homilies on religious themes which formed the great work of his life. Having been ordained to the priesthood, he became periodeutes or episcopal visitor of Ḥaurā, in Sĕrūgh, not far from his birthplace. His tenure of this office extended over a time of great trouble to the Christian population of Mesopotamia, due to the fierce war carried on by Kavadh II. of Persia within the Roman borders. When on the 10th of January 503 Amid was captured by the Persians after a three months’ siege and all its citizens put to the sword or carried captive, a panic seized the whole district, and the Christian inhabitants of many neighbouring cities plannedto leave their homes and flee to the west of the Euphrates. They were recalled to a more courageous frame of mind by the letters of Jacob.1In 519, at the age of 68, Jacob was made bishop of Baṭnān, another town in the district of Sĕrūgh, but only lived till November 521.
From the various extant accounts of Jacob’s life and from the number of his known works, we gather that his literary activity was unceasing. According to Barhebraeus (Chron. Eccles.i. 191) he employed 70 amanuenses and wrote in all 760 metrical homilies, besides expositions, letters and hymns of different sorts. Of his merits as a writer and poet we are now well able to judge from P. Bedjan’s excellent edition of selected metrical homilies, of which four volumes have already appeared (Paris 1905-1908), containing 146 pieces.2They are written throughout in dodecasyllabic metre, and those published deal mainly with biblical themes, though there are also poems on such subjects as the deaths of Christian martyrs, the fall of the idols, the council of Nicaea, &c.3Of Jacob’s prose works, which are not nearly so numerous, the most interesting are his letters, which throw light upon some of the events of his time and reveal his attachment to the Monophysite doctrine which was then struggling for supremacy in the Syrian churches, and particularly at Edessa, over the opposite teaching of Nestorius.4
From the various extant accounts of Jacob’s life and from the number of his known works, we gather that his literary activity was unceasing. According to Barhebraeus (Chron. Eccles.i. 191) he employed 70 amanuenses and wrote in all 760 metrical homilies, besides expositions, letters and hymns of different sorts. Of his merits as a writer and poet we are now well able to judge from P. Bedjan’s excellent edition of selected metrical homilies, of which four volumes have already appeared (Paris 1905-1908), containing 146 pieces.2They are written throughout in dodecasyllabic metre, and those published deal mainly with biblical themes, though there are also poems on such subjects as the deaths of Christian martyrs, the fall of the idols, the council of Nicaea, &c.3Of Jacob’s prose works, which are not nearly so numerous, the most interesting are his letters, which throw light upon some of the events of his time and reveal his attachment to the Monophysite doctrine which was then struggling for supremacy in the Syrian churches, and particularly at Edessa, over the opposite teaching of Nestorius.4
(N. M.)
1See the contemporaryChroniclecalled that of Joshua the Stylite, chap. 54.2Assemani (Bibl. Orient.i. 305-339) enumerates 231 which he had seen in MSS.3Some other historical poems M. Bedjan has not seen fit to publish, on account of their unreliable and legendary character (vol. i. p. ix. of preface).4A full list of the older editions of works by Jacob is given by Wright inShort History of Syriac Literature, pp. 68-72.
1See the contemporaryChroniclecalled that of Joshua the Stylite, chap. 54.
2Assemani (Bibl. Orient.i. 305-339) enumerates 231 which he had seen in MSS.
3Some other historical poems M. Bedjan has not seen fit to publish, on account of their unreliable and legendary character (vol. i. p. ix. of preface).
4A full list of the older editions of works by Jacob is given by Wright inShort History of Syriac Literature, pp. 68-72.
JACOBA,orJacqueline(1401-1436), countess of Holland, was the only daughter and heiress of William, duke of Bavaria and count of Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut. She was married as a child to John, duke of Touraine, second son of Charles VI., king of France, who on the death of his elder brother Louis became dauphin. John of Touraine died in April 1417, and two months afterwards Jacoba lost her father. Acknowledged as sovereign in Holland and Zeeland, Jacoba was opposed by her uncle John of Bavaria, bishop of Liége. She had the support of the Hook faction in Holland. Meanwhile she had been married in 1418 by her uncle, John the Fearless, duke of Burgundy, to her cousin John IV., duke of Brabant. By the mediation of John the Fearless, a treaty of partition was concluded in 1419 between Jacoba and John of Bavaria; but it was merely a truce, and the contest between uncle and niece soon began again and continued with varying success. In 1420 Jacoba fled to England; and there, declaring that her marriage with John of Brabant was illegal, she contracted a marriage with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in 1422. Two years later Jacoba, with Humphrey, invaded Holland, where she was now opposed by her former husband, John of Brabant, John of Bavaria having died of poison. In 1425 Humphrey deserted his wife, who found herself obliged to seek refuge with her cousin, Philip V., duke of Burgundy, to whom she had to submit, and she was imprisoned in the castle of Ghent. John of Brabant now mortgaged the two counties of Holland and Zeeland to Philip, who assumed their protectorate. Jacoba, however, escaped from prison in disguise, and for three years struggled gallantly to maintain herself in Holland against the united efforts of Philip of Burgundy and John of Brabant, and met at first with success. The death of the weak John of Brabant (April 1427) freed the countess from her quondam husband; but nevertheless the pope pronounced Jacoba’s marriage with Humphrey illegal, and Philip, putting out his full strength, broke down all opposition. By a treaty, made in July 1428, Jacoba was left nominally countess, but Philip was to administer the government of Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut, and was declared heir in case Jacoba should die without children. Two years later Philip mortgaged Holland and Zeeland to the Borselen family, of which Francis, lord of Borselen, was the head. Jacoba now made her last effort. In 1432 she secretly married Francis of Borselen, and endeavoured to foment a rising in Holland against the Burgundian rule. Philip invaded the country, however, and threw Borselen into prison. Only on condition that Jacoba abdicated her three countships in his favour would he allow her liberty and recognize her marriage with Borselen. She submitted in April 1432, retained her title of duchess in Bavaria, and lived on her husband’s estates in retirement. She died on the 9th of October 1436, leaving no children.
