And to Kant also belongs the credit of having established the reality and validity of _inner_ experience. The rock upon which his philosophy is built is no external fact or event--nothing in time or space--but the moral consciousness itself. And thus he restores, as the central interest of philosophy, the human individual, with all his experiences of need, of hope, and of insight. Personality is the principle of his philosophy. In this he is the true successor of the Reformation. CHAPTER VII THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT KANT AND AFTER.--With Kant the hey-day of rationalism terminated. He had put an end to the superficial psychology upon which it rested. For the rationalists, the life of the mind had consisted in _intellectual ideas_; but a more careful analysis indicated the presence of deeper-lying elements, which had hitherto been disregarded; there existed other important constituents besides the intellectual. Kant's criticism of "pure reason" did much to discredit the old view; and by founding his philosophy upon the non-intellectual "moral consciousness," he heightened the prestige of feeling as against reason (in the narrow and limited sense of that word). Thus Kant is not undeservedly called the father of a philosophy which succeeded him, and which was based upon the idea of the supremacy of feeling. But, at the same time, that title is more accurate as an estimate of another philosopher of rather different characteristics. ROUSSEAU.--Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a man of unique genius whose figure occupies a prominent position not only in the annals of philosophy, but in social, political, and literary history. Even more than Voltaire was he responsible for sowing seeds of thought which bore fruit in the events of the Revolution. And indeed, it is as the author of the notorious _Contrat Social_ that he is most widely known. ROUSSEAU'S "SENSIBILITY."--Rousseau was one of those philosophers whose character is the formative element which gives shape to their doctrines. His was a profoundly emotional temperament. He left behind him an invaluable document which lays bare all the psychological sources of his philosophy. The _Confessions_ reveal to us a man highly sensitive and morbidly introspective, the slave of unreasoning impulses and passions. In the eyes of some short-sighted persons, these first-hand revelations will obscure or cast doubt upon the capacity and genius of the man, for they do little to prejudice opinion in his favour. HE DEFIES THE ZEITGEIST.--Rousseau's profound originality lies in his having dared to dispute a dogma to which the prestige of an axiom then attached. He endeavoured to undermine the popular faith in scientific and philosophic culture. He went right back to Pascal, who, a century before, had raised the question as to the value of scientific knowledge for personal life, by proclaiming "The whole of philosophy is not worth an hour's study."