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THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

THE DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT

PUBLISHtD BY

JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW,
publishers to the elntbersit;).

MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK.
London, • • • Simpkin, Hamilton and Co.
Cambridge, • - J\Iacmiiian and Solves.
Edinburgh, • • Dougias and Foulis.

MDCCCXCV.

A CRITICAL ACCOUNT OF THE

PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

THE DOCTRIXE OF THOUGHT

HENRY JONES, M.A.

PROFESSOR OK MORAL PHILOSOPHY ,1N THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
AfTHOR OF "browning AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHER

GLASGOW

JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS

J3iiblishcrs to the clnitiErsitg

1895

IS DEDICATED

BY ONE OF HIS PUPILS

TO THE MEMORY OF

^ ©reat teacher
JOHN NICHOL

PREFACE

In this volume I attempt to give a critical account
of Lotze's exposition of the nature of thought.
That exposition forms, for Lotze, a part of a larger
undertaking. Before he could proceed to his main
endeavour, and give a metaphysical account of the
nature of Reality, it seemed to him necessary to clear
the ground of false pretensions set up for thought,
partly by the scientific men of his day but mainly
by Hegel and his followers. For these writers, as he
understood them, had identified thought with reality,
and converted the rich and living world of concrete
facts into a fixed system of abstract categories.
Lotze, therefore, subjects thought to a most search-
ing analysis, with a view of discovering what in
reality is its nature and what, if any, are the limits
of its powers.

He finds, in the first place, that thought is not
an ontological principle. It does not constitute
reality, but represents it — more or less inaccurately.
Thought mirrors the world of being, produces an
imafje or ideal reflection of it in man's conscious-

viii PREFACE

ness. That ideal representation of reality we call
truth ; but the world of truth, though it may-
correspond to the real universe, does not constitute
it or any part of it. Thought is thus simply a
function of man's intelligence.

In the second place, it is only one function
amongst several others. There is more in mind
than thought, and the processes of thinking do not
exhaust our intelligent activities. Besides thinking,
there are feeling and volition, elements of mind
neither less original nor less essential than thought.
Nor are the processes of sensation and perception
and imagination to be identified with thought
without inaccuracy and confusion. For these deal
with the individual and the concrete, while thought
is exclusively occupied with what is universal and
abstract. Thought conceives, judges, and reasons,
and besides this it does nothing further ; and the
conceptions, judgments, and reasonings which it
produces are only relations between the phenomena
of mind.

In the third place, these functions which are
allowed to remain for thought, it performs only
with the help of the other intelligent powers which
we have named, and upon which thought is entirely
dependent. Some of these powers, such as sen-
sation and perception, furnish thought with its
material or content ; and others, such as " faith," or
"the feeling which is appreciative of worth," provide
it with its ideal, its impulse, and its criterion, and

PREFACE ix

they give the only guarantee of the validity of its
conclusions. When thus provided with the material
on which it has to operate, and with the ideal which
it has to realize, thought can rearrange the given
data in accordance with general laws, grouping the
phenomena of experience in classes, and connecting
them in an order of sequence or simultaneity which
is necessary. But its function is wholly and ex-
clusively formal ; all that it does is to rearrange,
substituting a rational, or ideally necessary, for a
contingent connection between mental phenomena.

In the fourth place, the systematic world thus
created by thought from the data supplied to it, is
purely ideal. It is a world of ideas, and not a world
of things. There are no things called classes in the
outer world of reality; there are none which can
be called subjects, and none which can be called
predicates, and none which correspond to the
copula ; nor are reasonings which connect ideas to
be confused with causes which connect real objects.
The products of thought are not even similar to
anything which exists in the sphere of reality. Nor
are real things in any way responsible for them,
for they take no part in their creation. Things
do not conceive, nor enter into classes, nor range
themselves as subjects and predicates, premisses
and conclusions. These arrangements are mere
products of thought, and they constitute a world of
their own which is at no point in contact with
that real world which the}- in some way represent.

X PREFACE

In the last place, the results of thought would
not be recognized even as representing reality
were thought the only intelligent power w^hich man
can exercise. For the knowledge tJiat things are is
due to other mental functions ; furnished with the
facts, or intelligible data, thought may proceed to
show zvJiat they are, to reveal their meaning or ideal
significance. But the meaning of a thing is never
that which it is, but only that which it appears to
be when translated out of the sphere of reality into
that of ideality. And even that meaning which
thought extracts is no true or direct representation
of objects as they really are. For thought is not
immediate, but discursive and indirect. It never
reveals what an object is in and of itself, but it
shows whether it is like or unlike, equal or unequal
to, or otherwise related to other objects, which, in
turn, are just as little apprehended in themselves,
or as they are. The core of reality in the individual
thing entirely escapes the grasp of thought. An in-
tuitive or perceptive intelligence might give us that
inner core in things, and ri'-present that impervious
personality which constitutes the inner essence of
intelligent beings. But our intelligence is not in-
tuitive; it is discursive or reflective, condemned to
creep from one fact to another, instituting relations
between them, but absolutely incapable of seizing
the real being of any one of them. Thought is not,
therefore, constitutive even of intelligence as such.
It is rather an indirect and devious process, of

PREFACE xi

which man is obHi^ed to avail himself, in order to
make up for the absence of an adequate perceptive
intuition with which, for some unknowable reason,
man is not endowed. Thought is, therefore, a
symbol of man's mental incompetence, as well as
his only means of acquiring such knowledge as is
possible for him.

Now, if this view of thought be true, conse-
quences of the most important kind follow from
it. In the first place, the power of that idealistic
reconstruction of belief which has so strongly
influenced the modern mind is entirely broken.
Thought, instead of being the substance of things
seen, and the principle which lives and moves in
all objects of all intelligence, is only a part, and a
comparatively insignificant and dependent part, of
man's mental equipment. Hence the work of meta-
physics must be done over again from the begin-
ning. Philosophers must seek some other ontological
principle, more adequate than thought to the being
and to the explanation of the exhaustless and
ever-changing content of the real world. And, in
the second place, the theologians who had all along
striven against the reduction of God, the soul of
man, and the world into logical processes of thought
and mere pulsations of an impersonal reason, may
now take new heart. For, side by side with, nay,
dominant over, the merely formal and systematiz-
ing thought, there is room and need for that
intuitive perception, that immediate consciousness.

xii PREFACE

which alone makes us aware of reahty — supersen-
suoLis no less than sensuous. The accent and
emphasis must now fall, especially in spiritual
matters, not upon the power which rearranges the
content of our experience and can do nothing
more, but on those activities which supply us with
that content. The experience itself is more vital
and valuable than any exposition of it which
thought can afterwards give. Hence, for those
thinkers who have accepted sivipliciter the results
of Lotze's exposition, thought is, comparatively
speaking, of little importance. And we have — in
Germany only as yet — a new theology which trusts
the heart against the head, and which, having
removed the data of the religious life from the
sphere of a thought that is only formal, can regard
its operations with complete indifference. Reason
has nothing to do with religion, though it may
have with the theology which explains it.

But Lotze's investigation of thought has had
other and more valuable consequences. It has led
modern writers to investigate the nature of thought
for themselves, with the result that, particularly in
this country, there has been a remarkable develop-
ment of logical theory on Lotze's own lines. I
refer more specially to the logical works of Mr.
Bradley and Mr. Bosanquct, to whom I express
with great pleasure deep obligations. This develop-
ment of Lotze's position seems to me to issue in
its refutation ; and there are indications that the

PREFACE xiii

main contribution of Lotzc to philosophic thought,
the only ultimate contribution, consists in deepen-
ing that Idealism which he sought to overthrow.

It has been my endeavour in this volume to
justify this conclusion in detail. That is to say, I
have tried to lay bare the movement of Lotze's
exposition, so as to show not only that it refutes
itself, but that it indicates in a new way the neces-
sity for an idealistic construction of experience.
For if Lotze had been strictly faithful to the view of
thought which he sets forth, and which he attri-
butes to Idealists, he would have found it incap-
able of performing that poor remnant of its
functions which he allows it to retain. In order
to get his formal thought to produce any results, he
is constrained to find each of its products one by
one in its material. Hence, what he exposes to
our view is a kind of pseudo-dialectic by which, on
the failure of one form of abstract thought after
another, he has recourse to its content. Each fresh
appeal to the content gives to formal thought a
fresh start, and the possibility of thinking at all
is thus, by implication, shown to lie in its material.
The very helplessness of formal thought at once
indicates that sudi thought is a logical fiction, and
bears witness to the ideality of its content. On his
own showing the material dominates thought and
expresses itself in thought. In this way, therefore,
Lotze leads us from a formal to a constitutive, from
a subjective and " epistemological" to an objective

xiv PREFACE

and ontological view of thought. That is to say,
in expounding the conditions of its activity he yields
a tergo, and as an unwilling witness, an idealistic
conception of the world.

This conception cannot, howev^er, be full}- justified
without investigating reality itself By following
Lotze's exposition I have in this volume raised
questions which can be answered only by a further
inquiry which is directly and undisguisedly meta-
physical. I propose, therefore, to endeavour to
meet some of these problems, so far as it is in my
power, in another volume dealing with Lotze's
metaphysical doctrines, in which, I believe, he
corroborates the Idealism he sought to refute in
his backward process from thought to reality, by
an opposite process from reality to thought.

HENRY JONES.

The University,
Glasgow, February, 1895.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I PAGE

The Main Problem ok Lotze's Philosophy - - i

CHAPTER II
General View of Lotze's Doctrine of Thought T,y

CHAPTER III

Thought and the Preliminary Processes of

Experience 73

CHAPTER IV
The Theory of Judgment - - - - - 119

CHAPTER V

Lotze's Doctrine of Inference and the Syste-
matic Forms of Thought - - - - 173

xvi CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI

PAGE

Examination of Lotze's Ascent from Sub-

suMPTivE to Systematic Inference - - 223

CHAPTER VII

The Subjective World of Ideas and the Sub-
jective Processes of Thought - - - 268

CHAPTER VIII

The Principle of Reality in Thought and its

Processes 324

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

CHAPTER I

THE MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY

TT is an unmistakeable mark of greatness in a
man that he irresistibly attracts the attention
of thinkers and makes the task of endeavouring to
comprehend him inevitable. He may not claim
such attention at once. He may for a time be a
voice in the wilderness, and the message he utters
may travel in the void. If he be a philosopher he
must, as a rule, wait for the age that can compre-
hend him. The truths which he leaves as an
inheritance to the world generally fall in the first
place into the hands of rival schools which divide
the heritage between them, each of them seizing
a mere aspect of his doctrine, and, while following
it out into its abstract consequences, sacrificing the
principle which gave it vitality. The true heir of
the inheritance appears in him who is able to

2 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

collect together the scattered and conflicting aspects
and to grasp them in their unity.

But the greater gods appear rarely. Vital revolu-
tions of human thought are not frccjucnt. Many
must labour to understand the thoughts of the
few. And, amidst the conflict of opposing systems,
we must welcome those men who co-ordinate
the truths though they may lack the strength to
combine them. For, although co-ordination merely
shows the need of an ordering principle without
revealing what it is, and sets the problem rather
than solves it, it nevertheless places us at the
point of view from which alone solution is possible.

Such, I believe, is the service which has been
done in recent times by Hermann Lotze. Without
either the originality or the constructive power
that brings reformation through revelation and
heralds a new age with a new truth, he nevertheless
commands the homage of our time. It is doubtful
if any writer on philosophy has occupied so much
attention in recent years as Lotze. And the
modern developments of philosophy and religion,
both in this country and in Germany, are so
marked with his influence that the task of compre-
hending his significance cannot be easily or wisely
set aside.

It cannot be denied that circumstances more or
less fortuitous in character have combined with the
intrinsic worth of his writings to lend them import-
ance. He has received from translators such par-

MA IN FROBL EM OF LO TZE'S PHIL OSOPH V 3

ticular favour that all his greater works are in
the hands of English readers. He has given a
popular, as well as a scientific exposition of his
views, and thus helped materially in making them
a common possession ; and he is intelligible to
an ordinary reader. He gains also in all these
respects from his contrast to his predecessors in
Germany, of whose thoughts he is a vendor ; and
he gains still more by the impression — which the
student of the earlier German metaphysicians often
misses — that he is a " sound " thinker both as to
matter and method. Instead of their speculative
boldness, he has substituted an exposition of de-
tails which is extraordinarily careful, a cautiousness
which often amounts to hesitancy, an admirable
habit of arguing questions on both sides, and the
still rarer merit of admitting the limitations of his
own theories, and the cogency of other views with
which he has little sympathy ; so that he seems to
sit free from his own system.

But it need hardly be said that no combination
of such extraneous circumstances could of itself
account for his influence. His power over the age
springs from the fact that he is dealing with prob-
lems which it recognizes as vital, and his popu-
larity from the fact that he solves them in a manner
which, on the whole, accords with our convictions.
For, unlike his predecessors and the majority of
his contemporaries, he does no violence to the
views of ordinary educated persons on any of the

4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

graver matters of moralit\- or religion. On the
contrary, he seems to have restored to us posses-
sions which Kant and his immediate followers had
made insecure, and which the Materialists and the
Pessimists had rendered untenable. In the service
of these convictions he has, at least for the time,
stemmed the tide of Idealism and given pause to that
ambitious Monism which seemed to have confused
the old boundaries of thought, mingling together
nature and spirit, good and evil, things and thought,
the human and the divine. In the same interest he
has also " stayed the Bacchic dance of the Material-
ists," who had occupied the place left vacant b}-
the spent Idealism. So that it is no matter for
surprise that some readers of philosophy, and, more
especially, theologians of a reflective type should
consider that they owe it to Lotze above all others
that, after the reign of chaos, there is once more
"a firmament in the midst of the waters, dividing
the waters from the waters." To many such he is,
if not the last refuge, the latest hope.

Nor is he of little value to the few who are more
interested in the pursuit of truth than in the defence
of convictions already acquired. That is to say, the
writings of Lotze demand the attention of men
whose interests are philosophical rather than directl)-
ethical or religious. This is true, although he can
scarcely be said to have looked upon the world from
a fresh point of view, or erected a new system. In-
deed, he rather set himself to show why the reflection

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 5

of the world of reality in a philosophical theory is
an aim that transcends the powers of man, and
sought to cool men's ardour for new systems. So
far from deriving all things from a single principle,
there is scarcely any writer of his magnitude who
leaves his students in such doubt as to his regula-
tive thoughts. He rarely gives utterance to decisive
convictions ; when he does, he generally admits
that he cannot prove them — particularly if they
are positive — and he often seems to contradict
them in other parts of his writings. His caution,
his care for details, his obtrusive fair-mindedness,
have obscured his main conceptions. It is diffi-
cult to say whether he is an Idealist, or Realist,
or both ; and he has, quite naturally, been taken
for a Materialist, for a champion of Orthodox
theology, and also for an enlightened Agnostic.
Hartmann, his best critic, tries to make out that
Lotze never says a "Yea" without a "Nay";
some, even of his followers, admit that he has no
system — his centre like his circumference being
everywhere.

But though Lotze's thoughts lack the unity of a
system explicitly governed by a single principle,
they have that other unity, which is frequently not
less suggestive and valuable, that comes from being
occupied with one problem. He is by no means
a mere eclectic, or gatherer of simples. His con-
tributions to special departments of philosophy
have been too weighty, and his criticism of certain

6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

metapln-sical doctrines too penetrating, to be the out-
come of an unsystematic mind. Sporadic thought
could not wield the power he has shown ; and the mag-
nitude of his influence proves beyond dispute that
his speculation has one impulse and one aim. That
aim has been obscured, partly by the number of
the one-sided theories held in his day, and devoted
to the development of abstract views with all of
which he had some sympathy, and partly by the
predominance of the critical over the constructive
tendency in Lotze's own mind.

Erdmann, who estimates Lotze very highly, says
that " the reader of Lotze must make up his mind
to find much which appeared to him indisputable
truth described as uncertain, and, in the same way,
much which he held to be indisputably false re-
presented as at least possible." Now, the facult_\-
of rendering disputable what seemed certain is the
distinctive mark of the genuine critic. He suspends
our decision, he assists our progress by first seeming
to retard it ; he forces thought to turn back, so to
speak, for aspects of truth that have been neglected
during the excitement that comes with the con-
sciousness of advance. With the necessity and
directness of instinct the • critic sets himself in
antagonism to the aggressive movements of the
systematizing thought of his day, and protests
against the tendency to superinduce on the wealth
of phenomena a rash and abstract simplicity.

\Vc find these characteristics on almost every page

3fA IN PROBL EM OF L O TZE'S PHIL OSOPH 1 ' 7

of Lotze's writings. Like the true critic, he escapes
the contagion of both of the great modern enthusi-
asms, and endeavours to limit at once the scientific
and the ideahstic interpretations of the world to
the spheres within which they are respectively-
valid. While rejoicing in the conquests of modern
science, he is " filled with distrust of its importunate
persuasiv^eness " ; while sympathizing deeply with
the spiritual view of the world which Idealism
seeks to establish, he has the strongest antipathy
to its over-confidence and a keen sense of its diffi-
culties and of the existence of facts which refuse to
be fitted into its system. Yet he is not a sceptic,
except in the older and better sense of the term.
His interest is not in negation. " Man," he says,
" must make the best of what he has, and not
decline valuable knowledge merely because it does
not offer him the whole truth which he wishes to
know." Unlike the sceptic, Lotze believes where
he cannot prove, and finds experience itself to be
richer than any theory of it. His antagonism to
the generalizations of science, and especially to
Idealism, in which, as I believe, lies the key to his
significance, has its roots in positive convictions
which, as he conceived, have been either ignored
altogether or mutilated in order to be fitted into
systems. In fact, he sets himself against the two
great constructive movements of modern thought
on behalf of the contents of the ordinary consciousness.
This double attack ultimately resolves itself into

8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

a single one. His conviction that " the fundamental
ideas of Physical Science are inadequate, discon-
nected, and frequently inconsistent " could only be
justified by subjecting them to philosophical criti-
cism. For it is only when a science aspires to be
a metaphysic, and seeks to make its principles
universal in their application, that its inadequacy
is revealed ; the ultimate justification or refutation
of the constructive hypotheses of science is the task
of philosophy — or, if the phrase is less displeasing,
of a science of first principles. Besides this, Lotze
possibly divined a truth which is ever becoming
clearer, that there is a close affinity between natural
science and Idealism, that modern science when it
understands itself is idealistic in temper and tend-
ency, and that the attempt of philosophers to
establish a universal synthesis by means of the
principle of evolution differs from the work which
is done by men of science only in the extent of
its sweep and in the breadth and generality of its
results. It is not Idealism with its spiritual con-
struction of the world that is at war with the inner
spirit of science, but the scepticism which, in our
day, conceals its true nature under the names of
Dualism and Agnosticism. Hence the interest of
Lotze's strictures on both of these modern move-
ments, his attempt to limit the spheres within
which they are cogent, centres round his criticism
of Idealism.

Lotze's opposition to Idealism was based not so

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 9

much on his antagonism to its positive doctrines as
upon his antipathy to its system. It would not be
strictly true to say that Lotze adopts each of the
main tenets of Hegel while rejecting the whole, but
such a statement would be a fair summary of
his general attitude. His view of Nature, Man,
and God is not fundamentally different from that
of Hegel, but he strenuously criticizes Hegel's
attempt to reduce them all into pulsations or
dialectical movements of a single principle of
thought. To the essentially critical spirit of Lotze,
a system, simply because it is a system, seems to
tyrannize over its component parts. The reflective
characteristic of modern thought, manifested in
science no less than in philosophy, seemed to him
to raise universal conceptions to such a despotic
position that it was no longer possible to assign
their due place and rights to the rich contents of
the world and to the endless variety of its parti-
cular phenomena. His philosophy is a persistent
defence of perception against reflection, of the con-
crete particular against pale and vacant general
ideas ; it is a powerful protest against injustice to
the individuality and uniqueness which he found
at the core of every real fact. Thought, with its
abstract conceptions and unsubstantial universals
seemed to him poor and thin as compared with
the facts and events of the real world ; every gen-
eral law appeared to him to fall short of reaching
the core and essence of anything actual. How

lO THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

much more, therefore, must a system of general
laws — such as a philosophy must be — fall short of
the infinite variety of the facts of the world within
and without man, and the endless play of its
events.

It is thus easy to see how the Idealism of Hegel,
which was at once the most recent and the most
bold attempt to exhaust the contents of the world
of objects by means of thought, should draw upon
itself the most uncompromising opposition from
Lotze. It seemed to him to reduce the world to a
" solemn shadow-land " of general conceptions, to
convert the infinite variety of its chances and
changes into a system of logical notions at once
empty and ruled by necessity. In a word, Idealism
appeared to him to be an attempt to establish a
universal mechanism, which was not the less fixed
and relentless because it was called "spiritual."
"On such a view," he says, "individual, living minds
really count for nothing in history ; they are but
sound and smoke, their efforts, in so far as they do
not fall in with the evolution of the Idea, have no
worth and significance in themselves, their happi-
ness and peace are not among the ends of historical
development. The course of history is as the great
and awful and tragic altar on which all individual
life and joy is sacrificed to the development of
the Universal Idea of Humanity."^

It is this opposition to system that distinguishes
' Mikrokosiiius, Bk. vii., chap. ii.

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S rHILOSOPIIY \ \

Lotze's criticism of Idealism from that of such
writers as Schopenhauer and Hartmann. In the
case of these latter writers the criticism of Idealism
is preliminary to an attempt to erect a new system.
Startinij by rejecting the " Panlogismus " of Hegel,
and by denying that thought could perform the
constructive functions attributed to it, they then
assigned to it a subordinate position, and sought to
derive it and its activities and products from some
more fundamental ontological principle, whose mate-
rialistic nature they disguised by calling it the
"will" and the "unconscious." Instead of the
"self-conscious spirit" of Hegel, they set on the
throne a blind power ; instead of a system whose
principle is intelligence, they established a mechan-
ism to which ideas and the consciousness which
produced them were more or less contingent, and
completely unfortunate, additions.

The constructive efforts of these philosophers
have rendered their attack on Idealism compara-
tively harmless, at least so far as the popular and
theological consciousness is concerned. They have
diverted attention from the weaknesses of Idealism
and centred it on their own systems, which, being
materialistic, have all the defects of Idealism in
addition to their own ; which arc weak in their
logic, and which violate in a new way the current
moral and religious convictions of the modern world.
But Lotze enjoys the immunity from attack which
is always the peculiar privilege of the pure critic ;

12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

for no camp can be burned till it is pitched some-
where, and no opponent can be overthrown till he
takes up some position of his own. In this fact, I
believe, is to be found the true secret of the
impression that Lotze has made on both German
and English thought. Far from contributing a new
rival system of his own, his effort culminates in re-
establishing popular ethical and religious convictions,
purifying them only of their grosser contradictions.
Not that Lotze's agreement with the broad opinions
of the ordinary consciousness is in itself a defect.
On the contrary, I should say that privid facie it
is a grave argument against a philosophy that it
contradicts the principles which the world has
found valuable in practice. In one respect at least,
common sense is truer than any philosoph}', and
serves as its criterion. And it is a positive achieve-
ment for a philosopher to be " orthodox," provided
his orthodoxy is philosophical. For he has not to
invent the world of art, or morality, or religion, but
to understand it. He comes neither to invent nor
to destroy, but to fulfil ; he rises above the funda-
mental convictions of mankind not by rejecting,
but by comprehending them.

But he Jiiust comprehend them ; and to com-
prehend them means that he holds them in a
manner fundamentally different from the ordinary
consciousness. He must not only acknowledge the
different aspects of the truth, he must also bring
them together by revealing within them the opera-

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 13

tion of a single principle of unity and simplicity.
He may, like the ordinary consciousness, maintain
the necessity of nature, and the freedom of man,
and the omnipresence of God ; he may give man
all his own way which is essential to morality, and
God all His own way which is essential to religion,
and thus permit both these forces which mould the
higher destinies of mankind to exist together. But
he must also strive to reconcile them. Truth for
him must not be a thing of aspects and phases
merely ; he must not agree with the common con-
sciousness in its fragmentariness. This, I believe, is
the cardinal defect of Lotze. He spares no effort
to expose the errors and omissions of the systems
which he criticizes, and he thereby performs a
service whose value it would be hard to estimate too
highly ; nevertheless he not only leaves the diffi-
culties where they were, he also directs his main
attack against the very attempt to resolve them into
a higher principle. He has exercised, and exercised
with uncommon power, the function of a mere
critic ; but he has failed to escape the implicit
dogmatism which always lies in wait for the mere
critic. For the mere critic is always dominated by
an unconscious conservatism which only makes a
show of passing its convictions through the crucible
of doubt. While seeming to pursue truth, he is
really engaged in defending what he has from the
first taken to be indubitable. This, as I shall try
to show, is what Lotze has done in appealing from

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

the systems of philosophers to experience. His
justification for doing so lies in the fact that
practice is and will remain wider than theory, and
that the world is greater than our best construction
of it. But the appeal must be made on behalf of
that construction, and the facts of experience must
be regarded as problems, and not as truths already
known and certain. Otherwise philosophy has ab-
dicated its function in favour of the dogmatism
and fragmentariness of common sense. There is
thus a higher service to truth than that of gathering
up its fragments ; it is not enough that " there was
a noise, and a great shaking, and the bones came
together, bone to his bone." There must be "breath
in them"; and the primary business of philosophy
is, after all, to be the witness to this breath and
life, to find an expression for the One which
pervades all the manifold differences of phenomena
and makes the world a unity. The philosopher who
is satisfied with exposing the abstractness and incon-
clusiveness of earlier systems may effectively point
out the labour that remains to be achieved by
others, but he does not perform it himself. But
Lotze, in so far as he has confined himself to
criticism and the restoration of ordinary convictions,
will not give rest to any, except to those who find
in the failure of philosophies an excuse for taking
traditions for truth and for giving up the endeavour
of the intellect.

It may seem to be a hard saying " that Lotze

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOl'ZE'S PHILOSOPHY 15

has set himself against the constructive movements
of modern thought on behalf of the contents of the
ordinajy conscioiisnessl' and it certainly demands
both justification and limitation. Taken absolutely
it is not true. For the critical tendency which
predominated in him was itself guided by the con-
sciousness of a single problem which ordinary
experience seems somehow to solve, although philo-
sophy has not been able to reveal the principle
which brings the solution. That problem is the
reconciliation of reasoned or systematic knowledge
with " the unscientific consciousness of spiritual
reality which is expressed in religion and morality."^
It is the problem which vexes the modern spirit
and constrains it to reflection. And it is this fact
— that Lotze has avoided the one-sided develop-
ments of abstract views, placed himself at the
point of collision of the primary interests of human
life, and thereby taken upon himself our burden —
which at the same time gives him the sway he
exercises over our time, and puts him in the line
of succession from Kant.

For that problem was, of course, first stated by
Kant, and the main features of his statement
remain unchanged to our own day. He had found
that human experience was divided against itself,
and that human rea.son, in the endeavour to inter-
pret it, was called upon to consider questions which
it could not decline, and which it could not

' See Caird's Critical Philosophy of Kant, \o\. I., p. 41^

1 6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

answer. It could not decline them because they
sprang from the very nature and essence of rational
experience, and it could not answer them because
every answer it could furnish did violence to the
material on which it was directed, converting the
unconditioned into the conditioned, the infinite
into the finite, the real into the phenomenal.
Experience contained elements which at once
challenged knowledge and transcended it ; and
reason, in its attempt to meet the challenge,
seemed to fall into intolerable contradictions. Kant
was, therefore, constrained to examine " the pre-
tensions of pure speculative reason " to deal with
the practical interests which hinge upon the super-
sensible ideas on which morality and religion rest.
The result of the examination was to deprive it of
these pretensions. " / must, therefore, abolish knozv-
ledge to make room for belief' is his strong ex-
pression of the immediate results of his First
Critique. And although he found in his Second
Critique another " absolutely necessary use of pure
reason — the moral use," which promised to restore
to us the possessions to which man as a purely
cognitive being had no right, and although in his
Third Critique he came still nearer the unification
of the elements of experience which seemed at first
irreconcilable, the history of modern thought amply
shows that the solution he offered was incomplete.
A commentator speaking of Lotze has remarked
that " he never went back to Kant," implying

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY ly

thereb}^ that he had no need to do so, because
he was from the first engaged in the same manner
with the same difficulties. Nor is there any doubt
that Lotze's speculative effort derived its original
impulse from the same contradiction between
natural knowledge and spiritual beliefs, and that it
was guided throughout by analogous views as to
the nature both of human thought and of the ex-
perience which thought has to comprehend. Those
who are fortunate enough really to know Kant
have little need of Lotze. But to most students
of philosophy there can be hardly any better help
to the understanding of Kant than the study of
Lotze. None betray the vulnerable points of a
master's doctrine so surely as his devoted disciples,
and hardly any single writer shows more clearly
than Lotze does the unsatisfactory character of the
Kantian compromise between faith and reason. And
besides, Lotze was able to study Kant's thoughts
in the light of the labours of those who succeeded
him. Hence, although the problem remains the
same, and, in its main features, the solution also,
the processes by which that solution was attained
are deeply modified by both of the great movements
of thought which had only begun to appear in
Kant's day and in Kant's own writings, namely,
the Scientific and the Idealistic movements.

One of Lotze's works, his Mikrokosnius, while,
owing to its popular form it has of all his writings
the least strictly scientific value, has the double

1 8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

merit for his students of being the completcst ex-
pression of his general views, and of revealing most
clearly the motives and convictions which guided
his speculative endeavour.' In the opening para-
graphs of that work Lotze indicates with consider-
able accuracy the problem which he had set himself
to solve, and the purpose which in the main was
dominant throughout the whole wide range of his
speculation. '• Between spiritual needs and the
results of human science there is," he says, " an
unsettled dispute of long standing. In every age
the first necessary step towards truth has been
the renunciation of those soaring dreams of the
human heart which strive to picture the cosmic
frame as other and fairer than it appears to the
eye of the impartial observer." These convictions,
springing from the heart, have from one point of
view, as he proceeds to show, little claim to be
" set in opposition to common knowledge as being
a higher view of things." They are only "indefinite
yearnings ignorant of their goal " ; and " though
they have their source in the best part of our
nature," they are infected by doubts and reflections
and subject to the " influences of transmitted culture
and temporary tendencies," and even to " the natural
changes of mental mood which take place in men,

' An article on " Philosophy in the last Forty Years,"
published in the Contemporary Revicn.', January, 1880, and,
republished in Lotze's Kleine Schrt/teji, Vol. ill., has con-
siderable value for the second of these reasons.

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZIvS PHILOSOPHY 19

and are different in youth from what they are after
the accumulation of manifold experiences." It can-
not, therefore, " be seriously hoped that such an
obscure and unquiet movement of men's spirits
should furnish a juster delineation of the connec-
tion of things than the careful investigations of
science, in which that power of thought, which all
share in. is brought into action.'" We might, there-
fore, conclude that we must give up belief to make
room for knowledge. But, on the other hand, the
renunciation of these beliefs in response to the
demands of systematic cognition is impossible with-
out distorting and maiming experience in its
essential features, and without stultifying the very
purpose to attain which such a renunciation is
made. For even if truth were attained by such a
process, and even if that truth were not partial
but complete, it would have, thus set by itself as
the sole ideal of human effort, little value. " If the
object of all human investigation were to produce
in cognition a reflection of the world as it exists,
of what value would be all its labour and pains,
which could result only in vain repetition, in an
imitation within the soul of that which exists
without it } What significance could there be in
this barren rehearsal — what should oblige thinking
minds to be mere mirrors of that which does not
think, unless the discovery of truth were in all
cases likewise the production of some good, valu-
able enough to justify the pains expended in

20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

attaining it?"' If, on tlie one hand, the yearnings
of the heart. " the spiritual demands," cannot be
satisfied unless their objects are real, and if our
beliefs have no right to convince unless they are
true ; on the other hand, the mental picture even
of these objects, if it could be attained, would be
nothing but a subjective imitation of their reality,
and would have no innate worth. " Taking truth as
a whole, we are not justified in regarding it as a
merely self-centred splendour, having no necessary
connection with those stirrings of the soul from
which, indeed, the impulse to seek it first proceeds." ^
Animated by this double conviction Lotze resists,
on the one side, the tendency to "cling with im-
mediate belief to that view of the world, which
seems to have its truth corroborated by its con-
sonance with our wishes." He will not " put science
as a whole on one side, as if it were a maze in which
cognition, detached from its connection with the
whole living mind, has become entangled." He re-
fuses, that is, to extrude the intellect on behalf
of the spiritual convictions that arise from the
heart. But, on the other side, he resists with even
greater earnestness the other tendency more pre-
valent in his day, of renouncing as unreal every-
thing that is not capable of being assuredly known
or is not susceptible of systematic exposition and
proof. He will not allow man " to revel in this
faith of the world of feeling," nor will he agree
' MikrokosDiits^ Introduction. -Ibid.

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 21

with " the deification of truth." Neither is he con-
tent with the common compromise by which men
endeavour to reap the advantages both of an un-
critical faith in the facts of the supersensible world
and of the systematic knowledge of the world of
sensible realities. The difficulty cannot be evaded
by "taking part in both worlds and belonging to
both, yet without uniting the two"; nor "by fol-
lowing, in science, the principles of cognition to
their most extreme results, and allowing oneself,
in practical life, to be impelled in quite other
directions by traditional habits of belief and action."
" We can never look on indifferently when we see
cognition undermining the foundations of faith, or
faith calmly putting aside as a whole that which
scientific zeal has built up in detail. On the con-
trary, we must be ever consciously endeavouring
to maintain the rights of each, and to show how
far from insoluble is the contradiction in which
they appear to be inextricably involved."^ For the
rights of each, if only they are understood, will
prove inalienable ; and the conflict between them,
as long as one aims at extinguishing the other,
will therefore be endless. For rights are immortal.
" The old contradictions rise again to battle ; on the
one side is the knowledge of the world of sense
with its stores of exact truth and the persuasive
force of perceived facts, ever on the increase ; on
the other side are the divinations of the super-
' Mikrokosinus, Introduction.

22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

sensible, scarcely sure of their own content and
hardly susceptible of proof, but sustained neverthe-
less by the recurring consciousness of their neces-
sary truth, and still less susceptible of refutation.'"

But Lotze is convinced that " the contest be-
tween the two is an unnecessary torment which
we inflict upon ourselves by terminating investiga-
tion prematurely," and " it is this conclusion which
he desires to establish." His aim is "to adjust the
relation between our cognition and our spiritual
needs," and he is not hopeless of success ; for their
opposition is not due to a final untowardness and
contradiction in human nature, but to the distortion
of their true relation during the course of human
development, and to the elevation of each in turn at
the expense of the other. He does not desire to
abolish knowledge to make room for faith, nor faith
to make room for knowledge. His watchword, rather,
is, as he says, to " maintain the rights of each " ;
to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto
God what is God's. And, on the whole, as we
shall show, the point of view from which what is
Caesar's is also God's lay beyond the horizon of
his speculative vision. He was content to restore
the disturbed balance, and to delimit the territories
of faith and knowledge.

It is possible that such a purpose, even if it
were achieved, cannot be regarded as satisfactory
from either the speculative or the practical point
" Mi'krokos>iii/s, Introduction.

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 23

of view, and that the impulse to unity and whole-
ness is as imperious in the sphere of faith as it
is in that of knowledge. For the division between
faith and reason, which thus sunders into two
parts our cognitive experience, is analogous to that
which cleaves our moral nature. Just as man's
moral ideal stands over against and condemns his
actual achievement, so belief, with its prophetic in-
dication of a higher truth that is merely divined,
confronts and condemns as inadequate the narrow
region of his assured knowledge. The moral ideal
which condemns the actual is generally recognized
as also inspiring it, and the poorest moral victory
is felt to be in some dim and devious way the
triumph of the supreme good. In consequence, the
unity of the ideal and the actual is seen to be
deeper than their division, and the former, though
never realized, is always in course of realization.
But, in the case of the theoretical life of man, this
deeper unity has been overlooked by Lotze and
many others ; and the difference between belief
and knowledge has been magnified and hardened
into irreconcilable opposition. The sting of the
contradiction which comes with the consciousness
that the divined truth is not known, but " is given,
and yet not given," as Lotze puts it in his earlier
Metaphysic, has not been recognized by him as
itself a witness to the unity of man's rational
nature. He ignored the fact that the torment of
a divided intellectual life could not arise except

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

for the ori,fanic filaments which indicate that what
is beinfr rent asunder is whole and one. And

consequently, instead of endeavouring to discover
those principles which, while seeming to transcend
experience, still constitute it, making one world of
the two regions of belief and knowledge, he sought
to balance their claims. Instead of regarding faith
as always anticipating knowledge, as holding in-
secure posts with an advanced guard in a foreign
land, pending its permanent occupation by reasoned
knowledge, he sought to confine faith and reason
each in a domain of its own, and to make some
things into objects of belief, and others into objects
of knowledge.

If there are principles of unity in the whole of
our experience, and if these are discoverable by
philosophic methods, Lotze's attempt to compro-
mise must be regarded as having failed. Never-
theless the failure to reach a unity on the part
of one who clearly recognized the initial antagonism
of the parts, may be far more valuable and ulti-
mately constructive than a theory which gra.sps a
unity at the expense of the differences. Contradic-
tions are always living and suggestive ; abstract
unities are dead and barren. And it is no small
honour to Lotze that, in an age which was given
over to abstract constructions of man and the world,
he stood almost alone, protesting against the rash
haste which secured unity by sacrificing its content.
From this point of view he has been compared by

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 25

some of his sympathetic critics to Rembrandt and
Rousseau; for he, like them, led the way from artifice
to art and nature, looked man and the world in the
face, and, in consequence, found in them a wealth of
content in comparison with which the theories so
confidently advanced in his day were unreal and
empty. He preferred the antagonisms of reality
to the hollow peace of empty consistency ; and he
appears amongst his contemporaries in the role of
one who protests on behalf of man and nature, in
the whole compass of their many-sided existence,
against the abstract conceptions of them which were
then in vogue. And this attitude is always charac-
teristic of Lotze. Reality and theory were, to him,
contrasted as the living and the dead. In the realm
of the former he found " innumerable activities,"
" unfailing movements," an inexhaustible content ;
while the limited region of knowledge was " a
solemn shadow-land of unchangeable ideas," " the
imperturbable repose of universal but empty re-
lations of thought." And, whether he considered
the labours of the idealists or of the materialists,
he found that the extent and the value of know-
ledge was mischievously overrated, with the result
that violence had been done to the complex
nature of man, who was mutilated that he might
be fitted into systems. Truth had been deified,
as already hinted, as if it had sovereign and
innate worth ; while, as his whole aim is to show,
it is able only to mirror that which veritably

26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

exists. The world of ideas at its utmost can only
be a barren rehearsal, or lifeless copy, of the real
world. Its value is derived and not native ; it
shines only in a borrowed light ; the ultimate
significance and worth of what we know consists
merely in its subservience to " what we have to do,
and what to hope." Theory exists for the sake of
practice, the intellect is rooted in the heart, the
true has its foundations in the good, and Meta-
physics in Ethics.

Students of Kant will not miss the analogy
between Lotze's view of the relation of Meta-
physics to Ethics and Kant's transition from the
speculative to the practical reason. The latter
supplies in the moral law, the reality, the '^factum "
or " qiiasi-factum " which gives a irov cttw to the
ideas of God, Freedom, and Immortality, which all
experience presupposes, but which, apart from the
immediate deliverance of the moral consciousness,
would hang empty in the upper air of the transcend-
ent. But, although the conception is Kant's, and
the principle of reality offered by Lotze is attained
by him in Kant's way, the modern movement of
thought had rendered it necessary to give it
a new exposition. The difficulty and the need of
reconciling the contents of the religious and moral
consciousness with natural science had become much
more acute, partly on account of the growth of
natural science and partly on account of the influ-
ence which Kant himself had exercised. The lesson

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 27

of the First Critique, and of that Critique alone,
had been taken to heart by one important section
of the thinkers of Lotze's early days. That lesson,
so long as it remains uncorrected by what Kant
taught further in his Critique of Practical Reason
and the Critique of Judgment, is negative. It
placed the objects of reason, in which morality and
religion centre, beyond the reach of knowledge,
and it confined first the cognition and then the
interests of man to the sphere of sensible facts.
For the ideas of reason, so long as they remained
unrealizable thoughts, could not command the
allegiance of mankind. They might be called things-
in-themselves, and even be set up as ideals which
all knowledge presupposes, but so long as they
could not be known, or verified, they would be
allowed to remain in their empty elevation, while
the endeavours of man turned into another channel.
It is true that the things-in-themselves had for
Kant a double meaning, sometimes standing for the
realities which lie behind the objects of sensuous
experience, sometimes for the realities which trans-
cend that experience. In this respect real natural
objects and the objects of our moral and religious
consciousness may seem to stand on the same
level, being both unknowable. But there lies a deep
difference beneath this surface resemblance. In the
case of natural objects Kant restores to us under
the name of "phenomena" all that he refused to
us under the name of "noumena," whereas the super-

28 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

sensible " noumena," while enjoying a superior
dignity as opposed to the objects of sensuous
experience, are set apart in empty sublimity above
man's knowledge. The immediate effect of the
Critique of Pure Reason when taken as a complete
expression of Kant's views was, therefore, to direct
intellectual endeavour to the world of natural
l)henomena, which were practically none the worse
for being only "phenomena"; and to relegate to a
faith that could not be knowledge the whole world
of supersensuous reality. " A strong current of
Naturalism set in, in which Lotze himself seems
to have been at iirst caught when he gave himself
to science. And this Naturalism, which maintained,
to begin with, an attitude of mere indifference
towards the unknowable supersensuous reality,
passed easily into a Materialism which denied it.
Natural science and its methods were extended
over the whole region of intelligible existence, and
what science could not know, could not be."

But whether we attribute it to the natural bent
of Lotze's spirit towards art and literature and
religion, or to his early religious training, or to the
influence of Weisse, he was early in revolt against
these Materialists, and his first service to philo-
sophy was to expose the inadequacy of the cate-
gories which they employed, and to show that, side
by side with Science, there was room and need
for Philosophy. It is not without something of
the bitterness of a convert that he says in his

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 29

earliest Metaphysics, " In these days almost more
time is given to the deification of science than to
the solving of its problems," " These extravagant
expectations so little satisfied, so much deceived
by the results of science, have generated the aver-
sion to the employment of pure thought." So, as
Edmund Pfleiderer says, " Lotze raised once more
the standard of Philosophy out of the dust in
which it was trodden, and taught those who came
after him to have courage and to trust themselves."
His antagonism to the pretensions of natural
science to deal with all the phenomena of human
experience, and "his distrust of its importunate
persuasiveness," remained wath him to the end.
But he did not recoil from science without learning
from it. He was taught by his own experience
at the dissecting table to respect its methods and
to trust, in their own legitimate region, its slowly-
elaborated results, although he had at the same
time the painful conviction that it was, and must
for ever remain, silent regarding those objects
which are most worth knowing. It remains one
of the best achievements of Lotze that he vindi-
cated for the understanding its own undeniable
region of activity.

But another movement, certainly not less signifi-
cant in itself nor less powerful in its influence in
Lotze's day, had issued from Kant : I mean, the
idealistic movement. " When Lotze finished his
studies," says Dr. Caspari, " most of the academic

30 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

chairs were held by Hegelians. No prominent man
could then enter into the holy places of philosophy
who had not been stimulated by Hegel ; and,
although there were already schisms and divi-
sions in the Hegelian school, still so great was the
^litter of his thoughts that few dared to contradict
what seemed false in them. To refute Hegel in a
radical w^ay, it was necessary to live within the
power of his fundamental ideas, and work a way
through his chief doctrines. This the disciples of
the opposed schools of Herbart, Fries, Benecke,
and others failed to do. Hegel and his disciples
were, indeed, sharply called to task by them, points
of view fundamentally different and antagonistic
were opposed to his, but Hegel's own point of
view was not actually overturned. Lotze was,
historically speaking, the first among modern inves-
tigators w^ho, in a psychological, epistemological,
and philosophical sense, laid bare the secret of the
deceptive power of Hegelianism and at the same
time, in the most fundamental manner, refuted it.
' Man darf init volleui RccJitc sagen : Lotze hattc
Hegel iiberwjinden! "

Whether Lotze's victory over Hegelianism was
complete or not, it is certain that the desire to
refute Hegelianism was a determining element in
his philosophic career. For he found in it, and
in the most aggravated form, the same vicious tend-
ency that roused his antagonism to the pretensions
of natural science, namely, the tendency to fit all

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 31

things, with whatever violence, into one system of
thoughts, and to deify the intellect and its pro-
ducts. And his very respect for the methods and
results of science, so long as it confined itself to
its own proper region, deepened his antagonism to
Idealism. " Bred," as he tells us, " in the traditions
of the Hegelian school, which believed itself to
have explained all the particular facts of the
world's history as independent consequences of a
single general principle " ; and, as a philosopher,
necessarily sympathizing with its attempt to unify
experience, he had the deepest aversion to its
method and results ; for it seemed to him to have
turned its back upon the world of facts, and lost
itself in the region of empty thoughts. He shared
with his age the hunger for facts, and the aversion
to the generalizations of a priori speculation which
had driven his contemporaries to seek satisfaction
in natural science. It was with a "prejudice" against
pure thought that, as he tells us, "he entered upon
the lively philosophical current of his youth." And
that distrust of thought he himself attributes mainly
to the influence of Hegel, from which the mind of
Germany was gradually emancipating itself during
his youth. In fact, the Stojf-Hnngcr, the yearning
for the real, or at least the palpable and the par-
ticular, under whose impulse the thought of Lotze's
day threw itself upon the natural world of per-
ceptible facts and events, and which seemed to be
the direct and necessary consequence of confining

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

the German people to " the thin Hegelian diet "
of abstract and ambitious Idealism, had complete
possession of Lotze. If his positive attitude was
determined for him by Kant, his negative attitude
was determined for him by Hegel, as is evident
whether we have regard to his logical, metaphysical,
psychological, moral, or even some of his religious
views. To Hegel was partly due both his recourse
to natural science, and his consciousness of its in-
adequacy and of the delusory character of its pre-
tensions outside the sphere of nature. Hegel's
abstractions, as he considered them, drove him to
the individualism of Herbart, and drew him away
from his intellectualism. It inspired his psycho-
logical researches, and generated his respect for
the empirical data which they yielded. Above all
it was the recoil from Hegel that produced both
his affinity to and his difference from Leibnitz, and
strengthened his adherence to Kant — especially
to the Second Critique, leading him to endeavour
to base Metaphysics upon Ethics, and to subor-
dinate " The True " to " The Good."

The relation of Lotze to Hegel on one side and
to the pure Naturalists on the other, and his attempt
to correct the errors of both by recourse to the
teaching of Kant, make Lotze a most interesting
figure in the history of philosophic thought. He
appears before us, from the beginning of his career,
as a highly complex phenomenon, representing in a
remarkable way the multiplex elements which arc

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 33

in constant conflict in modern life. And for all its
diseases he prescribes one sovereign remedy. For
reflection had taught him that the apparently
opposite defects of the science and philosophy of
modern times spring from the same cause. In
both cases alike, reason, or the faculties of mere
cognition, had been mischievously overrated. Both
disciplines had awakened extravagant expectations
that cannot be realized by human knowledge. It
had been forgotten " that intellectual life is more
than thoiigJitr " Much goes on within us which our
thinking intelligence follows and contemplates only
from without, and whose peculiar content it cannot
exhaustively represent, either in the form of an
idea, or through the union of ideas. He, therefore,
who is animated by the conviction that real exist-
ence is not impenetrable to the mind, cannot with
equal confidence assume that thought is the precise
organ which will be able to comprehend the real in
its innermost essence. ... I recall the multi-
tude of those who maintain that they experience
that which is highest in the world, perfectly intel-
lectually, in faith, in feeling, in presentiment, in
inspiration, and who yet acknowledge that they do
not possess it in knowledge. . . . All science
can, of course, only operate with thoughts, and must
follow the laws of our thinking ; but it must under-
stand that in all the objects it occupies itself with,
and especially in that highest principle of all which
it presupposes, it will find matter which, even if

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

intellectually it were apprehended quite perfectly,
could yet not be exhausted in the form of an idea
or a thought."^

But Hegelianism put its whole trust in thought.
" That philosophy," he tells us, " sought to lay bare,
by its dialectical method, the whole contents of the
physical and moral world, every particular in the
precise place which it occupied in the world's plan ;
but, of what it then disclosed, it had little more to
say than that it occupied that particular place.
The peculiar character with which every separate
part of the whole filled its place in the system
remained a superfluous circumstance which was
little considered, and was counted incapable of
being explained ; and the essential thing in every
fact and phenomenon consisted in its repeating as
the N^'' or ^V+i''''' example in the total series of
all things real, one of the few abstract thoughts
which the Hegelian method announced as the deepest
sense of the world." -

Lotze never loses sight of this error of Idealism,
and he was so possessed with the conviction of its
viciousness that he regarded it as the cardinal
defect of the great philosophers of Greece. It is
scarcely too much to say that the main endeavour of
his life was to refute it. There is no form of the
distinction between knowledge and reality which he
neglects to emphasize. He sets Logic and Meta-
physics so apart that it is more difificult to relate

^ Kleine Schri/ten, in., pp. 453, 454. -Idem, p. 454.