Bibliography.—F. von Löher,Jakobäa von Bayern und ihre Zeit(2 vols., Nördlingen, 1862-1869); W. J. F. Nuyens,Jacoba van Beieren en de eerste helft der XV. eeuw(Haarlem, 1873); A. von Overstraten,Jacoba van Beieren(Amsterdam, 1790).
Bibliography.—F. von Löher,Jakobäa von Bayern und ihre Zeit(2 vols., Nördlingen, 1862-1869); W. J. F. Nuyens,Jacoba van Beieren en de eerste helft der XV. eeuw(Haarlem, 1873); A. von Overstraten,Jacoba van Beieren(Amsterdam, 1790).
(G. E.)
JACOBABAD,a town of British India, the administrative headquarters of the Upper Sind frontier district in Bombay; with a station on the Quetta branch of the North-Western railway, 37 m. from the junction at Ruk, on the main line. Pop. (1901), 10,787. It is famous as having consistently the highest temperature in India. During the month of June the thermometer ranges between 120° and 127° F. The town was founded on the site of the village of Khangarh in 1847 by General John Jacob, for many years commandant of the Sind Horse, who died here in 1858. It has cantonments for a cavalry regiment, with accommodation for caravans from Central Asia. It is watered by two canals. An annual horse show is held in January.
JACOBEAN STYLE,the name given to the second phase of the early Renaissance architecture in England, following the Elizabethan style. Although the term is generally employed of the style which prevailed in England during the first quarter of the 17th century, its peculiar decadent detail will be found nearly twenty years earlier at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire, and in Oxford and Cambridge examples exist up to 1660, notwithstanding the introduction of the purer Italian style by Inigo Jones in 1619 at Whitehall. Already during Queen Elizabeth’s reign reproductions of the classic orders had found their way into English architecture, based frequently upon John Shute’sThe First and Chief Grounds of Architecture, published in 1563, with two other editions in 1579 and 1584. In 1577, three years before the commencement of Wollaton Hall, a copybook of the orders was brought out in Antwerp by Jan Vredeman de Vries. Though nominally based on the description of the orders by Vitruvius, the author indulged freely not only in his rendering of them, but in suggestions of his own, showing how the orders might be employed in various buildings. Those suggestions were of a most decadent type, so that even the author deemed it advisable to publish a letter from a canon of the Church, stating that there was nothing in his architectural designs which was contrary to religion. It is to publications of this kind that Jacobean architecture owes the perversion of its forms and the introduction of strap work and pierced crestings, which appear for the first time at Wollaton (1580); at Bramshill, Hampshire (1607-1612), and in Holland House, Kensington (1624), it receives its fullest development.
(R. P. S.)
JACOBI, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH(1743-1819), German philosopher, was born at Düsseldorf on the 25th of January 1743. The second son of a wealthy sugar merchant near Düsseldorf, he was educated for a commercial career. Of a retiring, meditative disposition, Jacobi associated himself at Geneva mainly with the literary and scientific circle of which the most prominent member was Lesage. He studied closely the works of Charles Bonnet, and the political ideas of Rousseau and Voltaire. In 1763 he was called back to Düsseldorf, and in the following year he married and took over the management of his father’s business. After a short period he gave up his commercial career, and in 1770 became a member of the council for the duchies of Jülich and Berg, in which capacity he distinguished himself by his ability in financial affairs, and his zeal in social reform. Jacobi kept up his interest in literary and philosophic matters by an extensive correspondence, and his mansion at Pempelfort, near Düsseldorf, was the centre of a distinguished literary circle. With C. M. Wieland he helped to found a new literary journal.Der Teutsche Mercur, in which some of his earliest writings, mainly on practical or economic subjects, were published. Here too appeared in part the first of his philosophic works,Edward Allwills Briefsammlung(1776), a combination of romance and speculation. This was followed in 1779 byWoldemar, a philosophic novel, of very imperfect structure, but full of genialideas, and giving the most complete picture of Jacobi’s method of philosophizing. In 1779 he visited Munich as member of the privy council, but after a short stay there differences with his colleagues and with the authorities of Bavaria drove him back to Pempelfort. A few unimportant tracts on questions of theoretical politics were followed in 1785 by the work which first brought Jacobi into prominence as a philosopher. A conversation which he had held with Lessing in 1780, in which Lessing avowed that he knew no philosophy, in the true sense of that word, save Spinozism, led him to a protracted study of Spinoza’s works. TheBriefe über die Lehre Spinozas(1785; 2nd ed., much enlarged and with importantAppendices, 1789) expressed sharply and clearly Jacobi’s strenuous objection to a dogmatic system in philosophy, and drew upon him the vigorous enmity of the Berlin clique, led by Moses Mendelssohn. Jacobi was ridiculed as endeavouring to re-introduce into philosophy the antiquated notion of unreasoning belief, was denounced as an enemy of reason, as a pietist, and as in all probability a Jesuit in disguise, and was especially attacked for his use of the ambiguous term “belief.” Jacobi’s next important work,David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus(1787), was an attempt to show not only that the termGlaubehad been used by the most eminent writers to denote what he had employed it for in theLetters on Spinoza, but that the nature of the cognition of facts as opposed to the construction of inferences could not be otherwise expressed. In this writing, and especially in theAppendix, Jacobi came into contact with the critical philosophy, and subjected the Kantian view of knowledge to searching examination.
