  True rationality is social rationality. This is Jacobi’s lesson in Allwill, and it is repeated in the Woldemar — though the central character there, Woldemar, while exhibiting the same propensity to abstract feeling and abstract thought as Allwill, is treated by Jacobi with much warmth. The character might well have been intended by him as a self-portrait. The novel itself, in its final form, was put together from two pieces originally published independently (Jacobi, 1779 (3) (4)). The synthesis never quite worked. Woldemar, unrealistic man of feelings that he is, has construed his whole world around the friendship he has developed with one of the women in the circle of friends he frequents. He has invested his whole existence in that friendship.