MAIN PROBLEM OF LOTZE'S PHILOSOPHY 35

them to each other at all than to identify them. He
is never weary of repeating that thoughts are not
things, although they may be valid of things; and his
world of ideas or of knowledge stands apart from,
though it is in some way connected with, the world
of things. And even within that world of knowledge
he endeavours to draw a distinction between the
work of thought and that of our other faculties of
cognition. He represents the activity of thought as
secondary and formal, and he throws all the em-
phasis upon its data. Perceptions or impressions,
whether of sensible or supersensible facts, whether
derived through the influence upon our senses of
the natural world, or through "divine or super-
sensible influence upon our interior being, by means
of which intuitions of another species fall to our
lot, such as the senses can never supply, and
such as constitute that religious cognition which
obtrudes itself upon us with immediate certainty " ^
— these alone give him his '' pimctum stans"
his sure footing amidst " the wash and welter " of
mere thoughts. And hence, however little he
may have intended it, he rendered the activity
of thought nugatory, and prepared the way for
that despair of philosophy which so characterizes
thought in Germany in our day, and especially
religious thought. To such devoted disciples as
Edmund Pflciderer he may seem to have succeeded
in establishing a " Philosophy of the Feelings," and
' Outlines of Religion, p. 4.

36 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

to have reconciled speculation with Christianitj' by
explaining all things in terms of "Love"; but to
less ardent devotees his claim to respect will lie in
his unconscious exposure of the Scepticism that
underlies distrust in thought, and especially in the
illustration that he gives of the necessity of ad-
vancing from the halting idealism of Neo-Kantism
to that fuller reconciliation of the true and the real
which Idealism has endeavoured to effect.

The main task of the critic of Lotze must con-
sist in the examination of his view of the function
of thought. Compared with this, the superstructure
of psychological and metaphysical doctrines will, on
his system, have only secondar}- interest. The value of
his positive contribution to philosophy depends upon
the success of his attempt to restrict the claims of
thought, so as to make room for faith. We must,
therefore, first endeavour to determine in what
respects and for what reasons thought is regarded
by Lotze as incapable of meeting the demands that
have been made upon it, and then estimate the value
of the other elements of experience which Lotze
summons to the aid of thought in his attempt to
present such a view of man and the world as is
adequate to their complexity.

CHAPTER II

GENERAL VIEW OF LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF
THOUGHT

A / E have seen that Lotze describes the main

purpose of his philosophical investigations
as the adjustment of the relation between the in-
tellectual and the practical interests of man. He
desired to restore the broken harmony of our
modern life. The cause of the discord and "tor-
ment" seemed to him to lie in the attempt of the
intellect to arrogate to itself supreme and exclusive
dominion, and to extrude as untrustworthy those
"vague beliefs and unquiet yearnings which arise
from other parts of our nature," even though these
parts were "the best," and though the objects to
which these yearnings were directed seemed alone
to have transcendent worth. This aggressive use
of the intellect, on account of wliich the conflict
arose — a conflict which must be endless because we
cannot extinguish a part of our own nature — was
characteristic alike of the votaries of science and of

^S THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

the idealists. Both schools sought to satisfy the
manifold demands of human nature by means of
knowledge alone, both treated truth as alone having
independent worth, and both dealt with man as if
he had no impulses, no desires, no ends except
those which are cognitive. And, as against both,
Lotze strenuously endeavoured to lower the claims
of speculative reason, and to emphasize the exist-
ence and significance of the practical side of life,
which derives its stimulus from the object of
religious faith and the moral ideal. I propose in
this chapter to give in outline his view of the true
place and functions of human thought.

If Kant may be said to have examined reason in
order to determine what we can know, Lotze may
be said to have examined it in order to show^ what
we cannot know. With a frankness which is as
admirable as it is rare, he admits that he entered
upon his philosophical career with a prejudice against,
and a disposition to resist, the claims that had been
set up on behalf of thought; and he suggests, w^hat
none of his readers can deny, that his after-work
may be regarded as a prolonged attempt to justify
his early attitude by definitely confining thought to
its own proper limits. The " incitements to these
doubts" of the supremacy of thought came to
him mainly from the philosophy of Hegel;' and
since his own doctrine of thought thus originally
appears as a protest, it may be best understood, to
^ See Kldne ScJu-iften, \o\. in., p. 454.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OE THOUGHT 39

be<^in with, in the li^^ht of that which it protested
against.

It is scarcely necessary to say that Hegel, no
less than Lotze, started from Kant, and with the
aim of solving the problem which Kant had formu-
lated. In one sense they both agreed in their view
of the final results of his philosophy. They found
in it " pairs of opposites which Kant could neither
separate nor reconcile. Sense and understanding,
necessit}' and freedom, the phenomenal and the
real self, nature and spirit, knowledge and faith "
stood over against each other, opposed and yet
related.^ Lotze regarded this antithesis as final, and,
as we have seen, endeavoured to establish harmony
by separating the antagonists and dividing the
realm of reality between them. But Hegel regarded
the opposition between them as itself a witness to a
deeper unity, a unity whose nature is most fully
expressed in the second terms of this opposing
series. He sought, therefore, to " refer nature to
spirit, necessity to freedom, the phenomenon to the
noumenon : to show that spirit is the tnith of nature,
that freedom is the truth of necessity, that the
noumenon is the tri(th of the phenomenon.""- And
by their "truth" Hegel meant their reality. That
is to say, he resolved reality into spirit, or, to
quote his own phrase, he regarded " the real as the
rational."

Now, so long as Lotze is criticising Hegel, and
^Caird's Hcgcl, p. 122. "^ Ibid., p. 124.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

not developing his own metaphysical views, he re-
presents Hegel as endeavouring to identify reality
with the thoughts that arise in the human con-
sciousness, or with the system of knowledge in
which these thoughts in some way or other cohere.
And Hegel's doctrine that the real is the rational
seemed to him to mean that the real consists in
the movements and the products of our thought.
Nor is it possible to deny that there are expressions
in Hegel which are susceptible of this interpretation.
"Everything we know," says Hegel, "both of out-
ward and inward nature, in one word, the objective
world, is in its oivn self the same as it is in thought,
and thought consequently expresses the truth of the
objects of perception." " In modern times a doubt
has for the first time been raised in connection
with the difference alleged to exist between the
results of our thought and things in their own
nature. This real nature of things, it is said, is
very different from what we m^ake out of them.
The divorce between thought and thing is mainly
the work of the Critical Philosophy, and runs
counter to the conviction of all previous ages, that
their agreement was a matter of course. The
antithesis between them is the hinge on which
modern philosophy turns. Meanwhile the natural
belief of men gives the lie to it. In common life we
reflect without particularly noting that this is the
process of arriving at the truth, and we think with-
out hesitation, and in the firm belief that thought

LOrZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT

coincides with thing. It marks the diseased state
of the age when we see it adopt the despairing
creed that our knowledge is only subjective, and
that this subjective result is final. Whereas, rightly-
understood, truth is objective . . . The whole
problem of philosophy is to bring into explicit con-
ciousness what the world in all ages has believed
about thought." ^ And what the world has believed
is, that the objects of our thought are things and
not mere ideas, that the truth expresses their
essential being, and that the real is the ideal.
When reflection comes in, this simple faith in the
identity of thing and thought is destroyed — and
reflection must come in. Then it is seen that "what
reflection elicits is a product of our thought, and
that the products of our thought are subjective,
and it is assumed that they are merely subjective.
But this assumption is regarded by Hegel as only
"half of the truth"; the true thought, the universal,
he holds to be so far from being viercly subjective
that it is "the essential, true, and objective being
of things."

At this point lies the parting of the ways between
Hegel on the one side and Lotze and many others
of Hegel's critics on the other. They would regard
the rift between thought and its objects, which
reflection reveals, as final; and if, in order to avoid
the Scepticism which seems to lie in wait for such
a view, they postulate correspondence between our
'^ Logic : Wallace's Translation, first Edition, !^ 22.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

subjective ideas and the things to which they point,
they throw no light upon that principle of unity
in virtue of which alone such correspondence is con-
ceivable. The world of ideas and the world of
objects, sensuous and supersensuous, are represented
as mutually exclusive ; no real element, no oiito-
logical principle connects them, but the former
"represents ideally," or "symbolizes" the latter
across the void. Hegel would press through the
difference which reflection reveals, to the unit}'
which manifests itself in the activities of both the
subject and the object ; and the thoughts which
seem to be purely subjective he regards as the
product of the reality which energizes in both the
subject and the object. Man and the world con-
spire together wherever thinking takes place, and
the resulting thought is the product and revelation
of both, or rather of that which is greater than
both because it comprehends them. But Lotze and
others would stop at the stage of reflection which
severs the subjective from the objective side of both
the things and the thoughts. Ideality and reality are
handed over respectively to the thought and to its
objects ; so that thought is ideal only, and objects
are real oiily, or thought is ideal without being real,
and its objects are real without being ideal. And
these thinkers are consequently left with the difficult
task upon their hands of discovering or inventing
a connection between the ideality and rcalit}' which
they have thus separated.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT

The importance of the issues, alike for our
speculative and our practical interests, will justify
the attempt to follow carefully the effort of Lotze
to establish this view.

Lotze goes with Hegel so far as to admit that
the first attitude of human thought is one of
immediate and entire trust in itself. It directs
itself upon objects without further ado. " The
first attitude of the mind can never be doubt ; it
begins always with entire confidence in all its
perceptions." But this confidence is due to mere
ignorance, and to the absence of all analysis. It
is not that a complete scepticism ensues with the
beginning of reflection, or that things are held to
be " in fact quite different from what they neces-
sarily appear to us," but that we distinguish between
things them. selves and the mental appearances- The
idea is still held to be true of an object, but it is
now distinguished from the object ; and although
the question zcJuthcr any realit\- exists and corre-
sponds to our thoughts is not raised, the assumption
that it corresponds needs now to be justified, and
philosophy comes in to show hozc it corresponds.
In a word, the assumption with which the ingenuous
consciousness sets forth, that things and ideas are
the same, is discredited. We discover that the
objects of thought are phenomena of consciousness
and not real, external objects ; and our problem
henceforth is to show not how ideas caji b< things, for
that is impossible, but how they can be true of things^

44 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

Lotze starts, then, by presupposing the pure
ideahty of thought. This, the first discovery of
reflection, is regarded by him as an ultimate truth.
To him the contrast is final between the concep-
tion of an independent world of things and our
own world of thoughts. " All we know of the
external world depends upon the ideas of it which
are within us; it is, so far, entirely indifferent
whether with Idealism we deny the existence of
that world, and regard our ideas of it as alone
reality, or whether we maintain with Realism the
existence of things outside us which act upon our
minds. On the latter hypothesis as little as the
former do the things themselves pass into know-
ledge ; they only awaken in us ideas, which are not
things. It is, then, this varied world of ideas within
us, it matters not where they may have come from,
which forms the sole material given to us, from
which alone our knowledge can start." ^

This, then, is the first limitation to which Lotze
would subject thought. Its material consists of ideas,
which are purely subjective whatever their origin
may have been ; and although its products may be
true of things, they are themselves not the things of
which they are true. Thought is a subjective activity,
and subjective also are its data and its results. We
cut ourselves free from reality in thinking, however
we may afterwards explain the validity of the re-
presentation of reality which thought furnishes.
^ Logic, II., >$ 306.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT

We might at first sight be led to consider that
the failure of knowledge actually to reach over to
reality, and identify itself with it, is a special defect
that attaches to the knowledge of man. But it is
not so. " We may exalt the intelligence of more
perfect beings above our own as high as we please ;
but so long as we desire to attach any rational
meaning to it, it must always fall under some cate-
gory of knowledge, or direct perception, or cognition,
that is to say, it will never be the thing itself, but
only an aggregate of ideas about the thing. Nothing
is simpler than to convince ourselves that every
apprehending intelligence can only see things as
they look to it w^hen it perceives them, not as they
look when no one perceives them ; he who demands
a knowledge which should be more than a perfectly
connected and consistent system of ideas about the
thing, a knowledge which should actually exhaust
the thing itself, is no longer asking for knowledge
at all but for something entirely unintelligible. One
cannot even say that he is desiring not to know,
but to be the things themselves ; for, in fact, he
would not even so reach his goal. Could he arrive
at being in some way or another that very metal in
itself, the knowledge of which in the way of ideas
does not content him ; well, he would be metal, it
is true, but he would be further off than ever from
apprehending himself as the metal which he had
become. Or supposing that a higher power gave
him back his intelligence while he still remained

46 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

metal, even then, in his new character of intelligent
metal, he would still only apprehend himself in
such wise as he would be represented to himself in
his own ideas, not as he would be apart from such
representation." ^

In this passage the distinction, or even the onto-
logical severance, of knowledge from the realities
known is represented as the characteristic and
essence of knowledge wherever we may find it.
It implies that perfect knowledge, say God's, is
still only knowledge, only an image, or replica, of
the world of being.

Now, such an ultimate distinction between thoughts
and the real objects of thought has generally been
made the ground from which the failure of know-
ledge is inferred. It has been assumed that if
knowledge is subjective it cannot be true. But,
Lotze argues, this assumption is entirely unjustified.
"Since knowledge must be subjective in every case,
the proof of such a subjective origin of our know-
ledge can, for that very reason, neither decide for
nor against its truth ; and he who believes that it
decides against it, only takes the first step in the
error which idealist views carry out more extens-
ively." - In Lotze's view, the condemnation of
knowledge on account of its subjectivity springs in
reality from a false theory of its nature and purpose.
It is presupposed that knowledge aims at being,

'Logic, II., ^ 30S.

-Kleine Schriftcii, \o\. in., p. 466.

LOrZE'S DOCTRINE OF rilOUGIIT

and not merely at representing its objects ; but
this presupposition is doubly absurd. For, in the
first place, it is impossible that ideas can be
things. As long as the law of identity holds,
one thing cannot possibly be another ; one idea
cannot be another idea, any more than it can
be the thing of which it is an idea. And, in
the second place, if by some kind of miracle
knowledge were to make this transition from itself
so as actually to become its own object, it would
ipso facto cease to be knowledge. It would be sunk
and lost in undistinguished and undistinguishing
existence. For knowledge is a relation of ideas to
reality, and relation implies difference. Delete the
difference, and the relation which knowledge is, is
extinguished. It cannot, therefore, be the aim and
purpose of knowledge to become or to be its own
object. Nothing can aim at its own extinction, nor
realize itself by ceasing to be. And if either
knowledge or morality seem to aim at a perfection
in which they would cease to be, that seeming is
false, and it implies that we have set before them
an end which is not their own. The false end
which we have set before knowledge, and the false
criterion by reference to which we condemn it, are
easily exposed : we have assumed that its goal is
to exist as things, instead of to be ''valid of
things. Hence the division between knowledge and
reality is, ontologically speaking, complete; and
thought is entirely confined within the ideal sphere.

48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

And yet this conclusion needs to be qualified in a
way to do justice to Lotze's view. He does not
mean to say that knowledge falls into some sphere
outside of reality : it is manifest that everything is
real, even false knowledge and mere illusions.
Ideas, as psychical phenomena, are events which
occur, and in that sense they are as real as any
other events. But as events they are not know-
ledge, and " their content, so far as we regard it in
abstraction from the mental activity which we
direct to it, can no longer be said to occur, though
neither again does it exist as things exist ; we
can only say that it possesses Validity." ^ As
knowledge our ideas may be true, but they are
not real in the sense of having existence. " Truth
belongs to existence, but it does not as such exist,"
says Dr. Bradley. " It is a character which indeed
reality possesses, but a character which, as truth
and as ideal, has been set loose from existence ;
and it is never rejoined to it in such a way as to
come together singly and make fact. Hence truth
shows a dissection, and never an actual life."^
" Our principles may be true, but they are not
reality." ^

This, then, is Lotze's first step in reducing the
pretensions of thought. Even if thought receives
the widest extension of meaning and is regarded
as equivalent to the whole of our intelligent ex-

^ Logic ^ 1 1- J § 316. -Appearance arid Reality, -p. 167.

'■^Principle of Logic, p. 533.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT

periencc, it is not to be considered as co-extensive
with and constituent of reality. It is only a sub-
jective fact, symbolic, representative, or valid of the
world of real things and events. " It is only by
misunderstanding," as Mr. Bradley says, "that we
find difficulty in taking thought to be something
less than reality."

But Lotze proceeds to limit the pretensions of
thought still further. Thought is not all reality, as
Hegel believed ; it is not even co-extensive with
our intelligent experience. " The nature of things,"
says Lotze, in a decisive manner, " does not consist
in thoughts, and thought is not able to grasp it.
Yet, perhaps, the whole mind experiences in other
forms of its activity and passivity the essential
meaning of all being and action. Thought, there-
after, subserves the mind as an instrument for
bringing what is experienced into that connection
which its nature demands, and for making that
experience the more intense the more thought
masters this connection."^ That is to say, we might
conceivably experience " the essential meaning " of
all things, but we cannot ^/linl^ it. Experience does
not consist entirely of thoughts. All reality, as we
know it, must manifest itself as our experience ; but
thought is only one of several elements that enter
into the constitution of experience. We have other
ways of attaining truth than that of thought. Lotze
cites with complete approval "the multitude of those

^ Mikrokosmtts, Bk. vill., chap, i., § 8.
D

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

who maintain that they experience that which is
highest in the world, perfectly intellectually, in
faith, in feeling, in presentiment, in inspiration, and
who yet acknowledge that they do not possess it
in knowledge." It is a grave error " to look upon
knowledge as the sole portal through which that
which constitutes the essence of real existence can
enter into connection with the mind. . . . Intel-
lectual life is more than thought." ^ Thought, in a
word, is only a single part, or element, or faculty of
mind, occupying a restricted place amongst several
others, which co-operate with it in the production of
the contents of our intelligent life. And, apart from
the prime error of identifying thought with reality,
philosophers have not in anything strayed more
mischievously from the truth than in representing
all the processes of cognition as processes of thought.
Lotze believes, as we shall see in detail in the next
chapter, that thought is to be distinguished from
sensation, perception, memory, and all the associ-
ative processes without which it would neither have
material on which to operate nor the power to act
upon it. But even if we take thought in its
broadest sense, as including these activities, we are
not entitled to give it the sole, or even the supreme
dominion in our theoretical life. We have no right,
in fact, to follow the example of the Idealists, and
either to ignore the function of feeling and will in
knowledge, or to merge them in the process of
^ Kleinc Schrificn, Vol. ill., pp. 453, 454.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT 51

tliinking. Even if we were to regard man, as they
did, as a being who is merely cognitive or contem-
plative, and as if he had all the complex needs of
his nature satisfied with knowing, we should not
be able to account for even that limited mode of
existence if his only intellectual instrument were
thought. There are elements in our cognitive ex-
perience which thought cannot yield. The unique
consciousness of pleasure and pain is no product
of thought, nor are the numerous emotions that
give variety and interest to our inner life. " The
living forces which living faith in God beholds, the
sensuous impressions that perception yields, are all
equally inaccessible to thought : we experiefice their
content, but we do not possess them by means of
thought. What is good and evil can as little be
thought as what is blue or sweet. It is only after
imviediate feeling has taught us that there is worth
and worthlessness in the world, and taught us, too,
the gravity of the distinction between them, that
thought can develop out of this experienced con-
tent, signs which enable us to bring a particular
fact under these universal intuitions. Is the real
living nerve of righteousness to be found in con-
ceptions.'' . . . Love and hate, are they thinkable.''
Can their essence be exhausted in concepts .-'" ^
Idealism, he goes on to show, so far from being able
to reduce these phenomena into thoughts, " has never
succeeded in showing that thought is the most
^ Mikrokosmus, Bk. vill., chap. i.

52 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LO'FZE

essential element in spirit, nor that thinking about
thought, or the pure mirroring of itself on the part
of a logical activity, is what is highest in thought."
The uniqueness of the feelings and emotions, their
absolute irreducibility into mere conceptions, indicate
that they have another origin than thought. They
spring from "the capacity of experiencing pleasure
and pain which is original in the soul," and which
is not explicable in terms of thought. For although
we cannot regard the soul as composite, after the
manner of the older psychologists who divided it
into quasi-independent faculties, and although we
must, on the contrary, regard feeling, thought, and
volition as inseparable elements in every psychical
activity, we cannot ignore the difference between
them, nor derive the one from the other. Feeling
never passes into thought, nor thought into volition.
Nor is there any necessary connection between them,
either in the way of subsumption or of causality
— or, at least, none that the human intelligence can
discover. " It is possible that even divine intelligence
would find nothing in the conception of knowledge
alone that should necessitate feeling to issue out of
it." Nor does the conception of thinking in any way
imply volition or explain it. It is perfectly pos-
sible to conceive beings who could know, and find
neither pleasure nor pain in the operation ; who
could feel without knowing ; who could both know
and feel without willing. No doubt, that is not our
case ; and, no doubt, " what we know as three is,

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT

nevertheless, but one in the being of the soul."
" Perfect intelligence would see the whole nature of
the soul in every one of its manifestations, and
discern its unity amidst the difiference, but we must
be content with merely postulating that unity, and
remember that, while we see a plurality of capa-
cities, unity of being is a fundamental attribute of
the soul."^ In this manner Lotze resists the attempt
to regard cognition as the sole origin even of our
cognitive experience, and tries to show that "a cross
section of any conscious phenomenon " or activity
would reveal the presence of elements derivable
only from feeling and volition.

But he is not content to place feeling on the
same level as thought ; he would subordinate the
intelligence to the emotions in a manner analogous
to that in which Schopenhauer and Hartmann
would subordinate it to a merely active principle.
And nowhere is the revolt of Lotze against w^hat
has been called the Panlogismus of Idealism more
evident than in the emphasis he lays upon the
function of feeling in our intelligent life.

" If," says Lotze, " it was an original character-
istic of spirit to present its own changes to itself
in thoughts as well as to experience them, it
belongs to it in a manner equally original, not
only to apprehend them, but, by means of pleasure
and pain, to become aware of the ivorth which they
have.'"- The apprehension of the value of objects in

'^ Mikrokosnius, Bk. il., chap. ii. - Ibid., chap, v., § 8.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

terms of pleasure and pain is, for Lotze, t/ic char-
acteristic of feeling. That value, he proceeds to
show, that is, the pleasure or the pain which objects
bring in their relation to the self, depends upon their
tendency to stimulate the soul in harmony with, or
against, the nature of the self, so as to assist or
arrest its development. Pleasure, in fact, is the
consciousness of the successful development of the
powers of the soul in its interaction with objects ;
pain, of disturbance and arrestment "consequent
upon its being stimulated by objects in a manner
contrary to the natural course of its activity." Upon
this relation of objects to the self, feeling alone can
pronounce ; and thoughts can neither yield, nor
corroborate, nor correct, nor retract its deliver-
ances. For the judgments of cognition and those
of feeling deal with different materials : the former
with the manifestations of objects, or the qualities
which they show in their relations to one another;
the latter, while silent as to the qualities of objects,
deals with their value in their relation to us.
Knowledge finds its goal in Truth, feeling in
Supreme Worth, or the Good.

Now, as we have already partly seen, the Good
is for Lotze a higher category than the True ; the
main purpose of his philosophy is to vindicate
for the aesthetic, moral, and religious ends of life
a position not only co-ordinate with, but superior
to, that of Knowledge. The Good comprehends
and exhausts the meanin" of the True. It is ex vi

LOrZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT

tcnnini a supreme end, while truth has only deriva-
tive worth as means to the good. The work of
the intelligence in rehearsing in the mirror of the
mind the content of the real world would be vain
and worthless apart from the practical purposes
which knowledge subserves. Hence feeling, as the
only source of the judgment of value, or as alone
capable of apprehending what is good or the
opposite, takes precedence of cognition. In the
first place, it is the source of the impulse to know ;
for w^e desire truth not because it is true but be-
cause it is good. "It is not a necessity of thought
that thought itself should be possible," Lotze tells
us in his Logic. Thought derives its necessity from
the practical ideal. In the second place, feeling
guides knowledge as w^ell as inspires it. In other
words, it supplies the cognitive, or the subsidiary,
as well as the practical or supreme ideal. And it
does this because it is the power from which
issues our sense of harmony. Being the source of
our consciousness of harmony it dominates the
sphere of art. " It is the basis of the imagination
from which are born the works of art, and which
enables us to comprehend all natural beauty; for
this creative and re creative power consists in
nothing else than in that delicacy of apprehen-
sion which can clothe the world of values in
the world of form.s, or detect the happiness that
is enfolded in the form." But further, feeling,
as the principle of harmon\', yields, although in an

56 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

indefinite way, that conception of the totahty of
being, or the systematic wholeness of the relations
of differences within a unity, which Knowledge
seeks to realize in detail by tracing one by one
the connections of objects with each other. Feeling,
and not any intellectual principle of mere con-
sistency, is the ultimate source of the requirement
that our conception of the world should be " that
of a whole and essentially complete unit, and that
it should at the same time comprehend all indi-
viduals." In a word, feeling is the source of the
ideal of knowledge ; and with no other powers than
those of the mere intellect we should neither have
it nor seek it.

Feeling thus supplies experience with a positive
content other than that which our cognitive faculties
could yield. " In its feeling for the value of things
our reason possesses as genuine a power of reve-
lation as it has in the principles of investigation
by means of the understanding, an indispensable
instrument of experience." And that which it
reveals is precisely that which has most value,
namely, our ideals, intellectual, aesthetic, moral,
and religious. No doubt the ideals with which it
guides life need definiteness and articulation. " No
source of revelation is less clear, nor does anything
stand in greater need of a firmer basis than these
assertions regarding the necessary form of the
world which are only founded on the feeling of
worth." The intellect must come in to explain.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT

But its function is only formal ; while feeling, on
the other hand, is the real source of " the higher
views of things, which will continue to be the
animating and quickening breath of all human
effort."

Now, inasmuch as feeling produces the con-
sciousness of harmony, and, therefore, the ideal of
knowledge, it is also of necessity the criterion of
truth. It shows from time to time, during the
progress of knowledge, the degree of its inadequacy,
and exposes the incompleteness, and therefore the
inconclusiveness, of the system of relations set up
by thought. For thought as a relating faculty is
radically incapable of bringing its products into a
unity. It explains everything in relation to some-
thing else, and its attempt to reach a first principle
only leads to an infinite regress, in which it pursues
receding conditions. The universals which it yields
" speak only of that which must be if something-
else is; they show what inevitably follows from
conditions the actuality of which they leave entirely
doubtful."^ Hence our thought-derived experience
is as to its parts necessary, and as a whole con-
tingent; it is a system of necessity on a hypo-
thetical basis. And whether we seek the real
meaning and essence of the individual parts, or
try to discover that which converts the hypothetical
whole into actuality, we must pass from thought
to feeling. Thought cannot reveal the unic^uc
^ Mikrokosinus, Bk. IX., chap. i.

58 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

elements which constitute the individuaHty of each
thini^, just because it is a function of relations ;
nor does its necessity lie within itself, but in
the aesthetic and moral facts which alone have
apodeictic certainty. There would be no logical
contradiction in regarding the highest and the best
which thought could reveal as a mere thought, to
which nothing corresponds ; nor in the view that
the system of nature which science constructs, or
the idea of a perfect being to which theology
points, may be nothing but empty thoughts. But
it would be " intolerable {i.e., to feeling) to believe
of our ideal that while it is an idea produced by
the action of thought, it has no existence, no power,
and no validity in the world of reality."

" It is not out of the perfection of the perfect
that its actuality follows as a logical consequence,
but, without any circuitous process of inference, the
impossibility of its non-existence is immediately felt ,
and all the show of syllogistic proof only serves to
make the immediacy of this certainty more clear." ^
In short, the certainty that Truth is valid, that
the Beautiful and the Good are real, or in other
words, that our cognitive, aesthetic, moral, and
religious ideals are not empty thoughts, rests on
no logical ground: it is "supported by the living
feeling that precisely to this, which is most perfect
and greatest, it belongs to be in a perfect and
complete way real."

' Mikrokosvuis, Bk. IX., chap. iv.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT

It is usual to regard certain laws of thought as
carrying within themselves an irrevocable authority,
and as constituting an ultimate court of appeal in
reference to both truth and reality. Such laws as
those of Identit}', Causality, and so on, seem to
have no need of an}' extraneous support, and,
indeed, to be incapable of it. But even these,
Lotze believes, must borrow their ultimate authority
from feeling and its content. " The fact that there
is truth at all cannot in itself be understood, and
is only comprehensible in a world the whole nature
of which depends upon the principle of the Good."
And that supreme Good is Love. " If this eternal
and supreme Worth of Love did not lie at the
foundation of the world, and if in such a case we
could still think or speak of a world, this world,
it seems to me, would, whatever it were, be left
without truth and without law." ^ A world, that
is, might be real, even although thought found
in it nothing but disorder and contradiction. That
which is thinkable need not exist, and that which
exists need not be thinkable — for all that tJiought
could show to the contrary. Thought gives us no
guarantee that there may not be an ultimate dis-
crepancy between itself and rcalit}-, and it cannot
turn aside the impotence and despair of absolute
scepticism. It is not " pure intelligence, whether
we call it understanding or reason, that dictates
to us those assumptions which we regard as
^ Mikrokosiitus^ Bk. !.\., chap. v.

6o THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

inviolable ; it is everywhere the whole mind, at
once thinking, feeling, and passing moral judgments
which, out of the full completeness of its nature,
produces in us those unspoken first principles to
which our perception seeks to subordinate the con-
tent of experience." While thinking plays its own
necessary part in articulating and defining, and in
that respect substantiating these inviolable assump-
tions, the ultimate basis is to be found in the
conviction of their worth, and worth is estimated
by feeling.

Hence the final criterion of the reality of any-
thing is not that it accords with the laws of thought
or with the idea of a complete system of experience,
nor is its unreality shown by its inconsistency with
such a system. There is no co7itradictioii in think-
ing that an unthinkable world may be real, or at
any rate, the contradiction is harmless. But there
is absurdity in it. It would be repugnant to our
aesthetic and moral nature, that thought should so
miss its end as either to represent the real as un-
real or the unreal as real. And it is this "absurdity,"
which is not an intellectual but an emotional
phenomenon, it is this violation of aesthetic feeling
or of the consciousness of fitness and harmony
which is the supreme criterion of truth.' Feeling,
therefore, is the source of the necessity which we
recognize in the laws of thought. We recognize
that what contradicts itself in thought cannot be
^ See Mikrokosnius^ Bk. v,, chap. iv.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT 6 1

real, and we conclude rightly ; but the authorit}-
of the law of contradiction and of thought itself is
derived from feeling. Its untrustworthiness would
be inconsistent with the aesthetic conviction de-
rived from feeling that thought must have worth.

There is still one more consideration advanced
by Lotze in illustration of the dependence of
thought upon feeling to which we must allude,
seeing that it turns upon a matter of fundamental
importance, namely, the distinction of the self from
the not-self It is not necessary to show that
human knowledge hinges upon this distinction of
the subject and the object of thought, or that the
whole task of knowledge is comprised in revealing
the relation of these poles of experience through
which alone truth and reality come to be for us.

Now the distinction of subject and object, or of
the self and the not-self, is usually regarded as
set up by thought ; and there is no doubt that the
intellect is par excellence the discriminating and
analytic faculty ; articulating the material with
which experience supplies it. It distinguishes
objects from one another. But the distinction
between subject and object must not be confused
with that distinction between objects which is onlj-
possible through the former. The difference be-
tween the subject and the object is so unique as
to point to the activity of a power other than the
intellect. For all the contrasts set up by thought
fall into the objective world, and are set over

62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

against the subject which thinks ; so that even
the self, in so far as it is known, is an object.
And even if we were able completely to represent
ourselves in thought, still that would be a repre-
sentation of the thinker, and not the thinker him-
self, and we should not identify ourselves with that
representation. " This perfect knowledge would,
indeed, imply that our own being had become
to us clearly objective — objective, however, in the
sense that our own self would appear to us but one
among other objects."^ The self's intimacy with
itself, as distinguished from its relation to objects of
thought, the inwardness of i"t'^-consciousness, which is
the essence of the contrast between the Ego and the
non-Ego, cannot be given in thought. In attempt-
ing to yield that consciousness thought falls foul
of itself, and necessarily stultifies its own process ;
for it can only know by objectifying, and in this
case if it objectifies it defeats its end, producing
the consciousness of a not-self instead of the con-
sciousness of self.

What, then, is the source of this distinction }
It arises from the jDeculiar value which each
individual necessarily sets upon himself as the
centre and focus of all his experience. And
this value, of course, is given only in feeling.
" Not as thought, but as felt in its immediate
value for us, docs the identity of the thinker and
the thought form the foundation of our self-con-
^ Mikrokosinns, Bk. ii., chap. v.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT (S-^

sciousness, and once for all lift the distinction
between us and the world beyond all comparison
with the differences by which it discriminates be-
tween one object and another."^ For this purpose
the simplest feeling serves, while " the consum-
mate intelligence of an angel, did it lack feeling,"
would utterly fail to give the consciousness of the
self as a self. " What we know, do, and suffer
does not exhaust our ego . . . we find our-
selves, on the contrary, in the general mood of
our feelings, in the temperament which differs in
each of us." The intellect can present the self to
itself, and may define and even deepen the con-
trast between the self and the not-self; but both
the self and the contrast must in the first place be
given by feeling as facts, before the intellect can
present them. Self - consciousness, therefore, is a
datum of feeling.

The conception that thought depends upon a
foreign source for its data lies at the root of the
whole attempt of Lotze to limit its powers. It
leads him, in fact, to share the material of thought
between feeling on the one side, and sensation on
the other. Feeling supplies it with the ideals which
inspire and guide knowledge, and which express,
although indefinitely, the harmonious totality of ex-
perience ; and sensation supplies it with the material
out of which is elaborated our world of sensuous
objects. And, as we shall see hereafter, thought,
^ Mikro/cosmtts, Bk. ii., chap. v.

64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

even when thus suppHed, is not able to carry out
by itself the work of converting the data of know-
ledge into actual knowledge. Feeling must give
it its impulse and the ultimate criteria of truth
and error ; and an " unconscious psychical mechan-
ism " must prepare beforehand the sense-given
material by a preliminary elaboration of it. The
consequence is that thought is reduced into a
purely formal function, which merely re-arranges
a content given to it from without, and which, even
in that re-arrangement, is led by ideals which do
not issue from itself but from feeling.

The general attitude of Lotze towards thought,
which it is my object in this chapter to illustrate,
may be better understood if we compare it for a
moment with that of Kant.

It is evident that thought, on Lotze's theory, is
dependent upon feeling, as the "understanding," on
Kant's, is dependent on " reason." In fact, it may
be said that he has endowed feeling with the
functions of reason, and reduced thought to mere
understanding, making it occupj^ an intermediate
place between sense and reason, and cutting away
from it both the highest and the lowest forms of
consciousness. We have seen already that he
makes feeling yield qne by one the three ideas
which Kant attributed to reason, namely, the Self,
the World, and God. To these ideas of feeling,
if such a phrase is allowable, he gives precisely
the same function as Kant gave to the ideas of

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT 65

reason. They are ideals which knowledge strives
to attain, they regulate the use of thought, they
point to the true content of thought which
thought itself can never possess, they serve as
the criterion which thought employs in distinguish-
ing truth and error, and they give the only possible
guarantee that the products of thought are not,
even at their highest and completest, merely illusory
subjective phenomena. It would be easy to show
that the parallelism between Lotze's " Feeling " and
Kant's " Reason " runs into the practical sphere as
well, feeling being for Lotze the source of our
moral and religious ideals. Indeed, in Book II. of
the Mikj'okosvnis Lotze all but identifies feeling
with Kant's " reason " in so many words : he speaks
of feeling as " containing the principle of reason,"
and attributes to reason the essential characteristic
he finds in feeling, telling us of " the inspirations
of a reason appreciative of worth." In the same
context he uses the term "understanding" to
represent what he elsewhere calls "thought." In
a word, what Kant means by asserting that we
may think what we cannot kiioiv, Lotze expresses
by saying that we can feel what we cannot tJivik.

At first sight this may seem to be a harmless
change of terminology. But closer examination will
show that these new expressions indicate that Lotze
fell away in essential matters from the Kantian
Idealism, converting the cleft within the intelligence,
which characterizes the Kantian doctrine, into a

66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

cleft bctijcen the intelligence and the emotional
faculties. The implicit dualism in the doctrine of
Kant would be eliminated if the intellectual powers,
whose highest form is reason, could be made con-
sistent with themselves, a task which was attempted
by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The dualism
in Lotze's doctrine can be eliminated only by the
completer subjugation of the intelligence to feeling,
which, as the subsequent history of Philosophy has
shown, leads to the despair of Philosophy itself, and
to an attempt to base our intelligent and practical
life on those " immediate intuitions of the heart,"
which arrogate to themselves the name of " faith. "
In a word, he paved the way to a deepening of the
dualism of Kant into an explicit Scepticism, and
thereby showed indirectly that the true line of the
development of Kant's doctrine is that which was
adopted by the Idealists, and which Lotze in his
logical theories so strenuously resists.

The opposition of Reason and Understanding by
Kant led to the contrasts of the phenomenal and
noumenal, nature and spirit, to which we have
already alluded. Kant himself felt that it was only
by tempering the opposition between them that either
truth or goodness could be saved. He endeavoured,
therefore, to bring reason down from its isolation
and to relate its datum, ox factum, to the phenomenal
world by using the latter as a " typic'' and iiid\rcct\y
filling the noumenal world with its content. Kant's
immediate successors souQ^ht to mediate further be-

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT CyJ

twecn these powers, and to make the understandinij^
and the reason interpenetrate; and Hegel endeavoured
to complete the process by representing the under-
standing as a stage in the self-evolution of reason
— the stage, namely, in which reason, on its way
from implicit to explicit, or from abstract to con-
crete, unity, is employed primarily with relation, dis-
tinction, difference, beneath which that unity was
always operative. But such ways of mediating
between the powers that co-operate to constitute
our intelligent experience are not possible on Lotze's
view. There is no way of making a transition from
cognition to feeling, and the judgment of reflection
differs toto coelo from the judgment of worth which
Lotze attributes to feeling. We are left with the
parts of the intelligent life in our hands, and bidden
still to believe in its unity, while all rational grounds
for such a belief are taken away from us. That is to
say, if the soul still is a unity, it is not a unity con-
ceivable on Lotze's theory ; and he really summoned
up belief not to anticipate but to contradict his own
conclusions. He makes no attempt to show how
one of the powers of the mind can be inspired by
the ideals, guided by the principles, employed upon
the data supplied by another. And in his criticism
of transeunt action in his Metaphysics, and of the
conception of the possibility of a relation behveen
things, he shows us sufficient reason why such an
external i-elation between thought and feeling is
impossible. No single principle can under-reach

68 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

the differences as he expounds them ; nothing can
fill up the interstices between feeling and thought.

The dualism of Lotze's view will become further
evident when we consider the relation between
sense and thought. On the doctrine of both Kant
and Lotze sense gave a discrete manifold, and the
task of thought was to relate it ; and, on the theory
of both, that manifold was given in the sense of
being supplied from without. Kant tempered this
opposition also ; he used the imagination to mediate
between sense and understanding, and if he still
retained for the manifold an extraneous origin and
— in the characteristic of pure difference — a nature
foreign to thought, he deprived it of all significance.
When the contributions of the understanding were
withdrawn from sense, little remained besides the
name. Later idealists, appreciating Kant's progres-
sive attempt, sought to make sense and thought,
perception and conception, completely relative to
each other, and to show that the sense-given material
carried within it from the first those principles of
unity which, at higher stages of consciousness,
became more and more evident. They denied that
the datum is a mere manifold, and conceived it as
implicitly rational. Instead of the hard contrast of
sense and understanding they regarded sense as in
process of evolution, and the lowest form of con-
sciousness, which is always rational, as passing into
a reason which comprehends itself The concep-
tion of the daiiivi of knowledge as rational carried

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT 69

with it the idea of the real, which reveals itself in
sense, as rational, and led to a completely idealistic
view of the world.

Lotze is not ignorant of the impossibility of
bringing the purely relating activity of thought to
bear upon the purely discrete data of sense. But
instead of endeavouring to modify these opposites
through the conception at which Kant was reaching,
that each implied the other, and that the pure uni-
versal and the pure particular are nothing but
logical abstractions, he sought to interpose between
them an " unconscious psychical mechanism " which
prepares the sense material for thought. Me is
obliged to endow this " unconscious mechanism "
with the functions of thought, as we shall see, but
so resolute is he to reduce thought to a formal
power that he will not definitely recognize these
functions as elementary activities of thought. He
ends with the most distinct contrast between them,
making thought a faculty which deals with uni-
versals only, with connections or relations, and look-
ing elsewhere for the particulars, the points on which
to hang these relations. So that, in this respect
also, the dualism of Lotze is more complete than
Kant's, and he attributes more to sensation and
perception, and less to thought or the understanding.

Thus Lotze, in opposing the tendency manifested
by both scientific men and idealists, to exaggerate
the functions of thought in knowledge, strips the
reflective intelligence on both sides. He hands over

70 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

the original data of thought to pure sense, and the
first elaboration of them to an " unconscious psychical
mechanism " ; and he hands over the ideals which
inspire and regulate knowledge to feeling. Before
thought proper enters the field the unconscious
mechanism has already built up the world as it
appears to the ordinary consciousness, and supplied
" the conception of the cosmos." The processes of
sensation, perception, and association in its various
forms, however analogous they ma}' be to those of
thought, are still not attributed to thought in this
sense of the term. It "comes in afterwards, and
takes cognizance of relations which it did not by
its own action originate, but which have been pre-
pared for it by the unconscious mechanism of the
psychic states."^ Nevertheless, with all this ex-
traneous assistance from the nether side, thought,
if left to itself, would still remain helpless. Feel-
ing and its consciousness of worth must give it
the impulse to do its work, present it with the
ideal of harmony which it is to pursue, supply it
with the criterion of its truth, guarantee its prin-
ciples, and fill its otherwise empty forms with the
value which alone renders them adequate to reality.
Thus he makes ample amends for the "deification
of thought" from which he recoils. Thought, taken
by itself as he takes it, has nothing of its own to
think about — sense must suppl}- the content ; even
if thought had a content of its own it could not
^ MikrokosviJis, Bk. \'., ch. i\-.

LOTZE'S DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT 71

even tr)' to think — -the impulse to know must be
awakened by feeling, and we desire truth only as
means to the good ; if by some chance thought
did try to think, it has no ideal of its own to
regulate its endeavour, but must borrow it from
the emotional consciousness of harmony ; having
borrowed its ideal, thought can neither reach it nor
know whether it has reached it or not — the criterion
of truth is immediate feeling ; even if thought did
reach the ideal it could not convince any one that
the only truth which it has in its power to offer is
not a subjective and illusory phantasm to which
no reality corresponds — -faith must guarantee that
thought has worth, and feeling alone can apprehend
that worth.

It is amply evident that if this be thought we
cannot avoid Lotze's conclusion that " Intelligence
is much more than thought." We cannot regard it
as the dominant function even in the creation of
our intelligent experience, far less can we identif}'
it with the principle of reality, as the Idealists
have done. It remains to be seen whether thought,
thus shorn of its pretensions, is capable of perform-
ing any function whatsoever ; or whether it is not.
on the contrary, a helpless residuum, an abstract
remnant found by analysis and set up as an in-
dependent entity, rather than a faculty really pos-
sessed by any intelligent being.

To determine this question we shall have to
inquire whether Lotze has not simply transferred

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

to feeling, processes which must be regarded as
processes of thought, obliterating his own distinction
between them, and endowing feeling with the powers
of both sense and reason. In other words, we must
examine his treatment of feeling. But before
doing so, we shall endeavour to follow him in his
exposition of the processes which still remain to
thoufjht.

CHAPTER III

THOUGHT AND THE PRELIMINARY PROCESSES OF
EXPERIENCE

AA /"E have seen how Lotze attributes to feeling
on the one side, and to an unconscious
psychical mechanism on the other, processes which
are generally regarded as belonging to thought.
We have now to follow his exposition of the
functions which thought is still allowed to retain.
There are one or two notable similes which recur
in Lotze's writings, and which are very suggestive
of his general view of the nature of thought and of
the place it fills in our intellectual life. He regards
thought as a means to knowledge, and compares it
to a "tool" which the mind employs in order to
attain it. Now, a " tool " suggests the idea of an
artificial contrivance employed to overcome some
initial defect or weakness ; and although I would
not willingly press a metaphor unduly, I believe
that ample evidence exists in Lotze's writings to
show that he considered thought to have only this

74 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

secondary and external use. In other words, he
does not regard thought as of the essence of mind,
or as constituting the vital element in intelligence.
On the contrary, he conceives minds which have no
need of employing the processes of thought, and
constantly refers to thought as something which
derives its necessity and its use from the peculiar
character of the human mind, and especially from
the peculiar position in the world which man is
originally made to occupy. " The forms and laws,
since it is vian who, by means of them, is to
arrive at the truth, must attach themselves to the
nature and stand-point of man ; and accordingly
they must have peculiarities which are compre-
hensible only from this fact, and not from the
nature of the ' Things ' which are to be known." ^
To understand the " tool " we must consider the
workman who is to use it and the material on
which it is to be employed, for, as he tells us, " a
tool must fit the thing and it must fit the hand."
Such consideration may bring to light that pecu-
liarity of intellectual constitution which makes
thought necessary for man, although it may not
be necessary for other intelligent beings.

This peculiarity is illustrated by Lotze through
the help of another recurring simile. A mind, —
presumably like God's, or an " archangel's," — " which
stood at the centre of the real world, not outside
individual things, but penetrating them with its
' Outlines of Logic^ 5.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION

presence," would stand in no need of thouijht. " It
could command such a view of reality as left
nothing- to look for, and would, therefore, be the
perfect image of it in its own being and activity."
That is to say, reality would immediately reflect its
image on such a mind, or such a mind would
know the truth of things by an immediate act of
intellectual intuition. But that mind is not man's.
"The human mind, with which alone we are here
concerned, does not thus stand at the centre of
things, but has a modest position somewhere in the
extreme ramifications of reality." And it is pre-
cisely this original eccentric position of man's mind
which makes thought necessary. " Compelled as it
is to collect its knowledge piece-meal, by ex-
periences which relate immediately to only a small
fragment of the whole, and thence to advance
cautiously to the apprehension of what lies beyond
its horizon, it has probably to make a number of
circuits, which are immaterial to the truth it is
seeking, but to itself in the search are indis-
pensable." ^ These circuits are the mediate rela-
tions which thought employs. Being incapable of
knowing a fact directly we infer it from another,
or we compare it with another, or we classif\' it,
or we relate it to others by means of judgment.
By employing these methods we arrive at truth, or
at least at such truth as is given to man to know ;
but }-ct they are all symbols of our imperfection,
' See Toi:;u\ Introduction, S ix.

■je THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

indirect means whereby we make up to some extent
for our inability to know intuitively and reach the
nature of reality at once. Had we been placed "at
the centre of things," or been born upon the mountain
top, to use another of his metaphors, we might
have commanded at once the view of the broad
expanse of being. But, as it happens, " Every one
who desires to enjoy the prospect from a hill-top
has to traverse some particular straight or winding
path, from the point at which he starts up to the
summit which discovers the view."^

From this conception of thought as a means, or
a tool, which man has to employ in the absence of
the power to know the truth directly, there follow
the most important consequences. In the first place,
thought, like all mere means, derives its only value
from its reference to the end for the attainment of
which it is used. And we thus arrive once more,
and by a new path, at Lotze's way of subordinating
thought to other faculties. But, in the second place,
the activities of thought, like those of all mere
means or tools, have no interest in themselves, and
its products have no immediate value. They are
significant only in their reference to ns, and they
give us no direct clue to determine the nature of
reality. "The act of thinking," says Lotze, "can
claim only siibjeetive significance ; it is purely and
simply an inner movement of our minds, which is
made necessary to us by reason of the constitution
^ Logic, § 345.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION

of our nature and of our place in the world." ^
" All the processes which we go through in the
framing- of conceptions, in classification, in our
logical constructions, are subjective processes of our
thought, and not processes which take place in
things."- This business of thinking is apparently
our own and private, and the real world stands
aside from it as having nothing whatever to do
with it. It awaits the issue of these processes
without itself giving them any guidance, or
otherwise taking part in them. Starting from a
certain point — some eccentric position — in the real
world, we creep our way by the help of the
relating activities of thought towards the centre.
" By a process of movement from point to point
we arrive at a determinate objective relation," and
get the view from the hill-top. But " the particular
movement chosen neither is, nor yet copies, the
way in which this (the objective or real) relation
itself arose or now obtains."^ And just as the real
world takes no part in the thinking process, so the
results of that process, the conceptions, classifica-
tions, judgments, and influences, are not copies of
reality, nor do they in any way represent really
existing facts or events. "The conte7it of knowledge
which is expressed through these forms of thought
has no Real significance." Thought produces general
conceptions, but there is no general plant, or general

^ Logic, § 345- ' Ibid., § 342.