The outbreak of the war with the French republic induced Jacobi in 1793 to leave his home near Düsseldorf, and for nearly ten years he resided in Holstein. While there he became intimately acquainted with Reinhold (in whoseBeiträge, pt. iii., 1801, his important workÜber das Unternehmen des Kriticismus, die Vernunft zu Verstande zu bringenwas first published), and with Matthias Claudius, the editor of theWandsbecker Bote. During the same period the excitement caused by the accusation of atheism brought against Fichte at Jena led to the publication of Jacobi’sLetter to Fichte(1799), in which he made more precise the relation of his own philosophic principles to theology. Soon after his return to Germany, Jacobi received a call to Munich in connexion with the new academy of sciences just founded there. The loss of a considerable portion of his fortune induced him to accept this offer; he settled in Munich in 1804, and in 1807 became president of the academy. In 1811 appeared his last philosophic work, directed against Schelling specially (Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung), the first part of which, a review of theWandsbecker Bote, had been written in 1798. A bitter reply from Schelling was left without answer by Jacobi, but gave rise to an animated controversy in which Fries and Baader took prominent part. In 1812 Jacobi retired from the office of president, and began to prepare a collected edition of his works. He died before this was completed, on the 10th of March 1819. The edition of his writings was continued by his friend F. Köppen, and was completed in 1825. The works fill six volumes, of which the fourth is in three parts. To the second is prefixed an introduction by Jacobi, which is at the same time an introduction to his philosophy. The fourth volume has also an important preface.
The philosophy of Jacobi is essentially unsystematic. A certain fundamental view which underlies all his thinking is brought to bear in succession upon those systematic doctrines which appear to stand most sharply in contradiction to it, and any positive philosophic results are given only occasionally. The leading idea of the whole is that of the complete separation between understanding and apprehension of real fact. For Jacobi understanding, or the logical faculty, is purely formal or elaborative, and its results never transcend the given material supplied to it. From the basis of immediate experience or perception thought proceeds by comparison and abstraction, establishing connexions among facts, but remaining in its nature mediate and finite. The principle of reason and consequent, the necessity of thinking each given fact of perception as conditioned, impels understanding towards an endless series of identical propositions, the records of successive comparisons and abstractions. The province of the understanding is therefore strictly the region of the conditioned; to it the world must present itself as a mechanism. If, then, there is objective truth at all, the existence of real facts must be made known to us otherwise than through the logical faculty of thought; and, as the regress from conclusion to premises must depend upon something not itself capable of logical grounding, mediate thought implies the consciousness of immediate truth. Philosophy therefore must resign the hopeless ideal of a systematic (i.e.intelligible) explanation of things, and must content itself with the examination of the facts of consciousness. It is a mere prejudice of philosophic thinkers, a prejudice which has descended from Aristotle, that mediate or demonstrated cognition is superior in cogency and value to the immediate perception of truths or facts.As Jacobi starts with the doctrine that thought is partial and limited, applicable only to connect facts, but incapable of explaining their existence, it is evident that for him any demonstrative system of metaphysic which should attempt to subject all existence to the principle of logical ground must be repulsive. Now in modern philosophy the first and greatest demonstrative system of metaphysic is that of Spinoza, and it lay in the nature of things that upon Spinoza’s system Jacobi should first direct his criticism. A summary of the results of his examination is thus presented (Werke, i. 216-223): (1) Spinozism is atheism; (2) the Kabbalistic philosophy, in so far as it is philosophy, is nothing but undeveloped or confused Spinozism; (3) the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff is not less fatalistic than that of Spinoza, and carries a resolute thinker to the very principles of Spinoza; (4) every demonstrative method ends in fatalism; (5) we can demonstrate only similarities (agreements, truths conditionally necessary), proceeding always in identical propositions; every proof presupposes something already proved, the principle of which is immediately given (Offenbarung, revelation, is the term here employed by Jacobi, as by many later writers,e.g.Lotze, to denote the peculiar character of an immediate, unproved truth); (6) the keystone (Element) of all human knowledge and activity is belief (Glaube). Of these propositions only the first and fourth require further notice. Jacobi, accepting the law of reason and consequent as the fundamental rule of demonstrative reasoning, and as the rule explicitly followed by Spinoza, points out that, if we proceed by applying this principle so as to recede from particular and qualified facts to the more general and abstract conditions, we land ourselves, not in the notion of an active, intelligent creator of the system of things, but in the notion of an all-comprehensive, indeterminateNature, devoid of will or intelligence. Our unconditioned is either a pureabstraction, or else the impossible notion of a completed system of conditions. In either case the result is atheism, and this result is necessary if the demonstrative method, the method of understanding, is regarded as the only possible means of knowledge. Moreover, the same method inevitably lands in fatalism. For, if the action of the human will is to be made intelligible to understanding, it must be thought as a conditioned phenomenon, having its sufficient ground in preceding circumstances, and, in ultimate abstraction, as the outflow from nature which is the sum of conditions. But this is the fatalist conception, and any philosophy which accepts the law of reason and consequent as the essence of understanding