  Yet there was a serious problem in the Spinoza Letters. Jacobi never quite gave to understand what he, as contrasted with Spinoza, meant by ‘intuition’. He says that philosophy must be ‘historical’ — presumably, that it must take its starting point from the records of human actions and human events; that it must never abandon experience, or common sense. These, though vague and hardly the basis for a well defined position, were in themselves perfectly acceptable claims. But Jacobi then obscured them with his pious perorations at the end — by citing, among others, the theologian Jerusalem, who thought that the task of philosophy is simply to elucidate the content of revealed faith, and Lavater, who believed in the ever present witness of miracles. He could easily give the impression, as he in fact did, that, by attacking philosophy and the philosophers, he was advocating a return to the blind acceptance of Biblical revelation; that, by ‘intuition’, he meant religiously inspired ‘faith’. Lessing had suspected that much at the end of his conversation with Jacobi, according to the latter’s own report.