^ Ibid., § 345.

78 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

animal, amongst existing objects.^ Thought classi-
fies objects in an ascending order; but "this horse
was not to begin with animal in general, then
vertebrate in general, later on a mammal, and only
at the last stage of all a horse." - Thought forms
judgments, combining two ideas by means of a
copula, but objects are not related to one another
as subjects and predicates. Thought infers con-
clusions from premises; but real things do not
exist in a series of major and minor premises and
conclusions. In short, all these products of thought
are artificial. They correspond to nothing whatso-
ever in the real world, and do not in the least
reveal to us the nature of reality. They are only
means to knowledge, indispensable to lis, but issuing
neither from the real world nor from the essential
nature of mind, as mind. They are our devious paths
to the mountain-top, or to use his other favourite
metaphor, they are only " a scaffolding which does
not belong to the permanent form of the building
which they helped to raise, and must be taken
down again to allow the full view of the result."
It is not thought which gives us such reality as we
know, and what thought gives us is not real.

This double separation of thought from reality
seems to defeat the very object of thought, which
is to enable us to know reality. For if reality
yields no guiding principle to the process and is
totally unlike each and all of its results, if, in other
' See Logic., § 342. - Idid.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION

words, thought is thus a purely subjective, merely
human instrument, it is difficult to sec how it can
assist in the attainment of objective truth. In a
word, Lotze's view seems at once to involve absolute
Scepticism. But that is by no means Lotze's
intention. The fact that thought and its products
are mere means and have no value or truth in
themselves does not, in Lotze's view, justify us in
denying to them the value and significance which
they have in so far as they serve to attain their
end. And he strenuously insists that they do
enable us to attain their end ; the tool is fitted to
the thing and to the hand, the paths do lead to
the hill-top, whence an "'objective'' view is obtained,
the scafi'olding does enable us to raise the edifice
of knowledge. No doubt the laws and forms of
thought are subjective and formal, antl they are
not to be taken as laws and forms of things ; never-
theless they are not "mere results of the organiza-
tion of our subjective spirit without respect to the
nature of the objects to be known." That is, they
have after all some reference to reality, and we
should apparently qualify what has just been said
about their pure subjectivity. Nor are they merely
formal. '" They are, rather, ' formal ' and ' real ' at
the same time. That is to say, they are those sub-
jective modes of the connection of our thought
which are necessary to us, if we are b)' thinking to
know the objective truth." ^ Hoiv tile}' can be real
' Outlines of Logic, i 5.

8o THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

as well as formal, how the processes which are thus
subjective caji have " respect to the nature of the
objects to be known and give an 'objective' view,"
are questions which gave Lotze much trouble. But
that they do so, or in other words, that thought
because it is subjective is not therefore invalid
is one of his most invincible convictions.

If we keep in mind both of these views of Lotze
we may be able to follow the windings of his ex-
position of thought, an exposition which, I am
tempted to say, is the most valuable of all the
contributions which he has made to philosophy,
and which has had the deepest effect upon subse-
quent speculation both in Germany and in this
country. The key of his position lies once more
in his relation to Idealism on the one side, and on
the other to the positive interest he always felt,
and which he took pains to justify, in the ideals
of our cognitive, and especially of our moral and
religious life. He wished, in fact, to strike a
middle path between the Scepticism which severs
knowledge and reality, and the Idealism which
seemed to him to identify them. Like Bunyan's
pilgrim in the Valley of the Shadow of Death he
walked along " a pathway that was exceeding
narrow, and was the more put to it"; for on the
right hand was "a very deep ditch," and on the
left " a very dangerous quag, into which, if even
a good man falls, he can find no bottom for his
foot to stand on." Our task henceforth is to follow

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 8 1

Lotze's exposition of the processes of thought,
and especially to observe how, while denying the
presence and actiinty of the principle of reality in
mans thinking, he still at tr Unites value and validity
to its results.

To the (question, " WHiat is the specific function
of thought?" Lot/.c gives a clear answer. It is
" to reduce the coincidence of our ideas to co-
herence " by exhibiting the ground, or reason, or
principle of their combination. It converts an
associative into a reflective experience. An exam-
ination of the contents of an individual's con-
sciousness would bring to light two kinds or
degrees of knowledge, springing from the difterent
ways in which the ideas that it contains are com-
bined with each other. First, there are ideas
which are contingently connected. They have
simply happened to come together in an indi-
vidual's experience, owing to the peculiar position
in which he is placed from time to time, and
they may come together again ; for one idea
excites another, so as to produce trains, or, as
Lotze says, "currents of ideas." "If we knew
the permanent characteristics of a single partic-
ular soul, if wc had a view of the form and
content of its whole current of ideas up to the
present time, then, the moment it had produced
a first and a second idea on occasion of external
irritants, we should be able to predict . . . what

its third and fourth idea in the next moment

I-

82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

must be. But in any other soul whose nature,
past history, and present condition were different,
the same first and second idea, developed at this
moment by a similar external irritant, would lead
with a similar necessity in the next moment to
an entirely different combination." ^ That is to
say, the connection between the ideas is not, strictly
speaking, a connection of the ideas ; they are
brought together, not by anything within them-
selves but by some accidental circumstance in the
psychical history of the individual ; they are co-
incident, not coherent. Such a current of ideas
gives " rise to many useful combinations of im-
pressions, correct expectations, seasonable reactions,"
and it may " correspond with fact." But the ques-
tion of truth or untruth does not arise in connec-
tion with purely associated knowledge. These ideas
have happened to arise and to be connected, and
nothing more can be said about them. But, in the
second place, there are ideas which have a right
thus to come together ; there are combinations of
them which claim to have validity for every con-
sciousness, so that if certain ideas are entertained,
certain others are regarded as necessarily following
from them. And the specific work of thought is
to bring this necessity to light as a principle of
coherence between the ideas themselves, and there-
fore as independent of, or rather as exercising a
regulating and determining authority over, the in-
^ Logic, Introduction, § ii.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 83

tlividual consciousness. " The thinkini^ mind is not
content to receive and acquiesce in its ideas as
they were orii^inally combined by casual coin-
cidence, or as they arc re-combined in the memory;
it sifts them, and where they have come together
in this way it docs away with their co-existence ;
but where there is a material coherence between
them, it not only leaves them together but com-
bines them anew, this time, liowever, in a form
which adds to the fact of their connection a con-
sciousness of the ground of their coherence." ^
Thought thus performs " a surplus work over and
above the mere current of ideas." " It always
consists in adding to the reproduction or sever-
ance of a connection in ideas the accessory notion
of a ground for their coherence or non-coherence."
" The peculiarity of thought, which will govern the
whole of our sub.sequent exposition, lies in the
production of those accessory and justificatory
notions which condition the form of our appre-
hension." - L.otze further explains his view by
contrasting the human with the presumable animal
consciousness, in which, though there are trains of
ideas suited to the ends of its life, there are no
thoughts in the specific sense of the term, and,
therefore, no universal knowledge, and no dis-
tinction between truth and error.' The distinction
is too familiar to need any more words.

^ Logic, Introduction, S iii. '^ Ibid., % vii.

•* See Outlines of Logic, § 4 ; Looic, Introduction, § vii.

84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

But a question immediatcl}' arises as to the
nature of the relation that exists between the
associative and thinking forms of consciousness.
Are we to regard the two as distinct ; or does the
former pass into the latter through the gradual
evolution of its contents ? Does thought produce
the principles which give coherence to the contents
of our experience, or does it only discover them in
that experience ? Is the original datum of thought
a genuine manifold with no inherent connections,
or is there in truth no such thing as a manifold,
but only what appears to be a manifold, because
the principles of unity within it are latent or
merely implicit ? Until this question is answered
it is manifestly impossible to distinguish clearly
the datum from the product of thought, or to
determine how far thought is subjective. I find
Lotze's answer very ambiguous, if I may not say in-
consistent. He opens his exposition, both in the
larger Logic and in the Outlines, by insisting upon
the necessity of preliminary intellectual processes
which shall prepare its material for thought. Such
a view is implied in the passages already quoted,
in which Lotze defines the specific function of
thought as " reducing the coincident into co-
herence," or as generating "accessory or justi-
ficatory notions" or "grounds" ''in addition to
the mere current of ideas." " From mere impres-
sions, in so far as they are nothing more than
our affections (moods, that is, of our feeling), no

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 85

logical connection is to be established ; but each
inchvidiial impression, in order to be capable, in
the logical sense, of being combined with another
into a thongJit, must be already apprehended by
the spirit in such a quite definite form as renders
this combination possible."^ If the states of con-
sciousness that follow the external irritants " are
to admit of combination in the definite form of
a tliougJtt, they each require some previous shap-
ing to make them into logical building-stones and
to convert them from impressions into ideas.''"' This
seems to be sufficiently explicit : thought is not
able to grasp the impressions as they are first
given, and certain processes, which Lotzc regards
as carried on by a j^sychical mechanism, must
interpose between the universals of thought and
the particulars of sense. In l^ook v., chap, iv., of
the Mikrokosinus and in j:^ 20 of his Logic he gives
these preliminary processes in detail. First, there
are " the direct sensations caused in us by the
outer world." Secondly, there are " the forms of
grouping to which the mechanism of the inner
.states gives rise, and by which these impressions
are combined into the image of a universe." How
this is done wc cannot tell, though " in scientific
thought we may guess how our psychic activity
arranges in time and space the man.ifold of im-
pressions." Thirdly, " with equally unconscious
necessit}' arise in us ideas of things in general,"
* Outlines of Logic, S 6. '■ Logic, § i.

86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZPZ

— something we may call sense -conceptions, or
universals of sense. Fourthly, " there are com-
parisons and distinctions given directly in percep-
tion," which " may become more distinct with the
aid of conscious reflection," but which " must be
left to the unconscious mechanism of our nature
to produce." Into all these " consciousness enters
afterwards and takes cognizance of relations which
it did not by its own action originate, but which
have been prepared for it by the unconscious
mechanism of the psychic states." From the same
point of view he represents "the current of our
ideas as a series of events which happen in us
and to us according to universal laws of our
nature," while he represents thought as " an activity
which our mind exercises in reacting upon the
material thus supplied."^ "We do not den}- that,
apart from thought, the mere current of ideas in
the brute gives rise to many useful combinations
of impressions, correct expectations, seasonable re-
actions ; on the contrary, we admit that much
even of what man calls his thought is really
nothing but the play of mutualh' productive
ideas."- It would be easy to multiply quotations
illustrating the view that a mechanical and associa-
tive form of intellectual activit}' prepares before-
hand the contents of experience, building" them up
into a coherent image of the world.

Ikit when wc come to examine these processes we
' Sec Logic, Introduction, ?;S iii. and i\-. ^ It>i(t., § vii.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 8/

find not only that they are identical with those of
thought, but definitely attributed to thought by
Lotze himself. In the first place, it is thought
which seizes upon the state of consciousness, or the
event or change in consciousness, and gives it sig-
nificance, converts it, in fact, from a mere mental
occurrence or impression into an idea which refers
to an object. It " objectifies the subjective," as he
says, and thereby produces at the same time a
meaning for ideas and an object to which they
refer. And, since the essence of ideas consists,
not in their mere existence as states of conscious-
ness, but in their having meaning or objective
reference, it is plain that ideas, as such, cannot be
said to exist at all except as products of distinguish-
ing thought. In the second place, it is thought which
endows the objectified state of consciousness, or
meaning, with some kind of independent existence.
For thought " cannot simply distinguish it from an
emotional mood of its own without accrediting it
with some other sort of existence, instead of that
which belonged to it as such a mood." Thought
" reifies," as Dr. Ward says, this aspect of the state
of consciousness, making the symbolic reference
into a ' this,' individual object. But, in the third
place, thought in producing from the psychical state
a ' this ' something, necessarily invests it with some
characteristic or other which serves to distinguish
it from another ' this,' or particular object. That
is to say, thought )-ields the qualities of intelligible

88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

objects. In the fourth place, thought, when it has
thus created a number of such substantial entities
with their adjuncts, places them in some kind of
relation to each other, so as to constitute a system.
And, as a result of all these processes, the world
of perceptions comes to be conceiv^ed as a world
in which there are " things as fixed points, which
serve to support a number of dependent properties,
and are connected together by the changing play
of events."^ The results of these operations of
thought are embodied for us in the primary differ-
ences, or parts of speech : the substantive gives the
object, the adjective its quality, and the verb the
changing relations into which objects enter. They
indicate three fundamental " concepts which are
indispensable for our judgments of reality," and
therefore three fundamental operations or forms of
thought. For all reality whatsoever must present
itself either as a thing having independent exist-
ence, or as a quality, or as a change or event. -
Not, however, that the actual world necessarily
exists in these forms, but that the intelligible
world, the world as it seems to us, has this
appearance ; for it could not appear to us at all
except under these forms.

In this analysis ' the world as it appears to the
ordinary consciousness, so far from being generated
by processes anterior to thought, is shown to be
from its first foundation the creation of thought ;

' Logic, § 7. - Ibid., § 316. ■' Ilnd., §2_f.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 89

and the associative consciousness, instead of being
preliminary to and a condition of the reflective or
thinking consciousness, is shown to be impossible
without it. It is thought which converts an impres-
sion into an idea, a psychic event into an intelligible
object ; it is thought which gives objectivity and
quality and relation. Its activities enter into all
the other mental processes ; and sensation and per-
ception, together with all our associative powers, so
far from being preliminary and independent, must
be regarded as either identical with, or essentially
related to, thought. The distinction between the
"receptive" and the active or reconstructive parts
of mind is rescinded ; for we find the presence of
the activity of thought everywhere generating intel-
ligible objects, their qualities and their relations.
The datum of thought has sunk from an " image
of a cosmos" into sequent states of consciousness
that, apart from thought, could never constitute an
intelligible world, for they are not ideas, but mean-
ingless changes in the state of the soul.

The discrepancy between these views is not
removed by distinguishing between " thought in
general " and " thought strictly so called," or
" logical thought," or between the proper and the
preliminary activities of thought. For it would still
remain true that, according to the second view, the
psychical mechanism and " the play of idea.s,"
whether unconscious or not, cease to be indepen-
dent and preparatcjry, and are themselves directly

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

due to the discriminating activities which ultimately
build up our reflective view of the world. And
thought, instead of being confined to the task of
converting coincidence into coherence, is repre-
sented as the author of the elements which coincide
and of the relations in virtue of which they form
any kind of system. In a word, a purely associative
consciousness is denied, and thought is made com-
pletely dominant in the intelligible world.

But no sooner is this consequence seen than the
spontaneity of thought in which it posited, qualified,
and related its objects is again withdrawn ; and
Lotze, in his account of the " second operation " of
thought, makes it once more receptive. Thought,
which seemed to produce objectivity itself, by a
translation of a state of consciousness into an object
having meaning, is obliged to find all that it needs
in the material. We are told that " the action of
thought consists merely in interpreting relations,
which we find existing between our passive impres-
sions."^ Thought does not uiakc its objects, nor
their qualities, nor their relations ; it finds them.
It is purely reactive, and for each of its particular
reactions it must find an appropriate stimulus in its
material. Thought does not, for instance, make the
idea of red or blue, neither does it make the dis-
tinction between them, or the common element in
virtue of which distinction is possible. " It cannot
be said that we ha\-e the idea of red as red only
^ Logic, % 9.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION

when \vc distinguish it from bkie or sweet, and only
by so distinguishing it ; and, again, the idea of bkic
as bkie only by a similar opposition to red. There
could be no occasion for attempting such a dis-
tinction, nor any possibility of succeeding in the
attempt, unless there were first a clear conscious-
ness of what each of the two opposites is in itself"^
The facts are tJiere in the impression, so is the
distinction between thcin. Following out this con-
ception, that thought must find what it makes, Lotze
proceeds to constitute the world of sense into a
complete analogue of the world of thought, so that
the latter may be furnished with all it needs, and
have its formal character maintained intact. There
are even nniversals of sense provided, in order to
occasion those of thought. " The first universal is
the expression of an inward experience which
thought has merely to recognize, and it is an
indispensable presupposition of that other kind of
universal which we shall meet with in the formation
of conceptions." To discover any common element
in red and yellow "we must have an immediate
sensation, feeling, or experience of the connection
which exists between red and yellow, of the fact
that they contain a common clement ; our logical
work can consist only in the recognition and
expression of this inward experience. The first
universal, therefore, is no i)roduct of thought, but
something which thought finds alrcad}- in existence." -
^ Logii, Sir. - Ibid., i 14.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

In a similar way Lotze proceeds to show that
differences of quantity within universals are given to
thought /;/ the mattei' of sense. " The judgment ' a
is stronger than bl is, indeed, as a judgment, a
logical piece of work ; but that which it expresses
— the general fact that differences of degree do
exist in the same matter, as well as the particular
fact that the degree of a exceeds that of b — can
only be experienced, felt, or recognized as part of
our inward consciousness." Feeling, or experience,
gives it first, and thought starts from this prepared
material. The same applies " to the manifold
matter of ideas, the systematic order of its quali-
tative relationships, and the rich variety of local
and temporal combinations " : " they belong to the
material which serves thought in its further opera-
tions, and viiist be given it to start zuithy ^ In
short, there must be in the matter of thought
something which by its likeness solicits the specific
acts of thought ; there must be differences to call
forth the thought of differences, similarities to call
forth similarities, relations of quantity, quality,
degree, temporal and special combinations to call
forth the like. " Thought is a recognition of facts,
and adds no other form to them except this recog-
nition of their existence. Thought can make no
difference where it finds none already in the matter
of the impressions ; the first universal can only be
experienced in immediate sensation ; all quantitative
' See Logic., § 17.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 93

determinations, to whatever extent thought may
develop them by subsequent comparison, always
come back to an immediate consciousness of certain
characteristics in the object matter." ^ In this way
the same scries of processes seem to be repeated
upon two different levels, once by feeling, or experi-
ence, and once by thought. There is, however, this
important distinction between them, namely, that
while the processes of thought are possible only on
condition that they have been already performed
by the psychical mechanism, the latter can be
carried on and completed without thouglit, for, as
we are told, they " must be given to it to start
with.'

Now, seeing that the world of thought has so
complete a counterpart in the lower world of sense,
it might seem difficult to find any reason for the
emergence of the thinking activities. Can it be
regarded as anything better than a useless repeti-
tion ? Lotze answers by indicating a second im-
portant distinction between them — namely, that
thought, in addition to the given facts of experience
and the connections between them, supplies the
reason or ground for them. The presence of the
ground, in virtue of which qualities are combined
in an object, is the distinguishing mark of the
concept, which is the first product of thought
proper. In an image which, on Lotze's view,
could be produced by the associative intelligence,
^ Logic, §§ 19, 24, etc.

94 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

or by the ps}-chical mechanism, quahties coincide
and constitute a kind of whole ; but this coinci-
dence is merely contingent. The combination is
due to the fortuitous experiences of the individual
mind, and it has no justification in fact. It may
be valid, or it may truly represent the actual com-
bination of qualities in an object ; but it may not.
In fact, the question of its validity does not arise
at this stage. The combination simply happens to
be in consciousness, and it may contain elements
which are really quite incongruous. But with the
concept, i.e., with the first specific product of thought,
there arises a regulative principle which sifts the
elements already present, rejects the irrelevant, and
even makes possible the prediction of elements not
yet experienced. Both the image and the concept,
being units of experience, contain something which
combines, that is, some kind of a universal in
which the parts are held together. But the uni-
versal in the image "comes to us without logical
effort as a simple fact of observation in our mental
life"; while the universal in the concept "we do
produce by logical effort," though not without the
help of the first universal.'

From this there issues a third distinction between
the image and the concept. The universal in the
former does not really dominate the particulars
which it combines; that is to sa}', the combining
elements, being externally superimposed upon the
' See Loii'ic, § 24.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 95

content, leave it unchanged. But the universal
which appears in the concept comprehends the
content and systematizes it by relation to itself,
making the differences into species Avithin the
whole. So that the "concept" or unit of the
thinking consciousness is radically different from
the " image " or unit of the associative conscious-
ness. For when the particulars become species of
the universal, they also become instances of the
universal, and lose their mere particularity ; whereas
those of the image remain particular, and their
combination is external as well as contingent. The
concept is, therefore, a universal which combines
2miversals, while an image is a universal which is
itself empty, and simply allows the particulars to
lie within it side by side. In the image of a piece
of gold, for instance, the specific colour, yellow, is
in some way joined with a particular weight, mal-
leability, size ; and in the image of a piece of
copper another particular colour is joined exter-
nally to another particular weight, size, etc. But,
in the genera/ conception of gold or copper or metal,
the qualities that are combined are themselves
general ; and they are combined in accordance with
a form or principle which determines that connec-
tion and makes it valid for all possible instances.
The concept, which is the first product of thought
proper, is thus universal through and through. Its
elements are universal, and they rest upon a ground
or principle in which alone their combination is

96 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

intelligible. This product, therefore, is guided b}-
a necessity which, at the same time, makes it
valid for every human consciousness, and makes it
representative of the objects of thought as they
must be, in order to be intelligible at all. We
attain, in fact, the curious result that while the
universals of sense which we observe, and which
are given in the material, may or may not be true,
seeing that they are purely contingent upon the
individual's experience, the universals which thought
makes and which presumably are not in the material,
are regarded as necessarily valid for everyone.
That is to say, thought observes what may not be
in the material, and makes, after observing, what
is necessary in order that the material may be
intelligible !

Now if, at the conclusion of this exposition, we
endeavour to discriminate between what thought
makes and what is supplied to it in its data, so
as to comprehend the function it performs in our
intelligent life, we find that the task is an exceed-
ingly difficult one. According to one view so much
is supplied to thought that nothing is left to it
except to "sift" the rich content of perceptive
experience and rearrange it, without in any way
adding anything to it except the reasons for its
combinations. Thought, on this view, is formal
and receptive, and its only work is that of reflec-
tion. It presents the old world over again, but m
the new light of an ordering principle. According

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION

to the other view it is only through the inter-
vention of thought that there are either ideas or
an intelligible world at all. It arrests the shifting
panorama of subjective states of consciousness,
objectifies and fixes them so as to give them
meaning, and then relates them into a systematic
world of knowledge. On this view everything,
except the absolutely meaningless subjective data,
is due to the spontaneous activity of thought. In
other words, thought, instead of being receptive
and formal, is essentially constructive, the cause on
account of which alone there can be either ideas
or objects, or connections between them.

Nor is the contradiction removed by making
these apparently spontaneous activities once more
depend upon analagous stimuli in the matter and
data of sense. It is only reiterated. If whatever
is done by thought in the way of analysis or
synthesis can be done only because each analytic
and synthetic act is prompted by differences and
common elements provided by immediate percep-
tion or inner experience, then we must return to
that anterior experience all that we have just taken
from it. The only element which thought retains
as entirely its own, and which does not seem to
have its counterpart in the associative world, is the
reason or the ground for the coherence. And the
only element which is definitely excluded from
thought is the manifold, the change in the state
of consciousness which thought has from time to

98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

time to objectify. But if we appl}- consistently
the idea which led Lotze to find for each of the
activities of thought a parallel in the sphere of
sense, we should have to postulate the existence
in the matter of sense even of these grounds or
reasons ; for, as we are emphatically told, all that
thought can do is to react, and every reaction
demands its own special incentive. Lotze did not
apply tJie idea consistently ; he leaves it quite
doubtful whether thought makes, or finds, these
grounds or reasons ; or, rather, he adopts the one
view or the other according to the necessities of
the moment.^

Now, if we bear in mind the middle position
which Lotze wished to maintain between Idealism
on the one hand, and Scepticism on the other,
we shall discover that no other way was left to
him, except this of first attributing all to sense,

J Lotze quite explicitly refuses to identify the principles of
pure thought with the principles which constitute the real
world, or which connect real objects. For instance, he
entirely separates the intellectual grounds or reasons for a
fact, from the causes which bring it about. What I am
referring to here is the relation between these principles of
thought and the principles which bind our experience, or
world oiiritclligiblc objects, into a system. What Lotze leaves
ambiguous is, whether in conception, judgment, and inference
we reveal connections already present in and constitutive of
our perceptive knowledge, or whether these processes bring
about new and therefore artificial universals, necessary for
us in mterprctiiig experience, but not necessary for the exist-
ence of experience.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION

and afterwards attributing all to thought, and,
finally, of attributing it to thought only because it
was already in its material. The sec-sazv is essential
to his theory ; the elements of knowledge, as he
describes them, can subsist only by the alternate
robbery of each other. If thought is merely formal,
and all its processes are one by one determined by
an anterior psychical mechanism, then there results,
in everything but the name, the Associationism and
the consequent intellectual and moral Scepticism
which Kant refuted simply by showing that all
these earlier processes involved thought. If, on
the other hand, the very objectivity of things and
the first possibility of their having any existence,
qualities, or relations, is due to thought, then we
are on the verge of the Idealism which found
nothing in the world except thought. In other w^ords,
thought becomes constitutive and not formal. Lotze
was well aware of both of these dangers, and he
directs his main endeavour to the attempt to make
thought effective and its functions real, while
stopping short of making it constitutive. Having
discovered that thought cannot draw distinctions
and form connections unless both distinct objects
and their common element are immediately given
to it in perception, or feeling, or inner experience,
we might have expected him to take the further
step and to say simply that these objects and their
common element exist in virtue of thought. That
is to say, wc might expect the simple conclusion

lOO THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

that because the higher is possible only if it also is
in the lower, therefore it is in the lower, and the
lower is only an elementary form of the higher.

But that step, simple as it is, would have trans-
tormed his view of both thought and reality : it
would have made the former constitutive and the
latter rational. Except for the fact that the manifold
is given, and that what is given is on Lotze's theory
a manifold, the real and the ideal would be com-
pletely identified. Instead of taking that step, Lotze
rests satisfied with asserting the similarity between
the differences and universals of sense and those of
thought. He cannot venture to identify them like
the Idealists, and he cannot show how the latter can
issue from the former. The world of sense and the
world of thought correspond point by point, and
each analytic or synthetic act of thought has its
own proper incentive in sense ; but Lotze does not
try to furnish any reason for this correspondence
and mutual adaptability. If he had supplied such a
reason the worlds of thought and sense would have
become species in a universal, to use his language ;
or different stages in the evolution of a single prin-
ciple of reason, to use the language of idealism.
But he conceals from himself and his readers the
necessity for seeking this deeper principle by prac-
tically denying the existence of any process in the
associative, or lower world of knowledge. " The
universal marks in the simplest case require no
special logical work of thought for their origin, but

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION joi

arise out of the immediate impression without our
logical assistance. That 'green,' 'blue,' 'red,' for
example, have something in common is a matter
of immediate experience. . . . So, too, differences
of magnitude are immediately perceived as true."^
" The ' first universal ' comes to us without logical
effort as a simple fact of observation in our mental
life, and just for this reason it can be applied in
building up this second universal, which we do
produce by logical thought. That the yellow of
gold, the red of copper, and the white of silver
are only variations of a common element which we
proceed to call colour, this is a matter of immediate
sensation^ - But how can these be immediate, if,
as Lotze has told us, the original datum of sense
is a subjective state of consciousness which, apart
from the activity of thought, would have no objec-
tive reference whatsoever t Does Lotze mean that
the world of objects related in space and time is
given to us at once without any process of intelli-
gence, so that we have only to open our eyes, so
to speak, in order to get it.'' Put thus broadly, we
must answer in the negative. It was impossible for
him to go back to the naive position of Locke, in
spite of his insistence upon the efficacy of " immedi-
ate" sensation, impression, perception, or experience.
The work done by modern psychologists, not to
mention that of Kant, had blocked the way by re-
vealing the poverty of the supplied material and the
' Outlines of Logic, § 13. -Logic, § 24.

I02 THF. PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZPl

significance of the work done upon it b}' the intelli-
gence. So he escapes the difficulty by calling these
truths " immediate," that is, by attributing them dog-
matically and unanalytically to " inner experience,"
and by making their jrsiilts so similar to those of
thought as to enable them to excite its activities
one by one.

The ultimate cause of Lotze's vacillating and in-
consistent account of the relation between thought
proper and the preliminary processes of intelligence
lies in a double hypothesis, which, when applied to
the facts of our intelligence, proves to be unworkable,
but which, nevertheless, he cannot give up without
admitting the main contention of the Idealists. This
hypothesis is that knowledge consists of two elements
which are so radically different as to be capable of
being described only by defining each negatively in
terms of the other : these elements are the pure mani-
fold or differences of sense and a purely universal or
relative thought. Unable to admit at once that such
elements can in no wise be brought together, or
to adopt either a pure Associationism or a pure
Idealism, he endeavours to mediate between them.
When that mediation is examined, however, it
turns out that it consists in endowing each alter-
nately with the characteristics of the other. That is
to say, when he comes to consider hoiu the manifold
can be combined into systematic knowledge, it turns
out that what is given to thought is anything but a
manifold : it is, on the contrary, the varied world of

PERCEPriON AND CONCEPTION

103

perception, with its objects distinguished in quantity
and quality, and related to one another in space and
time. And when he comes to consider how thought
which is merely formal can combine particulars, he
has to admit that it is not formal, but constitutes its
object by endowing a state of consciousness with
objective reference, and "reifying" it. Both the
manifold and thought change their character in his
hands ; but that does not lead him to examine his
assumption, or to define anew either the datum of
knowledge or thought which is its instrument. From
the fact that pure thought and the manifold of sense
pass into each other, and that the one proves mean-
ingless and the other helpless in its isolation, he did
not draw the conclusion that they are only aspects
of one fact, correlates mutually penetrating each
other, distinguishable in thought and for purposes
of investigation, but not separable as existences.
In other words, he did not recognize that he was
endeavouring to substantiate abstractions, and make
mere logical remnants do the work of an intelligence
which is never purely formal, upon a material which
is nowhere a pure manifold. And consequently,
instead of solving any of the difficulties which
Kant had left, as to the relation of sense and
understanding, perception and conception, and in-
stead of passing on towards an Idealism which
attempts to resolve the contrasted factors into
stages in the evolution of reason, he simply made
the difficulties of the Kantian theorj- more manifest,

104

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

and showed with new clearness the need of the
transition into some form of IdeaHsm. He has thus
helped indirectly to show that thought and its data
cannot in this way be set in direct antagonism to
each other if knowledge is to be the issue of their
interaction. He unconsciously teaches by his con-
tradictions that knowledge, however elementary and
sensuous, or advanced and reflective, always presents
the same characteristic of combining form and matter,
and that its object is always both real and ideal.
At the earliest beginnings, thought is there making
sense possible. In its highest developments in sys-
tems of science and philosophy, the elements of
sense are there, held, as it were, in solution by the
universal laws and forms. Nowhere in knowledge
do we find anything but a system. Both the differ-
ences and the unity may be more or less explicit ;
the articulation into reality and ideality, which is
everywhere characteristic of intelligible objects, may
be more or less complete, but they are always there.
The difference between the primary and elementary
data of thought on the one hand, and the highest
forms of systematized knowledge on the other, is no
difference in kind, analogous to that between a mere
particular and a mere universal, or a mere content
and a mere form ; but it is a difference in complete-
ness of articulation. As all the organism is in the
living germ, so all knowledge is in the simplest per-
ception, and all reason is in sense. ]3ut Lotze's
mechanical presupposition of thought as an instru-

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 105

ment externally adapted to its data, leads him to do
injustice to both thought and its material. In trying
to correct it he contradicts himself: representing the
datum now as a mere meaningless state of conscious-
ness, and now as a world of objects related in space
and time, and representing thought, now as a function
of mere empty universals, and now as reaching down
into and articulating the most elementary datum of
sense.

We may put this matter in another way, and its
importance demands the utmost care and clearness.
The TrpwTov xfyevSog of Lotze's doctrine lies in the
assumption that the first datum of knowledge is
the subjective state, or the change in consciousness
consequent upon the varying stimuli arising from the
outer world, and that the first act of thought is to
objectify this subjective. His whole doctrine rests
upon the psychological hypothesis that what we
first know, indefinitely enough perhaps, is a subjective
state, and that the first act of thought is to make
this state in ourselves representative of an outward
object. The subjective is projected, reified, posited,
so as to become an object.

Now, this assumption is, in the first place, not
supported by psychological evidence. It cannot be
denied that a change in ourselves is antecedent to
our knowledge of the meaning of that change, any
more than it can be denied that rays of light must
impinge upon the eye, and that certain physiologi-
cal processes must take place before we can see an

I06 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

object, l^ut it does not follow that we infer the
existence of the seen object from these physio-
logical changes in our brain or nerves, and from the
fact that light impinges upon the eye. On the con-
trary, we infer these processes because we have first
seen the object. The object is first given in sight,
and then science discovers the conditions on which
alone it could be seen. That is to say, the first in
the order of events is the last in the order of inter-
pretation ; or the first as a matter of fact is the last
as an object of thought. And similarl)' in the case
of the subjective state. That consciousness as a
matter of fact must change in order that we may
know the object which incited the change, does not
prove that we first know the change in ourselves
and then infer the object. On the contrary, the first
in tlie order of events is again the last in the
order of thought. What thought first gives is some
sufficiently indefinite object, so indefinite an object
that if psychologists are right it is not recognized
as either subjective or objective, as occurring either
in the self or in the outer world. Whenever we
endeavour to account for our knowledge of that
object, we recognize that it is possible only by
relation to ourselves, a relation which we explain
on the hypothesis of a change in our states of con-
sciousness. But it is most important to note that
what is inferred is the change in consciousness, and
that the premise from ^\•hich that inference starts
is the fact that we already do know the object.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 107

That is to say, we infer the subjective {in this sense
of the term) from the objective ; and do not infer
the existence of an object from a change in the
state of the subject. In the order of knowledge
the objective comes first ; in the order of the re-
flection, which accounts for that knowledge, the
subjective change comes first. We know the ob-
jective in part before we know the subjective, the
world before we know ourselves ; and our knowledge
of ourselves is due to our return from the world in
the way of reflection. In other words, the subjective
appears to us as subjective only because we have
analyzed the reality which we first know into two
elements. The reality first given to us indefinitely,
opens out upon us into differences, and sunders into
the primary distinctions of subjective and objective.
But we are not entitled, on account of the funda-
mental character of this distinction, to forget or deny
the unity of the reality in which the distinction
takes place ; nor is there any justification for fixing
a complete gap between the subjective and the ob-
jective, and compelling thought in some unknowable
way either to objectify the former or a part of it,
or to leap blindly from the one world into the other,
from the sphere of mere subjective states to that
of external facts corresponding to them. I should
say that no modern psychologist would deny that
the first fact in the order of events is a change in
the state of consciousness ; for obviously, if there
is no change in our state, there is no need of

I08 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

endeavouring to account for it, either by postulating
the presence of an object that incites the change,
or otherwise. But no modern psychologist would
admit that the first thing known, say, by an infant,
or by the unsophisticated consciousness in any of
its forms, is this subjective state. The relation of
the known object to the subjective state is the dis-
covery which the psychologist makes, and the history
of early philosophy shows us that it took a long
time to make that discovery. Indeed, we might
cut the knot at once by stating that the event of
knowing, like every other, must take place before
its interpretation, and that therefore the relation of
the subject and the object is prior to the distinction
between them which the process of interpretation
brings to light. But Lotze and many others begin
with a mere state of consciousness as the first fact
of experience, and then they try to escape out of
themselves into an outer world.

But neglecting this objection, let us admit that
the change in the subjective state not only occurs
before we know an object, but that we know this
subjective state first and then infer the corresponding
object. What follows 1 That it is impossible to
account for the fact that an object corresponding
to this change of state should ever reveal itself to
us, and that, if we begin with the purely subjective,
we must end there. Lotze, as we have seen, speaks
(jf thought as objectifying the subjective. He admits,
indeed, that the objectified state of consciousness

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION

109

is not an outward fact in the sense of a real thing
in space and time ; and asserts, on the contrary,
that the objectified states of consciousness which
constitute our system of experience, though they
are "valid of" the world of real objects, do not
constitute those objects. From this, of course, it
follows that the intelligible world is only a pheno-
menal world, and that feeling and faith must, on his
view, come to the assistance of thought in order to
give to that world its worth and validity. But that
is not the point I wish to press just now. What
I wish to show is, that this process of objectification
is unintelligible and impossible. Lotze himself no-
where explains this extraordinary process of seizing
upon a mere change in consciousness, flinging it, or
a part of it, into a sphere in which it can confront
the self as a not-self, and endowing it with a quasi-
independent existence. Nor is it explicable. A
change in consciousness is in itself, to begin with,
an occurrence and nothing more. It is not an
idea, any more than a change in the state of the
brain is an idea — until thought objectifies it. But
such objectification is impossible, nn/ess lue confound
an event zvitJi a knozvn event. If it is a known
event it is already an outward object, in the self
if we please, but distinguished from the self, and
therefore as outward as a change in the position
of Jupiter. Both the psychic change and the
change in the position of the planet are in con-
sciousness as known, and I should sa}' also that

no THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

they are both parts of the self, except that I should
have to turn aside to justify the statement. In
an}- case there is no need of objectifying a kiioivn
event. But there is no possibility of objectifying
an nnkiiozun event ; at least it seems to me
obvious, on the ground that what is unknown is
for it non-existent, that thought cannot deal in
any way with the unknown. This remarkable pro-
cess of objectifying a state of consciousness is
mythical.

But the same supposed process receives another
expression. The subjective state is made to sym-
bolize outward facts. Psychical states, we are told,
both occur and have meaning, i.e., they are events
that cither have or acquire the power of symbolizing
something other than themselves. An idea has two
sides : it is, as an existing fact, a change of state
in the individual's consciousness, but as having mean-
ing it is also a symbol of an object. And the essence
of an 'idea' is this power of symbolizing. Here also
we have, though in a less crude form, the conversion
of a subjective fact into an object of thought, or
the translation of what is at first merely real into
what ought to be merely ideal, if the writers were
thoroughly consistent.

There seems to me to be something unusual in
this use of the term " symbol." Ordinarily, symbols
presuppose the facts symbolized, derive their signifi-
cance from them, and are explicable only in their
light. But in this case the event, a state of con-

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 1 1 1

sciousness, symbolizes something which is not origin-
ally there to be symbolized, points to an object
which does not as yet exist, and indeed becomes
that object in the act of pointing to it, thereby
adding an ideal side to its own pre-existing real
one. This is a strange, and, I believe, an impossible
process. It is certainly impossible if the state, or
change of consciousness, is a mere event, and not
already the new knowledge of an object. Events
symbolize nothing, whether they be psychical or not,
until they are known ; but if they are already
known they are already objective and ideal, and are
themselves, on this phrasing of it, symbolized. The
psychical events or ideas are, further, supposed to
symbolize something other than themselves ; for, as
real events, ideas are said to be subjective facts,
while their ineaumg is an object. And we are told
that a thing never is what it means. But I cannot
believe either of these assertions. For a change
of consciousness, whether as an event not known
at all but as a simple change, or as a known
event, is not subjective. Nothing whatsoever is
subjective if we can indicate or speak of it. The
purely subjective is as completely beyond our reach
as the purely objective. In fact it is only because
it is already an object of thought that we can call
it subjective ; for we present it to ourselves, and
therefore distinguish it from ourselves, although
we at the same time regard it as a part of
the history of ourselves. But in strictness, it is

Iij THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

impossible to speak or think of a state of conscious-
ness as purely subjective, for the very act of doing
so makes it an object, or a part of that reality from
which we never escape, and which embraces both
the world and ourselves. The state of conscious-
ness, like every other possible object of thought,
is both subjective and objective ; it is a real
thing, which is also intelligible or ideal. We do
not begin with the subjective, therefore, unless we
begin with that which is ex in termini not an object
of thought. But perhaps what is meant is that the
change or state of consciousness belongs to our-
selves, and not to the not-self. If so, I do not denj-
its subjectivity ; but I would assert that my arm, or
eye, or purse, or wife, or child, or my next-door neigh-
bour and my enemy are subjective in precisely the
same sense; for if there is any philosophic attempt
more futile than another, it is the attempt to shut a
part of reality within and a part of it without the
self. My interest in my own states of consciousness
as facts belonging to me may very likely be stronger
than my interest in other facts belonging to me :
but the difference is only one of degree. Every-
thing that I can possibly know, or have an interest
in, is, in one sense, mine, or subjective ; but it is
also at the same time not me in the exclusively
subjective sense, but my object. Since the Ego
potentially includes the Universe, everything is in
one sense subjective. In knowing it I am only
knowing myself, and yet I am all the while know-

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 113

ing it as an object. It is presented to me, and
therefore objective ; it is presented by me, and
therefore subjective. The ideal and the real side,
the fact and its manifestation in thought, are in-
separable. We cannot begin with the subjective,
and do not need, therefore, to objectify it ; for in
order to begin at all we must already have an
object.

But supposing we admit that we begin with the
psychical event and then make it mean something,
can it mean something other than itself.^ Is it true
that a thing never means what it is, and that reality
and signiiicance, the fact and the ideal content,
never coincide } I think not. Against the bare
as.sertion that a thing never is what it means, I
would set the question, " Is a thing ever anything
except what it means.'" I am aware that every
finite object does mean something else in the sense
that in order to explain it we have to seek its mean-
ing in something else.^ If I want to understand a
I trace it to b, and b to r, so that the meaning of a
is not in itself but in b, and the meaning of b is
in c, and so on. But. on the other hand, the
meaning of a which I find in b is at the same
time regarded by me as the reality of a; and if
the meaning of a is not in itself — as it is not if
a be finite — neither is the reality of a in itself In
such circumstances I say not only a means b, but
that b is the reality of which a was the appearance ;

^ More strictly in everytliiiig else.
H

114

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

and, so far as I endeavour to express my complete
thought or to give the whole meaning of a, I cease
to speak of a except in its relation to b. I do not
see how we can escape this conclusion unless we
are to regard the process of knowledge as a self-
stultifying one, which in pursuing truth turns its
back on reality. No doubt an idea seems to point
to something other than itself, and the psychical
occurrence, as an occurrence, is not that of which
it is an idea. But if I wish to know what that
psychical occurrence is, I try to explain it, just as I
would try to explain any other event, by looking for
its conditions. And the explanation of that psychical
occurrence would be found, not in the external
object to which it points — for as an occurrence
it points to nothing — but in the conditions psychical
and other from which it has sprung. If, on the
other hand, I abstract from the idea its psychical
occurrence, then nothing whatsoever remains to have
the meaning— ^Ar^/i/ an outer object. That outer
object, if I know any psychology, I recognize as
standing in relation to me, or as having a subjective
side. And if my psychology is false, I substan-
tiate that subjective side of the object, endow it
with a quasi-independent existence, oppose it to and
then sever it from the object, and give all the
ideality to the former and all the reality to the
latter. What is meant by saying that an idea has
meaning can only be that the object shows itself
to be ideal ; but every attempt to make the idea.

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION 115

as idea, show itself as real must fail. Nor would
any one make the attempt of finding reality for
ideas except for the psychological assumption,
which psychology itself cannot justify, that we first
know the subjective and then the objective. But I
must insist that ideas, in so far as they are objects
of thought, are both subjective and objective, and
in so far as they are not objects of thought they
are as good as nothing. They do not need to be
" objectified," because they are objects already ; and
they have meaning, like all other things, just because
they are objects interpretable through their condi-
tions by the intelligence. Both " objectification "
and " symbolization " are psychological inventions,
designed to meet the insurmountable difficulty which
springs from assuming that we know the subjective
occurrence otherwise than in the attempt to explain
the conditions under which its reality has made itself
manifest to us. The genuine object of thought, there-
fore, is reality, and xQ.-dX\\.y , pari passu with our know-
ledge of it, shows itself as ideal. For, to the degree
in which the relations of an object to the intelligence
are discovered, to that degree its relations to the
system of which the intelligence is the focus are
discovered. That is to say, by revealing the re-
lations of an object to the self its place in an all-
inclusive system is revealed ; and the all-inclusive
system is reality.

Lotze's error in starting with the subjective state
and then seeking the objective reality makes itself

Il6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

further evident in the difficulty, to which I have
already casually referred, of collating the universals
of thought with the preliminary universals of sense
knowledge. That difficulty may be put in this
way : How can the universals of sense, which are
admittedly contingent and external, and which give
nothing more than casual coincidence to their con-
tent, occasion or suggest, or otherwise lead to
universals which are necessary and valid for all
intelligence, which give coJiercncc to the content,
and which convert the particulars into species of
the universal, and therefore themselves into uni-
versals ? The only answer which Lotze gives is
the following : " If w^e wish for practical purposes
to ascertain in any creature, object, or arrange-
ment, what is the line which divides what is
inwardly coherent from casual accessions, we put
the whole in motion, in the belief that the influ-
ence of change will show which parts hold firmly
together while foreign admixtures fall away, and
in what general and constant modes those parts
combine while changing their relative positions in
particular cases : in this sum of constant elements
we find the inner and essential cohesion of the
whole, and we expect it to determine the possi-
bility and the manner of variable accretions."
Vary the circumstances, as Mill would say, and
note what groups hold together, and we thereby
" determine the element which maintains itself in
the same instance under changed conditions ; for

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTION

117

it is only the assumption that the group a b c,
the common element in several groups of ideas,
will also be found thus to maintain itself, which
strictly justifies us in regarding these coexisting
elements as coherent, and as the ground for the
admissibility or inadmissibility of fresh elements." ^
But it is evident that observation of the elements
which happen to cling together under varying
circumstances cannot reveal the principle which
makes them coherent. Observed coincidence can
only yield coincidence ; by no repetition of par-
ticulars can we ascend to a universal, and no
intellectual alchemy can extract necessity from
chance."- We must either rest with coincidence,
that is, with purely associative thought, which is to
give up the conception of the rationality of experi-
ence ; or, by assuming a hypothesis, as science does,
we must repudiate the coincidence altogether. That
is to say, we must regard contiguity in space and
time, chance coherence, or association, as our first
attempt at systematization, and as resting upon
higher categories, and ultimately upon the highest
of all, namely, the supreme unity of apperception.
But Lotze does not explicitly admit the presence
of the principles of reason in the rudimentary data
of knowledge. On the contrary, he allows associ-
ative or chance-connected knowledge to subsist
side by side with reflective knowledge ; and does
not transmute perception into conception, or, rather,
^ Logic, § 22. - See Logic^ % 56.

Il8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

find the former to be the latter at a lower stage
of development. W'^ith the problem still upon
his hands of discovering the principle which at
once gives the universality of truth to our know-
ledge and necessary coherence to facts, he passes
from conception to judgment. For conception,
even upon the most generous interpretation of it,
only suggests that there may be a universal under
the coincident elements of sense knowledge. But
Lotze does not discover the universal in conception.
And just as he fails to find it in conception, he
also fails, as we shall see in the next chapter,
to find it in the judgment ; and he has to seek
it in inference. But inference does not yield it,
and he has to postulate it as an object of faith
lying outside the confines of reflective thought.
He has begun with the conception of the content
of knowledge as a mere manifold, and of thought
as purely formal ; he has taken the distinction or
severance of the subjective and objective as the
first datmii, and he is therefore unable to bring
them together again in a principle which is deeper
than their division. The only function of thought
is to connect, and that function it fails to perform.

119

CHAPTER IV

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT

A^T'E have seen tliat Lotze represents thought as
an activity which combines the contents of
experience according to universal, necessary grounds.
The first products of thought proper are con-
ceptions ; and conceptions are combinations of
universals within a universal, or, in other words,
combinations of elements which are determined by
a universal in such a way as to form a necessary
system of differences within a unity. The deter-
mination of the differences by the universal is
regarded by Lotze as an essential characteristic
of a true concept, and it is this which distinguishes
the concept from a general image. A general
image "subsumes" particulars under it, leaving them
unchanged ; a concept " subordinates " them to the
universal, resolving them thereby into species of
itself The former is obtained merely by the
omission of differences. The latter not only does
not omit, but it transmutes the contents and system-

I20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

atizes the materials of experience. And concepts,
as we ascend from one to another, become always
more concrete. It has been the aim of philosophers
to arrange the matter of knowledge under an ascend-
ing series of such concepts, so as to set up " a
structure resting on a broad basis, formed by all
singular concepts or ideas, growing gradually nar-
rower as it rises, and ending in a single apex, the
all-embracing concept of the thinkable." ^ Such an
aim is regarded by Lotze as not capable of being
realized, and that not merely because the world is
great and our minds are small, but because we must
necessarily arrive " not at one but at several ultimate
concepts not reducible to one another." These ulti-
mate concepts correspond to " those very meanings
of the parts of speech which at the outset we found
to be the primary logical elements." The concept
of a soviething corresponds to the substantive, of
a quality to the adjective, of becovivig, or an
event, to the verb, and " the rest to relation." And
as we cannot resolve being, becoming, and relation
into each other, nor find their roots in anything
higher, " the entire structure of our concepts rises
like a mountain-chain, beginning in a broad base
and ending in several sharply defined peaks.' -

Now, inasmuch as " it is not necessary that our

thoughts should have greater unity or simplicity than

the reality which they represent," the fact that a

single supreme conception is not possible, is not

^ Logic, § 33. - P'id.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 121

considered as a defect by Lotze. From this point
of view there does not seem to be any necessity for
any forms of thought besides conception. By means
of conception alone thought might go on to complete
a systematic representation of the intelligible world,
uniting its elements under these few ultimate con-
cepts ; these highest concepts exercising a determin-
ing power upon, and subordinating to themselves, all
the lower ones. Thought might, therefore, seem to
be capable of finishing the work of connecting the
contents of experience according to necessary prin-
ciples, by means of conception alone.