is fatalistic. Thus for the scientific understanding there can be no God and no liberty. It is impossible that there should be a God, for if so he would of necessity be finite. But a finite God, a God that isknown, is no God. It is impossible that there should be liberty, for if so the mechanical order of phenomena, by means of which they are comprehensible, would be disturbed, and we should have an unintelligible world, coupled with the requirement that it shall be understood. Cognition, then, in the strict sense, occupies the middle place between sense perception, which is belief in matters of sense, and reason, which is belief in supersensuous fact.The best introduction to Jacobi’s philosophy is the preface to the second volume of theWorks, and Appendix 7 to theLetters on Spinoza’s Theory. See also J. Kuhn,Jacobi und die Philosophie seiner Zeit(1834); F. Deycks,F. H. Jacobi im Verhältnis zu seinen Zeitgenossen(1848); H. Düntzer,Freundesbilder aus Goethes Leben(1853); E. Zirngiebl,F. H. Jacobis Leben, Dichten, und Denken, 1867; F. Harms,Über die Lehre von F. H. Jacobi(1876). Jacobi’sAuserlesener Briefwechselhas been edited by F. Roth in 2 vols. (1825-1827).
The philosophy of Jacobi is essentially unsystematic. A certain fundamental view which underlies all his thinking is brought to bear in succession upon those systematic doctrines which appear to stand most sharply in contradiction to it, and any positive philosophic results are given only occasionally. The leading idea of the whole is that of the complete separation between understanding and apprehension of real fact. For Jacobi understanding, or the logical faculty, is purely formal or elaborative, and its results never transcend the given material supplied to it. From the basis of immediate experience or perception thought proceeds by comparison and abstraction, establishing connexions among facts, but remaining in its nature mediate and finite. The principle of reason and consequent, the necessity of thinking each given fact of perception as conditioned, impels understanding towards an endless series of identical propositions, the records of successive comparisons and abstractions. The province of the understanding is therefore strictly the region of the conditioned; to it the world must present itself as a mechanism. If, then, there is objective truth at all, the existence of real facts must be made known to us otherwise than through the logical faculty of thought; and, as the regress from conclusion to premises must depend upon something not itself capable of logical grounding, mediate thought implies the consciousness of immediate truth. Philosophy therefore must resign the hopeless ideal of a systematic (i.e.intelligible) explanation of things, and must content itself with the examination of the facts of consciousness. It is a mere prejudice of philosophic thinkers, a prejudice which has descended from Aristotle, that mediate or demonstrated cognition is superior in cogency and value to the immediate perception of truths or facts.
As Jacobi starts with the doctrine that thought is partial and limited, applicable only to connect facts, but incapable of explaining their existence, it is evident that for him any demonstrative system of metaphysic which should attempt to subject all existence to the principle of logical ground must be repulsive. Now in modern philosophy the first and greatest demonstrative system of metaphysic is that of Spinoza, and it lay in the nature of things that upon Spinoza’s system Jacobi should first direct his criticism. A summary of the results of his examination is thus presented (Werke, i. 216-223): (1) Spinozism is atheism; (2) the Kabbalistic philosophy, in so far as it is philosophy, is nothing but undeveloped or confused Spinozism; (3) the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff is not less fatalistic than that of Spinoza, and carries a resolute thinker to the very principles of Spinoza; (4) every demonstrative method ends in fatalism; (5) we can demonstrate only similarities (agreements, truths conditionally necessary), proceeding always in identical propositions; every proof presupposes something already proved, the principle of which is immediately given (Offenbarung, revelation, is the term here employed by Jacobi, as by many later writers,e.g.Lotze, to denote the peculiar character of an immediate, unproved truth); (6) the keystone (Element) of all human knowledge and activity is belief (Glaube). Of these propositions only the first and fourth require further notice. Jacobi, accepting the law of reason and consequent as the fundamental rule of demonstrative reasoning, and as the rule explicitly followed by Spinoza, points out that, if we proceed by applying this principle so as to recede from particular and qualified facts to the more general and abstract conditions, we land ourselves, not in the notion of an active, intelligent creator of the system of things, but in the notion of an all-comprehensive, indeterminateNature, devoid of will or intelligence. Our unconditioned is either a pureabstraction, or else the impossible notion of a completed system of conditions. In either case the result is atheism, and this result is necessary if the demonstrative method, the method of understanding, is regarded as the only possible means of knowledge. Moreover, the same method inevitably lands in fatalism. For, if the action of the human will is to be made intelligible to understanding, it must be thought as a conditioned phenomenon, having its sufficient ground in preceding circumstances, and, in ultimate abstraction, as the outflow from nature which is the sum of conditions. But this is the fatalist conception, and any philosophy which accepts the law of reason and consequent as the essence of understanding is fatalistic. Thus for the scientific understanding there can be no God and no liberty. It is impossible that there should be a God, for if so he would of necessity be finite. But a finite God, a God that isknown, is no God. It is impossible that there should be liberty, for if so the mechanical order of phenomena, by means of which they are comprehensible, would be disturbed, and we should have an unintelligible world, coupled with the requirement that it shall be understood. Cognition, then, in the strict sense, occupies the middle place between sense perception, which is belief in matters of sense, and reason, which is belief in supersensuous fact.
