 Important to note is the new terminology that Jacobi was using in this last work, and had already begun to use in the previous essay on Kant. He was now operating on the assumption that there is a distinction between ‘reason’ and ‘understanding’ — where by ‘reason’ he meant the capacity for transcendent, unifying, principles; by ‘understanding’, the faculty of abstracting general representations from more particular ones (Jacobi, 1812–25: vol. 3, 395ff, 400, 434–35). The distinction was, of course, Kantian in origin.  The claim, moreover, that Kant had held ‘reason’ hostage to the abstractive requirements of the ‘understanding’ was one widely debated among his idealistic followers. Jacobi, however, was now using ‘reason’ to mean a faculty of intuitive knowledge of transcendent things. He was giving to it a positive noetic value. As used by him, therefore, the distinction between ‘reason’ and ‘understanding’ allowed him to draw what he thought was the crucial difference between himself and Kant (Jacobi, 1812–25: vol.  3, 369–72). Whereas Kant had tried to harmonize the two faculties negatively, simply by keeping each within its appointed limits, Jacobi had revealed their harmony positively, by bringing to light the knowledge that reason actually contributes to experience, thus providing the positive matrix within which the understanding can operate.