But such a conceptual view, even if it were com-
plete, would be radically untrue of reality ; so
untrue that "even a perfect knowledge of the ideal
world would give us little support in understanding
the real."^ It would be " an image of a fixed
order," whereas reality is always changing. What
" reality shows us is a changing medley of the
most manifold relations and connections between
the matter of ideas, taking first one form and then
another without regard to their place in the system."-
Hence, since the real world is a world of change,
we require, in order to represent it, another process
of thought than that of conceiving, which fixes
its material in a motionless and invariable order.
That process is Judgment. Judgment performs for
" changeable coincidences " what conception effects
for coexistent facts. The one deals with Becoming
' Logic, § 34. Jbid.

122 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

or change, in the same way as the other deals with
Being ; and both operate in obedience to the funda-
mental impulse towards necessary coherence which
characterizes thought.

We might conclude from this that thought has
two different organs whereby it performs the two
different tasks of representing permanence and
change, coexistence and sequence. For, as we have
seen, Lotze deems it impossible either to reduce
these phenomena to each other, or to find any
common ground for them. But in the very next
paragraph to that in which he confines Conception
to the representation of a fixed order, and Judg-
ment to the representation of change, Lotze makes
conception the starting point of judgment. Judg-
ment comes in to complete the task left unfinished
by the former ; for the combination which conception
effected has not been logically justified. That is
to say, conception, while producing coherence by
means of its universals, has not shown how the
universals come to be applicable to the particulars.
Nothing has been revealed either in the universals
or in the particulars that enables them to come
together, nor has any third mediating element been
shown to exist. The units of conceptions are thus,
so far, mere facts which happen to be. We must,
therefore, " break up these presupposed combina-
tions again ; or, if they can be justified, reconstitute
them, but in a form which at the same time expresses
the crround of coherence in the matter combined.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 123

In seeking to solve this problem, the form in which
thought will move will obviously be that of the
Jiidgvientr^

According to the first view judgment is introduced
in order to deal with a specific aspect of realit}',
namely its change, conception apparently being itself
able to complete a view of the world as a fixed order.
According to this second view judgment is brought
in to reveal the ground by which conception unifies
its content. Seeing that conception does not bring
to light the necessity of the coherence by revealing
its principle, and seeing that in consequence the
elements in the concept simply happen to cohere,
and are, therefore, little better than coincident, judg-
ment must take up its work with the specific aim
of rendering the principle of connection explicit, and
justifying the subordination of the contents. I do
not wish here to press this inconsistency ; I shall
simp]}' say that the second view is the more con-
sistent with the general theory of Lotze.

The judgment, then, according to Lotze, is "in-
tended to express a relation between the matters
of two ideas, not a relation of ideas." It seeks to
disclose not the mental medium of connection, or
subjective link, but the objective element which
makes one fact cohere with another. In the pro-
position " Gold is yellow," for instance, the idea of
yellow' is not represented in judgment as a property
of the idea of gold, so that the idea of gold is a
1 Lfl^ic, § 35.

124

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

yellow idea ; on the contrary, judgment relates the
f^icts to which these ideas point. These facts are
first given in experience as simply coincident : " the
relation between them is primarily no other than
this, that whenever, or whenever under certain con-
ditions, the one idea, gold, is found, there the other
idea, yellow, is also found. . . . The problem of
the logical judgment is to express what it is which
makes this relation possible, justifiable, or necessary;
and it solves the problem by exhibiting through
its copula the relation between the object matters
of the two ideas, a relation due to that which the
ideas represent, and differing in different cases." ^
Judgment, in a word, has to bring to light an
objective, and, therefore, a necessary and universal
connection between facts. Hence it is evident that
the whole problem of judgment turns upon the
possibility and nature of this connection, that is to
say, upon the copula. Its task, in a word, is to
furnish grounds of connection, " accessory notions,"
principles of coherence, between materials which
otherwise would either remain entirely separate or
else be connected merely by the contingent psychical
bond of association.

Now, as the whole problem turns upon the nature
of the copula, it is evident that the different kinds
of copula supply the principle on which judgments
can be classified. Hence the ordinary distinctions
of Quantity, Quality, and Modality are, in strict-
^ Logic, § yj.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 125

ness, logicall)' irrelevant. Quantity refers directly
only to the extent of the subject, and the copula
is, in the first instance, of the same nature whether
the whole or a part of the subject is spoken of.
Indirectly, it is true, the copula is itself concerned ;
for where the subject is used in its whole extent
there is implied that the relation of the predicate
to it is universal and necessary, whereas the rela- .
tion of a predicate to a part only of the subject
must be contingent. But the necessity is only
implied, and if the implication is developed the
distinction is found to turn, not upon quantity, but
upon the nature of the copula. Qualitative distinc-
tions between judgments are still more easily shown
to have no bearing upon the nature of the copula,
and, therefore, no logical worth. For, as Lotze
thinks, Affirmative, Negative, and Limitative judg-
ments express precisely the same relation between
the subject and the predicate. In the one case
a certain relation is said to hold ; in the other case
it is denied ; but the denial or the affirmation has
to do, not with the connection of the subject and
the predicate, but with the relation of both of them
to reality. As to the Modal distinction, unless we
either identify it with the relational one, or make it
arise out of the nature of the combining element or
the copula, we must regard it as expressing, not the
nature of the judgment, but the psychological condi-
tions, or other limitations, under which the judgment
is made ; and with these logic has nothing to do.

126 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

Judgments are, therefore, logically different only
in virtue of the different kinds of connection which
they establish between the contents of the two
concepts which respectively form the subject and
predicate. In one respect, indeed, the relation which
judgment establishes is always the same ; for it is
always necessary and universal, never particular or
contingent. That is to say, the relation is always
one of coherence between the facts themselves, and
never merely associative or dependent upon the
subjective experience of the individual consciousness.
But that necessity, or universality, or objectivity,
may reveal itself in consciousness in different
ways, or arise under different conditions. And
Lotze, following the steps of previous investigators,
finds that there are three of these conditions :
one fact may include the other ; one fact may
be connected with another through a third fact
or element which conditions them ; or it may
be related to another because they both fall within
a system of necessarily related elements. If we
take .S" to mean one of these facts, namely, the
subject in the judgment, and P the other, which is
the predicate, then we may say that these different
relations are expressible in the following form :
1st, vS" is P, that is, P is already implied in vS\ and
the relation between them is that of subsumption ;
2nd, If 5 is X it is P, that is, P is necessarily
connected with ^ through a condition, x\ 3rd, ^ is
either /-* or Q, that is to say, .S" having a certain

THE THEORY OE JUDGMENT 127

specific character is confined to one of these ex-
clusive alternatives and necessarily connected with
it — which of the two is its predicate cannot be
determined by judgment, and must be left either
to empirical observation or to some higher form
of thought, such as Inference. These forms are
respectively called the Categorical, Hypothetical,
and Disjunctive Judgment. Our immediate task is
to follow Lotze's exposition of these forms.

Now it is manifest that, as an event in our psych-
ical history, the Categorical Judgment comes before
the Hypothetical ; for we should have no occasion
to investigate the condition of a connection between
vS" and P " unless we had already had experiences
of the presence of P in some vS and its absence in
others." And, for a similar reason, the Categorical
precedes the Disjunctive. But Lotze finds a form of
Judgment which is earlier even than the Categorical,
or, more strictly perhaps, w^hich displays the Cate-
gorical Judgment in the process of being formed. It
is the Impersonal Judgment, whose differentia is that
it gives " logical setting to a matter of perception
without regarding it as a modification or determina-
tion of an already fixed subject."^ In other words,
the predicate of the Impersonal Judgment qualifies
an indefinite subject. A something, which has as
yet no independent content, passes into a limited
and recognizable, inadequate content in a predi-
cate. And as there are not, as yet, tivo definite and
^ Logic, i 47.

128 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

fixed contents to be connected, the relation between
them, or the copula, is itself indefinite. Thought
has not passed from an interfused to a definitely
articulated difference. But it is caught in the
attempt to do so, and on that very account reveals
the condition which all thought must fulfil, which
is "that everything which is to be matter of per-
ception must be conceived as a predicate of a
known or unknown subject."^ Thought begins thus
with an indefinite reality, and in the attempt to
make that reality definite it forms a predicate,
which qualifies the subject, and thereby tends to
give the subject a definite form. If we say, "It
rains," "It is warm," "It thunders," we are in process
of defining the " it," and of forming a definite S
which shall have a fixed content of its own. When
we have formed .such a subject, and can, therefore,
oppose it to, and connect it with, a predicate by
means of a copula, and not till then, we have a real
example of the act of judging. It is only then
that the question of the nature of the copula or
ground of connection between the elements of our
experience really emerges. The Judgment then, for
the first time, assumes the categorical form, and we
affirm or deny that 6" is P.

But immediately we make such an assertion as

'6" is /-" we fall into difficulties, for we find on

investigation that we have brought together things

which were given simply as opposed. We have

^ See Logic, § 48.

THE THEORY OE JUDGMENT 129

asserted identity between things which were given
as independent. Hence this, the first step in judg-
ment, seems to be altogether unjustifiable. "This
absolute connection of vS" and P, in which the one
is unconditionally the other and yet both stand over
against each other as different, is a relation quite
impracticable to thought." ^ By this Lotze does
not mean that thought does not form such judg-
ments, for that is obviously untrue, but that in
making them it seems to perform an illegitimate
process. And we are brought to the pass of being
obliged either to reject all categorical judgments
of the form 6" is P, or else to find some justifica-
tion for them in another form of thought.

The briefest examination of the categorical judg-
ment will serve to bring this difficulty to light.
To say that vS" is P, or that " gold is yellow " may
mean one of two things : first, that P is added
to 5, or yellow to gold as a new mark or element
which was not at first recognized as belonging to
it ; or second, that the predicate P, or yellow, is
asserted to have been already contained in the
subject and therefore necessary to the complete
conception of it. If we take the judgment in the
first of these two senses it is evidently synthetic,
if in the second, it is analytic. Now, it has been
supposed that it is only synthetic judgments, in
which we seem to add one element to another,
which present any difficulty to the logicians ; and,

^ Logic, % 54.
I

130 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

indeed, that even these synthetic judgments present
no difficulty unless they are a priori, that is,
unless we have no empirical datum to enable us to
make the transition from the one fact to the other.
But, in truth, the possibility of a posteriori synthesis
in a judgment is as difficult to explain as that
of a priori synthesis. For even though experience
should show us that 5 and P, gold and yellow-
ness, are always connected, it only shows that they
are concurrent phenomena of our consciousness ;
they are experienced together by us. But that
they must be so experienced, or that there is any
real and objective connection between the facts
themselves, can never be given by observation ; and
it is the necessary and objective, and by no means
the subjective or psychological connection which
Logic demands. Hence, since experience cannot
yield that objective coherence it cannot justify
the synthetic a posteriori judgment. Nor is the
judgment S \'s> P any more justified if we take
it in its analytieal sense. " However much yellow
may be already contained in the concept of gold,
the judgment "gold is yellow" does not merely
assert that the idea of yellow lies in the idea of
gold, but ascribes yellowness to gold as its property ;
gold must therefore have a determinate relation to
it, which is not the relation of identity."^ Judg-
ment, as Lotze insists, does not establish a con-
nection between ideas, but between faeis. And
^ Logic, § 56.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 131

how one fact can be the other remains unexplained.
Indeed, Lotze might have gone further and said
that it is altogether impossible to identify any
objects given as different.

What, then, can justify us in saying that 5 is Pt
" What right have we to assign to S 2. P, which
is not 6", as a predicate in a categorical judgment }
The answer can only be, that we have no right."
Nothing can justify the categorical judgment as it
stands. For thought also has its laws ; and its
primary law is the principle of identity which we
express positively in the formula A=A, negatively
in the formula A does not = non-yi.^ And, in
accordance with that law .S" cannot be P. It per-
mits us, on the contrary, only to say that .S is S,
P is P, and vS is 710I P. " Every predicate P
which differs in any way whatever from S, however
friendly to ^' it might otherwise be conceived to
be, is entirely irreconcilable with it ; every judg-
ment of the form 5 is P is impossible, and in
the strictest sense we cannot get further than
saying ' 5" is 5,' and ' P is P' " - The Categorical
Judgment seems, therefore, to be irreconcilably
inconsistent with the law of identity. Thought
which impels us to the formation of such judg-
ments seems to fall foul of its own primary law.

But this is only seeming. For examination will
show that it is what the judgment says, not that
which it ineatts, which is inconsistent with this
^See Logic, § 54. '-Logic, § 55.

133 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

primar)' law. Taken as they stand, categorical
judgments unite, in whole or in part, universal
concepts. The subject, for instance, of " Some men
are black " seems to be the universal concept " man,"
but the subject that is meant is certain individual
men. " It is not left to our choice what individuals
we will take out of the whole mass of men ; our
selection, Avhich makes them 'some' men, does
not make them black if they are not so without
it ; we have, then, to choose those men, and we
menu all along only those men who are black, in
short, negroes ; these are the true subject of the
judgment. That the predicate is not meant in
its universality, that on the contrary only the
particular black is meant which is found on human
bodies is at once clear. . . . The full sense,
then, of the judgment is, ' Some men, by whom
however we are only to understand black men,
are black men.' " ^ We do not connect any men
with any blackness in saying that some men are
black ; that is to say, the categorical judgment,
although it may seem to do so, does not connect
uni\-ersals. We connect the men who are black
with a particular blackness, with men who arc
black with that blackness ; that is, we connect
definite particulars with definite particulars. The
appearance of connecting universals only springs
from the fact that in ordinary speech we elide the
conditions or accessory notions. S \?, P there-
^ Logic, § 58.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 133

fore really means that particulars which fall within
.S are the particulars which fall within P ; and we
may express this symbolically by saying that ^"
is P is in truth 2 is 11.

Lotze proceeds to show in a similar way that
in such Singular Judgments as " Caesar crossed the
Rubicon " there are implied, but not expressed,
accessory ideas which limit the significance of both
subject and predicate. It was Caesar at a par-
ticular point in his history that crossed the
Rubicon once at a particular point in time. " The
Caesar whom the subject of this judgment means
is that Caesar only whom the predicate char-
acterizes." ^ The 6" that is P is the 5' that is
qualified by P, and the P that qualifies ^ is that
which is itself qualified by 6". S \s P there-
fore really means SP is PS, or, more strictly
still, perhaps, SP is SP. The categorical judg-
ment is an identical one, because it is a con-
nection not of universals but of particulars. " So
far, our result seems to be this : categorical
judgments of the form 'S is P' are admissible
in ^practice because they are always conceived in
the sense which we have called particular, and as
such are ultimately identical."- "The judgment,
as regards its matter, is perfectly identical, and, as
regards its form, it is only synthetical because one
and the same subject is expressed from two dif-
ferent points of vicw."^

^ Logic, % 58. - Ibid., § 59, ^ /^/^.^ g ^g.

134

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

But Lotze is not satisfied with this conclusion,
and the reason is obvious. The act of thought in
judging, as it is described by Lotze, destroys the
judgment and stultifies itself. For the judgment
has to express a coherence between the matter of
two ideas. But if we add all the supplementary
notions which were implied in it, and by means
of which alone we could reconcile such a judg-
ment with the primary law of thought, then we
have no longer two ideas, but one. The whole
content falls into the subject, and the repetition of
that subject under the form of a predicate which is
identical with it is a perfectly meaningless process.
We may as well say ' vS" ' at once, that is, try to
point it out as a fact that simpl}- is and is related
to nothing, as say that the particulars within it
are identical with themselves, or that SP is SPy
or 2 is II. For all relations of thought have dis-
appeared with the extinction of difference. "These
judgments no longer assert any imttual relation
between the parts of their content, but only that
this content as a composite whole is a more or
less widely excluded Faet, and this is clearly a
relapse to the imperfect stage of the impersonal
judgment." ^ There results nothing but " simple
or composite perceptions, and between the several
perceptions, or even the several parts of each com-
posite perception, there could be no expressible
connection, such as could show their mere coexist-
^ Logic, § 59.

THE THEORY OE JUDGMENT 135

ence to be due to inner coherence." ^ Thought,
whose specific function was to reveal inward coher-
ence between facts, has failed. What it can connect
must be identical, and therefore needs no connec-
tion ; what was different it cannot connect. Nothing
remains as the result of the categorical judgment :
experience has lapsed back into the contingent
form of external association, out of which judgment
was to lift it.

Since thought, in the course of the necessary
process of forming judgments, thus falls into con-
tradiction with itself, one might expect Lotze to
deny either that the function of thought is to relate
differences, or else that its primary law is that of
identity. But he does neither ; for it is not his way
to examine hypotheses that have proved untenable.
He returns rather upon " the accessory notions," or
limiting ideas, and gives them a new interpretation.
These accessory notions have, so far, been those
ideas which are elided in ordinary speech, but which
when expressed turned the universal judgment into
a combination of particulars, " ultimately identical
with one another." That is to say, if the accessory
notions implied in the statement that S xs P were
made explicit the judgment would take the form
2 is II, these being the particular facts that are
identical. But, henceforth, the accessory notions
instead of being additional limiting ideas, confining
the subject and predicate to particular facts, are
^ Logic^ % 59.

136 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

to be considered as conditions of a universal and
necessary connection between differences. So that
these notions which have so far served to remove
the difference between the subject and predicate
and to produce pure identity, are now to act as
principles of unity in difference, and to enable us
to combine 5 and P without completely identify-
ing them, and yet without violating the primary
law of thought.

Hence the hypothetical judgment, in which that
condition is expressed which was only implied in
the Categorical, comes in to justify the process
of the unification of differences. .S" is P is never
immediately or unconditionally true, but S '\s P
if it is X. Of course there may be some difficulty
in conceiving that 6" can be x, or that S-\-x can
be P, if the laiv of Identity, as Lotze conceives
it, is to hold. But it is not to hold any longer
as the o)ily law of thought. Lotze has more than
one arrow to his bow. Having seen that " the
principle of identity merely asserts the sameness
of everything with itself, and that the only relation
in which it places different things is that of mutual
exclusion," ^ and that, therefore, all apparent con-
nections between different things are contingent
and subjective, he looks round for another principle
of thought. He starts with an innocent, academic,
" quite general presupposition that the totality of
things thinkable and real is not merely a sum
' Logh\ § 6 1.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 137

which coexists but a whole which coheres." If
this presupposition is granted, " then the law of
identity has wider consequences. The same abcq,
with which / has once been found in combination,
can then, according to the law of identity, never be
found in combination with a xxow-p, nor can this abcq
ever occur without its former predicate /."^ Hence,
if we know that abc is a coherent whole, and if we
are " given ab, we know that c is the only new
element which can necessarily accrue ; if we are
given ac, b, and if we are given be, a ; in other
words, whichever of these elements occurs first in
any case has in the second the sufficient and
necessary condition for the possibility and neces-
sity of the accession of the third. That element
or group of elements to which we here give
the first place appears to us then logically as the
subject ; that which we place second, as the con-
dition which operates upon this subject, while the
third represents the consequence produced in the
subject by the condition."- Nor does it matter
which of the elements is regarded as reason, which
as the thing, and which as consequent, provided
they constitute a system. " In itself, every
element in such a combination is a function of
the rest, and we can pass inferentially from any
one to any other." " Lotze thinks that it does not
matter for Logic whether such a system really
exists ; for its only task is to find coherence
^ Logic, § 61. -Ibid. ^ Ibid.

138 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

between the matter of ideas, or to reveal the
conditions of " the merely thinkable." The task
of Logic at this point "is confined to developing
the principle of Sufficient reasofi, which, no less
than the principle of identity, has to be regarded
as the source of our knowledge." " It has merel}'
to show how, from the combination of two contents
of thought, S and Q, the necessity arises of tJiinking
a third P, and this in a definite relation to 5"."^

In order to comprehend this process of necessary
connection, we must explain the nature of the law
of sufficient reason, and that means something more
than merely asserting that for every valid statement
there must be an adequate ground. We must dis-
cover " in what relation reason and consequent stand
to each other, and in what sort of a thing we may
hope to discover the reason of another thing." Lotze
finds that the " reason," taken in its full sense, is
" completely identical " with the consequence, " that
the one is the other." Let A +B = C be the ex-
pression of the principle of sufficient reason ; then,
although "taken by themselves A on\y = A,B = B"
there is no reason why a particular combination
A + B . . . should not be equivalent to, or iden-
tical with, the simple content of the new concept
C," provided we do not take them by themselves,
but as elements in a system. For, if A + B is any
given subject, along with the condition by which it
is influenced, then C is not a " new predicate which
^ Logic, § 62.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 139

is the consequence of this subject, but the subject
itself in its form as altered by the predicate." ^
Ordinarily the reason is supposed to be something
dififerent from and additional to the subject, and, in
consequence, its identity with the consequent does
not appear. But, if we correct this abstraction,
and bear in mind that the reason is the whole
antecedent, that is to say, is the thing plus the
condition, their identity becomes apparent, because
the former passes into the latter and becomes it.
The consequent C is simply A+B over again; the
explosion is the powder at a high temperature.-
Hence, " sufficient reason " falls, after all, within
the principle of identity, or rather, it extends the
principle of identit}' in such a manner as to render
it valid of differences — provided, of course, those
differences constitute a system of mutually deter-
mining elements.

But IS there such a system .■* Or, in other words,
have we any right to the " quite general presupposi-
tion " we have made .'' For, so far, " we were only
able to show that an extension of our knowledge is
possible (/ there is a principle which allows us to
make A + B = C." We must endeavour to convert
that presupposition into a certainty by revealing its
grounds, unless knowledge of the unity of difference,
or of a principle of coherence between phenomena, is
to remain a baseless hypothesis or mere conjecture.
Now the law of identity requires no deduction. We
1 Logic, % 63. - See Logic, § 63.

140

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

have "an immediate certitude" of it: "we feel
immediately that it is necessary, and the opposite of
it we feel with equal conviction to be impossible in
thought." But the law of sufficient reason is not so
advantageously placed. " We do not by any means
feel it impossible to suppose that, while every content
of thought is self-identical, no combination of two
contents is ever equivalent to a third." ^ Neither
it nor its opposite impresses us as immediately
necessary. Hence it " must be considered as an
assumption which serves the purposes of thought
and which is guaranteed by the concen-
trated impression of all experience."- The impulse
of thought to convert the coexistence of the
elements of experience into coherence implies such
a principle, and an empirical fact confirms the
assumption of it. The world of intelligible objects
fortunately happens to be constituted in such a
way that thought finds coherences, identities, and
equivalences between its different elements. It
might, it is true, have been constituted otherwise :
that is, all its elements might have been incommen-
surable, without any inner coherence, and connected
merely by association, or subjective experience.
But its elements are not incommensurable as a
matter of fact ; and that matter of fact gives the
most valuable, although it is only " an empirical
confirmation of the principle of sufficient reason."
It is admitted that an experience would be possible
^ Loi^ic, § 65. - Ibid.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 141

without any such law, whereas no experience what-
soever is even conceivable except on the basis of
the law of identity. Nevertheless, 02ir experience,
in which elements which are different are actually
combined, is not possible without both of these
laws. Hence our experience confirms our assump-
tion of the law of sufficient reason ; it is proved
that A-\-B=C, that the whole antecedent actually
is the consequent. It might appear at first
sight that the law of identity rendered the com-
bination of differences impossible. But, if these
differences are placed within a system, the threat-
ened danger is averted. The principle of identity
only insists that a thing shall have a content which
is one with itself; it cannot exclude other contents
which do not conflict with it ; it relates a thing
only to itself, and leaves it free to enter into any
relations with other things, provided such entrance
is possible on some other grounds. ^ And since
experience is a system of differences within a unity,
these other grounds are furnished. Hence thought
does convert coincidence into coherence, not im-
mediately or categorically, it is true, but mediately
through the fulfilment of a condition.

But although the possibility of combining differ-
ences in a unity has been shown, it has not as yet
appeared how that combination takes place. In
other words, we have seen that a condition is able
so to affect the subject as to make it identical with
' See Logic, § 62.

142

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

the predicate, or that if S is x it is P ; but hou)
it has that power has not been shown ; we have
not actually discovered a principle of coherence.
" It remains to determine in each particular case,
what A, combined in ivJiat form with what B,
forms the adequate reason of zuhai C." ^ We might,
perhaps, discover this empirically in each iiistance
as it arose ; but that would not satisfy the demands
of logic, which seeks a universal principle of coher-
ence that would enable us to anticipate experience.
" There must be at any rate a principle which
allows us, when once the one truth A+B=C is
given, to apply it to cases of which experience has
not yet informed us. . . . Whenever we regard
A + B d^s the reason of a consecjuence C, we neces-
sarily conceive the connection of the three as a
universal one ; A + B would not be a condition of C,
if, in a second case of its occurrence, some casual
D instead of C might possibly be found combined
with it."- The connection of an antecedent and a
consequent is, therefore, one which takes place in
accordance with, or in subordination to, a rule. Any
reason cannot bring any consequent ; for in that
case they would not be a reason and a consequent,
and experience would be chaotic. Hence a reason is
a reason, and a consequent a consequent, only because
they are subordinate to a universal, which gives to
each of them its specific character and brings
about their connection. That universal has not
' Logic, § 67. - Ibid.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 143

been found. Hence the combination of differences,
although indubitable as a fact of our experience,
has not been logically justified, nor has the principle
which converts coincidence into coherence been dis-
covered. But that is as much as to say that tJie
function of thought is not even yet explained ; and
in order to do so we must pass beyond the hypo-
thetical form of judgment.

Now we find an example of a combination which
is universal in such a judgment as " Man is Mortal,"
in which it is implied that " it lies in the character
of mankind that mortality is inseparable from every
one who partakes in it."^ The combination in this
case is not contingent. "The general judgment lets
the reason of its necessary truth be seen through
it " ; man and mortality fall under some law which
universally connects them, so that if the one is, the
other is also. And yet we must not fall into the
error of thinking that the universal " man " is con-
nected with the universal " mortality." The universal
" man " does not die, and no death is death in
general. What is meant is that if any one is man
he is mortal. Hence, '•' the general judgment is
properly an abbreviated hypothetical judgment, in
its full form it ought to stand — If any vS" is a
man, this J)" is a mortal.""

But even this second statement is not complete ;
for we have allowed the predicate, mortality, to
remain a universal. But a universal predicate — a
^ Logic, § 68. - Ibid.

144

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

mortality in general, is as little possible as a uni-
versal subject — a man in general ; and universal
mortalit)' can as little attach to an individual man
as a universal man can die. That which is ex-
pressed in the predicate is a universal, but what
was meant is some particular instance of that
universal. Hence, if we bring out the meaning of
a proposition S \s P and express all its implications,
it will take the following form : " If any ^ is an
M it is either p^, or /-, or /■■, and here p^ p- /•'
mean the different kinds of a universal mark P
which is contained in the generic concept J/."^
Seeing that vS" is subjected to a condition 31, and
can be /^ only if it is an M, that concept M acts
in the way of a rule upon S, compelling it to
have as a predicate some one particular form of P.
" The subordination of ^S" to JW implies that ^ must
choose its own predicate from amongst /^ /^ /^ the
specific forms of P."'- Thus, at length, the effort
of thought to combine the matter of ideas in a
necessary way seems about to be successful. The
Disjunctive Judgment which thus grows out of
the hypothetical, represents thought as articulating
experience into a system ; for it combines an indi-
vidual subject with an individual predicate. And
as the particulars which it brings together are not
mere particulars, but are instances of a universal, as
they all fall under M, the connection is necessary.
Nevertheless, even the disjunctive judgment has
^ Logic, § 69. -Ibid., § 71.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 145

a defect. It does not connect the subject with
any particular predicate, but only goes so far as
to show that its predicate must have a certain
character, must be, that is, some one of a number
of instances of a universal to the exclusion of the
others. But it gives no indication as to which is
the one. The differentia of the disjunctive judg-
ment is that " it gives its subject no predicate at
all, but prescribes to it the alternative between a
number of different predicates."^ The universal does
not enable the subject to grasp its own particular
predicate, although it shuts it amongst others as
within an enclosure. Nor can "the decision wJiat
p^ or /"- belongs to S come from the fact (which
is thus far only the fact) that vS is subordinate to
iM, for it is just because it is a species of M that
it is still free to choose : that decision can only
come from the specific difference by which S,
as this species of M, is distinguished from other
species of it." - Hence the subject must be more
accurately defined than can be done by merely
placing it under an M, so that when this speci-
fication is accomplished it may appear that it is p'^,
and not any other, which must be its predicate.
But no further kind of Judgment is available to
perform this task, and we must pass on to another
form of thought, namely Inference. Inference may
exhibit the success of thought in producing a uni-
versal which shall make the contents of experience
^ Logic, § 69. - Ibid., % 7S-

146 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

cohere : so far the principle of necessary combin-
ation has escaped us.

I have considered it necessary to follow with
considerable care the exposition which Lotze gives
of the manner in which thought performs its
function of combining in judgment. It may be
possible to gain greater clearness by bringing his
main points together in a summary.

So far two main steps have been taken by
thought proper; one from perception to conception,
and one from conception to judgment. The first
step is only made possible through the sub-conscious
elaboration of the original data, namely, states or
changes of consciousness into individual and single
but complex ideas which refer to objects. It
consists in bringing into evidence the existence
of principles of coherence between the material
thus combined, and it cither displaces the con-
tingent by the necessary, or else shows that the
contingent was really never there. It either abolishes
the associat'ive consciousness by showing that it is
a stage in the growth of the thought- or reflective-
consciousness, or else it leaves consciousness divided
into a higher and a lower section. In either case,
thought arrives at conceptions, or universal ideas ;
ideas, that is, whose elements are themselves uni-
versal, and are combined by a universal.

The second step from conception to judgment is
taken because the impulse which led thought from
the particular datum of experience to universal

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 147

concepts has not yet been satisfied. The overt
reason alleged by Lotze for taking this step is
that concepts, serially arranged in a sort of hier-
archy, could only represent a static, or frozen
world, and would miss all the movement and
change which is continually pressed upon us by
experience. But a deeper reason than this incident-
ally reveals itself as he proceeds ; it is that the
concept has not really enabled us to see how the
principle of coherence operates — how a universal
can combine differences. No principle of unity
has been discovered, and the uniting activity of
objective thought, though present in conception,
has not been logically justified. The whole and the
parts fall asunder, whether we regard that whole
as a constant nucleus amidst change in time, or
as a universal amidst differences, both above time.
It is manifestly the object of judgment to bring
these together, or else to show that, and why, they
are already together in the concept. For there lie
before us precisely the same option and ambiguity
as in the case of the perception and the conception.
That is to say, just as we may conceive the con-
ception either as something new, or as an evolution
of the old, as bringing in a principle of coherence
for the first time or as revealing such a principle
in the perception, so we may conceive judgment
either as the process whereby universals are first
brought together, or as a process which reveals
the universals as already combined in a universal

148 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

manner in conception. According to the first view,
judgment is a process which unites conceptions
which have been ah^eady made, and judgment rests
upon conception as a later process impossible with-
out the first ; according to the second, the concept
is an implicit judgment, and in passing from the
former to the latter we are following the develop-
ment of a single function, rendering explicit what
was present in conception from the first, and there-
fore basing conception upon, or what is the same
thing, explaining conception in the light of judgment.
Judgment on this last view would become the
primary and fundamental activit)^ of thought. But
in either case, what we are trying to solve is the
logical question of the possibility of making the
coexistent coherent, and of the methods which
thought employs in doing so. This is accomplished,
in the first instance, in the Categorical Judgment
6" is P — the Impersonal Judgment may be set
aside for the present as a merely imperfect form
of the Categorical, or as the Categorical in the
making. But the Categorical Judgment fails to
bring S and P together. " vS is not P ; it only has
/^," and it remains to make really clear what con-
stitutes this "having" which we oppose to " being." ^
It fails because the immediate identification of vS
and P, which the Categorical Judgment expresses,
would violate the primary law of thought, namely,
the law of identity. All we can possibly have in
'Logic, § 51.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 149

accordance with that law is ^ is .S", and P is /-*.
That is, instead of making 5 and P coherent in
virtue of a universal principle which inwardly unites
them, they are allowed to remain hard, exclusive
units. We can, at the very best, only associate
them. Hence the categorical judgment, instead of
furnishing the principle of coherence, only shows
the need of it. In other words, the attempt to
justify the categorical judgment logically, shows
that we require a universal, or condition under
which it becomes possible to make such a judgment.
The universal, which was merely implicit in the
concept, remains merely implicit in the categorical
judgment. But the task of logic is just to make
this principle explicit, to reveal its presence as
constitutive in the function of thought. Now the
hypothetical judgment seems to perform that task.
It gives definite expression to the condition under
which the universal combines the particular. In-
stead of .S" is P, which is impossible to a thought
that is governed by the law of identity, we have,
If S is X, S is P. The protasis expresses the
principle of coherence between .5" and P, so that
we seem to have succeeded in catching and fixing
the Universal.

But we have not shown that, or how it com-
bines the elements, nor exhibited the law by
which it determines that S under the condition
X shall veritably be P. We have only the bare
assertion tJtat it does so, an assertion which, as

150 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

it stands, is as little justified as the categorical
assertion that ^^ is P. The immediate transition
from S to P was proved to be impossible ; we
have now to justify the mediate transition through
a condition. That is, we have actually to apply
the condition to the conditioned, the universal to
the particulars. So that precisely the same prob-
lem of finding coherence still lies before us. But
its form has changed. Instead of discovering a
universal we have now to apply it to particulars ;
or, in other words, we have to make the condi-
tion effective in distinct and different instances.
That, of course, is done by experience ; but it is
done according to a principle, and logic has to
discover that principle. The first step in this dis-
covery is made by the Disjunctive Judgment,
according to which 5 is, not P in general, for
that is impossible, but some particular P, such as
/\ or /-, or /'^ So that instead of the conditional
judgment "If vS" is x it is P," we have "If ..S" is x
it is either /^ or /-, or /^" We have, in other
words, to subordinate both the subject and the pre-
dicate to a universal in order to bring about the
coherence of their contents. We cannot combine
universals, for universals cannot be identified : S
cannot be P. And it is obvious that we cannot
make luere particulars cohere. Hence our only
refuge is to make the particulars examples of, or
cases within, a universal. And this is done in the
Disjunctive Judgment ; for our 6" is not a;/j' S,

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 151

but an ^ conditioned, an 6" which is an x\ and
our f-, p-, f", are not any predicates, but cases of
the universal P, which, together, exhaust its con-
tent. Here, therefore, is the combination of par-
ticulars into coherency b)' means of universals —
the thing we sought.

But our task is not finished even yet. For the
hypothetical, while it combines the elements within
the system which constitutes the subject S with
the elements within the system which constitute
the predicate P, both of which in turn fall under M,
does not show what element of .S is combined
with what element of P. s", j--, / within ^ may
go respectively with p^, p^, and f" within P ; but /
may also go with /^ or /'*, s^ with />' or p"^, and
S^ with p^ or />-. The Disjunctive leaves us with
this option in our hands, and affords us no further
guidance. It does not define the s that is to go
with /, or the / that attaches to an s. The uni-
versals fail to grasp the particulars, and s^ is as
little inwardly coherent with /', or p'^, or /'' as vS" is
coherent with P. Hence we must pass altogether
beyond the judgment, which can do no more ;
and seek in the major and minor premises of
inference the connection of the elements which will
justify us in saying that .S" is P, or, in other
words, which will actually combine the different.

Whether "thought as inference" succeeds in this
task in which thought as judgment has failed we
must enquire in the next chapter. I now turn

152

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

to the examination of this most important and
instructive part of Lotze's doctrine of thought. I
have already indicated at the beginning of this
chapter the inconsistency that lies in Lotze's
account of the relation between judging and con-
ceiving. He definitely states^ that Judgment can-
not precede conception, because that act of thought
consists in uniting conceptions. And in §§ 34, 35
of his Logic he speaks as if a conceptual view of
the world of thought could be completed without
the aid of judgment. The need of judgment is
there represented as springing from the fact that
the view which conceptions arranged in an ascend-
ing order gives of the world, is an image of a
fixed order, while the world of experience is a
world which is always changing. Judgment must
come in, in order to deal with this process of
' Becoming ' after the manner in which conception
deals with static ' Being.' Mr. Bosanquet regards
the distinction which Lotze draws on this ground
as practically a hasty oversight, and it is quite
true that Lotze makes no use of it, i.e., he does
not confine Conception to Being and Judgment to
Becoming. He proceeds rather to show that Judg-
ment continues on a higher level the attempt of
conception to bring the coincident into coherence ;
and the problem of change sinks into a case of
the general problem of difference or negation.
Conception had failed to reveal explicitly the
^ Logic, % S.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 153

bond that seems to combine its content, or the
manner in which it is appHed to the content ;
and judgment seizes the material and " recon-
stitutes it in a form which at the same time
expresses the ground of the coherence in the
matter combined." On this view judgment would
be implied in conception, and conception and
judgment would be the same function of thought
at different stages of development.

Now while admitting that Lotze in confining
Conception to Being and Judgment to Becoming
is only giving expression to a casual opinion
which was not thought out, I must consider the
inconsistency which he still allows to remain as
indicative of a radical flaw in Lotze's view of the
function of thought. It indicates two tendencies
which are always at w^ar in his doctrine : a con-
scious tendency to represent thought as formal,
and an unconscious tendency to regard it as con-
stitutive; a tendency to divide thought into sections
externally or mechanically related, and a tendency
to regard all its stages as the evolution of one
function. It is an example of what we must con-
tinually witness in his method : he starts from a
certain presupposition as to the nature of thought,
finds in the attempt to trace its operation that he
is obliged to treat the presupposition as if it were
false, and nevertheless he refuses to abandon it.
We have seen some signs of this already in the
difficulties into which he falls in dealin<z with the

154 T^HE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

associative consciousness and the first form of the
reflective or thought consciousness. The datum of
experience is taken, to begin with, as a manifold of
sensations, and consequently the only combination
of which it is capable is an external one. This first
combination he attributes to a psychical mechanism,
and thereby he escapes the problem of explaining
how it is possible. He does not see that it is im-
possible, that a pure manifold cannot in any manner
be combined, that no combining principle can be
external, that, as he himself insists elseivhere, a
relation which is merely bctiveen things is incon-
ceivable and impracticable. Or, if we insist that
he does see this, — and that also would not be
difficult to prove, — we are forced to admit that
he does not regard the original datum as itself
carrying within it the characteristics of thought ;
that is to say, he does not give up the' pre-
supposition, proved untenable by his process, that
thought has to deal with a manifold. To recon-
stitute his starting point so as to make it con-
sistent with his results would have been to admit
the truth of Idealism which makes thought think
thought, and reality itself inwardly ideal.

We have also seen the same inconsistency in
the second stage, that is, in the relation of the
associative consciousness to conception, or of co-
incident to coherent perceptions. He starts with
a mere subjective bond of temporal and spatial
relations between perceptions, but, in order to

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 155

bring these together into concepts he has to in-
vent objective universals between them. That is,
he has to qualify perceptions by conceptions,
which is to deny their particularity and isolation.
He has to invent sense universals, which are iden-
tical in everything except in name with the
thought universals which he has assumed to be
not present. But, as before, the fact that percep-
tions must be combined into conceptions in order
that knowledge may be possible, and the fact that
perceptions if they are merely associated or com-
bined externally cannot really be combined at all,
do not lead him to reconstitute his starting point
and deny that perceptions arc thus singular and
isolated. He allows the presupposition which has
proved untenable to remain, and therefore he
thinks himself still justified in holding that thought
is formal and not constitutive, and that it deals
with an alien datum.

We have precisely the same inconsistency in his
view of the relation of conception and judgment.
Conceptions are assumed to be isolated, and judgment
has to form a connection between them. .S' and P
in the categorical judgment have to be brought to-
gether; they are given to judgment in order to be
connected, but it becomes clearer than ever that if
they are to be connected they must have been
already connected : they must have been coherent
in virtue of a condition which the Hypothetical judg-
ment reveals as present all along. And yet this does

156 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

not lead Lotze to reconsider his original assumption
that the terms of the judgment are first independent,
or that the function of the judgment is to connect
ideas. That is, he does not cease to regard the
judgment as a combination of elements first given
in their isolation, and then brought together by
means of a copula, and therefore he is obliged to
regard judging as a process subsequent to, and
indeed difi"erent from, conception.

We have then to observe the difficulties into which
Lotze is led by his view of the judgment as " an
expression of the relation between the matters of
two ideas." The first attempt of judgment, which
takes the categorical form, is met with a definite
nan possiumis springing from the fundamental law of
all thought, namely, the law of identity. Instead of
finding how 5 and P are united, we discovered that
they cannot possibly be united in that judgment.
If they were different before, they remain different.
To make the one " unconditionally the other while
both stand over against each other as different is
quite impracticable to thought." This is obviously
true, if S and P were originally mere difierences,
and if the law of identity excludes all difference.
But Lotze does not turn back on these presupposi-
tions. On the contrary, having failed to make 6"
and P unconditionally one, he endeavours to make
them conditionally one. For although the law of
identity forbids us to say at once that ^" is P,
we may say, nevertheless, that .S" is P if .5" is x.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 157

But Jioiv can vS' ever be .r? Are not the difficulties
of identifying .S' with its own condition precisely
the same as those of identifying any other two
things which are given as different ? Lotze virtu-
ally admits this, and instead of connecting ^' and P
by means of a condition he drops them, and con-
nects 2 and 11. " The true subject is not the
universal S but 2, a determinate instance of it ;
and the true predicate is not the universal P but II,
a particular modification of it ; and the relation
asserted is not between 5 and P, but between 2
and n ; and the relation is no longer a synthetical,
nor even an analytical one, but simply one of
identity." ^ In order to connect 5 and P, Lotze
has to abandon some facts contained in the uni-
versal, and to confine himself to certain particular
ones, which are known to be identical in the sub-
ject and in the predicate ! He rejects the universals
vS" and P for particular instances of each, on the
ground that it was these latter which we really
meant to combine. But if they are ''instances'" of
universals, they are themselves universals ; hence
it would be necessary to analyze these in turn, if
we arc to find the " instances " in them which are
really combinable. And the process would repeat
itself ad infinitnvi. Nor would it ever succeed,
nor approach success. For "instances" of uni-
versals can never be particular ; and yet unless
they arc instances of a universal the)' cannot be
'^ Logic ^ § 57.

158 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

combined. Hence they either cannot be combined,
or they do not need to be combined. In other
words, if we have to analyze 5 and P into IS and
n in order to combine them, we hkewise have to
analyze 2 and 11 into s and p, s and / into rr and tt,
and still they would not be particulars ; and if they
were they would not combine. It is because he is
uneasily conscious of this difficulty that Lotze is
found to hint that we must either give up the
possibility of making synthetical judgments, or else
find their guarantee in "immediate perception."^
But that is as much as to say that thought cannot
produce coherence, which is its only task.

It should be evident at once that the synthesis of
the elements of knowledge into a system by means
of thought is impossible if the fundamental law of
thought is that of Dicre identity. Lotze's conclusions
seem at times to be about to force this admission
from him. He does admit explicitly, as we have
seen, that the law of mere identity instead of identi-
fying things simply isolates them irremediably, de-
feating its own sole purpose.- But he does not give
it up as a logical phantasm, or conceive the law of
identity which thought actually employs as a law
of difference as well, inasmuch as identity is meaning-
less and impossible except as the identity of differ-
ences. Instead of this, which would involve the
repudiation of a universal plus differences, relations
plus points on which to hang them, that is, the
^ See Logic, § 99. - Idid., § 361 ff.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 159

repudiation of an external relation between the uni-
versal and the particular, the concept and its contents,
the judgment and its parts, Lotze has recourse to
another law of thought which is not only different
from but inconsistent with the first law, as he con-
ceives it. He attempts to escape the formalism
and tautology of pure thouglit, as he conceived it,
by subordinating its activities to the law of reason
and consequent, and by assuming as a starting
point of knowledge the systematic form of unity
in difference, which the law of identity has proven
to be unthinkable.

Now, I am not concerned to deny the validity of
this new departure by the assumption of a system.
On the contrary, the cardinal error of Lotze's view
of thought seems to me to lie in the fact that it is
not originally and consistently based upon the con-
ception of system. He is driven to adopt it by the
failure of the tautological view to which he is at first
committed ; but instead of repudiating that view on
the ground that it leads to a deadlock, he endeavours
to set the second view side by side with it. There
are for him two laws of thought — that of identity and
that of reason and consequent ; there are two kinds
of universals, one which proves empty and fails to
combine difi"crences, and one which only exists with-
in a system, and which therefore permeates these
differences ; there are two kinds of particulars, or of
thought contents, those which lie asunder awaiting
combination by the act of judgment, and those whicli

l6o THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

determine each other, which are conditions and which,
therefore, are already universals, though not bare
universals. There is nothing within the whole theory
of thought more important than the distinction be-
tween these two views. " Logic," as Mr. Bosanquet
has said, "is little more than an account of the forms
and modes in which a universal docs or does not affect
the differences through which it persists. All turns
on the distinction between the abstract or powerless,
and the concrete or dominant universal."^ But Lotze,
while distinguishing the two, uses either of them
according to his convenience, and does not see that
if the one of them is the universal of thought the
other is not.

The question which Lotze has to face is the
possibility of making the transition from the first
of these to the second ; and he is not entirely un-
conscious of the difficulty. He raises the question
of our " right to translate those supplementary
additions, to which the true subject of the then
identical judgment owed its origin, into Coftditiojis." -
It is interesting to observe his answer. He arrives
at it, as we have seen, by the way of assuming
that knowledge is systematic, or that it is " a whole
which coheres." He finds the possibility of such
coherence to lie, in the first place, in the existence
of the law of sufficient reason, according to which
one element is able to determine another, and, accord-
ing to which, therefore, each of the elements is not
^ Loi^ic, Vol. II., p. 3. 'Logic, § 61.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT i6l

a particular but an instance of a concrete or dominant
universal. Having made these assumptions of a
system, and of a principle of sufficient reason, he
is able to proceed further towards representing the
process whereby the universal principle manifests
itself in systematic knowledge — though, as I shall
have occasion to point out, he repeatedly lapses
into his original view of the universal as " abstract
and powerless." But he acknowledges, to begin with,
that the whole view rests on an assumption. How,
then, does he justify it .'' First, by a reason which,
as he represents it, is entirely empirical. " It serves
the purposes of thought." It is useful. It is even
indispensable to ns, an essential characteristic of
our thought. But it is not essential to thought as
thought, for he finds a world of knowledge con-
ceivable in which everything should be incommen-
surable, a world, that is, of associated ideas in which
the concepts lie idly and peacefully side by side,
no one of them conditioning or conditioned. It
happens that our world of our knowledge is not such
a world. It happens, too, that reality as we know
it corresponds to such knowledge as issues from
the conception of a system dominated by a prin-
ciple of sufficient reason. But the first of these is
fortuitous, and the second is a "fortunate" accident,
"a fortunate trait in the organization of the think-
able world, a trait which does really exist, but has
not the same necessity for existing as the principle
of identity." In truth, on this view, it has not any

1 62 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

necessity. Its opposite is neither unthinkable nor
impossible in fact ; but it happens to be so. It is
guaranteed, no doubt, by "the concentrated impres-
sion of experience," whatever that means. But it
has not " immediate certitude like the principle of
identity." We do not ''feci it immediately to be
necessary, nor feel its opposite to be impossible in
thought." ^ Lotze is therefore obliged, in the second
place, to bring it into relation with the principle of
identity which Jias this immediate necessity ; and
he calls it an " extension " of this latter principle.
He endeavours to prove that it is an extension by
directly identifying the subject, when qualified by
the condition, with the consequent, and saying that
A+B is C. "Taken by themselves A only = y^,
B = B." But there dwells such efficacy in the
condition, or relation between A and B, which is
symbolized by the sign +, that A+B becomes
" equivalent to, or identical with, the simple content
of the new concept C" " Reason and consequence
are completely identical, and the one is the other."
If it is objected that the principle of identity bars
them against identification if they are different,
and that if they are not different, we cannot dis-
tinguish them into reason and consequent, Lotze
replies — "The possibility of mutual relations between
what is different is not really threatened by the
principle of identity, ... it cannot exclude
other contents which do not conflict with it." - And
•* See Logic, % 6^ /A ^ Logic, § 62.