The best introduction to Jacobi’s philosophy is the preface to the second volume of theWorks, and Appendix 7 to theLetters on Spinoza’s Theory. See also J. Kuhn,Jacobi und die Philosophie seiner Zeit(1834); F. Deycks,F. H. Jacobi im Verhältnis zu seinen Zeitgenossen(1848); H. Düntzer,Freundesbilder aus Goethes Leben(1853); E. Zirngiebl,F. H. Jacobis Leben, Dichten, und Denken, 1867; F. Harms,Über die Lehre von F. H. Jacobi(1876). Jacobi’sAuserlesener Briefwechselhas been edited by F. Roth in 2 vols. (1825-1827).
JACOBI, JOHANN GEORG(1740-1814), German poet, elder brother of the philosopher, F. H. Jacobi (1743-1819), was born at Düsseldorf on the 2nd of September 1740. He studied theology at Göttingen and jurisprudence at Helmstedt, and was appointed, in 1766, professor of philosophy in Halle. In this year he made the acquaintance of J. W. L. (“Vater”) Gleim, who, attracted by the young poet’sPoetische Versuche(1764), became his warm friend, and a lively literary correspondence ensued between Gleim in Halberstadt and Jacobi in Halle. In order to have Jacobi near him, Gleim succeeded in procuring for him a prebendal stall at the cathedral of Halberstadt in 1769, and here Jacobi issued a number of anacreontic lyrics and sonnets. Hetired, however, of the lighter muse, and in 1774, to Gleim’s grief, left Halberstadt, and for two years (1774-1776) edited at Düsseldorf theIris, a quarterly for women readers. Meanwhile, he wrote many charming lyrics, distinguished by exquisite taste and true poetical feeling. In 1784 he became professor of literature at the university of Freiburg im Breisgau, a post which he held until his death there on the 4th of January 1814. In addition to the earlierIris, to which Goethe, his brother F. H. Jacobi, Gleim and other poets contributed, he published, from 1803-1813, another periodical, also calledIris, in which Klopstock, Herder, Jean Paul, Voss and the brothers Stollberg also collaborated.
Jacobi’sSämmtliche Werkewere published in 1774 (Halberstadt, 3 vols.). Other editions appeared at Zürich in 1807-1813 and 1825. SeeUngedruckte Briefe von und an Johann Georg Jacobi(Strassburg, 1874); biographical notice by Daniel Jacoby inAllg. Deutsche Biographie; Longo,Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi(Vienna, 1898); andLeben J. G. Jacobis, von einem seiner Freunde(1822).
Jacobi’sSämmtliche Werkewere published in 1774 (Halberstadt, 3 vols.). Other editions appeared at Zürich in 1807-1813 and 1825. SeeUngedruckte Briefe von und an Johann Georg Jacobi(Strassburg, 1874); biographical notice by Daniel Jacoby inAllg. Deutsche Biographie; Longo,Laurence Sterne und Johann Georg Jacobi(Vienna, 1898); andLeben J. G. Jacobis, von einem seiner Freunde(1822).
JACOBI, KARL GUSTAV JACOB(1804-1851), German mathematician, was born at Potsdam, of Jewish parentage, on the 10th of December 1804. He studied at Berlin University, where he obtained the degree of doctor of philosophy in 1825, his thesis being an analytical discussion of the theory of fractions. In 1827 he became extraordinary and in 1829 ordinary professor of mathematics at Königsberg, and this chair he filled till 1842, when he visited Italy for a few months to recruit his health. On his return he removed to Berlin, where he lived as a royal pensioner till his death, which occurred on the 18th of February 1851.
His investigations in elliptic functions, the theory of which he established upon quite a new basis, and more particularly his development of the theta-function, as given in his great treatiseFundamenta nova theoriae functionum ellipticarum(Königsberg, 1829), and in later papers inCrelle’s Journal, constitute his grandest analytical discoveries. Second in importance only to these are his researches in differential equations, notably the theory of the last multiplier, which is fully treated in hisVorlesungen über Dynamik, edited by R. F. A. Clebsch (Berlin, 1866). It was in analytical development that Jacobi’s peculiar power mainly lay, and he made many important contributions of this kind to other departments of mathematics, as a glance at the long list of papers that were published by him inCrelle’s Journaland elsewhere from 1826 onwards will sufficiently indicate. He was one of the early founders of the theory of determinants; in particular, he invented the functional determinant formed of the n² differential coefficients ofngiven functions of n independent variables, which now bears his name (Jacobian), and which has played an important part in many analytical investigations (seeAlgebraic Forms). Valuable also are his papers on Abelian transcendents, and his investigations in the theory of numbers, in which latter department he mainly supplements the labours of K. F. Gauss. The planetary theory and other particular dynamical problems likewise occupied his attention from time to time. He left a vast store of manuscript, portions of which have been published at intervals inCrelle’s Journal. His other works includeCommentatio de transformatione integralis duplicis indefiniti in formam simpliciorem(1832),Canon arithmeticus(1839), andOpuscula mathematica(1846-1857). HisGesammelte Werke(1881-1891) were published by the Berlin Academy.See Lejeune-Dirichlet, “Gedächtnisrede auf Jacobi” in theAbhandlungen der Berliner Akademie(1852).
