  As literary texts, the two pieces belong to the popular Enlightenment genre of Erziehungsroman, ‘education-novel’. In both cases the education at issue, as one would expect from the genre, is that of a Herzensmensch. From what we learn about Allwill, since early age, out of sheer natural impetuosity, he was given to some most extraordinary behaviour. Allwill (whose name in German, as in English, means just that, ‘all will’) did whatever he did out of sheer impulse — his only norm of action, the action itself. And later, as a grown-up man, now that he has grown older, he displays this character trait in the arena of speculative dispute as well. For the impetuous young man has also become a skilled dialectician, as we learn from a scene in which we see him deliver a long disquisition on the nature of knowledge in the course of a social gathering (Jacobi, 1792: 143ff).