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 163

this answer is quite valid. But it is valid only if
we regard the principle of identity as at the same
time a principle of difference. As a law of mere
identity it cannot exclude other contents, as Lotze
says ; but it fails to exclude just because it has no
content of its own : having no content of its own
there is nothing in it to exclude or militate
against anything whatsoever. Nothing can either
exclude or include except that which has meaning,
except a universal which is concrete. Mere identity
is inconsistent with nothing, because it is itself
nothing. All relations disappear where differences
cease to exist, and amongst them that of identity
itself Bare identity thus, on Lotze's own showing,
allows the whole content of experience to lie in
irremediable chaos. He would allow the law, indeed,
to apply to single percepts, and to ensure the con-
sistency of an object with itself. But it is evident
that it cannot do even this unless the object is ab-
solutely simple and empty. In attempting to reduce
the law of sufficient reason into an extension of the
principle of identity, Lotze is unconsciously forced to
do the opposite, and to regard identity as itself an im-
plicit principle of self-differentiation. But, as before,
the results into which he is forced do not lead him to
reconsider his starting point; he allows the law of
mere identity, and that of sufficient reason, to lie side
by side in the same consciousness, and he subjects
thought to two fundamental laws which, as represented
by him, are radically inconsistent with each other.

1 64 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

But although these two laws are allowed to exist
side by side they have not the same value ; their
authority is different in character because, as we
have seen, it is different in its source. At the
foundation of the validity of "Identity" there is
" immediate conviction," " the feeling of its ne-
cessity," and the feeling of the impossibility of its
opposite. But " Sufficient reason " is summoned
into existence in order to account for the possi-
bility of an assumption — an assumption, however,
which Jiappens to be true ; for our knowledge is
systematic, though it might have been otherwise.

Now the difference which Lotze finds between
these two laws is important for two reasons. In
the first place, it shows that he derives the ulti-
mate principle of knowledge from a subjective
source ; and, in the second place, it shows that
the transition from the categorical to the hypo-
thetical judgment is not, as at first appears, a
movement in the gradual process of discovering
the ultimate conditions of thought.

That the ultimate starting point of Lotze is
psychological scarcely needs proof. The feeling of
the necessity of the law is not merely something
which accompanies that necessity. In that sense
there would be no occasion to deny Lotze's view.
There is no doubt that appropriate feelings accom-
pany every activity of the intelligence, or that every
exercise of thought or will has its own emotional
quality. But to Lotze this feeling of necessity is

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 165

not merely a subjective suggestion of the value of
a necessity already in existence, but it generates
the necessity itself. In other words, if we ask Lotze
why we should believe in the validity of the law
of identity, he lays his hand upon his heart and
answers, " I feel that it is true, and so do you." But
if we reply that many men, women, and children,
feel many other things to be true, and afterwards
find that they have deceived themselves, and ask
him why this feeling should be more trusted than
others, he can give no answer. He might, indeed,
point to its universality in the sense that every-
one feels it ; but, of course, that may be due to a
contingency that has never happened to vary. Ne-
cessity can never be attained by that path. Nor has
"immediate conviction" any right to be authoritative.
In the progress of knowledge we are continually
overturning bur " immediate convictions." The very
essence of all proof, whose function and aim is to
create and justify conviction, is to supplant immediate
by mediate conviction. The superiority of thought
over sense lies in its relativity. But Lotze, by
running the principle of knowledge back into im-
mediate conviction, turns that superiority into a
defect. He is unfaithful to the greatest lesson that
Kant, whom he professes to follow, has taught to
the modern world, namely, that no trntJi has the
right to convince except the luhole truth. Systematic
knowledge is to him a contingent affair. Clinging to
the as.sociationism which vitiates his whole procedure.

1 66 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

he desires some one fixed point of certaint}^ to
which he would attach all other knowledge ; and
he finds that fixed point, that principle of all ob-
jectivity, in the most subjective of all facts, namely
in a particular feeling. He bases the pyramid of
knowledge upon its apex, as if that process had
not been proved by Kant and his predecessors to
end in its ruin ; and he is therefore loyal, not so
much to the constructive as to the sceptical element
in Kant's doctrine.

But he has concealed that scepticism under a
show of a dialectical movement from coincidence to
coherence. The transition from perception to con-
ception, from conception to judgment, and from
the categorical judgment to the hypothetical, seems
to spring from an impulse inherent in thought, to
make explicit the operation of a concrete, dominant
universal in all particulars. We seem, to be going
back gradually upon the systematic conditions in
virtue of which alone our knowledge is possible.
The categorical judgment seems to push us on to
the hypothetical, because the latter contains the
condition of the possibility of the former. S is P
seems to be possible only if both 6" and P fall under
a condition, or, in other words, are parts or elements
in a system. And that would involve that the law
of identity is itself explained in the light of, and
therefore derives its authority from, the law of
sufficient reason. The unity and the differences
which are both implicit in the law of identity, the

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 167

universal and tlic particulars which are both bare,
are made explicit in the second law, which, so far,
brings to light a system of mutually related elements,
and holds in its hand a unity, a universal, which is
concrete. That system, as I shall show, and as
Lotze himself in a manner shows, becomes still
more evident in the disjunctive judgment. But by
subordinating reason and consequent to identity,
Lotze has robbed this process of all its meaning ;
and by regarding the authority of " the system of
knowledge" as inferior to that of immediate con-
viction of a particular truth, he has stultified the
deepest impulse of thought, namely, the impulse to
mediation or coherence. On his principles, having
found that the attempt to say that 6" is P really
results in " asserting the sameness of everything
with itself, and in placing two different things in
the relation of mutual exclusion," we should cease to
endeavour to mediate or relate. The end of thought,
dominated by such a principle of identity, is not to
say that ^ is P if S is ,r ; nor even that vS is S,
and P \s P ; but to say S, or P, and to be unable
to proceed from the one to the other. Instead of
thinking, which is mediating or relating, we should
point with the finger ; and even the act of point-
ing to an object 5 or P would convey more
meaning than we have a right to express on this
theory.

Lotze is saved from this issue only by his in-
consistency. But that the unconscious drift of his

1 6S THE PHILOSOPH Y OF LO TZE

thought leads him to the verge of this absolute
scepticism Avill become more evident when we
come to consider the ultimate results of his doc-
trine, and in particular the manner in which he
makes " thought " and all its process secondary to
sensible and supersensible perception.

If this criticism of Lotze's procedure is just, com-
paratively little value can attach to his transition
from the Conditional to the Disjunctive Judgment —
a transition which in his hands is not at all clear.
Partly on this account, and partly because I believe,
as Mr. Bosanquet indicates, that the disjunctive judg-
ment is not anterior to the more elementary forms
of inference, I shall deal with it here very briefly.

It is evident that Lotze's intention in passing from
the hypothetical to the disjunctive judgment is to
complete the connection of particulars by universals.
From his mode of representing matters it might
seem that all that is done in the latter which was
not done in the former is the substitution of the
particulars within /-', namely p^ /'- p^, for P. But
such substitution in itself marks no advance. The
only difference between the hypothetical and dis-
junctive types he furnishes is that the latter is a
hypothetical w^eakencd by doubt. ' If .S is J/ it is
pi p2 pZ' is j-jQ|- necessarily a true disjunctive. There
is no more disjunction, to take a concrete example,
in the statement, " If this animal is a mammal, it is
either a horse, or a cow, or a dog, etc.," than in the
statement, " If this animal is a mammal, it is a

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT 169

vertebrate." The essence of disjunction does not
consist in the freedom to choose amongst several
particular predicates, but in the necessity to choose
some one of them to the exclusion of the others,
that necessity springing from the subject in such a
manner that the predicates must be one of a certain
number beauise they constitute, and together ex-
haust, a system. We cannot say whether "If vS" is
M it is p^, p", or /^," is a true disjunctive or not,
unless we know that 6" acquires such a character
through its relation to M as to articulate itself in
these predicates. Without that knowledge the pro-
position simply expresses a hypothesis which is
further weakened by doubt or ignorance. In the
proposition, "A triangle is either equilateral, isosceles,
or scalene," we have true disjunction ; for our con-
ception of a triangle (i) compels it to take one of
these forms, and (2) to take one only, and (3)
excludes all other alternatives as impossible. These
alternatives, therefore, form a system of mutually
related parts within the single conception of the
triangle. And if we wish to show how the hypo-
thetical judgment develops itself into a disjunctive,
we must show how the idea of " condition " implies
this conception of a system. ^ But the emergence
of the conception of a system in the Disjunctive
Judgment is by no means emphasized by Lotze
as the vital matter in this transition. On the

^ This question is admirably worked out in Dr. Bosanquet's
Lopic.

170

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

contrary, we might conclude from liis exposition
that the idea of system was already adequately
expressed in the hypothetical judgment, which is
by no means true. No doubt that idea is involved
in the hypothetical ; it is present even in the cate-
gorical. It is just this implication of a system
in the most elementary form of judgment, and
its fuller expression in the sequent forms as we
ascend to the disjunctive which give unity to the
logical act, and make thought one function. vS
is P only because a condition under which both
fall is fulfilled ; that is to say, only because they
are elements in a universal, or parts in a system.
This is brought out in the transition to the
hypothetical. But it is imperfectly brought out.
The hypothetical judgment, " If ^S is M it is /^,"
expresses onl}' the dependence of P upon S, and
5" upon P. That is to say, M is shown to be
necessary to S, and 6" to P ; but P does not
seem to be necessary to S, nor 6" to J\I. The
relation is not shoivn to be mutual, and, therefore,
the system is not complete. Thought seems, in the
hypothetical form, to be in pursuit of a universal
which is necessarily always receding. For just as
^ could not be P unless it was M, so it cannot be
M unless it is N, and it cannot be A'' unless it is O.
And so on ad infiniUini. The universal which is
to enable us to combine the elements of experience
always escapes us. We are obliged under this form
of thought to explain everything in terms of some-

THE THEORY OF JUDGMENT i;i

thing else, and consequently we can never com-
pletely explain anything. But although it is only
a condition which is expressed in the hypothetical, a
self-inclusive system is implied. For if J/ is verily
the reason of S, then 5 is also the reason of M.
Once we escape from the confusion of taking the
rational nexus of reason and consequent as if it
were a causal sequence in time, it will become
evident that if either conception is a reason for the
other it may also be derived from it. So that the
hypothetical implies mutual or systematic relation.
It is this implication which is made explicit in
the disjunctive judgment, whose essence is that it
expresses the conception of a universal which
articulates itself in a number of elements that
mutually exclude each other, and, taken together,
exhaust or constitute the whole. From this point
of view, the sequence of the forms of the judg-
ment becomes intelligible ; they take their place in
the series according to the fulness with which they
express the universal, which fi'oin tJie first is pre-
sent in judgment as the condition of its possibility.
But this conception of a self-articulating universal
is necessarily foreign to a theory of thought which
starts from the presupposition that the function of
thought is to connect elements given as discrete.
In other words, it necessitates a view of the
nature of thought which is fundamentally different
from Lotze's. Its highest law cannot be that of
mere identity, but a system of related differences ;

172 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

its principle cannot be an abstract and powerless,
but must be a concrete universal that produces
its own differences and holds them within itself;
its starting point must be coherence and not coin-
cidence ; its task must be the articulation of a
unity, not a combination of differences. The move-
ment of Lotze's own thought forces him towards
it, and exposes point by point the unsatisfactory
character of its opposite. But instead of yielding
up the associative view based upon bare identity
as radically false, he endeavours to correct its
errors by combining with it the systematic or ideal-
istic view; and the result is that the latter hovers
before him as an ideal which is both necessary
and unattainable, and that while he is satisfied
that the mechanical view of knowledge in which
its parts are externally related is inadequate and
even finally self-contradictory, ending both with
universals that are empty and particulars that are
disconnected, he is unable to rise to the organic
view. And his doctrine culminates in condemning
thought because it is thought, and in an endeavour
to escape out of the sphere of relation into that
of dogmatism, or of immediate perception and
feeling, which he denominates " Faith."

173

CHAPTER V

lotze's doctrine of inference and the
systematic forms of thought

T OTZE'S definition of inference is strictly anal-
ogous to his definition of judgment. As
judgment "combines the matter of two ideas/' so
" The form of thought which combines two judg-
ments so as to produce a third is, speaking generally,
inference."'^ Thought is driven to the use of this
form by the failure of the disjunctive judgment to
determine the subject in such a manner that a de-
finite predicate shall necessarily belong to it. That
judgment left us a choice ; and choice, unguided
by any principle, is nothing better than chance.
The task of further defining the subject, so as
to bring to light a completely determining principle,
is taken up in the first place by Siibsinnptive
Inference, of which there are three forms ; namely
(i) the Aristotelian Syllogism, (2) Induction, (3)
^ Logic, § 74.

174

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

Analogy. I propose to follow, as briefly as possible,
Lotze's account of these forms.

The most perfect types of the Aristotelian Syl-
logism are, of course, to be found in the first figure,
in which a particular case, expressed in the minor
premiss is explicitly brought under the general rule
expressed in the major. But that general rule
may be understood in two ways, namely, as an
Analytic or as a Synthetic Judgment. If we take
it in the Analytic sense, that is to say, if we
understand in saying M is /", that P falls into M
as one of its marks without which M could not be
conceived, then the universal rule is certainly valid.
But in that case we cannot subordinate the minor
to this rule without presupposing that it is an
instance which falls under the rule. This will
appear at once if we take a concrete instance. If
" All bodies have weight," and if " air is a body,"
then certainly " air has weight." But we have
assumed that air has weight in assuming that it
is a body ; and the general rule is not possible
unless the truth of the special instance particu-
larized in the minor premiss is assumed. Hence,
the two premises, instead of enabling us to advance
to a new conclusion from their own independent
truth, are themselves valid only on the supposition
of its truth.-^ If air has not weight, then air is not
a body, or some bodies have not weight, that is to
say, both the major and the minor j^resuppose the
^ Logic, §§ 98, 99.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE lyt^

conclusion. Instead of an inference wc have a
petitio principii, " a double circle " ; and this form of
inference represents thought as tautologous.

If we take the general rule, or major premiss,
in a Synthetic sense, we shall avoid this apparently
vain repetition. Having combined M with some-
thing new, P, in the major, we are also able to
combine i' with it, seeing that ^' is M. In this
case the conclusion, 6" is P, would be a further
characterization of 6", and we should have advanced
by inference to a new truth. But, on the other
hand, we have not as yet found any logical
justification for such a synthetic major. In other
words, it has not been shown how we can add a
new mark P to the subject M\ and, until that is
seen, the validity of the major, and, therefore, of
all the subsequent inference which depends upon it,
remains doubtful. Thus the Aristotelian syllogism
throws no light upon this problem, and the subsump-
tion which it attempted proves to be impossible,
or is at least quite unjustified. In the first case,
there was no subsumption, in the sense of bringing
anything new under the rule, or of proceeding to
a third truth from two given truths : there was only
repetition. In the second case there is subsumption,
the conclusion is new, but it is not proved, because
the truth of the major is not demonstrated. Taken
analytically the syllogism is valid but tautological ;
taken synthetically it is progressive, but not de-
monstrably valid, and, therefore, not logical inference.

176 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

In both cases alike the principle of coherence fails
to bind together new elements ; for in the first case
there is no advance, and in the second there is no
necessary bond. Hence, either inference is not a
synthetic movement of thought, or else syllogistic
sLibsumption is no example of it. But Lotze does'
not permit us to doubt the first of these alterna-
tives, or to reject "the really fruitful exercise of
thought. There must be a method for finding
minor premises which subordinate a given subject
to a genus before it has been shown to possess
fully all the marks of that genus." ^ That is to
say, there must be a way of avoiding the futile
tautology of the first form. But that is as much
as to say that there must be a universal w^hich has
in itself a right to connect elements that are new ;
or, in other words, there must be a way of de-
monstrating the validity of the synthetic universal
of the major premiss. One way suggests itself at
once, namely, that of subjecting it to a condition
from which it necessarily follows. But this method
of justifying the universal would simply lead to an
infinite regress : the discovery of the universal that
carries necessity within itself is simply postponed,
and the syllogism can neither justify itself nor
derive its justification from anything else.

This endless regress might conceivably be arrested
in two ways : (i) we might perceive immediately
the synthetic universal required, that is to say, it
1 Logic, § 100.

THE THEORY OE INEERENCE 177

might be given us straightway as a fact ; (2) we
might be able to find within thought itself a
principle which justifies us in regarding a synthesis
as universal before we had actually observed within
it the presence of all its particulars. The first
alternative is set aside by Lotze. He is Jicre not
sure whether " the immediate perception of the
universal truth of a synthetical judgment is pos-
sible," and he is clear that we should be "only
very rarely in a position to rest the content of a
universal major premiss upon this ground." In
other words, we should be justified only noiv and
then in resting our ultimate principle upon a purely
dogmatic foundation ! So he adopts the second
alternative, and seeks to find a way of making the
major synthetic a priori, i.e., to find a law of
thought which justifies us in asserting a universal
of a content which we have not already included
within it. Such a law seems to be operative in
the second and third forms of subsumption : namely,
in Inductive and Analogical inference,

" The problem of all inferential processes," he
says, " is naturally this, from given data or premises
to develop as much new truth as possible." ^ Now,
experience presents us continually with premises
which show that a number of different subjects
have identical marks, and which show that a num-
ber of similar subjects have different marks. We
might express such premises respectively by the
'^ Logic, § 10 1.

178 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

symbols PM, SM, TiM, ViM, and IMP, MS, MT,
MV. The problem in each case is to discover a
law within these premises which will hold uni-
versally, and, therefore, in subjects and marks which
lie beyond the limits of our observation. We solve
this problem when we infer by Induction and
Analogy. In the former case we extend our uni-
versal over new subjects, LMN, WXZ ; in the
latter case we extend our universal over new marks,
and discover more about the subject AI. The prob-
lem of logic is to justify these processes ; and the
justification of both, if it exists, is the same. For
Lotze does not regard the distinction between in-
duction and analogy as fundamental. 'Tt is hardly
worth while to separate in such applications of
logic the part played by induction from the part
played by analogy ; nor is it worth while to find
fault with the loose usage which confounds the two
expressions." ^ The point of paramount interest is
the transition in either form from given premises
which can never be, as given, logically universal,
to universals.

As Lotze took the step from the categorical to
the hypothetical judgment by supposing a system,
so in like manner he supposes a system here. In
fact the transition which he has to make is
essentially the same in the two cases : he has to
pass from an identity which is tautological to an
identity which is concrete. "When we observe the
^ Logic, § 257.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE 179

same mark in different subjects, we are predisposed
to think that the agreement is not a chance one,
and that the different subjects have not, therefore,
stumbled upon the same predicate each through a
special circumstance of its own, but are all radically
of one common essence, of which their possession
of the same mark is a consequence." ^ That is to
say, P^ S, T, V, in the inductive premises PM,
SM, TjW, VM, are not really, or at least, not
essentially different, else their possession of the
same mark M would be contingent and unin-
telligible. Their possession of the same mark M
must be the consequence of the presence in them of
some identical element. In other words, " P, S, T,
V will be different, but still co-ordinate as species
under a higher concept Z! ; it is not as different
individuals, but only as species of the genus 2,
that they bear the common mark M as a necessary
mark of that genus. Our conclusion, therefore, runs
as follows, ' all 2 is M' and in this conclusion E
stands for the higher universal to which we sub-
ordinate the individual subjects, and for the true
subject of the AI which before appeared as a
common attribute of those individuals.""- The same
result, mutatis mutandis, follows the analysis of the
analogical premises MP, MS, MT, MV ; we grasp
the identical element in these different predicates,
the element in virtue of which they all inhere in
the same subject is, and we express that identical
^ Logic, § loi. -Ibid.

l8o THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

element by the symbol IT. Our conclusion in this
case is " All M is IT."

Now Lotze, as we have just seen, speaks as if
P, S, T, V remained under Z or IT respectively,
as "co-ordinate species under a higher concept."
That is, he speaks as if the}' retained their differ-
ences within the universal to which they are
subordinated. But this is just the point at issue.
We have advanced beyond the tautology of the
Aristotelian form of subsumption and reached a
concrete universal which is richer than that with
which we started, only if the differences are re-
tained, and if their retention is justified. But, on
the other hand, how can that difference be said
to be retained if we treat all the given elements
simply as cases of 2 or II, and assume that
every new case must also be S or 11 .■' What was
required was to adv^ance by inference to new in-
stances. But if we know no more than that ever\-
new instance is simply a case of S or 11, that is,
a mere repetition of that which was given as the
only relevant factor in the premises, no advance
has been made. We have omitted the differences
in order to find coherence, and made the function
of thought in induction and analogy simply tauto-
logous. If the unobserved instances are identical
with the old there has been no inference, and if
they arc not identical no inference is possible.
Inference and analogy seem, therefore, to be open
to the objection, "that if they are complete, their

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE i8l

information is certain but not new ; while so long
as they are incomplete, it is new but not certain."
If we know that all which can be connected with
M is 2 or n and must be 2 or IT, there is no
fruitful exercise of thought, or increase of assured
knowledge. And further, this was the very thing
we were supposed not to know, for we wished to
contemplate new cases. Hence this analysis has
only served to show that they must not be new
cases, but must fall within the same universal as
that which was found in the given premises. If
LMN, P, S, T, V, etc., are different we cannot
subsume them under a universal, if they are not
different there is no inference. We seem, there-
fore, to lapse once more into an identity which
excludes differences and into differences which re-
fuse to be combined ; and thought, in both
cases alike, fails to reveal the coherence of dif-
ferent elements within a universal, which is its
permanent task.

Lotze is not unconscious of the pass into which
he here brings thought ; and he endeavours to
obviate the difficulty in a very significant way.
He finds the objection, which is urged in pre-
cisely the same way against all the three forms
of subsumption, to be relevant, not against the
logical process itself but against our application
of it to the different materials of our experience.
Owing to the complexity of the material with
which we deal, and to our own ignorance, we

1 82 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

often make mistakes in the application of these
methods, but these errors do not diminish the
value of the logical principle where the application
is correct. " That principle asserts, that no rightly
conceived content of thought consists of an un-
connected heap of marks, which we may increase
at pleasure by adding no matter what new
elements." ^ " It does not lose its logical signifi-
cance because the truth of the universal includes,
or, if we prefer it, presupposes its truth in all
particular instances ; on the contrary the ver}-
meaning of the syllogistic principle is that the
two are inseparable." - And the same truth
stands in the case of induction and analogy. The
subsumption of particulars under a universal, at
which all these forms of inference aim, " is the
logical ideal, to the form of which we ought to
bring our knowledge"; and the only condition on
which this ideal can be reached is that the uni-
versal which is found at the end should be pre-
supposed at the beginning. This, it is evident, is
equivalent to admitting that, since thought must
end by systematizing experience, it must begin
from the conception of a system. That is to say,
the elements of experience which first presented
themselves as merely coincident or associated ex-
ternally, were always coherent, and never simply
coincident. The work of thought is, therefore,
once more, not to bring differences together but
'^ Logic, % 104. -Ibid., § 102.

THE THEORY OE INEERENCE 183

to articulate further the concrete universal which
is its true starting point. I admit the truth of
this: it is what I wish to urge; but it cannot
serve as a defence for Lotze. I have no doubt that
many of our errors, probably all of them, spring
from the wrong application of correct logical prin-
ciples. But that does not show that the logical
processes which he describes are valid as he de-
scribes tJtcni. Nor have I any doubt that the ideal
of knowledge is the subsumption of all particulars
within a concrete universal ; but that does not
prove that the logical processes he has described
are consistent with the attainment of that ideal.
His own analysis seems to me to have proved the
opposite. For, while the ideal at which thought
aims, — as an actual activity manifesting itself in
growing knowledge, — is rightly described as a
systematic whole of knowledge, these processes
have been shown to be inconsistent with any
system. Subsumption, as Lotze describes it, ends
in tautology : the universals, which are empty, are
simply reiterated, and the differences remain out-
side and unconnected. But instead of concluding
that there is no sncJi subsumption, and endeavour-
ing to re-interpret it so as to make it consistent
with the ideal of thought, he allows it to remain,
and tries to correct processes which are radically
defective by adding to them other and different pro-
cesses. He proceeds from s?ibsuvipiio7i to sjibstitiitioii.
What defect, or what unsolved problem, presses

1 84 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

Lotze onwards from subsumptive to substitutive in-
ference ? It is the imperfect specification of the
universal : the same defect as that which attached
to judgment even in its highest form. Indeed
Lotze seems to have a passing suspicion — de-
finitely shown to be true by Mr. Bosanquet — that
this kind of subsumptive inference is a less ad-
vanced form of thought than disjunctive judgment.
The true disjunctive, as we have seen, implied
such a unity between 5 and P, as to make 6"
determine itself necessarily in some one of a
definite number of related elements falling within
and constituting P. The syllogism was intended
to bring out that specific element ; but instead of
doing so its ultimate conclusion is that 6" is P,
i.e., it connects universals with universals. But the
aim of thought is to deal with particulars (or
individuals) in a universal manner. The process
whereby we conclude from the premises " Heat
expands all bodies," and " Iron is a body," that
" Heat expands Iron " is valid, of course, but it
is barren. "What we want to know is how iron
expands in distinction from lead," — that it ex-
panded somehow was already involved in the
premises. " This, then, is what the new forms
have to do ; they have to make the individual
felt as a species of the universal and so to enable
us to argue from its distinctive difference to its
distinctive predicate." ^ The problem is thus prc-
' Logic., § io6.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE 185

cisely the same as that which confronted Lotzc
in his endeavour to pass from the categorical to
the hypothetical judgment ; it is that of passing
from bare identity to a self-articulating principle.
And just as, in the former case, he introduced
from without the conception of a system, so in
this case he appeals from form to content. In
both cases he makes use of the idea of the mutual
determination of elements within a whole, instead
of the idea of the otiose, side-by-side existence of
general conceptions.

Now, the simplest form of a system in which
the elements may be regarded as mutually deter-
mining is that which is constituted by the idea
of a quantity. In other words, the step from the
general conception S, M, or P, to the particulars
which, taken together, constitute these, is more easily
taken in the sphere of pure quantity than it is
elsewhere. We can scarcely regard an organism
as equivalent to the sum of its parts — to head plus
body, phis limbs, plus internal organs ; for, in this
case, the nature of the relation of the parts to each
other and to the whole has too much importance
to be neglected. But w^e can without error sub-
stitute 20 + 354-15-1-30, or the units which, taken
together, constitute each of these, for the whole
sum 100. Lotze, therefore, proposes to substitute
for J/ its developed content ; or, in other words,
to supplant the indefinite, unanalyzcd middle term
of which alone subsumption could make use, by

1 86 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

means of its definite, distinguished, and mutually
determining elements. The advantage he gains
from this substitution is that he is able to deter-
mine the influence which the introduction of an}-
new relation will exert upon the data from which
we start. As long as we remain in the region
of universals this is impossible. "Nobody, for in-
stance, will undertake to judge how the working
of a machine will change under the influence of
a force s, so long as he merely has the machine
before him as a simple object of perception, M,
a steam-engine in general : he must first get to
know the inner structure, the connection of the
parts, the position of a possible point of action
for the force s, and the reaction of its initial
effect upon the parts contiguous to that point.
Accordingly, it is only by substituting for the
condensed expression or concept M the developed
sum of its constituent parts, with attention to their
mutual determinations, that we can hope to follow
the influence of sT ^

Let us, then, examine the method and the results
of this inference by Substitution. The result we
desire to obtain is the connection of a specific sub-
ject with a specific predicate in the conclusion, in-
stead of the connection of indefinite, general terms.
Our data are M is P and 6" is M, as before. But
we have seen already that 5 is M only if a condition
is fulfilled. In order to come together they must
^ Logic ^ § 109.

THE THEORY OE INFERENCE 187

be mediated b}' each other. Some part of M must
be identical with i\ Hence our minor premiss really
is ^ = sM.

But J/ is equal to its developed content, that
is, in Lotze's necessarily arbitrary symbolism,
M =a±bx±cx'-... , Thus the minor premiss, ^ is
M, takes, in the process of its interpretation, first the
form S = s]\I, and then S = s{a±bx±cx-...). The
major premiss is M is /''. From this we may con-
clude that sM=<jP, the s being converted into a
because it receives a more definite and, so far, a new
significance from its relation to the term P. Hence
the argument as a whole assumes the following
form : ^" = sM = s{a ± bx ± ex""-. ..) = rrP, and, instead of
the general conclusion S = P, we obtain the definite
conclusion S = a-P, which was not attainable by the
method of subsumption. I shall postpone for the
present the examination of this process of inference,
and follow Lotze's extension of it beyond this sphere
of abstract quantity.

It is clear that the possibility of inference by
substitution depends upon the possibility of analyz-
ing a concept into elements which, when taken
together, are equivalent to it. It is also clear that
when these elements receive new significance from
the manner of their combination, as, eg:, in the
organism, such immediate substitution of a sum of
parts for the whole is impossible. " Thus the effect
in use of our figure is confined to the region of
Mathematics, and primaril}- to the relation of pure

1 88 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

quantities." ' Where differences of qualit)- enter,
the appHcation of the method would seem to be
impossible. But it is not to be forgotten that, as
we have seen before, difficulties in applyini^ the
method are not to be regarded as flaws in the
method itself. "If only it were practicable, the
penal law itself would draw conclusions in our
figure of syllogism, it would break up ever}- crime
by substitution into its several elements ....
and deduce the kind and amount of punishment
which the particular instance demands."- And it is
also to be borne in mind that every object of
thought whatsoever has its quantitative side ; it has
extent or degree of existence. And, therefore, this
method is, in this respect, universally applicable.
The value of the results which it will }-ield will
vary with the different materials to which it is
applied. The truth which it yields is primarily
based upon and limited to the conception of pure
quantity. But nothing is pure quantity. In other
words, everything has its own character as well as
its own degree of being ; and quality is no less
omnipresent than quantity. Hence the equational
method of mathematical substitution is never en-
tirely true, for there is no object whose parts have
not their own character. Even inorganic matter is
not a mere sum of undistinguished units, the rela-
tion of which to one another and to the whole have
no significance. The universal of mere quantity is
^ Logic, § III. -Ibid., § 112.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE 189

always abstract, and its abstractness detracts from
the value of the results which a quantitative method
can yield, in proportion as the unity which we con-
sider is rich in content. Even in the sphere of
Physics we cannot rely on pure quantities ; for even
although it is a science of measurement, it measures
not pure quantities, but quantities of different objects,
in terms of different units. In the sphere of biology,
and still more of Psychology, or Ethics, or Philo-
sophy, the use of substitution all but vanishes. Mind,
The English Nation, The British Constitution will
not be much better understood even if we did analyze
them into the sum of their constituent elements, all
of which admittedly have their quantitative side.
Nevertheless, the method of analyzing the whole
into its constituents remains the ideal of our know-
ledge even in dealing with these subjects, and our
knowledge is defective in proportion to the degree
in which tJiis ideal remains unattained. " Even in
those cases where the demands of these logical
activities cannot be realized, they are still the ideals
of our logical effort. For if they can be applied
directly to none but quantitative relations, it is true
on the other side that wherever we are quite un-
able to reduce the object of our investigation to
those relations, our knowledge of it remains defec-
tive, and that no other logical form can help us
to the answer which a mathematical treatment of the
question, if it were practicable, would give us." '
^ Logic, § 112.

1 90

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

By this, Lotze seems to mean that wherever the
method of mathematics fails, certain and accurate
knowledge ends ; beyond its sphere we can only
give gene)'al solutions, which are not capable of
strict verification, because our whole is not strictly
analyzable into constitutive parts.

The question of the possibility of extending the
method of equivalence, or of measurement, being
tantamount to the possibility of the extension of
our knowledge of demonstrative truth, thus becomes
a matter of the greatest interest. Natural Science
proves that such an extension is possible, for it
" has certainly succeeded in establishing links of
connection, even between incommensurable pheno-
mena or attributes, which allow us to infer from
one to another." ^ The law of the Conservation or
Transmutation of Energy within which physics
works is itself an example of the possibility of es-
tablishing quantitative relations between phenomena
which remain to the end qualitatively difterent.
The same method is found practicable even with
respect to the relations of physical, physiological, and
even psychological facts to each other. '' I may
recall how physics has reduced the qualitative differ-
ences of our sensations of colour, tone, and heat to
merely mathematical differences in commensurable
motions of incommensurable elements."- It is the
task of Logic to discover the laws in accordance
with which these processes have been carried on.
1 Logic^ § 1 1 3- ' Ibid.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

191

It is by the use of inference by proportion, which
is an extension of inference by pnrc quantity. Pro-
portion is, of course, the equivalence of ratios. It
starts from a purely empirical basis. It is given
us as a matter of fact by observation that as A
changes into A^, a changes into a}, or B into B^.
The pitch of a note, for instance, changes with the
number of vibrations per second, and although we
cannot actually convert a note into vibrations, we
can discover that there is a constant law which
dominates their respective changes and makes them
measurable. Provided we can institute a ratio
between the changes on each side, we can institute
a proportion between the changes on the two sides.
In this respect we can measure incommensurables.
" Two angles E and e are commensurable ; so are
two segments of a circle T and /; but an angle
and a segment are incommensurable, and cannot be
directly measured by any common standard ; so,
too, the difference of two angles which again
represents an angle is incommensurable with the
difference of two curves, which again forms a curve.
Nevertheless, if it is once established that a certain
length of curve t belongs to an angle e at the
centre of a circle of a given diameter, and if we
form the angle E by ni times e, another corre-
sponding curve T by n times t, then the pure

numbers ;// and n are commensurable

For the circle, geometry tells us, that ;// = n. Given,
therefore, the two units e and /, we only require to

192

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

know a definite number E o{ c '\v\ order to arrive
at the proper value of T by the proportion
E -.c :: T : t. Expressed as a syllogism, then, the
whole process would answer to the scheme,

E:e= T:t
E = F{e)

e '

We must now examine the limitations of this
method of inference by proportion. In the first
place, as has been suggested, its basis is empirical ;
and it is important to note, what Lotze has not
made sufficiently clear, that this empiricism extends
not only to the terms themselves but to the ratios
on each side of the equation. In the case quoted
above, the ratios are expressible by the same pure
number, that is, in = n. But in the case, say, of
gravitation and distance the increase is inverse, and
inverse to the square of the distance ; so that m
is not in that case ec|ual to ;/. It is expressible
by a number but not by the same number. In a
word, the law of the changing units must be given
to us by observation as well as the changes them-
selves ; and in many cases the correspondence
between these laws is not numerically expressible.
Even where it is expressible the empirical element
in the correspondence cannot be eliminated. That
is to say, inference by proportion does not enable
^ Logic, § 114.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE 193

us to ascend from coincidence to coherence.
" Hitherto no attempt has succeeded in showing
how the distance contrives to weaken the force."
Nor do we know how changes in the number of
vibrations per second alter tlie pitch of a note or
the quaHty of a colour. Proportion does not en-
able us to do anything more than give a more
accurate expression to a correspondence which is
empirically given, and which remains empirical to
the end. " It makes no attempt to fuse the two
elements into an undiscoverable third, but leaves
them both in their full difference, and merely
points out that, in spite of their mutual impene-
trability, they come as a fact under a common
law by which they mutually determine one an-
other."^ That is to say, the incommensurable has
not, strictly speaking, proved commensurable after
all. The units have no common measure ; the
ratios no explanation. The qualitative difference
remains an insurmountable bar to exact thought,
and the measurement, useful as it has proved in
science, floats upon a purely empirical medium,
and has not revealed to us in any degree the prin-
ciple which would account for the correspondence
of the changes, and thereby convert their coinci-
dence into coherence. The method culminates in
making the existence of such a principle highly
probable, without throwing the least light upon its
character.

^ Logic, § 115.

194

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

It is scarcely necessary to insist upon the fact
that in a great portion of the material of our
thought, the discovery of a unit capable of definite
increase or decrease has so far proved impossible.
And I would deny that science, physical, physio-
logical, or psychological, has so far gained the point
of departure for making sensations of colour or
pitch commensurable with physical changes. W^e
can only, so far at least, judge of their corre-
spondence in a lax way, and instead of proportion
we have to be content with general and indefinite
comparison based upon no explicit standard. I am
also inclined to say that the failure of proportion
in such a sphere must be ultimate, because, in the
case of these sensations, gradations of quantity pass
immediately into differences of quality ; but it is
in part a matter of language whether, for instance,
we call difference in the shades of blue, or, indeed,
differences in Miy two sensations, however similar
they may be, qualitative or quantitative. I refer
to this because it suggests the law of a limit which
proportion cannot pass beyond, and which Lotze
acknowledges, though I am not sure that he is
aware of its full significance, or of the extent of
the sphere of its operation.

Proportion fails, therefore, wherever the unit within
which the ratios would fall has any real significance.
It is valid, like enumeration, only in the abstract
sphere of quantity, even though it seems to bring
together quantities of different things. Wherever

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

195

the whole is more than a mere sum, wherever it
acts as a determinant upon its elements, relating
them to each other in a definite order, wherever
in a word the whole is an individual, explanation
by proportion becomes inadequate. Proportion, as
distinguished from enumeration, does, indeed, imply
that the unit with which it deals is an individual,
i.e., an object with unique characteristics ; but it
is not capable of doing any justice to that implied
individuality beyond the mere admission of it.
Lotze expresses this by saying that the proportion
varies with "the nature of the subject in which
the changes are united." "Heat expands all bodies,
but the ratios of the degree of expansion to an
equal increase of temperature are different on differ-
ent bodies." The ratio of change is, in other words,
conditional upon the nature of the thing in which
the change takes place. Hence, the proportions we
establish between ratios are only true if a certain
condition, hitherto neglected, is observed. ^S" changes
as P changes only if both 5 and P have a certain
character. That is to say T:t:\E:e only for a
specific subject, S, i.e., only if 5 is an M. And
while it is true that only experience can give us
that subject, logic has to show "how a concept
M can be found at all, such that the proportions
required between every two of its marks can be
derived from it." ^

This implies that proportion can only deal with
^ Logic, § 116.

196 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

uni\-crsals, and that it is, in this respect, analogous
to the Categorical Judgment. Hence, just as S could
not be P unconditionally or immediately, so 5" can-
not vary as P varies, unless they both fall under
some law which determines that their changes shall
correspond. They are, in fact, instances of a rule
which acts in both of them, and is dominant within
their differences. We must, therefore, proceed to
look for this rule, just as we had to find the con-
dition in value of which the judgment S is P was
possible. But to find such a rule in the changing
objects is to lift some one element in them into
a position of superiority as regards the other ele-
ments. And this is equivalent to abandoning the
point of view of quantity ; for its essential charac-
teristic is that all its elements are homogeneous,
and all its units are simple, isolated, equal in value,
and incapable of determining each other except in
the abstract way necessary for their summation.
With the admission of differences of value, other
than that which springs from difference in quan-
tity, the method of mathematical reasoning, or of
substitution based upon equation, is no longer
available. We need another form of thought,
which will admit the unequal values of the con-
stituents in a concept, distinguish some of them as
essential, and others as derivative and secondary,
and also explain the principle in accordance with
which such a distinction emerges.

That ordinary thought is able to employ such a

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

197

method is evident from the way in which objects
are classified, even before science enters the field.
Had thought been confined to the quantitative
stage, things would be classified according to their
size, or intensity of colour, or weight, or some other
differences of qualities that appeal most immedi-
ately and aggressively to the sensuous consciousness.
But objects are not classified into great and small,
white and black, heavy and light, etc., but into
organic and inorganic, rational and irrational beings,
and so on. That is to say, the classifications are
frequently based upon qualities that are not sen-
sible, and to which quantitative measurement does
not seem to apply. And yet we do not classify
at random. On the contrary, in all such classifi-
cations, thought has been unconsciously guided by
a method which has enabled it to light upon
"authoritative" principles in objects, which distin-
guish between qualities that are essential and those
which are not. In other words, ordinary thought
seizes upon some elements in an object, and regards
them as determining what does and what does not
belong to it, while the excision of other qualities
seems immaterial, and to leave the object as a
whole practically unchanged. '•' In the beginnings
of thought there was no logical rule for this selec-
tive guidance of attention," Nevertheless, " in the
actual course of its development, thought was
directed to those universal concepts which really
contain the law for the complete formation of the

1 98 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

individuals for which they are acquired."^ And
it is the task of logic to explain, and thereby to
justify the process which thought has thus always
employed in its classification of objects ; the pro-
cess, that is to say, by which it succeeds in fixing
upon a certain quality M, and not another quality
N, as really constitutive of certain objects. "These
tendencies, which have hitherto unconsciously put
us upon the right way, we have now to translate
into logical activity ; in other words, we have to
become conscious of the reasons which justify us
in setting up a certain universal M exclusively as
the authoritative rule for the formation of a num-
ber of individuals, instead of some other N to
which we might have been led by comparing the
same individuals on a different principle."- Recog-
nizing that a concept is not in reality any group
of common qualities, but one in which some quali-
ties are essential and others unessential, we have
to show how this distinction is drawn and on
what authority it rests.

The first step in this process is that of observing
the same object under varying circumstances ; or,
failing this, that of comparing objects which are
similar in some respects, and not in others. The
result of these observations will be to show us that
a nucleus of elements hang together, while others
fall away ; that the disappearance of some elements
leaves the remainder, comparatively speaking, as
1 Logic, § 122. - Ibid., § 123.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

199

they were, while the disappearance of others would
either carry the remainder away with them, or else
essentially modify them, and change the character
of the object. By continuing this process of seeking
the permanent amidst the variable, we " find our-
selves on the way to classification " according to
essential and constitutive marks, " The authorita-
tive principle will appear to us to be in that inner
circle of marks which, when we ascend through the
next universal to higher and higher degrees of
universality, remains together the longest, and un-
changed in its general form ; and the only way to
conceive completely the nature of the particular is
to think of this supreme formative principle as
being specialized gradually, in the reverse order to
the grades of universality, by new accretions which
come within the influence of its reaction." ^

The nature of this logical classification, and
of the universal which it employs, will become
more evident if we contrast it with " combinatory
classification." The object of the latter kind of
classification is not so much to explain the par-
ticulars as to arrange them methodically ; and
the classification rests, therefore, not upon any
significant element in the objects classified, but on
the subjective purpose which is to be reached.
Words are arranged in a dictionary, for instance,
in the order of the letters of the alphabet, and the
principle of arrangement throws no light whatsoever
' Logic, % 124.

200 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

upon the inner content of the words. In other
words, the principle is not constitutive of the con-
tents of the class ; and, therefore, it merely sums
them, sets them side by side, and leaves them
indifferent to each other. It is not a principle
which systematizes; and, therefore, we are always
liable to err by excess or defect, that is, to bring
in objects into a class which do not really belong
to it, or exclude others which do ; for we have no
criterion of completeness, and are reduced to the
method of enumerating one part after another.
The "mark" employed as a universal does not enter
vitally into the objects of the class, nor in any way
regulate them so as to make them internally co-
herent.

But Logical Classification, on the other hand,
seizes upon a mark because it is deemed to be
constitutive of the object. As constitutive it is the
source of all the other marks, and " the law which
determines their order." In a word, the universal
in logical classification is converted from an otiose
quality into a condition. Upon that mark, as con-
dition, the existence and the whole character of the
objects in the class are supposed to depend. And
as all the other marks are present in virtue of the
same condition, they form a system of elements
which mutually determine one another through their
relation to the dominant quality.

The object of thought which results from taking
a mark as a determininsT condition differs in the

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE 201

most significant manner from the concept. Tlie
latter, which is a mere collection of *' notioiies coui-
munes, i.e., of marks which are known to occur in
the most different objects without exercising any-
recognizable influence upon the rest," ^ can only-
give us an image of a motionless and changeless
object ; and the complete arrangement of such con-
cepts or images in an ascending series would, as
has been seen, only reflect a world whose order is
fixed. But a thought which grasps an element as
constitutive of others, and as dominating them,
seems to become " living in our hands." In fact,
instead of the concept, we have the Idea (Idee), the
"thought of the object," its "formative law."^ That
law seems to exercise " an operative force, whose
unvarying and constant activity gives rise to a
series of different forms." These different forms, in
other words, as they issue from the same law, seem
to be the manifestations of a principle that is able
to articulate itself ; and the order in which they
are placed under its authority seems to imply the
presence of an authoritative " piirpose" throughout
them all. The law, in fact, appears to be also an
" End," toward which they all strive, from which
they all derive their existence, and which is real-
ized, more or less completely, in every member of
the series.

But Lotze, in consistency with his resolution to
maintain at all costs the distinction between logic
^ Logic, § 128. -Ibid., % 129.

202 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

and ontology, or between thoughts and real objects,
rejects these conceptions of " life," " operative force,"
and "purpose," as extra-logical. Thoughts, being
thoughts, must remain static ; but the thoughts of
"life," "force," "purpose," though they will not them-
selves have any life, or purpose, or force, have their
logical use. We must, therefore, run these operative
entities into their logical equivalents. "End" must
be explained as "coherence of species" dependent
upon a single mark; and "active tendency" must
be analyzed into equations between the parts of
the conditioned and conditioning facts. This is the
task which still lies before us. " We regard the idea
for which we are looking, neither as the intention
of a reflective consciousness striving for fulfilment
nor as an active force which causes its results, but
merely as the conceived or conceivable reason, the
consequences of which, under certain conditions, are
the same in thought as those which must follow in
reality, under the like conditions, from an intelligent
purpose, or a causative force." ^ The arrangement
of ideas in the world of thought will be similar to
that of facts and events in a world of reality which
is dominated by the living power of an active and
intelligent will ; but it will not be the same.

Now a supreme idea which corresponds with the

' intelligent purpose ' and ' active force ' must also

explain the manner in which the same universal

comes to be realized, with different degrees of com-

1 Logic, § 130.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

203

pleteness, in different concepts ; so that the concepts
may "form an ascending or descending scale in
which each one has its uninterchangeable place
between certain others." It must, in other words,
give a static representation of a world whose objects
can be regarded as stages in the development of a
single principle which realizes itself in all things,
but in some things more completely than in others.
But it is evident that a mere concept can yield no
such view of the world. On the contrary, the
universal or common element in a concept, or in a
series of concepts subordinated to one supreme
concept, is set in "hard antithesis" to the particulars
which lie side by side within it. And, therefore, it
cannot admit any difference of degrees, or be re-
garded as more fully present in some individuals
than in others. The universal either includes every
object equally, or else it entirely excludes them.
Indeed, in the last resort, the antithesis between
the universal on which such classification is based,
and the objects which fall into the class, ultimately
turns into direct and destructive antagonism. The
contents must be completely absorbed in the uni-
versal, as the condition of their inclusion in such
an abstract universal ; while the universal, owing
to its antagonism to its differences, destroys itself
and becomes empty. In fact, as every element in
the universal must simply sink into it, classification
itself becomes impossible. "lliat li\'ing thought
should not be satisfied " with such a universal is

204 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

inevitable, for all thought is made impossible by
direct antagonism between unity and difference.
"Living thought" must "distinguish species which
correspond or are adequate to their generic concept
in various degrees." And Lotze might have concluded
that all thought is living, or, in other words, that a
purely artificial and external universal cannot be
used as the basis even of combinatory classification.
But what is the logical process which enables us
thus to distinguish various degrees in the species
of a generic concept } How do we logically prove
that the universal is more completely realized in
some objects than in others. Lotze answers, that
it is by reducing the differences between them into
differences of quantity and then measuring them.^
Every one of the simple and stable qualities which
ordinary thought regards as belonging to objects
has its own quantitative value : each object has a
certain number of parts, each part has its own
intensity, magnitude, or degree of existence. Each
of these parts or elements is capable of increase
or diminution ; there may be more or less of each
of them within an object. The differences of quan-
tity in these elements is our clue to the differences
in quality of the objects in which they are found ;
and from these differences of quantity in the same
elements there arises difference of species within
the same genus. Li fact every change in the
quantity of the elements that constitute an object
See Logic ^ § 131.

THE THEORY OE INEERENCE

205

modifies the character of the object itself. For if
we change the quantity of an clement in the whole,
we change its relation to and modify its effect
upon other elements. The whole system is changed,
because the parts are vitally inter-related. If that
change of quantity is great, the character of the
object as a whole may be so changed as to tend
to make it pass beyond the limits of the genus
and demand a place under another — under the
genus N, instead of under M} We may, for in-
stance, shorten one axis of an ellipse, in propor-
tion to the other, to such an extent that the
ellipse tends to pass into a straight line. And
this consideration enables us to distinguish the
species Avhich is the truest type, or the most
perfect realization, of a genus. It is that which
is furthest from passing into any other genus ; and
it is furthest from passing into another genus if
" the total amount " of all its divergencies from
other genera is greatest iv/ien taken together. That
is to say, each of the characteristic elements in a
perfect species exists in the greatest quantity con-
sistent with the greatest quantity of the others.
" The highest perfection of a species depends upon
the equilibrium of its marks": it is the TVPE to
which the other species approximate. Hence we
conclude, that differences of species depend upon
quantitative differences and lend themselves to
mathematical calculation.

^ See Logic, § 131.