His investigations in elliptic functions, the theory of which he established upon quite a new basis, and more particularly his development of the theta-function, as given in his great treatiseFundamenta nova theoriae functionum ellipticarum(Königsberg, 1829), and in later papers inCrelle’s Journal, constitute his grandest analytical discoveries. Second in importance only to these are his researches in differential equations, notably the theory of the last multiplier, which is fully treated in hisVorlesungen über Dynamik, edited by R. F. A. Clebsch (Berlin, 1866). It was in analytical development that Jacobi’s peculiar power mainly lay, and he made many important contributions of this kind to other departments of mathematics, as a glance at the long list of papers that were published by him inCrelle’s Journaland elsewhere from 1826 onwards will sufficiently indicate. He was one of the early founders of the theory of determinants; in particular, he invented the functional determinant formed of the n² differential coefficients ofngiven functions of n independent variables, which now bears his name (Jacobian), and which has played an important part in many analytical investigations (seeAlgebraic Forms). Valuable also are his papers on Abelian transcendents, and his investigations in the theory of numbers, in which latter department he mainly supplements the labours of K. F. Gauss. The planetary theory and other particular dynamical problems likewise occupied his attention from time to time. He left a vast store of manuscript, portions of which have been published at intervals inCrelle’s Journal. His other works includeCommentatio de transformatione integralis duplicis indefiniti in formam simpliciorem(1832),Canon arithmeticus(1839), andOpuscula mathematica(1846-1857). HisGesammelte Werke(1881-1891) were published by the Berlin Academy.
See Lejeune-Dirichlet, “Gedächtnisrede auf Jacobi” in theAbhandlungen der Berliner Akademie(1852).
JACOBINS, THE,the most famous of the political clubs of the French Revolution. It had its origin in the Club Breton, which was established at Versailles shortly after the opening of the States General in 1789. It was at first composed exclusively of deputies from Brittany, but was soon joined by others from various parts of France, and counted among its early members Mirabeau, Sieyès, Barnave, Pétion, the Abbé Grégoire, Charles and Alexandre Lameth, Robespierre, the duc d’Aiguillon, and La Revellière-Lépeaux. At this time its meetings were secret and little is known of what took place at them. After the émeute of the 5th and 6th of October the club, still entirely composed of deputies, followed the National Assembly to Paris, where it rented the refectory of the monastery of the Jacobins in the Rue St Honoré, near the seat of the Assembly. The name “Jacobins,” given in France to the Dominicans, because their first house in Paris was in the Rue St Jacques, was first applied to the club in ridicule by its enemies. The title assumed by the club itself, after the promulgation of the constitution of 1791, wasSociété des amis de la constitution séants aux Jacobins à Paris, which was changed on the 21st of September 1792, after the fall of the monarchy, toSociété des Jacobins, amis de la liberté et de l’égalité. It occupied successively the refectory, the library, and the chapel of the monastery.
Once transferred to Paris, the club underwent rapid modifications. The first step was its expansion by the admission as members or associates of others besides deputies; Arthur Young was so admitted on the 18th of January 1790. On the 8th of February the society was formally constituted on this broader basis by the adoption of the rules drawn up by Barnave, which were issued with the signature of the duc d’Aiguillon, the president. The objects of the club were defined as (1) to discuss in advance questions to be decided by the National Assembly; (2) to work for the establishment and strengthening of the constitution in accordance with the spirit of the preamble (i.e.of respect for legally constituted authority and the rights of man); (3) to correspond with other societies of the same kind which should be formed in the realm. At the same time the rules of order and forms of election were settled, and the constitution of the club determined. There were to be a president, elected every month, four secretaries, a treasurer, and committees elected to superintend elections and presentations, the correspondence, and the administration of the club. Any member who by word or action showed that his principles were contrary to the constitution and the rights of man was to be expelled, a rule which later on facilitated the “purification” of the society by the expulsion of its more moderate elements. By the 7th article the club decided to admit as associates similar societies in other parts of France and to maintain with them a regular correspondence.
This last provision was of far-reaching importance. By the 10th of August 1790 there were already one hundred and fifty-two affiliated clubs; the attempts at counter-revolution led to a great increase of their number in the spring of 1791, and by the close of the year the Jacobins had a network of branches all over France. It was this widespread yet highly centralized organization that gave to the Jacobin Club its formidable power.