2o6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

But in the course of our experience we learn that
there are some kinds of objects, or some genera,
in which the equihbrium of marks cannot appar-
ently be maintained. These objects seem to con-
tain an elem.ent that constantly tends to disturb
the equilibrium, an impulse to intensify some one
mark at the expense of the others. We are
familiar with such objects in the region of biology.
In this region the determining consideration which
we constitute into the principle . of classification
and arrangement is not that of the quantitative
equilibrium of a sum of marks, but some single
element which imposes its own law on others,
constantly changing their relati\'e quantities and
therefore their mutual interaction, pushing some
into the background as insignificant and bringing
others to the fore-front. That determining element
seems to be /// process, and to have a " destination^
It is hardly necessary to indicate that Lotze will
not admit " process " of this kind, or " destination "
into his static logic ; nevertheless logic has to do
with the intelligible principle, or condition of its
possibility.

It is evident that such a " destination " is explic-
able only if we cease to regard each genus as
complete in itself, or as the source of the law
which it imposes upon its contents so as to limit
the quantitative variation of the marks of its
species. The most perfect species, from this new
point of view, will not be that which most per-

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

207

fectly maintains the equilibrium of its marks, but
the one which most shares the tendency to cJiange
which is the law of the genus, and most com-
pletely embodies its impulse towards a certain
destination. Hence the formation of the species
under M does not ultimately " depend upon any-
thing in the generic type M itself, such as could
be discovered by merely examining its own con-
stituent marks; on the contrary, the formation of
this genus M is not rightly explained until we
compare it with another genus N into which it
passes, and with a third L from which it came by
a similar transition, and these again with those
which went before and came after them." ^ We
cannot otherwise catch the direction of the pro-
gress, nor understand the highest genus Z, of
which L, Jf, N are species.

How are we to represent logically this relation
of the genera .-' In the same way as we repre-
sented that of species within a single genus. We
must in a word reduce the dift'erences between the
genera L, M, N, which fall under and move to-
wards the ultimate genus Z, into differences in
quantity ; and regard that genus as highest which
has within it the largest amount of the Z, which
is to a varying extent present in them all. " Only
in this way of measurement can we have any
' logical security ' that every species has a place in
the series of cognate species, the place answering
^ Look, § 134.

2o8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

to the degree of essence which it expressed."'
But by following this method we may arrange
species and genera into series and organize the
whole world of thought. The manner of that
organization is serial, that is, "the members are not
merely placed side by side, but follow each other
in a definite order, leading from the province
comprehended or dominated by one species into
that of another ; this order begins with those
members which answer least to the logical destin-
ation of the whole system, and ends with those
which express in the most complete and pregnant
way the fulfilment of that destination."^ It is not
our present purpose to dwell upon the fact that
Lotze considers that there may be several such
series. " The form of natural classification in
general is that of a web or systevi of series ; even
the culminating point of the system need not be
a strict unity, for the most perfect attainment of
the logical destination is compatible with a variety
of precisely equivalent forms." ^

But even if we were to succeed in classifying
our objects of thought in this manner — arranging
them, that is, according to the degree in which
an Ideal is realized in them — there is still some-
thing left over unexplained. Classification, whether
from the point of view of an Ideal which is pro-
gressive, or from that of a Type which is static,
can only arrange its materials in an order which
^ See Logic, § 135. "Logic, § 136. '•Ibid.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

209

is fixed. The ascending series is as motionless as
the species and genera which simply lay side by
side. The movement, the transition from species
to species, " the process of becoming remains a
mystery which classification cannot explain." The
fact that genera fall into classes, serial or other,
and have a relation to one another within the
whole, is as little explained by classification as is
the relation of ^S" and P in the categorical judg-
ment. The condition which determines their re-
lation has not been discovered. We may say that
one concept emanates from another ; but a theory
of emanation is not an explanation of a process :
it is only the assertion of it. To explain, we must
grasp that which emanates and discover the method
of its process. We must, in a word, as in the case
of the categorical judgment, discover the condition
on which alone the relations of different concepts
within a whole is possible.

Now, a little consideration will show that the
condition is ultimately the same as that which was
discovered in the analysis of proportion. For in
this case, as in the former, the elements within
the whole have different and changing values, and
therefore react differently upon each other. It is
plain that they would not be able to act upon
each other at all, except for the presence of the
same universal in them all ; and it is plain that
they would not be able to act in different ways

were it not that each of them has its own law as

2IO THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

well. To comprehend this process we must, there-
fore, keep before our eyes both the universal and
the particular laws; just as we had in the case of
" proportion " to maintain within our grasp both
the general law of the change and the specific
" subject " in which the change took place. So
far we have paid attention to the comprehensive
universals and neglected the interaction of the
elements within the genera as wholes. But it is
not the wholes as wholes which interact, or which
condition each other. The wholes are in fact
nothing but "condensed expressions for a definite
union of separable elements, which act and react
upon each other according to constant and uni-
versal laws, and give rise in one combination to
one set of results, in another to another."^

From this it follows that the effective agency
which places the genera in order and organizes the
contents of our knowledge by reference to an
ideal will not be found simply in that ideal, but
also in the individuals which fall under it. Our
principle of explanation must not be the bare
ideal, but the ideal which has already articulated
itself in its content. That is to say, the ultimate
starting point of explanation is a System.

But, to start from the conception of a System

is to start from a hypothesis, or, in other words,

it is to make unverified knowledge the basis of

demonstrative knowledge. Such a process may

^ Logic, § 144.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE 211

seem both impossible and absurd : impossible be-
cause we cannot start from a system unless our
knowledge is already complete ; absurd, because
one should say that an uncertain, or unverified,
premiss can never yield certain knowledge.
Nevertheless it is undeniable that modern science
employs this method and employs it success-
fully. It always starts with " the conception of
a law which fixes the particular result of a par-
ticular condition universally." Its method as a
whole rests upon the assumption "that everything
exists, and exists only, when the complete sum
of conditions is given, from which it follows neces-
sarily by universal laws." ^ Science does not decide
what a fact is, nor, indeed, whether it is a fact
or an illusion, until there is found a place for it
within an interrelated system based upon a h}'po-
thetical principle.

Now, it seems to Lotze, that to explain each
fact by its relation to other facts in a .system
and to the principle which is embodied more or
less completely in every phenomenon, is to ex-
plain things as mechanically necessary. Nothing,
on this view, is regarded as deriving its exist-
ence or its law of behaviour from itself; but all
things act in subordination to laws which are
external and derive their function and meaning
from relations. Or if we still maintain that
each thing has in some way its own law and its
' Logic, § 145.

212 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

own unique form of existence, without which it
could have no vakie or activity and the system
itself would become empty, we must also recog-
nize that its law must be a subordinate and
derivativ^e one, and therefore that each particular
object is only an instance or example of some-
thing higher which dominates it. Such a system
of mechanical necessity is, according to Lotze, set
up by natural science in its attempt at " Ex-
planation!' It is hardly necessary to point out
that "explanation" of this kind — although it is
much more satisfactory than the mere otiose
classification of ancient thought, and although it
is "almost the only form in which the scientific
activity of our time exhibits itself" — is unsatisfac-
tor}'. It does not meet the demands even of
our cognitive consciousness ; for the ideal which
inspires it, namely the conception of a system,
is fundamentally unrealizable. The system must
be a hypothesis as long as we have not already
found a place within it for every phenomenon,
and the hypothetic character of the idea of system,
which serves as the foundation of our knowledge,
makes the superstructure as a whole insecure.

But quite apart from these objections that arise
from the fact that the theoretical demands which
we must make are not adequately met, there are
others springing from another side of our nature.
Even if a complete system of the kind we have
described were realizable in thought, the needs of

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

213

tlie human spirit would not be satisfied. On the
contrary, we find that the very conception of such
a completed system awakens unremitting opposi-
tion to itself. This opposition arises from the
aesthetic side of our nature. From the aesthetic
point of view we demand that an object should
be in itself whole and complete ; it must exhibit
its own law, be the source of its own contents,
and itself determine the relations between them.
And this is precisely what the " explanatory "
method of science, which refers each object to
others and to a whole system, and reduces every-
thing into an instance of a universal or an
example of a law, renders impossible. The op-
position between what science offers and what we
must aesthetically demand thus seems to be final
and irreconcilable.

But the opposition to scientific explanation which
is offered by the aesthetic spirit is not directed
against the ''order" which "explanation" establishes,
but against the founding of that order upon an ever-
receding condition, or upon an eternal "if" This
"if" allows the possibility to remain that everything
may be really different from what it appears to be.
And it is this final uncertainty against which our
spirits are in revolt. We must, therefore, endeavour
to find something which shall convert this "if" into
a fact, or apodeictic certainty. Such a ''fact"''
would give us, instead of thoughts in necessary
relation, a reality which is its own law, "a being

214

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

which, not in consequence of a still higher law
but because it is what it is, is the ground both
of the universal laws to which it will always con-
form, and of the series of individual realities which
will subsequently appear to us to submit to these
laws." ^ Such a reality the third form of thought,
which we distinguish from both the ''explanatory''
or the mechanical and the classificatory, aspires to
give, and Lotze calls it the " Speculative form!'
We have an example of it in Hegel's attempt
"to derive the world from a single principle," "to
look on and see how the development followed
from the inherent impulse of the Idea," to attain
" to a vision of the universe springing out of the
unity of an idea, which develops itself and
creates the conditions of its own progress." ^ The
characteristics of this form of thought are, that
"it must have only one major premiss for all its
conclusions, and this premiss must express the
movement of the world as a whole ; its minor
premises must not be given to it from elsewhere,
but it must produce them from itself in the form
of necessary and exhaustive varieties of its mean-
ing, and thus must evolve in an infinite series of
conclusions the developed reality which it had
conceived as a principle capable of development,
in the major premiss."" This form, in a word,
attempts to represent the world as an organic
whole ; and the impulse to employ this method
1 Logic, § 148. - Ibid., § 150. '•' Ibid, % 149.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

215

makes itself particularly evident at the times
when the mechanical mode of explanation has
done violence to our aesthetic and moral beliefs.
So that the speculative form of thought, as an
attempt to satisfy the demands of the whole
spirit both cognitive and otherwise, would seem
to have the highest value. In fact " it is the
last in the series of forms of thought ; it leaves
no elements remaining in unconnected juxtaposi-
tion, but exhibits everything in that coherence
which had been all along the aim of thought." ^

The ideal of completely organized knowledge
which it sets before us is, indeed, not capable of
being realized. But that does not deprive it of its
binding force. It only indicates that in order to
reach that ideal we need other powers than those
of mere thought. In other words, this form of
thought "points beyond the province of logic,"
which can only deal with mere " forms." It reveals
the incompleteness of mere thought, when taken
by itself; for it demands that the supreme principle
should be real and active, and capable of articulat-
ing itself into a systematic world of real objects.
But thought cannot yield any such real principle.
It deals with forms, and these forms must borrow
from elsewhere the material which can fill them
and give them meaning and value. Thought at
its highest and best is, in its isolation, empty ;
and its highest form, namely, the " Speculative,"
^ Logic, § 151.

2i6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

so far from satisfying the theoretical and practical
demands of our nature, only serves to show that
in order to account for our experience wc must
take into consideration other powers of our nature,
and strive to explain the world in the light, not
of an aspect but of the complex totality of our
intelligent existence.

Before I endeavour to estimate the value of
Lotze's doctrine, I believe it will be useful if I
recount, as briefly as possible, the main transitions
which he makes as he follows thought upwards
from judgment to its highest and ultimate, or
speculative form.

Thought was left at the close of the last chapter
at the stage of the Disjunctive Judgment. The
processes of Judgment had revealed the need of
a principle of coherence or copula, and that prin-
ciple had in the Disjunctive Judgment determined
the subject in such a manner that some one of a
particular class of predicates was seen to belong to
it necessarily. It failed to make the discrete data of
experience coherent only because it did not succeed
in deciding wJiich of the members of the class
constituting the predicate necessarily belonged to
the subject. It left us an option, although it con-
fined that option to the members of a class.

Inference was brought in to remove this option.
Inferential thought attempted to perform this task
in the first place by making use of Siibsiunption.
Subsumption took three forms. The first, or the

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

217

syllogistic, failed to carry us beyond the stage of
the disjunctive judgment, for the syllogism allowed
the predicate of the conclusion to remain indefinite ;
that is to say, the universal did not bring the
particular data of experience into coherence. The
syllogism also assumed what it proved, and was
tautological. So that this form of inference missed
the very essence of the thinking process, which is
synthetical, bringing fresh material under a universal.
This last error seemed to be capable of being
corrected by the remaining forms of Subsumption,
namely, Induction and Analogy. These apparently
admit the synthetic advance ; they enable us to
extend our universals to new cases and justify us
in applying principles in an a priori, and therefore
in a universal, manner. But these forms also proved
on examination to be either invalid or tautological.
In so far as the processes were synthetic they
appeared to be invalid ; in so far as they were
valid they were tautological. In fact, we were
not able to bring under the universal anything
but universals, and these universals had to be
treated as identities.

Now it is certainly necessary in the course of
thought to advance to universals, for we cannot
combine in thought mere particulars; but it is also
necessary to bring these universals back so as to
find them within the particulars.^ It is this last
step that Subsumption fails to take. It leaves us
' Sec Logic, § 105.

2i8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

in the region of mere universals. Lotze has, there-
fore, to have recourse to Substitution.

Substitution, that is,, the displacement of an in-
definite whole by the definite parts or elements
which constitute it, is seen in its simplest and
earliest form in mathematical equation, in which,
instead of a whole inadequately grasped, we may
use the sum of its units. This kind of inference,
therefore, seems to give us what was required. It
enables us to articulate the universal, and get
valid, definite results. But, on examination, it is
seen to have the defect that, while it is applicable
to every phenomenon it completely explains nothing
whatsoever. The mathematical method is true of
everything in so far as everything Jias quantity, it
is true of nothing in so far as nothing is mere
quantity. In a word, it is abstract, and in order
to be practically valid in its application to objects
this abstractness must be remedied. We must be
able to equate or to measure something other than
pure quantities. This is done by the equating of
ratios, or by proportion.

Inference by Proportion, as modern science amply
shows, enables us to measure things which are
qualitatively different, or intrinsically incommensur-
able. But Proportion has an empirical basis, and
its empiricism cannot be cleansed out without
lapsing back into the consideration of abstract
quantit}-. Its advance in practical usefulness is
obtained at the expense of its logical validity.

THE THEORY OF INFERENCE

219

Ratios are taken instead of pure quantities, only
because the different units between which tlic ratios
exist are not reducible to each other — the units of
sensation, e.g., into units of physical motion. Hence
it onh' suggests the presence of a law which deter-
mines that the changes shall be correspondent ; but
it neither proves its existence nor explains its
nature. And, further, it neglects that element in
each subject which gives to its changes a specific
ratio : it cannot explain, for instance, wh}- the ratio
of the expansion of iron and lead to the same
temperature should be different. Hence it leaves
out an element necessary to the knowledge of any
real concrete fact of experience ; it stops, that is, at
the universal — that 5 varies as P varies — without
showing the condition which brings the correspond-
ence into being in any particular case. Nay, the
existence of any such condition is not consistent
with the principle on which mathematical inference
rests ; for the idea of a condition implies that a
certain element in an object, or series of objects,
has superior value to the rest and a power to
dominate them, while mathematical inference starts
from the supposition that all the units, or elements,
are homogeneous and are indifferent to each other.
If we follow up the consideration of this condition
that lies in each specific subject we are led on
from Mathematical or Substitutive inference to
Classification.

Classification makes a certain mark or element

220 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

in the individual subject its first consideration, re-
garding it as dominant over all the other qualities
which it possesses, or, in other words, converting it
into a Coiidition of the other marks. And it
arranges the world of objects in one of two ways ;
first, in accordance with the conception of a Type;
second, by reference to the conception of a Regula-
tive Ideal. The first arrangement gives us a fixed
system of species which, while falling under the
same genus, maintain their own specific character,
the difference in the character of the species being
due to the different anionnts, measurable by quan-
titative methods, of the sum of their characteristic
qualities. But the defect of this form of thought
is that, like the Conceptual view of the world, it
leaves the real world of motion, and change, and
variable interaction entirely unexplained.

But Classification by reference to an Ideal is able
to deal with change ; and it represents each object,
each species, and genus as in process of realizing
within itself, more or less perfectly, a highest
principle. So that the explanation of each pheno-
menon is found to lie in the place which it
occupies in reference to other phenomena, and to
the central principle which manifests itself in
different degrees in all of them. It is explanation
by reference to a System.

At first sight Systematic Explanation seems to be
all that can be demanded by thought, and we
miirht consider that at last thought had succeeded

THE THEORY OF HYFERENCE 221

in making experience inwardly coherent. But ex-
amination leads once more to disappointment. For,
in the first place, the explanation is HypotJietical.
We must assume the whole in order to account for
the part, and we cannot know the whole because
we do not know the parts. In the second place,
it is Mechanical, for everything finds its explanation
only in something else. That is to say, the ex-
planatory principle is never discovered, and this
form of thought is of necessity incomplete. For
the necessity it traces everywhere is traced to no
origin ; nothing is a law to itself, and everything
is necessary on account of something else. We
require, therefore, some reality which is at once a
ratio essendi and a ratio cognoscendi both for itself
and for all other things.

Such a reality is furnished by the Speculative
form of thought. This form of thought is the
highest and the last. It promises to satisfy the
demands of the intellect, which the hypothetical
method of science failed to meet, and also the
demands of our aesthetic and moral nature, which
the scientific form of thought when taken as ulti-
mate positively violated. This form, then, yields a
supreme principle which dififerentiates itself in all
that is and in all that comes to be ; and it brings
coherence into all the manifold data of experience.

But it achieves this task onl}' if any form of
thought can yield such a real, active, self-articulat-
ing principle. And as thought is a faculty of pure

222 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

forms, and logic the science that reveals the laws
of formal activities, it cannot yield such a reality.
Hence thought culminates in pointing to the need
of other intelligent functions, if the world in all its
rich content is to be explicable by man.

I shall proceed to the examination of the theory
thus advanced by Lotze in the next chapter.

CHAPTER VI

EXAiMINATION OF LOTZE'S ASCENT FROM SUBSUMP-
TIVE TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE

T HAVE ventured to say that Eotze's philosophy
owes its suggestiveness not so much to any
new solutions that it offers as to its being con-
sistently occupied with a single significant problem.
The account which he gives of the various forms
of thought bears this character. The demand which
he makes upon thought at the very outset — that it
should represent experience as inwardly coherent —
is pressed upon each of its forms as they succes-
sively emerge. In dealing with his view of the
earlier forms of our intellectual life, whose activity
he regards as preliminary to those of thought
proper, I indicated an ambiguity in his statement
of the task which thought had to perform. Lotze
did not make it clear whether thought was required
to prodiicc from itself, or merely to fud in its
materials those grounds of coherence, or " accessory
notions," in virtue of which human knowledge is

224

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

a systematic whole, and not a mere collection of
elements externally connected, according to the con-
tingent circumstances of the psychical experience
of different individuals. He has not brought this
question of the receptive or constructive nature of
thought to a definite issue ; otherwise he would
have been obliged to abandon the intermediate
position, which he consistently endeavoured to
maintain, between the Scepticism which condemns
knowledge and the Idealism which "deifies" it.
For this question constitutes what one may call
the main watershed in modern philosophic theor)%
dividing its streams in directions that diverge to
meet no more. Lotze's attempt to combine both
of these views, by representing thought as partly
receptive and partly constructive, seems to be
identical with that of Kant, and to make him so
consistently Kantian as to render it unnecessary
that he should " go back to Kant." But we must
draw this important distinction between these two
philosophers, namely, that Kant represents tJie
process of transition from one view to the other,
and that the conflict of these elements in his
doctrine comes mainly from the fact that he did
not reconstruct his first presuppositions in the light
of his last results. The war of tendencies in Kant's
doctrine is characteristic of all great writers who, in
the course of their own thought, bring about the
transition from an old to a new view of the world.
Rut Lotze, on the other hand, permanently attached

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 225

himself to the point of equipoise, which Kant
had reached at the close of his first Critique, and
presented the conflict as a fixed battle in which the
combatants arc immovably interlocked. He would
brini; peace by compromise ; or rather, seeing that
compromise is impossible, by yielding all to each
in turn.

It is this alternation which constitutes the char-
acteristic feature of Lotze's doctrine. We found
evidence of it in his account of the processes of
intelligence which are preliminary to the operation
of thought proper. Experience was first presented
to us as so void of all intrinsic coherence that it
was impossible to raise the first and the most
fundamental of all questions for a thinking being,
namely, that of the truth or the falsity of his ex-
periences. All was given, and the " given " as such
is neither true nor false. Moreover, the "given"
was a discrete and disconnected manifold ; or,
what comes to the same thing, the connections
that were present were purely external, and con-
tingent upon the psychical experiences of the
individual. The connection, therefore, was not
between the phenomena themselves, but was im-
posed upon them from without ; that is to say,
feelings and other subjective states, in some in-
explicable manner, connected objective things,
though only contingently. Ilcnce the principles
of inward coherence, or grounds of connection,
which were objective, had to be produced by

226 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

thought out of itself. Thought, which was purely
receptive as to its content, was purely creative as
to its forms. No sooner, however, is this view
enunciated than difficulties begin to emerge. For
why should "the grounds," or universals, which
thought brings out of itself, have objective
validity, any more than the chance combinations of
a purely associative intelligence .'' How can uni-
versals which thought produces, bind contents which
are given to it as disconnected .'' Such a view
would attribute to thought both too little and too
much. If its universals are really to bind, that is
to say, if they are to make the phenomena of
experience inwardly coherent, then they must have
been present in the phenomena and constitutive of
them from the first. Hence thought would from
one point of view make all, and from another
point of view make nothing. It would make " all "
because the phenomena of experience could not
exist except as elements in a whole ; it would
make nothing, because, the whole being there to
begin with, there was nothing to make. Thought
would find itself in all its materials on this view.
Reflection would add nothing to that which is ; it
would not be called upon to produce even the
universals. But if reflection is discovery and not
creation, it is because what it reflects is already
thought. The real is the rational, and reflection is
its consciousness of itself This conclusion, how-
ever, is uncompromisingly idealistic, and if it does

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 227

not "deify abstract truth," as Lotze thoui^ht, it at
least insists that the real is the ideal. Hence
Lotze compromises. Conscious of the fact that
the abstract universals of thought cannot be applied
to an entirely foreign material so as to make it
coherent ; that it does not go out, to use his
phrase, to meet the manifold which flows in, with
a series of empty forms in its hand ; and that, if
it did, the forms could never be applied to the
data ; and conscious, on the other hand, that to
find these forms present in the material from the
first, as concrete and constitutive universals, would
involve the interpretation of the world in terms of
thought, he strikes a middle path. He cannot do
without any inward universals, for pure Associa-
tionism is Scepticism; and he cannot attribute these
universals to thought, for that would imply Idealism :
so he attributes them to Sense. He makes them
correspond to, incite one by one, the universals of
thought. So that he is able to retain his view
that thought is formal, and its universals abstract
in the sense of not producing their content, and
yet he is able to regard experience as coherent.
The questions that still remain unanswered are,
How can sense produce universals.'' How, if sense,
or intuition, or immediate perception does give
these universals, the sense-universals are related to
the universals of thought .•* Are they the same .-'
Then why not attribute all to sense or all to
thought.-* Are they dififcrcnt .'' By what means

228 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

then is that difference mediated ? Lotze does not
even ask these questions. And, in consequence, a
convenient ambiguity enfolds the whole matter.
Thought remains formal and its universals abstract,
and yet, through the interposition of the psychical
mechanism and preliminary processes of intelligence,
it is able to perform the task of making ex-
perience inwardly coherent, just as if its uni-
versals were concrete and constructive. He makes
sense perform the processes of thought, or rather,
he sinks reflection in perception. He presupposes
that the universals of thought are abstract, and
that those of sense are concrete. Thought must
produce the universals from itself, because idealism
is not true ; and it must find them in sense, because
associationism is false.

The same attempt to strike a middle path between
a formal and a constitutive view of thought char-
acterizes his treatment of Judgment. We have
seen that Judgment makes its appearance in order
to "express a relation between the matters of two
ideas." But it is not made clear whether the rela-
tion it expresses already exists and has only to be
made explicit, or whether, the matters of the two
ideas, are given without connection. The question
recurs, Does thought produce, or does it find, the
universal } Is the universal in itself bare and
empty and to be applied to a " given " material, or
is it concrete and constitutive of that content, in
the sense that the particulars cannot exist except

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 229

in their coherence ? Lotze, once more, does not
confront the issue; but he proceeds, as far as pos-
sible, upon the assumption that thought is formal,
and that it does not originally comprehend and
penetrate its content ; and when he can go no
further on that hypothesis he starts from the
idea of a system. He does not see that both
views cannot be true, but tries to subordinate
the latter to the former. In support of this
view of his attitude, I have only to refer to
his transition from the Categorical to the Hypo-
thetical Judgment, He assumes that the universal
of thought is a unity which is inconsistent
with differences, and asserts that vS" cannot be P
so long as the law of identity holds ; and he
makes the subject of the Categorical Judgment
qualify the predicate, and its predicate qualify the
subject in such a manner that this Judgment is
made purely tautological. Then he proceeds to
correct this result by first assuming, and then
seeking to prove, that knowledge is systematic,
and that its universals are, therefore, concrete and
formative. And he brings in the law of sufficient
reason, and even strives to make it an extension of
a law of pure identity, ignoring the fact that he
had assumed as his starting point, and amended
the Categorical Judgment on the supposition, that
what the Judgment means is pure identity, and
that nothing but pure identity is consistent with
the supreme law of thought. Lotzc had not learnt

230 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

the value of the negative in Logic, or, what is the
same thing, that affirmation is definition.

Judgment can be understood in two ways, and
the ideal which is gradually realized in its suc-
cessive forms is capable of two expressions. First,
we may regard it as an attempt on the part of
thought to combine ideas which are at first inde-
pendent, so that it must produce its own universal,
which, therefore, has in itself no content, and must
be applied ah extra to the unconnected data.
Secondly, we may regard Judgment as the pro-
cess whereby a single idea, or an indefinite uni-
versal, "which, on this view, is the datum of thought,
articulates itself in a subject and predicate. That
is to say, "the Judgment is a process of explicat-
ing the copula," and exhibiting its concreteness in
the difference of the subject and predicate. On
both views the ideal of knowledge is the exhibition,
in all the contents of experience, of the primary
law of thought ; and the primary law in both
cases is the law of identity. But the law of
identity on the first view is a law of pure unity
which excludes differences, and its realization
would empty knowledge of all contents; while,
on the second view, the law of identity is simply
the most abstract, and therefore the most imperfect,
expression of a unity which includes differences.
That unity is taken up and expressed more fully
in the law of sufficient reason, and is again taken
up in the law of systematic disjunction, where

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 23 1

both the unity and the differences are made ex-
pHcit and emphasized in their necessary relation.
On this latter view the ideal of knowled^re, and,
therefore, the fundamental law of thought, is the
conception of an all-inclusive totality which is
systematic, that is to say, whose universal is com-
pletely concrete. Lotze's whole doctrine is based
upon the first view of thought and its laws, but
its verisimilitude is made possible only by making
use of the second.

The same attempt to unite an abstract and formal
view of the processes and laws of thought with a
concrete view of knowledge is manifested in his
view of Inference. For Inference can, like the
Judgment, be understood in two ways. It may be
regarded, with Lotze, as a process of " combining
two judgments for the production of a third and
valid judgment which is not merely the sum of
the two first," or, in other words, as a process of
"bringing two concepts into connection" by the
help of a medium, in such a manner that they
"can meet in the conclusion."^ Upon this view
the demand which is once more made upon thought
is that it should combine what is given as discon-
nected. In the second place. Inference may be
regarded as the process whereby the apparently
imviediate connection of two concepts is shown to
have been really mediate. That is to say, on this
view inference neither makes a universal which
1 See Logic, § S3.

»32

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

combines, nor applies it to foreign data ; but,
beginning with a universal which is partially dif-
ferentiated in judgment it makes that universal
more explicit and concrete by showing that it is
a necessary system of interrelated differences. On
this view, if I may so express it, thought starts
with a system, and its task is to explicate it in
two ways at once : it has to express the universal
more fully by bringing out the differences in it, and
it must throw new light upon the differences by
showing that they are necessarily related under the
universal. The data must be shown to include the
conclusion, as the conclusion must be shown to
imply the data; that is, the wholeness and unity of
the system must be vindicated. "You can no more
have data or premises without conclusion than con-
clusion without data or premises."^ But if the data
or premises in order to be data must contain the
conclusion, we do not begin with two propositions in
order to produce a third, any more than in Judgment
we begin with two ideas and then connect them by
means of a copula. The process of Judgment is
one by which thought forms distinctions within a
single indefinite idea, and the process of Inference
simply carries the movement of systematization, or
articulation, one step further. Dr. Bosanquet calls
inference " mediate judgment." That is to say,
inference seizes upon a single datum already known
to be a unity of differences, and "it drags into con-
Bosanquet's Logic, Vol. il., p. 7.

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 233

sciousness the operation of the active universal as
a pervading- unity of content." It is not judgment
with reason " annexed," but judgment with the
reason already there made explicit. That is to
say, when we infer, we show that ideas are
necessarily connected ; and there is only one way
of showing that they are necessarily connected,
namely, by showing that the differences can exist
at all only in virtue of the universal, and the
universal only in and through the differences.

These two views of Inference bring with them
radically different conceptions of the goal of know-
ledge. The perfect example of inference, or ot
perfectly reasoned knowledge, would, on the first
view^ be found in the Aristotelian Syllogism as
explained by formal logicians. These writers quan-
tify and qualify the subject and predicate, because
they assiuiie that in judging we endeavour to express
the identity of concepts ; and in consequence the
syllogism is found simply to say the same thing three
times over. Each of the premises, as Lotzc was
well aware, presupposes the conclusion ; for M is
identified with P, and 6" with M ; and therefore ^
and P are also directly and completely identified ;
hence the syllogism is purely tautological, and
thought makes no synthetic movement but simply
repeats itself But, on the second view, the perfect
example of inference, or of reasoned knowledge,
would be found in what Lotzc calls the " Specula-
tive form of Thought," in which, as we have seen,

234 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

the " Universe " is represented as " springing out of
the unity of an idea which develops itself and
creates the conditions of its progress," a universe
rich with an endlessly varied content.

Now Lotze, in strict analogy with his manner of
dealing with Conception and Judgment, starts by
assuming the first view, follows it until it leads him
into the deadlock of pure identity, and then avails
himself of the second view without rejecting the
former as false. The only difference in his method
of procedure arises from the fact that the self-
contradiction of formal or tautologous thought
reveals itself sooner in inference than in its other
forms. The Categorical Judgment conceals the
unity between the concepts expressed in the sub-
ject and predicate, and Conception conceals the
differences within the unity. Both appear, though
for different reasons, to fall below system. But the
very statement of the premises of an inference
betrays the systematic nature of thought. For we
cannot begin with any two propositions, but with
two propositions given as related through a middle
term : both the universal and its contents are in this
manner explicit from the beginning. But imme-
diately the syllogism is subjected to examination by
Lotze and the formal logicians, it is deprived of its
systematic or .synthetic character ; and, as we have
seen, it turns out to be invalid if it advances to
anything new in the conclusion, and to be tauto-
logical if it does not advance to anything new.

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 235

This is sufiiciently well known, and I need not
dwell upon it. What I wish to show is, that it
turns out to be either tautological or invalid, only
because it is assumed that thought is formal ; or
that, because it brings connections to its materials,
it cannot connect them except at the cost of
reducing them into complete identity with itself. In
fact, if we quantify and qualify the subject and the
predicate in both premises, the syllogism will show
itself to be expressible by one circle three times
repeated ; and even the repetition is illegitimate.

Now Lotze admits this conclusion, and insists
nevertheless that thought in inference must be
progressive. But instead of rejecting the view of
thought as formal, which makes it impossible that
it should be progressive, instead, that is to say, of
rejecting this interpretation of the syllogism, he
endeavours to remedy its defects by adding to it
two other forms of subsumption, namely, Induction
and Analogy. In these forms of inference the
demand for a movement to a new and broader
conclusion is explicit ; or, to express the fact
more accurately, the universal, which is presupposed
in certain cases or instances, has to show itself in-
clusive of other instances or cases, which are not at
first recognized as contained in it. I need not add
much to what I have already said on this matter.
Lotze's treatment of Induction and Analogy is such
that these inferences also show themselves to have
the same radical defects as the Aristotelian form

236 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

of Subsumption ; that is to say, the universal can
subsume nothing except that which is completely
identified with it, and the argument is either tauto-
logous or false. We have to reduce S, P, T, V,
into 2 or n ; that is, we have to eliminate their
differences in order to conceive them as having the
same subject or predicate, Jll. And further, even
if we did this, we do not justify the conclusion under
2 or n of the new cases LMN, or WXY ; and
the inclusion of apparently new instances is the
sole purpose of induction and analogy. In a word,
both the given instances and the new instances
can be brought into relation with the common
term only by insisting solely on their sameness.

That no other method was really available to
Lotze might be shown by considering his way of
taking the premises of Syllogistic Subsumption as
eitJier analytic or synthetic. ^ It seems to me to be
self-evident that if the premises are taken as analytic
vicrely, the inference must be tautological ; if taken
as synthetic merely, it must be invalid. Analysis
rejects the differences, and synthesis neglects the
unity — unless we take them as correlative aspects
of one activity necessarily implying each other.
But Lotze, always unconscious of the significance
of the negative, did not recognize their mutual
implication. That is to say, the judgment could
not present itself to him as both analytic and
synthetic ■ — analytic because it is synthetic, and
^ See Logic, % 99.

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 237

synthetic because it is analytic — for he did not
recognize that every definition of an object is both
affirmation and negation.^ Had he admitted this,
he would have found himself in the dialectical
movement whereb}' the universal advances in con-
creteness through distinction, which is the core of
the idealistic view of thought.

There is thus, on Lotze's view, no genuine advance
in the movement from the first to the second and
third forms of subsumption. The only difference
between them is that the same defect is exposed
from different sides. In syllogistic inference we
proceed from a universal with the view of finding
what was in it, or in ordinary language, we proceed
from the whole to the parts ; in induction we start
from the parts with the view of finding their uni-
versal or necessary connection. Both attempts fail
for the same reason : the universal in the first case
is taken as abstract, and the data in the second
are treated as if they were mere particulars. And
the remedy in both cases is the same, namely, that
of regarding both the universal and the difference
as present from the first, and viewing inference as
a process whereby the relation between them is
shown to be necessary. On this view we start
neither from a bare universal nor from pure
particulars, but from both in their relation. The

^ He admits that intuition gives us truths which are at
once synthetic and analytic, but intuitional apprehension is
not to liim logical, or thinking apprehension. CScc Logic, § 361.)

238 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

relation between them is, however, indefinite and
uncertain ; and the inferential process consists in
re-explaining the general law and its contents in
such a manner as to make their mutual implication
explicit. That this is the genuine process is manifest
if we bear in mind that the major from which
syllogistic inference starts is taken as having a
specific content which only needs to be explicated,
and that the facts or events from which induction
and analogy start are not a7iy facts or events, but
those which we surmise to be " instances " of the
law we desire to establish. Inference consists in
the first case in the explication of the general law,
and in the second case in an examination of the
" instances," with a view of discovering the law
which explains them. In the first case the surmised
differences in the universal, in the second case the
surmised law in the particulars are converted into
a certainty, by showing their necessary mutual
implication. There is no transition from a universal
to particulars in the first case, nor from particulars
to a universal in the second. Nor does inference
ever proceed to that which is new ; for, as we have
seen, the data must contain the conclusion. But
it does not follow that inference is tautological
repetition ; on the contrary, the discovery of the
necessity of their connection throws a new light both
on the unity and on the differences. The symbol of
inference is not mechanical connection but organic
growth. It is the evolution of the contents of a

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 239

single, though not a simple, idea ; and evolution
neither admits of anything new nor simply repeats
itself. This view of inference, however, would not
only radically modify Lotze's theory of subsump-
tion, but overthrow his theory of the fundamental
function of thought. That function would be shown
to consist not in connecting the discrete, but in
differentiating a unity.

I have already shown that Lotze was aware of
the fact that his interpretation of subsumptive in-
ference was inconsistent with the 'living' movement
of thought in synthesizing experience.' He is prac-
tically compelled to admit that the aim of infer-
ence is to exhibit a universal as persisting in and
permeating differences.^ But instead of drawing
the apparently inevitable conclusion that either the
subsumptive inference, as he has described it, is not
inference at all, or that his description of it is
erroneous — seeing that it led to tautology, he allows
it to remain. And he endeavours to adjust matters
by bringing in still another form of reasoning,
namely, reasoning by Stibstitution. By doing so
he is able, without rejecting his view of thought
as formal and as combinatory of material supplied

^ See Logic, §§ 102, 104.

- In converting the surmised law into a known law, multi-
plication of instances is of the highest value, not however on
account of their multitude, but because each new instance
brings in a new difference, which is nevertheless compatible
with the universal. The universal, that is to say, becomes
more concrete, and therefore more cogent.

240

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

to it from without, to escape the tautology, and to
exhibit thought as progressing towards a concrete,
or systematic representation of the world. Hence-
forth, therefore, he employs as his datum a con-
crete universal, that is, a universal which contains
explicit differences within it, and he represents
inference as the process of exhibiting the necessity
of the mutual implication of the whole and the
parts. But while doing so, and while compelled
to do so in order to make any advance, he still
considers that the thought whose evolution he is
following is formal, and he continually lapses to
the tautological view. It is the contradiction which
springs from the attempt of Lotze to follow both
of these tendencies — the tendency towards tauto-
logy which is imposed upon him by his original
theory of thought, and the tendency towards system-
atic wholeness which the undeniably concrete
character of knowledge forces upon him — that I
wish to make clear in w^hat remains of this chapter.
In making the transition from Subsumption, as
he conceived it, to Substitution, Lotze is uncon-
sciously moving into a new mode of thought in-
consistent with the first. He is, as suggested,
employing a concrete universal and watching the
process of its evolution into differences, instead of
an abstract universal with which he vainly en-
deavoured to combine data given as different.
The importance of the transition is concealed from
him for more than one reason. The main one is.

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 241

of course, that he was never led by any difficulties
to reconsider his first assumption that the function
of thought is that of combining data borrowed
from elsewhere. But the immediate reason is that
in substitutive inference the universal is the least
concrete, the nearest to the abstract universal of
tautological subsumption, which thought employs.
The boundaries march, and Lotze does not re-
cognize that he has passed into a new territory.
And the third reason is that his analysis of
substitutive reasoning is, for him, unusually defec-
tive.

That the new universal is concrete, although its
concreteness is of the lowest degree, is evident
from the fact that it expresses the identity of a
whole with the total number of its distinct and
separate parts. Subsumption, on Lotze's view,
stopped short at universals. The only conclusion
which it yielded was that S is P, or rather that
SP is SP ; for we had completely to identify
M and P in the major, and 5 and M in the
minor, and therefore ^ and P in the conclusion.
The conclusion might therefore be expressed in
the form oi x = x. But Substitution yields the con-
clusion that x = a-{-b-\- c\ the elements which con-
stitute X are given as separate. The universal, or
the quantitative identity of the ii^'o sides of the
equation, is thus manifestly an identity which
consists with their difference. There is definite
advance from tautology, now that the whole is not

242

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

merely reiterated but interpreted into a number
of elements existing side by side in a sum.

But Lotze was not aware of the significance
of the step he had taken in passing from sub-
sumption, as he explains it, to substitution. He
was not conscious that he was employing a con-
crete or self-differentiating, instead of an abstract
and tautological universal. This is evident from
the fact that he called this kind of inference
SiLbstitutive. For Substitution is not inference at
all. It is, rather, the result of a process of
inference. The mathematician will not substitute
a + b + c for x unless he has already ascertained
that they are equivalent ; and the process of
inference lies in the discovery of that equivalence,
after which the act of substitution may follow as
a matter of course. That process of inference is
miscalled ' Substitution ' by Lotze, and left entirely
unexplained. Had he even endeavoured to explain
it, it is probable that he would have discovered
the genuine movement of thought in drawing
necessary conclusions ; for nowhere is the move-
ment of inferential thought more simply exposed,
or its inferential validity more manifest. And it
manifestly consists in the substitution of a definite,
and analyzed, and systematic, for a more indefinite
universal ; the latter, during the process, passing
into the former. We begin with a whole that
contains parts, or a universal conceived as con-
crete ; we end with a number of parts which, taken

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 243

together, constitute the same whole ; and we pass
from the one to the other by analyzing the sum
into a number of homogeneous units, or, what is
the same thing, by enumerating the units under
the guidance of the conception of the required
sum. What I wish to make quite clear is, that
we are dealing with the same universal during
the whole process and simply making it more
explicit. We prove, or infer, that 37= 16 +5 + 3 + 13
by setting out the parts one by one and enumerat-
ing them ; or, in other words, by analyzing it, so as
to make its contents distinct. I speak with diffi-
dence, but I should say that all mathematical
reasoning exhibits, in the most complicated of
its processes, precisely the same movement. And,
I should say further, that all reasoning whatso-
ever consists in the same kind of movement of
the self-differentiation of a concrete but indefinite
unity or universal, into a unity which is more
concrete because its contents are more clearly set
forth in their mutual relation.

The distinction between the mathematical and
other reasoning processes does not spring from
any difference in the essential movement of infer-
ential thought. In fact, thought has onl}' one
way of prov'ing a truth, namely, that of showing
that it is already contained in the premises.
And it shows that it was already in the premises
by a more exhaustive investigation of theiri. The
proof will wear a deductive or an inductive

244 ^^^ PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

appearance according as the immediate purpose
of the investigator throws the emphasis upon the
discovery of the parts in the whole, or upon the
discovery of the law which is impHcit in the
parts. That is to say, the movement of thought
may appear to be either analytic or synthetic,
but as a matter of fact it is always both. The
analysis of the unity is not only the discovery of
the parts, but the explanation and reconstruction
of the law of the whole ; and the synthesis of the
parts under a necessary law is not only an ex-
position of the law, but a reconstruction of the
parts. So far, then, all reasoning is the same.
Different proofs spring entirely from the different
things proved.

But, on the other hand, it is evident that the
process by which we discover the equivalence of
mathematical quantities is different from that which
we employ in inferring the effects of a physical
cause, or the results of a political action. Physics
brings in considerations of the direction of a
force, the point of its application, and many other
matters which make the problem much more
complex than that of simple addition and sub-
traction. And so do each of the other sciences.
And we are not entitled to transfer the method
which yields true results in regard to the joint
action of physical forces to any other sphere, —
e.g., the moral sphere, — and apply it at once to
the combined action of the motives of an in-

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 245

telligent being. Mathematical reasoning, so far
from being the type of all possible reasoning, is
capable of being employed in a valid manner
only within the abstract region shut in by the
definition of its subject. It moves safely only
within the region marked out by its clear hypo-
thesis. Indeed, the question of the possibility
of regarding any specific method of reasoning
as the type or norm is raised. May it not be
the case that every object of investigation de-
mands its own method ; or, in other words,
that while all reasoning is the explication of a
universal into a mutually related system of con-
tents, each universal, or unity, demands a specific
mode of treatment .''

This question is brought before us by Lotze
under the form of the possibility of extending
the sphere of application of Mathematical Sub-
stitution. Recognizing that the equational method
is immediately applicable only to abstract quantities
which are not real objects, but a single aspect of
them, and recognizing that the object of thought is
to combine into a coherent whole the complex facts
of experience, Lotze is pressed on to the considera-
tion of Ratio and Proportion. These conceptions are
introduced by Lotze in order to enable us to connect,
by necessary laws, data which are not reducible
to homogeneous units of quantity ; in order to
"' measure the incommensurable," as he expresses it.
But, as was seen, no such result issued from their

246 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

emplo}'ment. I need not recapitulate the reasons
which led us to conclude that what was incom-
mensurable at the beginning- remained incommen-
surable to the end, namely, the different qualitative
characteristics which necessitated the employment of
ratio and proportion, instead of the comparatively
simple method of addition and subtraction. In
this respect there was no advance made b}^ making
use of them ; for what was calculable was the
pure quantities, while the different units from which
the calculation of proportions started were neither
reduced into each other nor into instances of
anything higher. Strictly speaking, therefore, the
method of Substitution was not extended. And
yet, on the other hand, it is undeniable that the
employment of the conceptions of ratio and pro-
portion has led to the greatest triumphs of the
most completely inferential and predictive of all
the natural sciences, namely, Physics. Physics, in
fact, is a science of measurement, and it measures
by establishing proportion between changes in
objects qualitatively different. How then are we
to account for this inferential power which physics
has shown } It is evident that even its measure-
ments are absolutely confined to the quantitative
side of the objects which it investigates. The
qualitative difference between one form of energy
and another is not touched by its mathematical
calculations. These remain empirical data to the
end, and one form of energy is not resolved into

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 2

another when a law of proportion between their
changes is established. That bodies generally ex-
pand under increase of temperature is a fact of
observation which mathematical substitution, by ratio
or otherwise, cannot explain. And, as Lotze shows,
no general law of expansion can be applied in-
differently to any body: each metal exhibits its own
specific ratio of change of magnitude to change of
temperature. Observation and experiment must
come in at every step ; for it is these, and not
the quantitative laws, which reveal the specific
individuality, so to speak, from which the varying
ratios spring. Comparison of quantities suggest a
law of concomitant change, but the nature of that
which makes the changes concomitant is not brought
to light. Physics, in a word, employs observation
and experiment as well as mathematical processes ;
and, just as observation without the latter would
simply lead to a natural history of the facts and a
mere collection of disconnected particulars, so the
latter, by itself, would give nothing but empty
quantitative relations that would throw no light
upon the law of the changes of objects. The ex-
tension of substitutive inference is impossible. It
may, of course, be applied to all objects, provided
we can grasp the quantitative side, which all objects
whatsoever must have, and fix upon a definite and
constant unit ; but this is not an extension of the
method beyond quantity, as might be gathered from
Lotze's expression.

248 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

Are we to consider, then, that where science
makes use of the conceptions of ratio and pro-
portion it is making use of two methods, the one
for computing and the other for observing facts ?
If so, in what relation do they stand to each other?
Can physical investigation be fitly described as
mathematical substitution phis empiricism ? Or, on
the other hand, does its observation of data, its
experimentation, its preparation of its material for
mathematical calculation, also involve processes of
inference which are not mathematical?

These questions, I believe, bring the fundamental
difficulty of Lotze's position into clear view, and
enable us at once to discuss the value and validity
of his whole movement from Substitution to Pro-
portional inference, and thence to Classification,
Explanation, and the Speculative form of thought.
Lotze recognizes the difficulty. He admits ex-
plicitly " that the group of mathematical forms of
inference ends here, — with the emphatic recognition
of the fact that the point which does not admit of
being dealt with mathematically is the disparate-
ness of marks"; and he also admits that this "is
precisely the point which we cannot avoid consider-
ing." That is to say, mathematical reasoning stops
short at quantitative equation ; but we are forced
onward by the demand which thought makes that
experience shall be systematic, and shall include in
its system the qualitative differences of objects.
We must pass from equation to definition ; we

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 249

must consider the combination of different qualities
and different objects, as well as their quantitative
differences. So that the question is unavoidable,
whether, when wc thus pass to the consideration
of qualities, we leave all inference behind, or make
use of another method of reasoning which yields
universal laws of connections between the qualities
of real objects; in other words, whether the "de-
finition " we must employ involves inference, or is
merely descriptive ; whether, in defining, we do
more than set side by side the qualitative differ-
ences which observation yields to our empirical
observation.

I find Lotze's answer to be hesitating. He is
once more drawn in two directions by the theory
of the formal nature of thought from which he
starts, and by the demand which experience makes
that its systematic necessity shall be revealed by
thought. In obedience to the tendency which
springs from his theory of thought, he is impelled
to give over to other powers than those of logical
thought all that refuses to yield itself to mathe-
matical computation ; in obedience to the second,
he is led to recognize elements of necessity and
universality in tlie processes of Classification, and
Scientific Explanation, and Speculation, although
these processes do not appear to rest upon Com-
putation.

The phenomena which in presenting themselves
force this problem upon Lotze, we may arrange as

250 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

follows : — First — the qualitative differences which
give rise to the employment of ratio and propor-
tion ; the units which refuse to be expressed in
terms of each other. Secoiid — the differences ///
value or significance of the qualities of objects,
leading us to regard some of these as essential,
and as exercising a dominant function over others,
and enabling us to raise them into principles of
classification according to type. Third — the appar-
ent transition of one genus into another, leading
us to regard some special genus, or some special
principle embodied in it, as the source of a law
which dominates all other genera, and to arrange
objects in an ascending order, according to the
degree in which this highest principle is realized
in them. For, in all these cases, as Lotze sees,
there is evidence of the operation of regulative laws
which make our experience systematic. Classifica-
tion, as he shows, was no matter of mere empiricism
even before science entered the field. Ordinary
thought was in some way led to employ principles
of classification that were to some degree explana-
tory of objects, and apparently constitutive of them.
And it is still more obvious that systematizing
thought which, to say the least, does not appear to be
purely mathematical in its character, has been opera-
tive in the building up of our scientific and philosophic
theories. Since thought has achieved these results,
logic cannot avoid the problem of revealing the
nature of the processes which thought has employed.