At the outset the Jacobin Club was not distinguished by extreme political views. The somewhat high subscription confined its membership to men of substance, and to the last it was—so far as the central society in Paris was concerned—composed almost entirely of professional men, such as Robespierre, or well-to-dobourgeois, like Santerre. From the first, however, other elements were present. Besides Louis Philippe, duc de Chartres (afterwards king of the French), liberal aristocrats of the type of the duc d’Aiguillon, the prince de Broglie, or the vicomte de Noailles, and thebourgeoiswho formed the mass of the members, the club contained such figures as “Père” Michel Gérard, a peasant proprietor from Tuel-en-Montgermont, in Brittany, whose rough common sense was admired as the oracle of popular wisdom, and whose countryman’s waistcoat and plaited hair were later on to become the model for the Jacobin fashion.1The provincial branches were from the first far more democratic, though in these too the leadership was usually in the hands of members of the educated or propertied classes. Up to the very eve of the republic, the club ostensibly supported the monarchy; it took no part in the petition of the 17th of July 1790 for the king’s dethronement; nor had it any official share even in the insurrections of the 20th of June and the 10th of August 1792; it only formally recognized the republic on the 21st of September. But the character and extent of the club’s influence cannot be gauged by its official acts alone, and long before it emerged as the principal focus of the Terror, its character had been profoundly changed by the secession of its more moderate elements, some to found the Club of 1789, some in 1791—among them Barnave, the Lameths, Duport and Bailly—tofound the club of the Feuillants scoffed at by their former friends as theclub monarchique. The main cause of this change was the admission of the public to the sittings of the club, which began on the 14th of October 1791. The result is described in a report of the Department of Paris on “the state of the empire,” presented on the 12th of June 1792, at the request of Roland, the minister of the interior, and signed by the duc de La Rochefoucauld, which ascribes to the Jacobins all the woes of the state. “There exists,” it runs, “in the midst of the capital committed to our care a public pulpit of defamation, where citizens of every age and both sexes are admitted day by day to listen to a criminal propaganda.... This establishment, situated in the former house of the Jacobins, calls itself a society; but it has less the aspect of a private society than that of a public spectacle: vast tribunes are thrown open for the audience; all the sittings are advertised to the public for fixed days and hours, and the speeches made are printed in a special journal and lavishly distributed.”2In this society—the report continues—murder is counselled or applauded, all authorities are calumniated and all the organs of the law bespattered with abuse; as to its power, it exercises “by its influence, its affiliations and its correspondence a veritable ministerial authority, without title and without responsibility, while leaving to the legal and responsible authorities only the shadow of power” (Schmidt,Tableauxi. 78, &c.).
The constituency to which the club was henceforth responsible, and from which it derived its power, was in fact thepeuple bêteof Paris; thesans-culottes—decayed lackeys, cosmopolitan ne’er-do-wells, and starving workpeople—who crowded its tribunes. To this audience, and not primarily to the members of the club, the speeches of the orators were addressed and by its verdict they were judged. In the earlier stages of the Revolution the mob had been satisfied with the fine platitudes of thephilosophesand the vague promise of a political millennium; but as the chaos in the body politic grew, and with it the appalling material misery, it began to clamour for the blood of the “traitors” in office by whose corrupt machinations the millennium was delayed, and only those orators were listened to who pandered to its suspicions. Hence the elimination of the moderate elements from the club; hence the ascendancy of Marat, and finally of Robespierre, the secret of whose power was that they really shared the suspicions of the populace, to which they gave a voice and which they did not shrink from translating into action. After the fall of the monarchy Robespierre was in effect the Jacobin Club; for to the tribunes he was the oracle of political wisdom, and by his standard all others were judged.3With his fall the Jacobins too came to an end.
Not the least singular thing about the Jacobins is the very slender material basis on which their overwhelming power rested. France groaned under their tyranny, which was compared to that of the Inquisition, with its system of espionage and denunciations which no one was too illustrious or too humble to escape. Yet it was reckoned by competent observers that, at the height of the Terror, the Jacobins could not command a force of more than 3000 men in Paris. But the secret of their strength was that, in the midst of the general disorganization, they alone were organized. The police agent Dutard, in a report to the minister Garat (April 30, 1793), describing an episode in the Palais Égalité (Royal), adds: “Why did a dozen Jacobins strike terror into two or three hundred aristocrats? It is that the former have a rallying-point and that the latter have none.” When thejeunesse doréedid at last organize themselves, they had little difficulty in flogging the Jacobins out of the cafés into comparative silence. Long before this the Girondin government had been urged to meet organization by organization, force by force; and it is clear from the daily reports of the police agents that even a moderate display of energy would have saved the National Convention from the humiliation of being dominated by a club, and the French Revolution from the blot of the Terror. But though the Girondins were fully conscious of the evil, they were too timid, or too convinced of the ultimate triumph of their own persuasive eloquence, to act. In the session of the 30th of April 1793 a proposal was made to move the Convention to Versailles out of reach of the Jacobins, and Buzot declared that it was “impossible to remain in Paris” so long as “this abominable haunt” should exist; but the motion was not carried, and the Girondins remained to become the victims of the Jacobins.
Meanwhile other political clubs could only survive so long as they were content to be the shadows of the powerful organization of the Rue St Honoré. The Feuillants had been suppressed on the 18th of August 1792. The turn of the Cordeliers came so soon as its leaders showed signs of revolting against Jacobin supremacy, and no more startling proof of this ascendancy could be found than the ease with which Hébert and his fellows were condemned and the readiness with which the Cordeliers, after a feeble attempt at protest, acquiesced in the verdict. It is idle to speculate on what might have happened had this ascendancy been overthrown by the action of a strong government. No strong government existed, nor, in the actual conditions of the country, could exist on the lines laid down by the constitution. France was menaced by civil war within, and by a coalition of hostile powers without; the discipline of the Terror was perhaps necessary if she was to be welded into a united force capable of resisting this double peril; and the revolutionary leaders saw in the Jacobin organization the only instrument by which this discipline could be made effective. This is the apology usually put forward for the Jacobins by republican writers of later times; they were, it is said (and of some of them it is certainly true), no mere doctrinaires and visionary sectaries, but practical and far-seeing politicians, who realized that “desperate ills need desperate remedies,” and, by having the courage of their convictions, saved the gains of the Revolution for France.
The Jacobin Club was closed after the fall of Robespierre on the 9th of Thermidor of the year III., and some of its members were executed. An attempt was made to re-open the club, which was joined by many of the enemies of the Thermidorians, but on the 21st of Brumaire, year III. (Nov. 11, 1794), it was definitively closed. Its members and their sympathizers were scattered among the cafés, where a ruthless war of sticks and chairs was waged against them by the young “aristocrats” known as thejeunesse dorée. Nevertheless the “Jacobins” survived, in a somewhat subterranean fashion, emerging again in the club of the Panthéon, founded on the 25th of November 1795, and suppressed in the following February (seeBabeuf;François Noel). The last attempt to reorganize them was the foundation of theRéunion d’amis de l’égalité et de la liberté, in July 1799, which had its headquarters in theSalle du Manègeof the Tuileries, and was thus known as theClub du Manège. It was patronized by Barras, and some two hundred and fifty members of the two councils of the legislature were enrolled as members, including many notable ex-Jacobins. It published a newspaper called theJournal des Libres, proclaimed the apotheosis of Robespierre and Babeuf, and attacked the Directory as aroyauté pentarchique. But public opinion was now preponderatingly moderate or royalist, and the club was violently attacked in the press and in the streets, the suspicions of the government were aroused; it had to change its meeting-place from the Tuileries to the church of the Jacobins (Temple of Peace) in the Rue du Bac, and in August it was suppressed, after barely a month’s existence. Its members revenged themselves on the Directory by supporting Napoleon Bonaparte.
Long before the suppression of the Jacobin Club the name of “Jacobins” had been popularly applied to all promulgators of extreme revolutionary opinions. In this sense the word passed beyond the borders of France and long survived the Revolution. Canning’s paper,The Anti-Jacobin, directed against the English Radicals, consecrated its use in England; and in thecorrespondence of Metternich and other leaders of the repressive policy which followed the second fall of Napoleon, “Jacobin” is the term commonly applied to anyone with Liberal tendencies, even to so august a personage as the emperor Alexander I. of Russia.
The most important source of information for the history of the Jacobins is F. A. Aulard’sLa société des Jacobins, Recueil de documents(6 vols., Paris, 1889, &c.), where a critical bibliography will be found. This collection does not contain all the printed sources—notably the official Journal of the Club is omitted—but these sources, when not included, are indicated. The documents published are furnished with valuable explanatory notes. See also W. A. Schmidt,Tableaux de la révolution française(3 vols., Leipzig, 1867-1870), notably for the reports of the secret police, which throw much light on the actual working of the Jacobin propaganda.
The most important source of information for the history of the Jacobins is F. A. Aulard’sLa société des Jacobins, Recueil de documents(6 vols., Paris, 1889, &c.), where a critical bibliography will be found. This collection does not contain all the printed sources—notably the official Journal of the Club is omitted—but these sources, when not included, are indicated. The documents published are furnished with valuable explanatory notes. See also W. A. Schmidt,Tableaux de la révolution française(3 vols., Leipzig, 1867-1870), notably for the reports of the secret police, which throw much light on the actual working of the Jacobin propaganda.
(W. A. P.)
1“When I first sat among you I heard so many beautiful speeches that I might have believed myself in heaven, had there not been so many lawyers present.” Instead of practical questions “we have become involved in agalimatiasof Rights of Man of which I understand mighty little but that it is worth nothing.”Motion du Père Gérardin the Jacobins of the 27th of April 1790 (Aulard i. 63).2i.e.Journal des débats et de la correspondance de la Société, &c. For the various newspapers published under the auspices of the Jacobins see Aulard i. p. cx., &c.3In the published reports only the speeches of members are given, not the interruptions from the tribunes. But see the report (May 18, 1793) of Dutard to Garat on a meeting of the Jacobins (Schmidt,Tableauxii. 242).
1“When I first sat among you I heard so many beautiful speeches that I might have believed myself in heaven, had there not been so many lawyers present.” Instead of practical questions “we have become involved in agalimatiasof Rights of Man of which I understand mighty little but that it is worth nothing.”Motion du Père Gérardin the Jacobins of the 27th of April 1790 (Aulard i. 63).
2i.e.Journal des débats et de la correspondance de la Société, &c. For the various newspapers published under the auspices of the Jacobins see Aulard i. p. cx., &c.
3In the published reports only the speeches of members are given, not the interruptions from the tribunes. But see the report (May 18, 1793) of Dutard to Garat on a meeting of the Jacobins (Schmidt,Tableauxii. 242).