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 251

How, therefore, does thought, by means of tlic
conceptions of ratio and proportion, establish Liws
of correspondence between the changes of objects,
between whose qualities there remains a permanent
and insoluble difference. What is there found in
Lotze's view beside mathematical computation ?
Observation of data ! " The ultimate discoverable
laws of phenomena will always be found to involve
determinate relations between disparate elements
which we can only accept as facts, and utilize in
the form of proportion, without being able to show
the reason why the two elements must be propor-
tional." " From one disparate thing to another our
thought has no means of transition ; all our ex-
planation of the connection of things goes no further
back than to laws which admit oi" being expressed
in the form of proportion ; and these laws make no
attempt to fuse the two elements into an undis-
coverable third, but leave them both in their full
difference." ^ The stream of inference, which is
merely computative, and the observation of facts
flow side by side without mingling, so far as
Lotze shows us anything to the contrary ; and the
processes of necessary connection according to law,
seem to belong purely to the former, while the
latter is presented as purely empirical.

If we turn in the next place to the classification of
objects according to essential qualities, and ask h(n\-
it has been brought about, we receive practical 1\-
^ Logic, § 115.

252 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

the same answer. The mere fact that thought has
been guided in such a manner as to be able to
distinguish between the essential, dominant, consti-
tutive qualities of objects, and those which are,
comparatively speaking, contingent and without sig-
nificance is undeniable. But when Lotze comes to
enquire Jioxu this has been done, he practically says,
in the first place, that logic cannot answer. Logic
issues a prohibition, gives a " general direction not
to choose as bases of division notiones coinviniics, i.e.,
marks which are known to occur in the most differ-
ent objects, without exercising any recognizable
influence upon the rest of their nature." But "the
positive direction answering to this prohibition, viz.,
how to find the decisive basis of division, logic
leaves entirely to be given by special knowledge of
the matter in question." The errors of merely com-
binatory and meaningless classification are "avoided
in practice by concomitant reflection and an estimate
of the different values of the marks, based upon
knowledge of the facts or a right feeling, often
merely upon an instinctive taste." ^ Classification,
in a word, is based upon the knowledge of the
facts — a view which no one, I should say, would
care to deny — and that knowledge of the facts is
Tiot guided by rational or logical principles of
thought, a view which is most doubtful. Indeed,
a little further on, we find Lotze himself resile
from handing over this most important function
^ Logic, % 1 28.

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 253

of classification to "right feeling" or "instinctive
taste," or to any other such contingent, or, at least,
unanalyzed process. In the case of Classification
according to an Ideal, which leads on step by step
"to the systematic organization of the A\hole world
of thought," computation or mathematical infer-
ence once more comes in, and takes at least a
remnant of the truth from the hands of mere
contingency. The distinction between the various
degrees in which species correspond to their generic
concepts, is found to have its quantitative side.
All objects, all elements, have "intensity," "number
of parts," and "specific relations"; and these can
furnish a foothold for equational reasoning. " The
possibility of making this distinction depends prim-
arily upon quantitative measurements to which the
several marks and their relations are possibly or
necessarily accessible." ^ If, in a scheme of develop-
ment such as the biological kingdom, we wish to
account for the way in which some animals are
placed lower in the scale than others, we can count
and measure. And similarly in the case of Classi-
fication according to type, and the distinction
between natural and forced classification. "An
instructed taste will partially obviate " the evils of
the unnatural classification, and besides " taste," we
can avail ourselves of computation. This method
will show us how, by increase or decrease of qualities,
an object tends to pass from one class to another ;
^ Logic, % 131.

254

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

and it enables us to fix upon that species as the most
perfect example of the type whose essential marks
are, at their greatest quantities, in equilibrium. " We
always regard as the typical and most expressive
examples of each genus those species in which all
the marks are at the highest value which the com-
bination prescribed by the genus allows." ' And
the highest value is, as he has explained, the highest
quantitative value. This side, namely, the quantitat-
ive, lends itself once more to logical exposition ;
that is to say, it consists of inferential processes of
thought. " This point of view belongs entirely to
logic, and is independent of the views which we
may form on other and material grounds as to
the value, meaning, and function of anything which
has the law of its existence in a generic concept." '^
But what shall we say of all that remains over,
and is, on Lotze's own showing, not reducible into
merely quantitative differences .'' No doubt the
knowledge of material grounds of value, meaning,
and function is requisite for classification ; but is
that knowledge, because it is material, not guided
by rational and necessary principles of thought
which are susceptible of logical justification .'' Ap-
parently not, on the view of Lotze. All that refuses
to yield itself to calculation has to be handed over
to " instructed taste," " instinctive taste," " right
feeling," " concomitant reflection," and such other
intuitive processes resting on material knowledge
"^ Logic, § 133. -Ibid., § 132.

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE

255

as fall bc)'ond the sphere of the logician, although
logic deals with all conceiving, judging, and reason-
ing, with all the processes which build up experience
into systematic knowledge. Conceptions of pur-
pose, end, destination, the active self-differentiation
of a supreme principle, force themselves upon Lotze.
By employing these conceptions, modern science
and philosophy have achieved the most momentous
results, and carried knowledge beyond the classifi-
catory methods of ancient times. But we look in
vain to Lotze to find the logical justification of
these processes. If we ask "how Classification by
development reaches its required conclusion, the
certainty, namely, that it has really found that
supreme law or logical destination which governs
the particular object or the universe at large,"
he replies: "To this we can only answer, that
by way of mere logic it is quite impossible to
arrive at such a certainty." " The whole realm of
the real and the thinkable must be regarded as a
system of series in which concept follows concept
in a determinate direction ; but the discovery of
the direction itself, and of the supreme directing
principle, it leaves to positive knowledge to knozi: as
best it cany^ Once more, I would emphasize the
fact that no one can well deny that for all these
purposes "positive knowledge" is necessary; but is
this all that logic can say of " positive knowledge,"
namely, that it must know these things as best it
^ Logic, § 138.

256 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

can ? Does inference stop where we fail to count
and measure ? Is it not possible to give any rational
justification for classing together the ox and the
horse and the rhinoceros, rather than the ox and
the oak and the east wind, except such as issues
from the addition and subtraction of homogeneous
units of quantity ? And is there no other logically
justifiable reason for regarding man as higher in
the scale of creation than the tiger and the cat or
the snake, except that the equations which would
set forth the quantities of their different elements
would be different ? Lotze's answer is explicit.
" The form of proportion indicates a limit to know-
ledge," and proportion, as explained by Lotze, is
adding and subtracting plus empiricism.

Lotze's analysis of the process of inference has
the high merit of placing the problem of logical
or necessary thinking in a clear light. He helps
to make the choice between a formal and material
view of its processes inevitable. For either Science
and Philosophy must be content to forego their
pretension to any definitely assured knowledge that
passes beyond the limits of mathematical computa-
tion, or else we must regard the systematic character
of the results they have attained as due to processes
of inference which are not capable of being char-
acterized as mathematical. In other words, there
is no strictly verifiable knowledge except mathe-
matics, or else thought is not merely mathematical
and subsumptive. In its dealing with qualitative

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE

!57

differences, with considerations that spring from the
conception of the significance of elements, their
real relations, their interaction, destination, purpose
and end, in a word, with all that leads mind to
find in the world something- which demands more
than that its objects should be counted and
measured, we must either regard thought as being
led by principles not capable of being justified as
inferential; or else we must consider that Lotze's
view of the logical processes is utterly inadequate.
We have to condemn either Lotze's view of thought
as formal, or all knowledge as uncertain, and per-
haps invalid, except that which is based upon the
abstract conception of quantity. The choice will be
the less hesitating if we examine once more from
another point of view his exposition of Mathe-
matical Inference.

It is evident from what has just been said that
Lotze's attempt to advance from Substitutive In-
ference to Classification, Explanatory Theory and
the Dialectical Ideal of Thought has failed. For
the only inferential element in these processes, that
is to say, the only element which could be logically
justified as the source of necessarily valid relations,
was the Mathematical. What remained over was
that which material knowledge gains " as best it
can." We are no doubt driven to employ these
forms by the impulse towards complete systematiza-
tion which characterizes thought. And Lotze is at
some pains to show that the ideals after which

258 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

these forms of thought strive are in themselves
valid — the defect lying solely in our imperfect
application of them, or, in the last case, in some
weakness that attaches to human thought as such.^
But, on the other hand, " if the validity of these
ideals is not at all impaired by the fact that human
knowledge is not able to apply them to every
given instance," how does it come that logic is able
to give no better justification of them than that
they are realizable only on the quantitative side
— the side which misses entirely all that we can
mean by the nature of objects, their interaction,
and their functions ? For these have been explicitly
given up to material knowledge, which proceeds as
best it can. "A demonstrative method, or a method
which involves no logical jumps, a sure logical
receipt for arriving at a true universal law of a
series of events, does not exist." - " The discovery
of an universal law is always a guess on the part
of the imagination, made possible by a knowledge
of facts." ■' Lotze's resolute exclusion from the
sphere of logic of material considerations narrows
the operations of thought which it can justify to
mathematical reasoning.

But if ive exclude material considerations we cannot
justify even the niatJieinatical processes. Not those
of ratio and proportion ; for these, as we have
abundantly seen, must derive the units which they
employ from empirical observation of the facts of
'See Logic, § 151. -Logic., § 269. "'Ibid.

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE

259

experience. What then of purely Mathennatical
Substitution ? That Lotze has given no logical
justification of this process we have already seen.
The obviously undeniable equivalence of a mathe-
matical sum and the total number of its homogeneous
units led Lotze to regard the act of substituting as
logical, and to overlook the fact that the process
of enumerating the units, or of analyzing the sum,
was the inferential process which demanded logical
justification. But no logical justification of it is
possible on Lotze's view of thought, on the view,
namely, that qualitative differences act as an
absolute bar to inference. For even although a
quantitative sum is the unit of thought which has
the least concrete character, or in which individuality
is at its lowest point, it is not without any character
or individuality. Even in this extreme of abstraction
thought has not succeeded in rejecting all content.
Even in a quantitative sum, as Kant has pointed
out, the synthetic element must not count for
nothing ; or, in other words, there is a genuine
process of transition through difference to unity in
concluding that 7 + 5 = 12, as all who have watched
the first attempts of a child will readily acknowledge.
After all, 7 + 5 = 12, is a different statement from
7 + 5 = 7 + 5, or 12=12, although analysis would show
that in this latter statement also there is evidence
of the operation of a thought that recognizes unity
only in difference. Nor is the universal entirely
inoperative : on the contrary, while leaving its parts

26o THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

comparatively free, so that we can sa)- that 12 = 7 + 5,
or 5+7, or 3 + 2+44-3, and so on, it still directs
that its parts shall be explicable as definite and
homogeneous units ; 100 or 1000 is not the sum of
any quantities ; a unit is not any thing, although
it ma}' be the quantitative aspect of any concrete
object. But the idea of a universal that is operative
in its contents, giving them their character, or of
a universal that maintains itself in and by means
of difference is manifestly not admissible to a
logician who makes bare identity the ideal of
thought. It is as impossible for purely formal
thought to make the transition from 7 + 5 to 12,
as from Ji' to P. We require the condition on
which the categorical statement of their equivalence
rests ; and that condition cannot be given, as our
analysis of Subsumptive Inference showed. For
Subsumption, on Lotze's principles, either lapsed
into tautology, or else had to be pronounced in-
valid. Thus, step by step, the apparent advance
towards forms of thought more adequate to com-
bine the concrete data of experience proves illusory.
The higher processes of philosophical systematiza-
tion, Scientific Explanation and Classification, have
no logical justification except that which issues
from mathematical reasoning by ratio and propor-
tion, l^ut reasoning by ratio and proportion, if we
eliminate the empirical or material element, sinks into
pure Computation, or Substitution ; Substitution, in
turn, lapses into Subsumption ; Subsumption is either

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 26 1

tautological or invalid. Thus thought can combine
no differences, and that was its only function. The
exclusion of the matter and the attempt to treat
thought as purely formal has led to its extinction.

What Lotze has done in his ascent from Sub-
sumption to Dialectical Thought is really to expose
the inadequacy and invalidity of his view of the
function of thought. Formal rea.soning, as long as
its formality is manifest, fails to move at all. As
long as 5 and P have no definite meaning we cannot
bring them together by means of premises ; nothing
can mediate between them, and we have to conclude
that 6" is not P, and Z is not J/, or AT 11, unless
by means of accessory notions, which as formal
they cannot yield, we reduce them to identity. In
Substitution the movement of genuine reasoning
began ; but it is due to the fact that our data have
meaning, or material content. It is because we
recognize that the sum is a sum of definite units
whose character is known, that we proceed to
explicate its contents by analyzing it into these
units. In that analysis we arc progressively showing
the construction of the sum and the systematic
nature of the datum from which inference sets
forth, and inference consists simply in following the
movement of this datum from an implicit system
to a system whose parts are articulated.

When we ascend to reasoning by ratio and
proportion, we begin to deal with objects whose
whole nature refuses to yield itself to merely

262 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

quantitative expression ; and what Mr. Bosanquet
calls "the very travail of the mind'' begins, namely,
" the enquiry into actual and material conditions
or connections." And the purely mathematical
element in this enquiry, just in so far as it fails
to grasp the actual nature of the objects, ceases to
have value as inference. For, in truth, mathematical
proofs come in ab extra in order to verify, by acces-
sory and contingent considerations, inferences that
have been already made ; and because they come in
ab extra, and do not issue from anything deeper
than the quantitative aspect of the objects, the
demonstration they yield is incomplete. As Lotze
himself has shown, all that proportion between
changes in different subjects establishes is the
existence of a constant relation, or rather, a strong
presumption that there is a common law which
binds them. That is to say, failing actually to
discover in what way one form of energy, — say
mechanical energy, passes into another form, — say
the energy of heat, and knowing only that energy
disappears in one form and that it reappears
in another, the physicist concludes, after he has
convinced himself by the exclusion of all other
possible sources of energy in the second case, that
the same energy has persisted through the change
of form. The inference is in no wise based upon
mathematical considerations, but upon the material
premises ; and into these premises the investigator
throws all the wealth of his previously acquired

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 263

knowledge of nature. And the more discriminative
his knowledge, or the more systematic, or the greater
the degree in which he is able to focus the light
of the whole world upon the problem in hand, the
greater his success in developing the indefinite
system which is in the datum, into an explicit
system of necessarily relative elements. It is con-
sideration of the material that enables him to
predict, and to extend his universal law over cases
not yet observed ; and, just in so far as the
material, or data from which he starts, is already
recognized as connected by real relations to his
conception of the physical world as an orderly
totality, or, in other words, just in so far as his
world enters into his datum, the progress of his
inference is valid. Mathematical calculation is not,
even in physical matters, of the essence of the
inferential process. For instance, even in the case
where the astronomer infers the existence of a
planet in a certain quarter of the heavens from
the disturbances observed in the path of another
body, calculation is only an instrument, although
a most powerful one, in the hands of the astron-
omical system which is presupposed, and apart
from which it would be powerless. The inference
really springs from the complex, material con-
siderations of objects acting upon each other by
gravitation with a force varying according to dis-
tance ; and these are verified, not by mathematics,
but by the constancj- with which they hold in every

264 I^H^ PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

fresh application. The inference is guaranteed by
the cogency of the whole system which is em-
ployed in making it, that is to say, by all the
relevant material considerations which the astron-
omer is able to adduce. The aberrations in the
path of the planet force him to choose between
his whole astronomical system, and the truth of
the aberrations he has observed. The exception
threatens the whole body of his science, while his
reduction of the exception into a new example of
the general law corroborates the hypothesis on
which the whole science rested. The cogency of
the mathematical element in the argument, as
contrasted with that which springs from material
considerations, is only due to its comparative sim-
plicity. We can analyze a mathematical datum
into its contents in such a way as to shut out
doubt, because the identity of the sum and the
whole series of its parts are plain ; but to throw all
the emphasis of proof upon quantitative equality
is to regard science as tending towards an abstract
construction of the universe, and to ignore the
fact that its triumphs are marked by its articu-
lation of nature into a more and more concrete
system.

As we leave the sphere of Physics, which is
able to make so powerful a corroborative use of
quantitative measurement, to those spheres in
which life and intelligence complicate our prob-
lem, such measurement not only becomes less

SYLLOGISTIC TO SYSTEMATIC INFERENCE 265

available but less valid. The validity of mathe-
matical reasoning as applied to the physical uni-
verse is complete only where we deal with the
abstraction of quantity, and it becomes more and
more untrustworthy in its results the more con-
crete the material on which it is employed. To
count all men as one, and no man as more than
one, was a valuable ideal for an age where the
equality of man had ceased to be an effective
principle in social and political matters ; but to
raise the consideration of mathematical equality
into a dominant principle which should override
all other considerations, would render the con-
ception of social or political organization im-
possible ; and any inferences based upon such a
hypothesis would be falsified by every private and
public action. To make valid inferences regarding
a state or community we must know it, and to-
wards such knowledge the computation of the
units that compose it would go but a very little
way. Differences in qualities, so far from pre-
scribing the limit of inference, are its very essence.
They bar all progress in reasoning only if we
presuppose that the aim of reasoning is to find
pure identity, and that thought is formal. It is true
that differences in quality present us with a prob-
lem ; but they present us with a problem only
because they present us also with an indefinite
unity which demands articulation. It is scarcely
too much to say that the main steps which science

266 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

takes in its interpretation of nature are due to
exceptions, that is, to differences which begin with
challenging the ordering law. By further know-
ledge of these the law is modified and re-inter-
preted through the modification, the light of the
exception being reflected into the system. And
yet, on the other hand, the exception itself would
not have the requisite power to compel recon-
struction if it had not systematic knowledge be-
hind it. In other words, the bare particular is as
impotent for inference and as valueless for reason
as the bare universal. But no qualities of objects are
mere differences : their resistance to a law derives
all its power from their affinity to it. In a word,
they must be relevant to the system which they
threaten. Hence every effective exception is a
new aspect of the unity, and all genuine differ-
ences bind ; just as every universal is eff"ective
and combines by necessary law only in the degree
in which it reveals itself as concrete.

Inference, therefore, is progress from system to
system ; and it would arrive at necessity only
when all the manifold data of experience reveal
themselves as manifestations of a single principle
which lives in the deepest differences. Up to that
point, which we can never reach, scientific systems,
including mathematics itself, will remain hypo-
thetical, and the truths they contain will rest
upon unverified assumptions. But as that point
is approached, every material datum whose nature

5 YLL O CIS TIC TO S YS TEMA TIC INFERENCE 267

is exposed b\- anah'sis, and every general law
whose synthetic power is shown in its extended
application, more or less corroborate previously
acquired knowledge, and bring it nearer to the
ideal. The true history of thought, and the true
science of its laws and operations, will follow step
by step the evolution of its material into a system-
atic world of necessarily related objects.

But such a view of thought is impossible to a
theory which has staked its destiny on the pre-
supposition of its form.al nature, and whose onh'
result is, on the one side, to make any inferential
movement of thought unintelligible, and, on the
other, to hand over the whole world of science
and philosophy to the empiricism which system-
atizes " as best it can." That Lotze's view of
thought renders all its processes nugatory, and that
it leads him to attribute all the processes that are
effective in the growth of knowledge to sense,
perception, and faith, and thereby to consequences
whose sceptical nature is concealed only by their
dogmatism, will become more evident as we discuss
the general considerations which follow Lotze's
analysis of the thinking processes of conception
judgment, and reasoning.

268

CHAPTER VII

THE SUBJECTIVE WORLD OF IDEAS AND THE
SUBJECTIVE PROCESSES OF THOUGHT

T OTZE ends both the first and the third book
of his Logic with a sympathetic reference to
Idealism. In the former he admits that in the
Speculative form of thought, " if we could give
that form to the whole material of thought, our
mind would find all its demands satisfied ; " ^ and
in the latter he says, " I will at least close with
the avowal that I hold that much reviled ideal of
speculative intuition to be the supreme and not
wholly unattainable goal of science."- His quarrel
is not with the idealistic view of the ideal of
knowledge, but with the doctrine that the ideal is
attainable by thought. He does not so much
desire to establish another view of the world, as
to prove that the truth is attainable by other
means than those of the discursive understanding
with which he identifies thought.

^ Logic, S 151. -Ibid., § 365.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 269.

We have seen what extreme difficulties meet
him in the attempt to confine thought to the
formal activity of combining externally given
contents : how formal thought, at each step of
advancing knowledge, showed itself more and more
inadequate to the demands that were made upon
it ; how the apparent transitions from one form to
another, from Conception to Judgment, from Judg-
ment to Reasoning — nay, from each of the subsidiary
forms of these latter to the higher one — proved to
be unintelligible, the higher being only apparently
higher than the preceding form ; we have seen, in
other words, how thought lapses back, in Lotze's
hands, into mere tautology, each of the forms of
reasoning, judgment, and conception failing in turn
to break its fall. But none of these difficulties
roused Lotze to reconsider his fundamental pre-
supposition that thought is a formal, combining
function. On the contrary, while the method of
his procedure allowed a certain doubt to remain
as to whether thought might not after all be
constructive and systematic ; while thought seemed
in conceiving to find its laws in its materials, in
judging to find the contents of experience to be
systematically and inwardly combined by a law
of sufficient reason, we are explicitly told at the
end of the process that "the universal laws are pro-
duced by thought from itself alone." That is to
say, it does not reveal these laws within, but ex-
ternally superimposes them upon, the contents of

270

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

experience. And the result is, of course, that these
universals, being the products of thought, are arti-
ficial and subjective, and not to be taken as objective
and constitutive of the facts which they serve to
explain. Here Lotze definitely asserts that it is
this confusion between the necessary forms of
thought and objective principles of unity which
constitutes the fundamental error of Idealism.
Pushed himself to the very verge of Idealism by
the facts, which he acknowledges in no stinted
fashion, that knowledge grows in concreteness, and
that its ideal would be the recognition of a single
self-articulating principle, he is drawn back from
the precipice by the presupposition that thought
must be formal, and that its laws must be only
principles of arrangement without any content of
their own. Not that he wishes to deny that such
an objective principle exists, nor even that it is
possible for us to know it, at least in part ; but
what he insists upon is that we cannot know it
by means of thought. Thought, which is a faculty
of pure forms, can yield no material knowledge ;
and Hegel had no right to convert a merely logical
conception, although it is necessary for us in arrang-
ing the material of knowledge, into an objective
principle of reality. The ideal system ought to be
for thought, but what " ought to be " for thought
must not be changed into the actual existence of
direct experience. ^

' See Logic ^ § 151.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 27 1

From this it follows that the question of the
value of the whole philosophic endeavour of Lotze
is concentrated into this single problem : Is thought
formal? In the last chapter I tried to show that
if it is, it is tautological, and entirely incapable of
performing the only function attributed to it by
Lotze, namely, that of combining the data of ex-
perience. All its universals proved empty and
powerless; they could not combine what was given
as different, nor convert the contingent coincidences
of experience into a necessarily coherent system.
But there are reasons which Lotze adduces in favour
of his invincible conviction that thought is a faculty
of pure forms, and in no sense constitutive, that
still remain to be examined. These reasons are
given by Lotze, and with uncommon dialectical
power, in the Third Book of his Logic.

Side by side with the statement that the specula-
tive or idealistic form would satisfy all the demands
of thought, Lotze places another, namely, that "the
condition under which human thought is placed
may be altogether inadequate to achieve the specu-
lative ideal in more than a few instances, perhaps
even in one." ^ By that condition he means the
eccentric position, "somewhere in the extreme rami-
fications of reality," to which we have already
alluded, and which prevents human thought from
immediately grasping its material and "penetrating
it with its presence." Thought, in order to obtain
^ Lo_^ic, §151.

2/2

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

a systematic view of the world, and avoid a present-
ation of it which is out of focus, must approach
its task in a mediate fashion by means of relations,
producing these relations out of itself. These re-
lations are not part of the reality, nor a part of
the explanation of reality, but vieans towards
explanation — paths to the mountain top, scaffolding
to the building, as the reader will remember.
Hence, Lotze's task of justifying this view is tanta-
mount to the task of proving that the products of
thought are artificial, and that its process concerns
it alone, without any participation in them by the
experience and reality which they are employed to
explain. He has to prove that thoughts are not
things, and that the principles of our thought do
not " penetrate things with their presence."

It might be considered obvious at once that
thoughts are not things. Common sense, no less
than philosophy, revolts against the immediate
identification of the world with the representation of
it made by thought. Nor is there any doubt that
Idealism, if it is to be regarded as an endeavour
to evaporate the real world into empty and unsub-
stantial products of the activity of our intelligence,
has either an inveterate prejudice or an invincible
truth arrayed against it. It seems too evident to
need demonstration that the world of ideas is not
the world of things. I would go so far as to state
unconditionally that it does not matter whether
such ideas are adequate or inadequate, true or false,

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 273

held by man or by some superior intelligence, they
are in no case the things which they represent. It is
inconsistent with the possibility of knowledge that
it should be the reality which it represents ; know-
ledge is incompatible alike with sinking the real
in the ideal, and the ideal in the real. Absolute
scepticism, the paralysis of all intelligence, follows
alike the complete and indistinguishable identifica-
tion, and the complete separation of the real and
the ideal. And it is most important that we should
keep botJi of these collateral truths steadily before
our minds. The philosophy of Hegel and the
philosophy of Lotze may be regarded as deriving
one of their fundamental distinctions from the fact
that they ward against the same scepticism upon
different sides. Hegel, as against his predecessors,
opposes mainly the tendency so to separate the
real and the ideal as to obscure or annul the
principle which reveals itself in both of them ;
Lotze directs his main attack against what he
conceived to be their immediate identification by
Hegel. And it is this which, in my opinion, makes
him so valuable as an expounder of Idealism, and
helps us to know more clearly than Hegel's imme-
diate successors what he meant by the principle of
thought which he identified with the principle of
all reality. ^

^ It is no part of my present endeavour to expound or defend
Hegel's view, or to endeavour to show that Hegel's thought was
not thoughts as Lotze believed, and that in pronouncing the

274 ^^^ PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

The first part of the task of Lotze consists then
in proving that the real and the ideal are not
identical ; the second, in proving that while not
identical they are still not separate. In performing
the first part of his task he endeavours to show
(i) that ideas are not things, and (2) that they
are not even like to, or images of, things; in
performing his second he tries to show that ideas
are valid of things, and that their validity while
real does not exist as an additional element over
and above the objects and connections concerning
which we have valid knowledge.

I do not think it is necessary to say much of
Lotze's attempt to prove the first of these points.^
It seems to come to him as an immediate convic-
tion, superior to the need of proof, that things do
not pass into thoughts. Indeed, the opposite view,
that Ave know not ideas but things seems to him
to be entirely meaningless. It is a "fallacy" to
think " that the conception of a knowledge which
apprehends things not as they are known but as
they are, means anything intelligible at all." - But,
while the very immediacy of the conviction that
the only objects on which thought can be engaged
are ideas, or that thought is inevitably confined

principle of reality to be spiritual, he did not regard it as the
product of any intelligence in the sense of an idea, or a world
of ideas.

^ See above, chap. ii.

-Logic, § 311. See also §§ 312, 313, and so on.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 275

within the circle of its own ideal contents, stands
in the way of direct proof, he finds it indirectly
proved by scepticism, which he subjects to a most
interesting analysis.^ Scepticism, he thinks, derives
all its vitality from its attempt to travel beyond
the boundaries of the sphere of ideas, so as to com-
pare knowledge as a whole with some presumed
reality that exists beyond its boundary. It does
this in two ways, by conceiving and then refuting
a world of real objects which is either (i) identical
with, or {2) similar to the world of ideas. But
once it is seen that no such world of real objects
is predicable without contradiction, scepticism loses
its only foothold. In other w^ords, its condem-
nation of ideas for not being identical with, or
images of, things, falls to the ground as soon as
it is recognized that it is no part of the function
of ideas either to be or to image things, and that
we have no possible means of apprehending the
things beyond knowledge by reference to which
we may condemn it. The criterion of knowledge
is not an " assumed external world of the Real
which comes in here between our ideas as the
standard by which their truth is to be measured ;
the standard is always the conception of which
we cannot get rid, of what such a world must be
if it does exist, is always, that is to say, a thought
in our minds."- The criterion of thought is its own
content, or that which is of the same nature as its
^ See Logic, Book ill., chap. i. -Logic, § 306.

276 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

present content. We condemn knowledge by our
conception of fuller knowledge, not by that which is
not, and cannot possibly be, knowledge. "A scepti-
cism which indulges the apprehension that every-
thing may be in reality quite different from what
it necessarily appears, sets out with a self-contra-
diction, because it silently takes for granted the
possibility of an apprehension which does not
apprehend things but is itself things, and then
goes on to question whether this impossible per-
fection is allotted to our intelligence." ^ And it
is evident that the same contradiction is involved
in asserting the similarity of ideas and things.
Here, also, what is defined as beyond knowledge
is taken to be known. And besides, the slightest
examination of the ideas of "imaging" and "copy-
ing," which are so freely used in this connection,
will show that they are mere metaphors, entirely
inapplicable to the matter in hand. The rhind is
not a mirror, ideas are not pictures ; even if the
mind were a mirror, and if the external world
reflected itself upon the mirror, the presence of
the picture and the recognition of it as present
are entirely different things. " The apprehending
consciousness is no resisting surface, curved or plain,
smooth or rough, nor would it gain anything by
reflecting rays no matter in what direction ; it is
in itself and its own co-ordinating unity, which
is not a space and not a surface, but an activity,
'^ Logic, § 309.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 277

that it has to combine the separate ideas excited
in it into the perception of a spatial arrangement,
which perception again is not itself an order in
space, but only the idea of that order." ^ In a
word, the crude idea of similarity is sufficiently
refuted by the equally crude distinction between
spaceless objects of thought and a spatial world
of real objects. There is no need to follow this
further. As against the scepticism which comes
from the immediate identification of things and
thoughts, or their mediate identification through the
conception of their similarity, Lotze guards by con-
fining mind entirely to its own contents, and re-
pudiating altogether a world of objects beyond
the confines of knowledge. Truth " belongs to the
world of our ideas in itself, without regard to its
agreement with an assumed reality of things out-
side its borders." -

But it may well seem that in his attempt to
destroy the basis of scepticism, that is to say, in
insisting that mind is absolutely confined to ideas
— "that this varied world of ideas within us, it
matters not where they may have come from,
forms the sole material directly given to us, from
which alone our knowledge can start," ^ — Lotze
has conceded all that the sceptic could desire.
That is to say, the sceptic does not deny that we
know, or have, ideas ; what he denies is, that that
knowledge, since it is neither identical with nor
^ Logic, § 327. ~ Ibid., § 313. '■'Ibid., % 306.

278 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

similar to its objects, is true. By cutting away the
ground from the sceptic, Lotze seems to have also
cut it away from himself. If the sceptic cannot
prove that knowledge is false, it might appear
that Lotze cannot prove that it is true ; in fact,,
unless we can compare ideas with the realities
which they mean, both truth and error would seem
to be equally impossible. There is no knowledge
because there are no knowable objects except
ideas. Lotze, in endeavouring to avoid sinking
thoughts in things, may seem to have fallen into
the equally grave error of abolishing things in
favour of thoughts.

But Lotze does not admit this. He draws a dis-
tinction instead. For it is one thing to assert that
we cannot know real objects by means of thought;
it is quite another to say that we cannot find by
other means that they exist. And again, it is one
thing to say that ideas cannot be their objects, or
that ideas cannot be images of their objects, but it
is another to say that they cannot be valid of
objects. Although, as we have seen, " it is not a
necessity of thought that thought itself should be
possible,"^ it is still conceivable that there may be
some other necessity why thought should be, and
why its contents should reveal the true nature of
the world of facts. We cannot prove that things
are from the idea of them, or pass from necessity in
thought to necessity in fact, or actuality ; neverthe-
^ Logic, § 346.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 279

less it may be possible to start from the actuality
of some fact, and proceed therefrom to the validity
of knowledge. In any case, Lotze will not willingly
permit any doubt to remain as to the complete
subjectivity of all knowledge, human and other ;
for "this is no prejudicial lot of the human spirit,
but must recur in every being which stands in
relation to anything beyond it." ^ Nor will he
admit that the subjectivity of knowledge implies
that it is untrustworthy. On the contrary "This
universal subjectivity, belonging to all knowledge,
can settle nothing as to its truth or untruth."
Whether our knowledge does or does not corre-
spond to the presumed outer world of real objects,
we cannot by means of thought say. We can-
not compare our knowledge to any such objects,
seeing that we know only ideas, and we cannot
pass judgment upon our knowledge without there-
by employing principles whose validity is being
questioned. Thought may construct its system of
ideas, making it all compact of invariable con-
nections, and conclusions following necessarily from
data; so that thought, starting from any datum
and going in any direction by " the most round-
about tracks," would still be led to the certain dis-
covery of the result it requires. Nevertheless the
whole system would hang in the air. All that
thought can determine by its laws is that a thing
if it exists must be identical with itself, and that if
^ Metaphysics^ § 94.

28o THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

a certain condition exists, certain consequences will
follow; that is to say, the whole system of thought
connections is based upon a hypothesis which thought
itself cannot verify. " To no single constituent b
of the ideal world can thought ascribe, over and
above the eternal validity which within that world
belongs to it, a necessity of realization in the order
of events in time." ^ One matter of fact, one " pin-
point rock" of reality might serve to actualize the
whole system of necessarily related thoughts. " If
only this reality belongs as a matter of fact to a
second such element a, with which b stands in
necessary connection, it can then pass over to b
also." - But thought can furnish no such point.
There is a great gulf fixed between the world of
ideas and that of reality, so that no unsubstantial
thought, no shade that wanders in that realm, which
is valid without existing, can take upon itself the
body of actuality, and be.

But in this extremity Lotze finds help in another
quarter. Where thought fails, perception, or experi-
ence, or intuition, on the one side, and feeling on
the other, succeeds. While all our knowledge is
hypothetical as respects thought, " it strikes in at a
particular point in a reality which it finds, as a
matter of fact, given to it, in order to deduce from
this real premiss, as themselves real, the conse-
quences which attached to the thought premiss as
necessary." " This " matter of fact," this " real pre-
1 Logic, § 348. - Ibid. ^ Ibid.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 281

miss," must not be confused with anything that
thought may, in its own right, endeavour to repre-
sent as incontrovertible and necessary, although
''within the world of ideas itself there are fixed
points, primary certainties, starting from which we
may be enabled to bring the rest of the shifting
multitude of our ideas into something like orderly
connection."^ In all our knowledge "we start from
some truth which operates upon the mixture of our
thoughts, which is submitted to the test like a fer-
menting matter, assimilating that which is akin to
it, and rejecting that which is alien."- But even
these fixed points and primary certainties are only-
ideas, and the fermentation will only issue in a
consistent system of mere thoughts. The things,
the realities to- which they refer, are still beyond
reach. Indeed, thought being a process of media-
tion, always comprehending one fact only by
reference to another, can, strictly speaking, yield no
fixed point, or primary certainty, or matter of fact.
And yet, "on the possibility of an immediate know-
ledge of some universal truth all certain belief
depends." ^ Whence, then, can we derive this
immediate knowledge } The answer which Lotze
gives is analogous to that which we have already
discussed in connection with the relation of thought
and its preliminary processes. When he contem-
plates the mediate and formal character of thought,
he is driven to seek for the fixed certainties in
^ Logic, § 209. - Ibid., § 322. ^ Ibid., § 356.

282 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

" experience," in the sense of direct perception.
" Facts of perception," he says, " we acknowledge
without question ; our misgivings begin with the
interpretations of those facts by discursive thought,
more especially when we consider the protracted
and intricate webs of ideas which thought spins in
abstraction from the facts of sense, yet always with
the expectation of reaching a final result which
perception will confirm."^ From this point of view
he examines the sure truths which are yielded by
Mathematics and by Natural Science, and finds
that they are all dependent upon direct perception.
In the end everything "is given to thought and
nothing by thought." It depends entirely upon
" the grace of facts." " Neither the idea of quan-
tity as such, nor the more defined conception of
its capability of being summed, nor finally any one
arithmetical proposition, ever enters into our con-
sciousness without being occasioned, and the occasion
can always be traced in the last resort to an
external stimulus." - It is not " the bare logical
principle of identity," nor, indeed, any other logical
principle or law of thought, " but the perception of
quantity, . . . which at once guarantees the truth
of arithmetical reasoning, and is the source of its
fruitfulness."^ As he himself admits, he has to
" invoke the aid of Perceptions to supply both
subject, predicate, and copula of the judgment in
which we express the a priori principles, from
1 Logic, § 334. 2 /^/^_^ § 3.3, 3 /^/^.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 2S3

which we proceed to extend knowledge and dis-
cover the laws of nature." He is obliged by his
view of thought, as dependent for each of its
activities upon external stimuli, to find everything
in experience. And the difference between him
and the empiricists, whom he criticises, amounts
simply to this, "that to him, principles presented
as truths are valid always, whereas, in the view of
empirical philosophy, each particular apprehension
of them must in consistency be regarded as a
psychical fact and nothing more, as to which there
is no certainty whether it will recur in a similar
case or not." ^

When, however, he turns to the examination of
experience, he finds that, apart from thought, it can
yield nothing whatsoever. " Without the assump-
tion of the unconditional validity of some absolutely
certain principles not drawn from experience, the
very deliverances of experience itself could be no one
more probable than another." "- Perception, in the
ordinary sense of the term, is penetrated through
and through by thought. We require thought, as
he shows, even to recognize that a thing is identical
with itself In fact, the criticism of empiricism on
the one hand, and of a pure a priori procedure
of thought on the other, have both so told upon
Lotze that he is able to attribute certain knowledge
to neither of them. Thought can yield only uni-
versals, which are not facts ; pure perception can
^See Logic, § 355. 'Logic, § 356.

284 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

yield only particulars, if the term is applicable, or
bare stimuli, and not knowledge.

In this difficulty he has recourse to " Intuition','
which has both the immediacy of direct experi-
ence and the universality and necessity of thought.
What, then, is " Intuition " t Lotze answers that
it is a form of knowing in which there is "no sort
of procedure consisting of the connecting of various
single acts, whereas there is one in tlie case of
thought." Intuition is therefore indescribable, its
parts or elements cannot be set side by side. " The
attitude of Intuition towards its content is that of
passive receptivity, and its work is done so com-
pletely at a single stroke, that no steps or stages
in it can be distinguished or could be described.
This must not be misunderstood." ^ There may be,
and indeed, there must be, steps which lead up to
this intuitive knowledge. " When geometrical in-
tuition teaches us that two straight lines intersect-
ing each other can only have one point common to
both, there does undoubtedly take place, regarding
the act as a psychical event, a certain succession
of ideas. We might explain how we first think
each of the two straight lines in itself, then place
them each in the same plane, make them from a
parallel position converge, follow each to the point
of section and then beyond it ; . . . but this is
not the geometrical intuition itself; so far we have
only brought all the different points which go to
1 Logic, § 357.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 285

make up the relation in question, and now intuition
pronounces on these points of relation, as by a
single instanta7ieous revelatioji." ^ Analysis of the
act of intuition itself is impossible. It is "absolutely
immediate apprehension." It grasps the many in
one at a single stroke ; it is a synthesis without
process ; it sees the unity in difference, and escapes
at once the bare universality of thought and the
pure particularity of sense, yielding truths which
are self-evident, shining in their own pure light.
We cannot prove its deliverances to be logically
necessary, it is true ; for logical necessity can only
come through discursive processes, which should lay
out the elements in the intuitive truth one by one,
making them dependent on each other. But, on
the other hand, they have an aesthetic necessity,
and will " accordingly find the touchstone of their
validity no longer in the unthinkableness, but in
the plain absurdity of their contradictories." - Once
they are recognized, these truths are immediately
felt to be true. " Each one is its own evidence,
and stands in no need of support from others."
The characteristic of the self-evident truths given
by intuition is that " by their clearness and strength
they force themselves upon consciousness, and at
once claim recognition without constraining it by
any process of proof." ^ And " clearness and
strength " are ultimately " their sole credentials."
No doubt it may be urged that false knowledge
''Logic, § 357. -Ibid., § 364. "^ Ibid., § 356.

286 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

often appears to be self-evident. " That state of
repose and peaceful equilibrium of the mind, in
which the self-evidence of knowledge, regarded as a
psychical fact, consists in the last resort, may also
be produced by conjunctions of ideas of by no
means universal validity." ^ But there are logical
rules, says Lotze, " through which we seek to free
ourselves from these illusions." And in any case
the false application of a test does not destroy its
worth, and there can be no other ultimate test of
truth, except that it constrains belief. He who
denies the self-evident cannot be convinced of any-
thing, and gives himself up to disputation for
disputation's sake. Here, therefore, in the immedi-
ate deliverances of intuition, we have the fixed
points and ultimate certainties on which all the
world of thought ultimately depends, and from
which it derives its validity. Intuition gives what
thought could never itself reach, and converts the
hypothetical knowledge of a possible world into the
immediate and direct experience of reality.

What then is the value of this attempt to meet
the sceptical denial of a world of objects corre-
sponding to the world of ideas to which, as Lotze
never doubts, the thought of man is inevitably con-
fined } To answer this question it will be sufiicient
if we examine Lotze's ultimate resource, namely,
intuition. For although there are many expressions
which would lead us to regard him as appealing to
'^ Logic, § 356.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 287

sensuous perception for deliverance from the sub-
jectivity of ideas, he is, on the other hand, con-
vinced that mere empirical perception cannot yield
either certain or general truths, and sometimes, that
it is not possible without thought. We should, by
examining his view of thought and of perception, be
condemned once more to watch the futile process
of first referring all things to sense, and then all
things to thought, in the vain attempt to bring
together what are presupposed to be mutually ex-
clusive. We have shown already that if sense is a
pure manifold and thought is purely formal, their
combined activity in the production of knowledge is
not conceivable. And it is not necessary to insist
further that Lotze, so far from questioning the
validity of his presupposition as to the discreteness
of the material and the formal character of the laws
of thought, makes it his main endeavour to account
for knowledge upon these premises, in opposition
to the Hegelian view that thought is a constitutive
and concrete reality. ^

There remains for us, therefore, to examine briefly
the intuitive form of knowing, which, on Lotze's
view, yields self-evident truths. Now, there is no
doubt that a self-evident truth must be taken as
valid, or that it constrains belief and shuts out all
possible doubt. But, as Lotze admits, there is a
difficulty in recognizing what truths are self-evident,
and what truths or illusions have only a spurious
^ See chap. iii.

288 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

self-evidence. Errors have often seemed to be self-
evident, as, e.g., that the sun moves round the earth,
and they have had the "strength and clearness" to
constrain belief That is to say, they have had all
the marks of " aesthetic necessity," and their denial
has seemed not only contradictory but "absurd."
Lotze, therefore, proposes to subject the presumed
self-evident truths, that is to say, truths which con-
strain conviction by their clearness and strength, to
a logical test. The object of that test, as Lotze
shows us,^ is to separate the contingent and alien
elements in the truth from the essential and neces-
sary. But that is as much as to say that the self-
evident truth is self-evident because it is recognized
as a system of elements which are through and
through rationally coherent ; or, in other words, it
is to make " the sole credential " of self-evidence
consist in the complete revelation by reflective con-
sideration of all the elements which are necessarily
related in the system. The necessity of the truth
would thus spring, not from its immediacy, but
from the fact that thought had completed its
mediating process by revealing the object as a
totality of mutually related parts. And no truth
would be necessary, or self-evident, except that
which is ideally complete, that is to say, except
the whole truth. We are, no doubt, often so con-
vinced by many truths, short of the unattainable
whole of truth, as to call them self-evident : that
^ See Logic, % 356.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 289

two straight lines cannot intersect more than once,
is an example of such self-evident truth. But it
remains self-evident only as long as we are con-
tent, as the mathematician is, to isolate the sphere
of pure quantity and to treat it as a whole, by
assuming a certain view of space. If, instead of
Euclidean space, we conceived a spherical space,
all straight lines would, I suppose, intersect twice.
Genuine self-evidence belongs to no partial truth.
Nothing can be regarded as necessary except the
whole, or, in other words, the actual. The partial
truths which we regard as self-evident are so only
because we treat them for our purposes as if they
were complete systems, or concrete wholes, as in
the case of a geometrical construction ; and even
there the self-evidence is not immediate, but covi-
pleted mediacy.

But Lotze's "credentials" of self-evidence, nameh",
"the strength and clearness which constrains belief,"
rest on the confusion between the aesthetic result
of the recognition of truth and that recognition
itself There is no doubt that a self-evident truth
brings conviction, or constrains belief, nor that
systematic coherence when it is recognized produces
a satisfaction which is well-named " aesthetic." We
find that satisfaction in the contemplation of a
work of art, which impresses us with its harmonious
totality, or in the apprehension of a completed
mathematical proof, or in the conception, so far
as it is possible to us, of a universe as the mani-

290

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

festation of a single principle and the witness to
one presence. The absence of such completeness
on the part of the objects of our thought is, on
the other hand, when once detected a source of
dissatisfaction, which spurs us on to further effort
after knowledge. Nevertheless, this does not justify
us in regarding either the fact that belief is con-
strained, or the fact of being convinced, or the
feeling that accompanies the conviction and the
clear vision, as if it constituted the self-evidence,
or were itself a test of truth. To have the con-
sciousness of being convinced, which is followed
by aesthetic satisfaction, is a very different matter
from recognizing that the conviction is true. We
are convinced immediately whenever any thought
appears to be valid, but the thought cannot be
assumed to be immediately valid because we are
convinced. Yet Lotze seems to be employing the
subjective feeling that follows conviction as if it
were itself a valid ground for that conviction : a
process which is equivalent to asserting that every
conviction must be true simply because we are
convinced. This is to make that feeling or belief
the source both of itself and of the completeness
and self-evidence of the object which generates it.

But, apart from this confusion of an immediate
or subjective fact with clear objective knowledge,
intuition, as described by Lotze, cannot give the
sure standing ground for knowledge, or otherwise
relate mere ideas to objects. Intuition, taken as

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 291

the negation of all process, and as an attitude of
pure recipiency, could guarantee no truth nor yield
any. No doubt the mere setting out of the ele-
ments of a truth one by one ivitJiont combining
them cannot yield a self-evident truth ; but neither
can the mere act of grasping them together with-
out the comprehension of each of them. Lotze
has seized the last stage in the apprehension of
an object, and isolated it from the antecedent
process which alone makes it possible, and called
it Intuition. And there is no doubt that the in-
tuition of poets, or men of science, baffles all
analytic attempts to set forth its stages one by one.
Nevertheless the intuition never takes place through
ignorance of the elements which are grasped to-
gether, and apart from any process. We do not
step at once from the elements to the whole, as
Lotze implies, but each element has all along been
treated as an element in the whole. In a word,
the universal which is self-evident at the completion
of the process was active throughout the whole
movement of thought, from the first indefinite ap-
prehension of an uncertain something, to the clear
view of the object as a systematic totality carrying
within it its own explanation and evidence.

But, in the next place, even intuitive truth is
only truth, and truth, we are told, is never reality.
Intuition cannot, after all, take us outside the
sphere of ideas, or show that there are any ob-
jects corresponding to thoughts. Even if we admit

292 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

that there are some truths which may be regarded
as ultimate principles, which form " fixed points of
certainty" that give security to the rest of our
ideas and rational coherence to our experience, still,
that they are themselves true of facts cannot be
proved on Lotze's theory. They, too, fall entirely
within the subjective sphere of mere ideas, as
Lotze is constrained to admit. " As regards the
ultimate principles which we follow in this criti-
cism of our thoughts, it is quite true that we are
left with nothing but the confidence of Reason
in itself, or the certainty of belief in the general
truth that there is a meaning in the world, and
that the nature of that reality which includes us
in itself has given our spirit only such necessities
of thought as harmonize with it." ^

Thus Lotze appeals from reason to faith, or
from cognition to the conviction of the goodness
of God. If "thought can never settle the question
whether it alone exists, or whether there is a
world of existence outside it to which it enters
into relation," and if no logical argument can
carry the sceptic from the idea of a thing to the
actuality of it — there is another class of arguments
which we can use. These arguments " pass from
the incontestable value of an object of thought
to the belief in its reality," - And value, as has
already been seen, is given in feeling and not b}'
thought ; so that thought cannot controvert its
^ Metaphysics, % 94. - Logic, § 348.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 293

deliverances. The beliefs in " a supreme good, in
a life beyond the earth, in eternal blessedness, rest
upon an extremely broad, though an unanalyzed
foundation of perception. Such beliefs start from
the fact of this actual world as it is given us in
experience, in which we find certain intolerable
contradictions threatening us if we refuse to ac-
knowledge that these ways in which the structure
of the world extends beyond our perception are
real complements of that which we perceive. . . .
Starting from the reality of a as given in experi-
ence, they connect with it the reality of b which
is not so given, but which appears to follow from
rt as a necessity of thought."^ In this passage
we seem to have a reminiscence of the Kantian
theory of the three ideas of reason which at once
transcend experience and give the only ground of
its possibility. And as knowledge for Kant im-
plied these supreme ideas, so experience for Lotze
demands these objects which have "incontestable
value." Thought postulates these objects, and they
lie beyond its confines, inasmuch as by its pro-
cesses of mediation it can never reach completeness,
or, in other words, attain to an object whose value
lies in itself alone. That is to sa}', thought shows
that if any knowledge is to be valid, these supreme
objects must be. But in Lotze's view there is —
on the ground of thought — no absolute necessity
that thought should have valid results, nor even
^ Logic, § 348.

294

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

that it should be. And consequently thought can-
not go beyond demanding these objects; it cannot
show that its demand must be satisfied. Hence
it cannot guarantee that these objects exist ; for
what is itself contingent cannot supply grounds
for the necessity of anything. In a word, thought
can only ' point out the empty place which these
objects could occupy,' with the advantage of con-
verting its postulates into actual facts. "We have,
therefore, the right to say that all our conclusions
concerning the real world rest upon the immediate
confidence or the faith which we repose in the
universal validity of a certain postulate of thought
which oversteps the limits of the special world of
thought." ^ Thought postulates the Good ; feeling
gives it. For feeling is the source of our conscious-
ness of value ; and the value of objects is their
essence and reality. To feeling we must there-
fore turn for those real objects, by depending from
which our thoughts shall have objective reference
and be true of actual facts.

Thus feeling once more appears as the pivot on
which Lotze's doctrine of knowledge ultimately
turns. It alone pronounces upon the worth of
objects, and therefore witnesses to the existence
of the Good, for which, and by which alone, even
truth exists. It is only the Good which has in
itself the complete right to be, and its reality can-
not be denied without that inward and intolerable
^ Logic, S 349.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 295

self-stultification to which Lotze gives the name of
" absurdity." The Good is therefore the fact which
gives meaning and validity to our thoughts, and
carries us beyond the sphere of mere ideas, which
in themselves would be empty and vain.

Now, I am not concerned at present to discuss
the question whether the Good and the Real may
thus be taken as identical, or whether Metaphysics
is ultimately based upon Ethics. What we have
to determine is whether the Good or the Real
manifests itself to feeling and not to thought ; or,
in other words, whether feeling, and feeling alone,
is the appraising faculty which pronounces upon
the worth of objects. In chap, v., Book II. of the
Alikrokosimts, Lotze asserts that ' to become aware
of the value of objects in terms of pleasure and
pain belongs to feeling, in the same way as to
become aware of changes in the self, which arise
through its varying relations to objects, belongs to
knowledge.' Indeed, herein lies the essential superi-
ority of feeling over thought. For, while thought
can apprehend only varying relations in the self
and in the objects — only the outer order of their
mutual and changing connections, feeling grasps
their reality, their inner worth, their unique and
constitutive individuality.' Feeling appreciates this

' In his Metaphysics^ Lotze tries to prove \h?i\. fih'-sicli-scyn,
or self-feeling is the core and essence of all real objects. For an
object to exist and to be aware of itself in feeling, or to be in
direct emotional relation to itself, are the same thing. Nothing

5 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

! . .

iistitutive worth of objects something after the
^nner in which the "Moral Sense" alone, accord-
ing to the English Moralists, pronounced upon the
goodness or badness of actions. We cannot derive
the deliverances of feeling from any other source,
nor dispute their authority. Feeling, through the
pains and pleasures attached to every activity, guides
us to our good : and it guides us unerringly. For
these pains and pleasures are, in some unknown way,
made to arise in us when the conditions of life
respectively disagree or harmonize with our welfare;
and so far as they lead us, they are to be absolutely
trusted. No doubt " pleasure may arise from the
sweet taste of a poison, and the antidote is bitter " ;
but even in this case " the feeling is in the right,
for in the former case there is momentary harmony
between the impression and the energy of the nerve,
and in the latter an antagonistic disturbance of the
prevailing state. Experience does not retract these
judgments ; it merely gives a warning not to rely
on them exclusively, and teaches us to judge of
the total value of an impression only when we have
struck the balance of the total sum of its con-
sequences, and of the helps or hindrances attached
to them." The testimony of feeling sceins false in
such a case only because it is illegitimately extended

is, except that which feels itself. By feeling itself an object
shuts itself within itself, and has an individuality of its own.
And yet by feeling it participates of the nature of the whole,
which is also feeling : for God is Love.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 297

as if it applied to the welfare of the whole body,
instead of to that particular nerve which is irritated.
In short, if these different feelings did not arise
from our activities — -and in ways which we can
neither regulate nor anticipate — we could have no
conception of the conditions of life which contribute
to our welfare, that is to say, we could not know
the good, nor in what to seek it. Strictly speaking-,
indeed, we should, on Lotze's view, know nothing
whatsoever without feelings ; for, without them, as
already shown, knowledge could neither be inspired
nor tested. Objects would have neither interest
nor worth. We should be passive and inert specta-
tors, simply recognizing what is, indifferent alike to
growth and decay, action and inaction, development
and degradation ; for all would be without purpose,
and therefore without significance.

In order to avoid raising psychological questions
which could not be thoroughly discussed here, it
may be admitted that feeling, whatever its ultimate
relation to thought may be, gives us the conscious-
ness of pleasure and pain. We cannot attribute
this function to any other power without confusion
of terms. It may be admitted also that, on the
whole, pleasure may contain an indication of the
harmony between the self and its environment,
which is the condition of our development, and,
consequently, of the value of objects for us. But
the question which Lotze has raised is, whether
feeling makes these indications apart from and

298 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

without the co-operating activity of thought, so as
to be the only source of our knowledge of the good.
Can a pleasant state of consciousness be at once
identified with the judgment that an object has
positive value, and pain with the judgment that
the object has negative worth ? Is every being
that is pleased ipso facto conscious of objects, of the
relation between objects and the self, and of the
value of that relation ; or, on the other hand, is
there a transition involved in passing from the
feeling of being pained or pleased to the knowledge
of the existence and of the nature of objects?

It seems to me that Lotze's error is exposed by
mereh- asking these questions. If, as he himself has
said, there may be beings who feel and do not
know, then such beings could be pained and pleased
without in the least recognizing that either pain
or pleasure has worth, and without recognizing
that that worth resides in objects, or even that
objects exist at all. They would live entirely
within the world of their own sensations, oblivious
to all else. To be in a certain state of conscious-
ness, and to know by reflection upon that state
that it exists, that it is due to objects, and that
these objects have any character whatsoever, are
surely very different matters. The former is an
immediate fact which means nothing, but is a mere
occurrence in consciousness ; the latter are the result
of the interpreting activity of thought, and quite
beyond the power of feeling to produce — unless we

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 299

endow it with the functions of thought in addition
to its own. Lotze has obliterated, in the case of
feehng, the distinction that exists between all the
facts of consciousness and those of self-conscious-
ness, or even between sensitive existence, experience,
and the interpretative intelligence. From the fact
that reflective thought cannot produce its data, and
that its whole operation consists in making clear
that which already exists, he has concluded that
in this sphere thought does not even interpret ;
and he has attributed to immediate feeling the pro-
cess of interpretation as well as the data. Now,
it seems to me that Lotze has precisely the same
reason for attributing all knowledge except that of
pleasures and pains exclusively to sensation, as he
has to attribute the knowledge of these latter to
feeling. That is to say, on his theory, sensations
of colours, sounds, smells, and so on, occupy the
same position as feelings of pains and pleasures ;
for they are means to knowledge of objects, or
qualities in objects, which his formal thought could
not achieve. Hence, if Lotze has a right to pass
from feelings of being pleased or pained to judg-
ments of the value of objects, and to attribute these
judgments not to thought but to feeling, he has
the same right to pass immediately from sensations
of colour, sound, etc., to judgments regarding their
qualities. Indeed, one of the main criticisms we
endeavoured to enforce was, that Lotze, so long as
he bore in mind his conception of the purely

300 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

formal character of thought, had to attribute to
sense all the activities of thought, so that thought
could only repeat, one by one, the processes which
had already been performed on the lower level.
But in the case of sensation, thought, according to
Lotze, did repeat the processes; and it had to
repeat them on condition of escaping extinction,
and of having no function whatsoever. Had Lotze,
however, passed at once from sensation to judgments
of sense, and been consistent to that view, as he
has passed from feelings of pleasure and pain to
judgments of worth, thought would have been ex-
punged, and Lotze's Sensationalism would have
been explicit and complete.

We may perhaps make Lotze's position clearer
if we put it in another way. We have seen above ^
how Lotze asks, with a certain consciousness of
triumph, whether " love and hate " are concepts,
whether " the living nerve of righteousness," " good
and evil," "blue and sweet" are given in thoughts.
The answer is obvious. They certainly are not, if
thought, as Lotze believes, is a purely discursive
and formal faculty, exercised upon data received
from sense as an external source. But we might
ask in turn whether love and hate, and righteous-
ness, and right and wrong, and blue and sweet,
can be given zvitJioitt thought. The answer is
equally obvious. Sense, by itself, gives as little as
thought does by itself The whole problem lies in
' See chap. ii.

THE SUBJFXTIVITY OF THOUGHT 301

the nature of the relation between these two factors,
No one now can well deny the need of either, and
the difficulty which we have to meet is how to
conceive of both so as to enable them to co-operate
and produce the concrete fact of knowledge, in
which form and content interpenetrate. Lotze tries
to bring them together after defining them as prac-
tically exclusive and independent ; Hegel and his
followers would find a unity beneath their differences,
and regard that unity as best characterized by the
term Thought or Spirit. That is to say, they deny
that thought is formal, and that sense is pure
discreteness ; for they find both in the result, and
would find both in its conditions. Lotze himself
could really deny neither of the factors. Every
possible object, even the datum of sense, neces-
sarily has its ideal side or relation to thought, for
it is a fact of consciousness ; and, on the other
hand, every object is presented to thought. But
he was satisfied with expounding these aspects in
their isolation, now attributing all to sense, now all
to thought, as if the fact were now merely real
and now merely ideal. But in the case of the
feelings of pleasure and pain, the hesitation between
the two inconsistent views disappears ; the ideal
side of pains and pleasures, without which even
they could not be, or be for consciousness, which
is the same thing, is at once attributed to feeling.
He has not analyzed feeling, as sensations had been
analyzed during the progress of modern philoso-

302 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

phical thought, nor laid bare the presence of thought
in its data, and their absolute emptiness and un-
intelligibility apart from thought. Had he done so,
it seems to me that the presence of the relating
activities of the intelligence would have been as
manifest in the judgment of worth as in all other
judgments. It would have been clearly seen that
a process of inference is involved in the transition
from feelings of pleasure and pain to the recogni-
tion of the self in which they exist, of the objects
which incite them, and of the worth which, in rela-
tion to the self, resides in those objects. Inference,
it is true, arrives at nothing except what is given
in the data; but, on the other hand, it reveals what
was given in the data. Hence we must interpret
the data in the light of that which is shown to be
in them, and not the conclusion in the light of the
undeveloped premises. We iind the truest expres-
sion of the reality, not at the beginning but at the
end of the process, where the presence and activity
of thought is undeniable. Feelings yield no objects,
any more than sensations do. Feelings liave value
no doubt, just as colours and sounds have their
qualities ; nevertheless " value " can no more be felt
than quality or quantity, a " footlong " or a " }'ard's
distance" can be felt. Taken by themselves, if,
indeed, we could take them by themselves as
Lotze endeavours to do, pleasures and pains are
transitory phenomena like sensations, standing in
the same need, on Lotze's theory, of being "objecti-

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT -q-

o'-'j

fied," and " posited/' and " reified," by the activity
of thought. Feelings apart from thought are as
blind as sensations apart from thought. But Lotze
has not thoroughly realized the inward mutual
implication of the content and forms of our ex-
perience. In other words, he has not clearly and
consistently recognized that the ideal and the real,
the subjective and objective, are inseparable, and
that as either may be taken as the adjeetive of the
other, neither can be by itself considered as either
substantial or adjectival. Consequently, neither the
phantom of a feeling or sensation that is not for
thought, that is to say, of a reality that is not
ideal, nor the complementary phantom of an ideal
construction that is pure general law without any
specific content, entirely disappears from his theory.
In dealing with the data of sense, he alternates
between Sensationalism and Idealism, and in deal-
ing with feelings he confuses themi, attributing to
feeling the functions of thought besides its own,
— as if these same functions could be valid when
performed by feeling, while invalid when performed
by thought — and even calling feeling in one place
" Reason appreciative of worth."

The Judgment of Value then cannot be attributed
to feeling. Feeling gives pleasures and pains,
and nothing more. It gives us neither objects,
nor the self, nor the worth of objects in relation
to the self. Hence we do not feel the Good, even
if we were to admit that the Good is the hedonistic

304

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

Good, which alone can spring from feelings of
pleasure and pain. It is probable that many
beings feel much pain, and enjoy many pleasant
sensations, who have no conception of objects, for
whom the distinction of the self and the not-self
does not exist, and who have no idea of their
worth ; it is certain that if we eliminate the cog-
nitive processes from our own thought and live en-
tirely under the guidance of feeling, the supreme
ideal of our practical life, and the ultimate goal of
knowledge, could not present itself to our conscious-
ness. Feeling is as little capable of giving us the
reality which shall give content to our otherwise
pale and empty world of ideas as Intuition or
Perception ; and Lotze's last attempt to escape
from the sphere of subjectivity entirely fails, for he
has no other weapon to turn aside the Scepticism
which assumes, as Lotze himself does, that we
know only ideas. Scepticism denies that any ob-
jects knowable to us correspond to these subjective
ideas. Lotze asserts the contrary, but fails to make
good his assertion. To meet scepticism we need
other methods than those which alternate between
sense and thought, and confuse between feeling
and reason.

Before I endeavour to indicate the source of
Lotze's difficulty, and the direction in which its
solution may be sought, I must follow his exposi-
tion of his final reasons for regarding thought as
formal and subjective, the reasons which, I have no

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 305

doubt, seemed to Lotze to have most cogency, and
which at first sight, at least, may appear to be the
most difficult to meet. I refer to his proofs of the
subjectivity of the processes of thought, as distin-
guished from its laws and its products which we
have already discussed. With these our task of
exposition will end.

In defining the scope of the present inquiry I
anticipated its main result by the assertion that
Lotze, in his exposition of the processes of thought,
zvhile denying the pj^esence and activity of the prin-
ciple of reality in mans tJiinking, attributes value
and validity to its results}

This denial which was implicit in his treatment of
the forms of thought, namely. Conception, Judg-
ment, and Reasoning, and in his view of the objects
of thought as a world of mere ideas, is made explicit
in chapter iv., Book III. of his Logic. He there
takes up these thinking processes one by one, with
the special object of showing that reality takes no
part whatsoever in them. "Thought," he says, "as
an activity or movement of the soul, follows laws
of the soul's own nature ; will these laws which it
necessarily follows in the connection of its ideas,
lead to the same result as that which the real
chain of events brings round } Will the outcome
of the process of thought, when at the close of it
we turn once more to the facts, be found in agree-
ment with the actual results which the course of

^ See above, p. 81.
u

306 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

nature has produced ? And if on the whole we
consider it improbable that thought and being,
which it is natural for us to regard as made for
one another, should be entirely divorced, are we
also to suppose that every single step taken by
thought answers to some aspect of that which
actually takes place in the development of the
things thought about ? " ^ Starting from the pre-
supposition which is manifestly true, that thought
in its processes follows its own laws, and from the
presupposition which we shall question, that the
laws of thought are not also the laws of things,
he has to show that the results of thinking are true
of real events and facts and he has to explain how
thought comes to have this validity. In obedience
to its own special laws, thought goes its own way,
creating relations which it does not find, and which
correspond to nothing which actually exists ; and
yet, by means of these relations, it ultimately places
man at a point of view from which he attains
objective truth, or a view of reality as it is. The
steps of the process are purely subjective, they
are merely the means whereby we discursively
move from idea to idea towards the centre " from
the extreme ramifications of reality," or towards
the mountain top, whence the wide prospect of
real existence may reveal itself They are, as we
have already seen, artificial means Avhich we employ
to nullify the distortion and limitation of view
"" Logic, § 334.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 307

which arise from the eccentric position which we,
as distinguished from other possible intelligent
beings, are originally condemned to occupy.

Lotze begins his proof of the pure subjectivity
of the processes of thought with the exposition of
the elementary activity of instituting Comparison
between objects. " To whatever act of thought we
direct our attention, we never find that it consists
in the mere presence of two ideas a and b in the
same Consciousness, but always in what we call
a Relation of one idea to the other. After this
relation has been established it can in its turn be
conceived as a third idea CT That is to say, in
every act of thought we find two facts and one
connection ; and Lotze wishes to prove that the
two facts are given to thought, and that the re-
lation is made by thought, and, as made by thought,
has no reality which corresponds to it. " The idea
of the identity of a and a, which is the result of
comparing them, consists neither in the fact of
their coexistence, nor in their fusion ; it is a new
and essentially single act of the soul, in which the
soul holds the two ideas side by side, and passes
from one to another." ^ That is to say, the act of
comparison leaves the objects exactly where they
were, and the relation which is formed between
them is a mental product due to a mental act and
superimposed upon the facts. If we compare a
and b, red and yellow, we begin from "objects
^ Logic, § 335.

3o8

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

directly given in perception." " The ideas of iden-
tity or difference, the connection C, we obtained as
the result of the act of relation introduced by the
mind." And those ideas of relation are absolutely
necessary to the final comprehension of a and b ;
for we cannot think the terms except in their
relation, nor the relation apart from the terms.
Nevertheless the movement from a \.o a whereby
we discover their identity, or from a to b whereby
we discover their difference — "the movement back-
wards and forwards between them through which
we discovered their relation to each other is merely
a psychical processy^ The things did not pass into
each other, a did not become a, nor did a separate
itself from b when we identified or distinguished
them. The act is purely subjective and so also is
the product of it, namely, the connection between
the facts. Without this act, indeed, "our result
could neither be obtained in the first instance nor
repeated afterwards in memory, but it has never-
theless to be abstracted from the real significance
of the act of thought to which it ministered, as
a scaffolding is withdrawn when the building is
completed."- That is to say, although we cannot
know w^ithout these relations, yet thought makes
these relations purely out of itself; although we
needs must make use of these relations to under-
stand facts, we must not conclude that they are
themselves facts, or hypostasize them into objective
^ Logic, § 336. -Ibid.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 309

entities. Tliere is nothing even like them in the
real world. " How can the propositions ' a is the
same as «,' and ' a is different from b', express an
objective relation, which, as objective, would subsist
independently of our thought, and which thought
could only discover or recognize } . . . What are
we to make of a self-existent distinction bctiveen a
and /; .-* What objective relation can correspond to
this 'between'.'"^ Betweenness, if the reader will
pardon the term, is not a quality of a nor a quality
of b. " Difference being neither the predicate of a
taken by itself nor of b taken by itself, of what is
it the predicate ? " - The relations between them
are manifestly the product of our thought springing
into existence with our mental act, and they have
a merely mental reality, that is to say, they are
valid, but they have not existence ; they enable us
to know things, but they are not qualities of things.
We cannot convert mental operations and mental
products into real qualities of objects ; if we did
so we should fall into all the difficulties disclosed
by ancient philosophy, and be obliged to regard
objects as being in themselves both greater and
smaller, and so on, and to build the mental
scaffolding into the objective edifice.

But if the case stands thus, must we not con-
clude that the results of our thinking are invalid .-*
If we can only know by inventing these relations,
and if these relations are not qualities of any
' Logic^ i 338. - Ibid.

3IO

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

objects, how can our knowledge be true ? Are we
not forced to the conchision, first, that thinking is
a self-deluding process because it establishes unreal
relations between things ; and second, that real things
are, as a matter of fact, quite unrelated, indepen-
dent, isolated, particular ? Lotze answers to the
first question that " such is the constitution of our
soul, and such do we assume that of every other
soul which inwardly resembles ours, that whenever
and by v/homsoever they may be thought, they
must also produce for thought the same relation,
a relation which has its being only in thought and
by means of thought. This relation, therefore, is
independent of the individual thinking subject, and
independent of the several phases of his thought."^
We all think so, and must all think so, and there-
fore all is right. The universality of the process
makes it unimpeachable. Our thoughts possess
objective validity through these processes and
products, and that is all which can possibly be
demanded. The second question presents a graver
difficulty. Lotze meets it by distinguishing be-
tween the relations of ideas to each other in con-
sequence of which they can be valid, and the
relation of things to each other in virtue of which
they exist. The relation of ideas to ideas is a
relation betiveen them, the relation between object
and object is a relation in them. The thought-
relation between a and b " at once separates and
1 Logic, § 338.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 311

brings them together, and is nothing more than
the recollection of an act of thought performable
only by the unity of our consciousness." ^ Thought,
and thought only, has passed to and fro between
them, and the relation is the mind's consciousness
of its own transition. But a real relation cannot
be merely betivecn objects ; in the sphere of reality
both severance and unity are not together possible.
On the contrary, the idea of a relation between real
objects both implies and prohibits the existence of
an interval that separates them ; which is direct
self-contradiction. Hence we must regard that in
the sphere of reality the relation is constitutive of
each of the objects, and that each exists in and
by its connection to the other ; for otherwise they
could not really interact upon each other.- Hence
the relation between objects which thought finds,
is, in the last resource, only an inadequate ex-
pression of the actual relation zvitJiin real objects.
The real relation is something more than the

^ Logic. § 338.

'-' Lotze proceeds in his Metaphysics to show from this that
only the One exists, that is to say, he makes the Unity of
objects constitutive of their differences, and denies the entire
independence of things. But, on the other hand, inasmuch
as relations without related points, a One that is not also
a Many, would be empty and meaningless, he gives to
each object, to each atom, this power of relating itself to
others, and builds up a kind of Monadism. And as this
relation is a relation of each thing to itself, or a feeling,
or a fiir-sich-scyn, feeling or fiir-sich-scyii constitutes every
object.

312

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

thought-relation. In the case of " realities, things,
beings, which we do not create by thought, but
recognize as objects outside thought, the name
relation expresses less than we have to suppose as
really obtaining between the related things."^

An important consequence follows from this last
conception, that the real relation between things
"takes logical shape in the weakened form of a
relation " between ideas. It enables Lotze at the
same time to deny the actual reality of the pro-
ducts of thought, and to deny to thought the
power of creating these relations purel}' out of
itself. Passing on from the abstract relations of
mere identity and mere difference, Lotze proceeds
to examine the attempt which thought makes to
represent identity in difference. This attempt is
exemplified in its simplest form in conceptions ;
for conceptions are unities, or universals, which
contain and connect different elements. Now, a
general conception, Lotze shows, manifestly corre-
sponds to no actual object, nor does the process of
forming it correspond to any actual movement in
the object. " It is commonly admitted as a self-
evident truth, that the class to which a real object
belongs is not itself real ; this individual horse we
see, horse in general is nowhere to be found." -
Nor does the horse itself pass through a process
analogous to that by which our minds form the
conceptions; that is to say, it is not first "animal
1 Logic, i 338. - Ibid., § 339.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 313

in general, then vertebrate in general, mammal in
itself, one-toed animal in general, horse in itself,
black horse in general." The least examination
makes it amply evident that the universals of
thought are not true of any real objects, and that
the process of forming them is simply and purely
a psychical process. And yet thought must, in
obedience to its own laws, perform these actions
and produce these results. Does the difference be-
tween a universal of thought and a really perceived
object, and the apparent independence of the
thinking process of all reality, justify us, then, in
absolutely severing them .' By no means, answ^ers
Lotze. The perceived fact both inspires and guides
the process, although it does not participate in its
sequent stages, nor reveal its own nature in the
results. " We could not so much as bring red and
blue under the general name of colour, did not that
common element exist in them, to our conscious-
ness of which we testify in framing the name ; we
could form no class notions of plants and animals
if the marks of individual plants and animals, and
the modes in which those marks are conjoined, did .
not really possess such points of comparison as
allow us to arrange them under general marks and
forms, and thus, by setting these in the place of
the merely individual, to construct the thought-form
of the class, however impossible it may be to pic-
ture it to the mind." ' Thought has, after all, to
^ Logic, § 339-

314

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

find what it makes. The process of forming; con-
ception is not purely subjective, neither are the
relations which it establishes. "Thus in the fact
that we are able to think a universal, there is un-
doubtedly contained a truth of real and objective
validity ; the contents of the world of ideas, which
thought does not create but finds, do not fall into
mere individual and atomic elements, each one ad-
mitting of no comparison with the other ; but, on
the contrary, resemblances, affinities, and relations
exist between them, in such wise that thought, as
it constructs its universals, and subordinates and co-
ordinates its particulars under them, comes through
these purely formal and subjective operations, to
coincide with the nature of that objective world." ^
We must not forget, however, that these existent
relations which are given to us only correspond to the
thought relations which we make ; the real relations
only serve to incite thought to an activity which
produces mental relations. Both kinds of relations
are real, but with a different kind of reality, as we
have seen. " This Reality, which we desire to
recognize in the general notions which are created
by our thought, is a reality which is wholly dis-
similar to Existence, and which can only consist
in what we have called Validity, or in being
predicable of the Existent." -

This complete dissimilarit}' between them, which
nevertheless admits of that correspondence which
^ Logic, § 339. -//;/>/., S 341-

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 315,

we can onl}' call Validity, may be made still
more evident by the following considerations. In
the first place, the gradual process whereby a con-
cept becomes a more adequate expression of the
actual fact which it strives to represent, without
ever attaining complete success, is totally unlike
the growth of the object itself Concepts gather
concreteness by the external accretion or super-
addition of other concepts ; one independent set
of qualities is superimposed upon another set as
we proceed from the general concept towards the
individual. But "there is no moment in the life of
a plant in which it is merely plant in general, or
conifer in itself, awaiting some subsequent influ-
ences answering to the subsequent logical deter-
minations in our thought to settle the question
what particular tree it is to grow up into." The
concept may be made concrete in any manner
we please. We may proceed from the general
conception animal to any more particular concep-
tion of a special class of animals that happens to
interest us, adding any qualities of animals that
suit our purpose. But the growth of the living and
real object is definitely conditioned from the begin-
ning. It cannot develop into anything. In the
next place, just as the constitution of the logical
notion is arbitrary, so is the relation of logical
notions to each other. Classification, by which we
subordinate one notion to another, "has no real
siernificance in relation to the actual structure and

3i6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

development of thin^js themselves." We may clas-
sify the same things in many ways. And " different
classifications of the same objects conflict owing to
imperfect knowledge and observation, and thus in-
troduce various and diverse ladders of universals
between the highest universals and the objects.
The logical right of thought is incontestable to
start from any point of view it pleases," and to
proceed in any direction. And even if thought
were to hit upon the highest and best conception
under which, as logical consequences, all other
conceptions would find their true place, " this
Logical structure, valuable as it would be for
knowledge, would represent no real structure cor-
responding to it in the object itself" ' Lotze
therefore concludes as follows. " All the processes
which we go through in the framing of conceptions,
in classification, in our logical constructions, are
subjective movements of our thought, and not
processes which take place in things ; but, at the
same time, the nature of these things, of the given
thinkable contents, is so constituted that thought,
by surrendering itself to the logical laws of these
movements of its own, finds itself at the end of
its journey, if pursued in obedience to these laws,
coinciding with the actual course of the things
themselves." - The paths of thought and reality
diverge ; the paths of thought are many and not
one, it may start from any point and proceed
1 See Loi^ic, % 342. - Ibid.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 317

from one member in the system to another in any
way it pleases ; provided always, and only, that it
follows its own laws, it will arrive in the end at
an objective result valid of real objects.

Lotze subjects the forms of Judgment and Infer-
ence to a similar examination, and arrives at similar
conclusions. We need not follow his exposition
any further than is necessary to indicate the special
difficulties which we have to meet if we are still
to maintain that the products of thought are, after
all, not merely subjective, nor attained without the
participation of reality in the thinking process.

The Categorical Judgment is represented by Lotze
as consisting of subject and predicate, given first
in their isolation and then connected by a copula.
For instance, in the judgment, " A triangle is a
threesided figure whose angles taken together are
equal to two right angles," we have first the idea
of the subject, a triangle, then an idea of a figure
whose angles are together equal to two right angles,
and then a copula '^ is" expressing their identity.
But it is evident that a triangle does not first exist,
and then exist in a particular way. The process
of passing from the conception of a triangle to its
characteristics is a purely mental one, and the
triangle itself takes no part whatsoever in it. In
the next place, the Copula in the judgment has
always one character, but the real relations between
actual objects are many and various. " In the
uniform Copula 'is' of the judgment, all objective

3i8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

distinctions in the connection between ^^ and P
are obliterated. They may be related as whole
and part, as a thing to its transient states, or as
cause to effect ; in the form of the judgment they
appear solely as subject and predicate, two terms
which denote merely the relative positions which
the ideas of them assume in the subjective move-
ment of our thought." ^

The pure subjectivity of the Hypothetical Judg-
ment, both as a product and as a process, is still
more evident. In the first place, a genuine or fully
expressed hypothetical judgment always admits of
simple conversion. The judgment, " If B is true
then F is true," means that B and F both fall
under some general notion M, which necessarily
combines them in such a manner that each follows
from the other. If i? contains the whole reason
for F, and for F only and not also for F^ or F'-,
then F contains in the same manner the reason
of B. " We know the consequent from the ante-
cedent, and the antecedent from the consequent."
They are interchangeable, for they have the same
significance ; and thought may make either of them
its starting point, and proceed with complete security
to the other. But real antecedents and consequents,
or causes and effects, are manifestly not thus related.
The actual order of events is not thus reversible.
Hence, in the process of forming these judgments
thought moves free of reality in an ideal region
^ Logic, % 343.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 319

of its own ; the facts and events do not follow its
movements to and fro ; and the relation which
thought establishes, being thus reversible, is quite
unlike anything that obtains between the objective
facts. In the next place, the relation between the
thoughts is quite general and vague : " /^ is in a
general sense conditioned by B ; but this, a mere
abstract relation, is something less than anything
that we obtain in reality between B and F as
things or events." ^ In their case the determining
conditions have a particular character leading to
specific determinations, which are not expressible in
the vague universals of thought.

" Finally, Disjunctive Judgiiicnts do not even
purport to express any reality at all ; the process
of wavering undecided between several mutually
exclusive predicates can answer to no process in
the real world." "^ There are no real facts which
are cither this or that, any more than there are
hypothetical facts, suspended between existence and
non-existence, like the hypothetical ideas which
judgment employs in saying that " if A is, B is."

"A brief consideration of the various forms of
Syllogism leads to similar results." The parts of
the Syllogism have a fixed order of priority ; we
must proceed from the major premiss through
the minor to the conclusion. But this process
belies the truth, if it is taken to be anything more
than psychical. The equality of the angles of an
1 Logic, § 343. - Idid.

320 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

equilateral triangle does not come to be, as a
matter of fact, later in time than the equality of
the sides, when wc prove the former from the
latter. And in a similar way, those principles from
which we proceed in thought to explain the order
of the world, did not really exist before the world,
although we derive the idea of the latter from the
idea of the former : " the reality of the world can-
not be derived from something which is unreal,
and which is yet essential and possessed of a
regulative power." ^ The principles that determine
our thoughts, even if they are valid, do not deter-
mine the actual sequences of facts, nor can we
" subordinate the existent " to them without a
fallacious process of hypostasization, and without
confusing the evolution of meaning with the evolu-
tion of facts.

And as to Induction, " no one fails to see that
the synthesis of particular facts in a general, not
merely a universal, proposition is not the real
ground of the validity of the general proposition,
but only of our apprehension of that validity." -
No one would maintain that the order of the
planetary system came to be when it was dis-
covered by Copernicus, or that the earth became
stratified in a particular manner when the science
of Geology came into existence.

" Still more convincingly does the variety of
forms, which a Proof may assume, witness to the
' Logii., § 344. '^ Ibid.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 321

merely subjective significance of the several infer-
ences of which it is made up. How many different
proofs, direct and indirect, progressive and retro-
gressive, all equally inadequate, may be given for
one and the same proposition ? How many even
in the form of direct progressive argument alone ?"^

" Lastl}-, in regard to the final operations of
thought, with the account of which the doctrine
of pure Logic concluded," that is to say, in regard
to Classification, Explajiatory Theory, and the Dia-
lectical Ideal of T/iought, we found that there, too,
" the proper essence of the thing does not make
its way into our thought; it can only apprehend
under these Forms, but the Forms do not create
it, and do not fully express it." - Process and pro-
duct are subjective only, and reality neither takes
part in the former nor corresponds to the latter.

What, then, in the last resort, are we to conclude
concerning the activity and the results of thinking ?
First, answers Lotze, that " the logical act of think-
ing ... is purely and simply an inner movement
of our own minds, which is made necessary to us
by reason of the constitution of our nature and of
our place in the world " ; and that it can claim only
Subjective Significance. Thought as an activity is,
according to his view, our \vay of moving from
the extreme ramifications towards the centre, or
of clambering to the hill-top, whence the view of
the real world is to be obtained. Being unable to

^ Logic, S 344. ^ Ibid.

322 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

know at once and intuitively, we must use these
indirect methods of relating phenomena, or rather
ideas, to one another, and explaining one by means
of another, in endless regression. But the result
of the activity, " the Thought itself, on the other
hand, in which the process of thinking issues, the
prospect obtained, has Objective Validity." And
it has objective validity because all real thinking
leads to the same result ; the object which in the
end presents itself to the individual " also presents
itself as the self-identical object to the conscious-
ness of others." -^ How then can a process which
is purely subjective, as we have just been told, lead
to a result which is objective .-' Lotze answers that
it is not, after all, purely subjective; there must
be some relation between the thought and the
things on which it is engaged. " Yet, after all,
some such relation there must be, if the Logical
Thought in which they issue is to possess an
Objective Validity which does not belong to the
thinking act which issues in it." They " cannot
stand altogether out of connection." What that
relation or connection is Lotze does not explain.
He only indicates in a figure that thought, with
all its manifold and arbitrary processes of inference,
which start from any point and proceed in any
direction, must always begin from points in the
same " geographical territory, the remaining part
of which is what constitutes the landscape which
^ See Logic, § 345.

THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THOUGHT 323

is commanded from the summit."^ He implies,
what has been elaborated more fully since his time,
that all the processes of thought start from percep-
tions, in which we "come into contact with reality."
Or, as he has striven to show elsewhere, the ac-
tivities of thought are each stimulated by an
appropriate incentive issuing from the region of
real facts. Finally, we are reminded once more
that the Thoughts which we arrive at by means of
these processes, although they are valid, are only
valid; although they are objective, they are not
objects ; although they are real, they are not the
real things which they indicate. " It is out of the
question that this kind of Reality" — i.e., the reality
of " things and events in so far as they exist and
occur in an actual world of their own beyond
thought " — " should move and have its being in the
forms of the Concept, of the Judgment, or of the
Syllogism, which our thought assumes in its own
subjective efforts towards the knowledge of that
reality." '-^ The objectivity of our thoughts consists
merely in the fixity and invariability of their sig-
nificance; but significance is not what is signified.
" The nature of reality is not given in thought,
and thought is not able to find it."

The importance of the issues thus finally raised
by Lotze justifies a careful scrutiny of the argu-
ments we have endeavoured to set forth, and I
shall proceed to examine them in the next chapter.
^ Logic, § 345. - Ibid.

324

CHAPTER VIII

THE PRINXIPLE OF REALITY IN THOUGHT AND
ITS PROCESSES

IN the last chapter I endeavoured to set forth the
arguments advanced by Lotze to prove that
the contents and the processes of thought are sub-
jective. His theory, as was seen, rests upon two
main assumptions, whicli must now be examined.
These are, first, that " it is the varied world of
ideas within us which forms the sole material from
which alone our knowledge can start"; and,
second, "that the act of thinking is purely and
simply an inner movement of our minds." Con-
vinced of the complete and inevitable subjectivity
of the data and products of thought, Lotze sought
to find a foothold in the objective world by means
of other powers of the intellect and heart. Thought
being a mediating faculty was incapable of direct
contact with reality, and could only move from one

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

325

subjective idea to another; but "perception," "ex-
perience," " intuition," or " feeling " seemed to him
to be capable of immediately grasping reality and
of apprehending not only the relations of objects
to one another, but their unity, individuality, and
essence. They stand in need of thought, not
because thought can add anything to what they
present, but because thought can render it more
definite, clear, and articulate ; thought stands in
need of them, because without them it would have
no content whatsoever, no objects to connect, and
no starting point whence to move.

I tried to show that these immediate forms of
knowledge could not thus supply thought with its
necessary data unless they were armed with all the
powers of thought as well as with those which are
peculiar to themselves. Lotze himself was virtually
forced to admit this. He was obliged to regard
sense as yielding universals of its own, and to
make the sensuous consciousness the exact counter-
part of the reflective; he represented perception and
intuition as capable of yielding immediate know-
ledge of universal principles, as well as of objects
in space and time ; and he endowed feeling with
a power to form judgments and to apprehend the
inner worth, or reality of objects, as well as to
be the consciousness of the state of being pleased
or pained. But Lotze's theory, both of thought
and of these other forms of our intelligent life, was
such as to demand their rigid separation. The

326 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

mediate processes of thought and immediate appre-
hension, knowledge of real things and knowledge
of mere ideas, of individual facts and of connecting
relations, are so sharply contrasted by him that it
is entirely unintelligible how they can be attributed
to the same mental functions, whether we call these
feeling, or experience, or perception, or thought.
And, on the other hand, they cannot be shared
between different functions. For, on Lotze's own
showing, if perception, experience, feeling, and in-
tuition exclude thought and its mediate processes,
they can yield no intelligible data whatsoever ; and
even if they did, that is, if they did supply thought
with prepared material, thought could either not
receive it at all, or else, in the very act of receiv-
ing it, would convert it into what is mediate and
purely subjective. And, on the other hand, if these
forms of intellectual apprehension do not exclude
thought, then we must regard them as both
immediate and mediate, as yielding both mere
ideas and realities. But feeling and the im-
mediate forms do not furnish us with knowledge
of reality. Each of the outlets which Lotze offers
us as means to escape from the subjectivity and
mediacy of thoughts, ends in a blind alley; "the
varied world of ideas within us is the sole material
from which knowledge starts," and it is the sole
result of knowledge. We have, as he finally admits,
to fall back in the last resort upon faith. But the
only faith which remains to us must be such as to

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 327

contradict the conclusions to which the theory
points, and itself incapable of all rational justifica-
tion. For although Lotze was undeniably right in
insisting that the contents of thought are subjective,
because they can be given only by thought; yet
if they are subjective only, thought can give no
real knowledge : truth loses that objective reference
to reality which is its essence, and faith becomes
belief in the impossible.

We now turn from the data and products of
thought to its processes. Here also Lotze advances
a half-truth. That thought in thinking follows its
own laws is undeniable : it is a truism. That in
doing so it does not also follow the laws of the
nature of things is a matter on which Lotze's argu-
ments are not convincing. Indeed, as we have
already partly seen, ^ Lotze himself had in a
manner to retract his confident assertion of " the
pure and simple" subjectivity of these processes.
He was obliged to find appropriate "stimuli" for
every one of the elementary activities of thought ;
and in dealing with the higher forms he was obliged
to have recourse to material knowledge, — of the co7t-
dition in the Categorical Judgment, of the prificiple
of distribution in the Disjunctive, of quantity in
Substitutive inference, of empirical data in Ratio
and Proportion, of the inner qualities of objects in
Classification and of a supreme principle of reality
in Scientific and Ideal Explanation. Without this
^ See chaps, iii. and vi.

328 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

guidance of facts, left entirely to itself, thought
could not operate at all, far less operate in such a
manner as to arrive at results which are true of
the actual nature of things and course of events.
In order to make the subjective activities lead to
objective truth, he is obliged to admit that, after
all, the processes of thought " cannot stand altogether
out of connection with reality." But he does not
explain that connection, nor is it explicable on his
theory. He confidently asserts that if we move
along "the spider-webs" of thought-relations from
the '■' extreme ramifications " towards reality, or if we
clamber in any direction and from any starting point
to the hilltop, provided we proceed in accordance
with the laws of thought, we shall obtain the
objective view of the world of real being. But he
offers no justification of his confidence, and does
not explain the possibility of knowing the objective
fact by subjective means. He falls back upon
Faith and metaphor — faith, not directly in reason
itself, but in the Reality which has given us reason,
and would not give us a reason that is deceptive.
And his faith, whether in the validity of knowledge
or in the reliability of reason, is no doubt well
founded ; only, in that case his theory is wrong.
For that which faith believes to be united Lotze's
doctrine separates ; and if the deliverance of faith
that the subjective idea contains a reference to
objective reality is valid, then the diremption of
ideality and reality cannot be justified. Lotze thus

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

329

has recourse to a faith which, instead of anticipating
proof, like a hypothesis in science, and instead of
pointing- the way to reasoned knowledge and ex-
tending the clearly known along its own lines to
a not yet clearly known, contradicts the results to
which his own doctrine inevitably leads. What we
must conclude on Lotze's theory is that thought is
so made that it cannot meet with reality in know-
ledge ; what we are to believe is that they never-
theless do come together. He therefore puts faith
to an illegitimate use, and calls it to convince when
conviction is impossible, except on condition of re-
constituting the theory which demands it. It need
hardly be added that the difficulty which shows
the need of faith arises, on Lotze's view, from a
presumed imperfection or incompleteness in the
human mind, and not from any defect in the
doctrine which he advances,

Lotze suggests in the Mikrokosvius^ "that thought
and being seem to be so connected as that they
both follow the same supreme laws, which laws
are, as regards existence, laws of the being and
becoming of all things and events, and, as regards
thought, laws of a truth which must be taken
account of in every connection of ideas." But this
is only a casual and tentative admission, made in
the presence of the Scepticism which follows from
their complete separation. He will not definitely
assert any ontological relation between the two
•* See Book viii., chap. i.

330

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

elements of knowledge, nor admit the ultimate
identity of the nature of thought and reality. That
would have been Idealism, He rather gives these
laws a double aspect; "as regards existence" they
are one thing, and " as regards thought " they are
another. He gives no hint of the relation of these
aspects ; but, in truth, introduces the dualism of
thought and reality into these supreme laws them-
selves. Whenever Lotze endeavours to explain, or
to show the possibility of the correspondence
between thought and reality, or between the pro-
ducts of reflection and the objects of experience,
he constructs the latter on the model of the results
which have been achieved only by means of the
former. The only difference is that sense is more
concrete, and also less definite, or that thought is
at once more abstract and more systematic, its
relations being explicit. For it is quite evident
that in order to account for the rich variety of
the world of apparent knowledge there must be
attributed either to the data or to the activities of
thought, or to both of them, an adequate com-
plexity. Both sense and thought cannot be bare.
Mere stimulus plus pure form, even if they could
be brought together so as to interact, could not
produce varied knowledge. And inasmuch as the
formality of thought and the mere universality of
its relations must at all costs be maintained, the
whole emphasis of Lotze's theory falls upon the
data which are supplied to it, and upon the processes

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 331

of perception, intuition, or feeling which are pre-
liminary to it. Thought is all but redundant and
supererogator}'.

Now it is evident that Lotze's emphasis upon
the variety and wealth of the given content, and
upon the formal emptiness of thought, implies the
subordination of mind to a foreign material in the
way of Sensationalism. But the term "stimulus"
proves valuable in this extremity. For a stimulus
to knowledge is not knowledge, nor can sensible
elements with all their variety do more than excite
thought into activity. Thus we are left once more
with mere sense-incitements on the one side, and the
bare universals of thought on the other. In order
to mediate between this pure manifold and the
universal forms, Lotze interposes a psychical me-
chanism, or experience, or intuition, which seems to
perform the same function on his theory as the
imagination did on Kant's. But Lotze does not
explain how any mediation is possible between
these extremes of pure difference and pure unity ;
nor does he analyze the mediating activities in
this connection. He rather conceals from himself
the need of analysis by representing the psychical
mechanism as unconscious, and perception, intuition,
and feeling as immediate. Such a dogmatic pro-
cess, however, is manifestly of no philosophical
value. It only removes the problem from the
sphere of thought and its data, to the sphere of
these unconscious and immediate processes. But

332 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

these are necessarily inexplicable, seeing that all
explanation is mediation. And besides, even if
these processes could be explained, the relation
which they establish between sense stimuli and
thought forms could only be mechanical. Indeed,
the mechanical adaptation of the one to the other
would itself be impossible. For even mechanism
implies a unity ivithin the differences, although the
unity implied is more abstract than it is in an
organic existence. But Lotze's antithesis of thought
and stimulus is so hard and strict as to make any
unity inconceivable ; nothing can reconcile a pure
manifold of sense with his purely self-identical
thought. So that, in the last resort, Lotze does
not solve the problem of the relation of thought
and reality, nor reveal a way of escape from the
subjectivity of a knowledge of mere ideas to a
knowledge of objective truth.

In one passage Lotze casually suggests another
view, according to which the reality on which
thought is exercised is related to the truth which
thought reaches, in the way of a self-developing
identity. " The whole series of inter-subordinate
universals- are," he says, " contained not actii but
potentid in the essence of the thing itself." ^ Here
the organic view seems to be substituted for the
mechanical or external view of the relation of
thought and reality. But it is mentioned only
once, so far as I have been able to ascertain, and
^ Logic, § 342.

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

ZZZ

it is mentioned with a " perhaps." Above all, it
runs contrary to the whole trend of Lotze's effort ;
for it involves that thought in its operations finds
only itself, and that the reality on which thought
is engaged receives its fullest expression and
attains its highest form in thought as a spiritual
activity.

We must conclude, therefore, that if there is a
way of showing, either that the subjective activities
can reach objective results, or that, "if we follow
the laws of discursive thought and construct the
intricate w^eb of ideas in abstraction from reality,
the final result will correspond to the actual course
of events," Lotze has not revealed it to us. His
theory, starting from the subjectivity of the con-
tents and the subjectivity of the processes of
thought, leaves us enclosed within a world of pure
ideas without showing how any reality can be
known at all, to say nothing of being known to
correspond to the sphere of ideas. His treatment
both of the results and the processes of thinking
ends with a Scepticism which is concealed by
contradictions and tempered by a faith that cannot
convince.-^

^ The doctrine repeatedly advanced by Lotze that our ideas
can be regarded as objectively valid and that the process of
thought leads to objective results merely because every one,
on account of the constitution of the human soul, must arrive
at the same results, does not seem to me to be worthy of
serious discussion. Error would not cease to be error though
all should commit it. It would, probably, not be recognized

334

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

Now, Lotze's failure to account for the knowledge
of reality is, on his premises, inevitable. Objective
knowledge cannot be elicited from subjective data
by means of subjective processes. Lotze seems to
me to have the merit of making it plain — by an
indirect method — that the only way to reach reality
at the end of the process of thought is to take our
departure from it, and that the only way in which
the activities of thought can produce results which
are true of reality, or indeed any results at all, is
by the co-operation of reality in their production.
Man's mind and the real world must work together
if man is to know ; and, on the other hand, if the
world is to reveal itself to man's thought it must
have ontological affinity to his thinking powers.
To demonstrate this a theory of mind and a
theory of reality fundamentally different from
Lotze's is required ; one which, instead of seeking
a way of connecting given inner states which are
merely subjective with given outer data which are
objective, starts from a unity which reveals itself in
the distinction of the ideal and real, and reveals
itself more and more completely as the knowledge
of man grows. All I can attempt here is to meet
some of the main arguments by which Lotze
sought to show that the world does not help man

as error. That all men do, and that all men must, think in
a subjective manner upon subjective data does not bring us
any nearer objectivity than if only one person thought in this
way.

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 335

to think, or that reality does not participate in the
thinking process.

Lotze bases these arguments on the contrast
between what is presented to thought and what is
effected by thought, and on the contrast between the
respective modes of activity of thought and reahty.
Now, it is evident that this contrast can be insti-
tuted only if both of the terms compared are
presented in knowledge ; both of them, in other
words, must fall within the sphere of experience.
Hence the contrast is not between the world of
thought and the real world, in the sense of a world
out of all relation to our intelligence, of which
Lotze sometimes permits himself to speak ; but
between facts as given in thought and facts as
sensuously perceived, or as " given in experience."
But the first doubt that arises is whether the
phenom.ena of our mental life are thus distinguish-
able, i.e., whether some of them can be attributed
to sensation or perception only, and some to con-
ception, or judgment, or inference only. I need
not dwell upon this recurring difficulty. No doubt
the sensuous and the intelligible elements respec-
tively predominate in the different phenomena of
our mental life, and the ordinary logical distinction
between perception and conception is both useful
and valid. But it cannot be m.ade absolute ; the
perceptive element cannot be eliminated from con-
ception, nor the conceptual from perception. There
is no intelligible datum which is either purely

336 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

particular or purely universal, which is either
unrelated stimulus or bare form. Lotze himself
does not deny the Kantian dictum that perception
without conception is blind, and conception without
perception, empty. Nevertheless his contrast be-
tween the facts given to thought and the products
effected by thought loses all its meaning unless
they are thus isolated and mutually exclusive. For
he speaks of the data a and a, which thought
pronounces to be identical, and a and b which
thought pronounces to be different, as if they were
given one by one prior to any relation between
them. Mind comes in afterwards and creates these
connections. It passes to and fro between the
given facts, spinning its spider-webs of relations ;
for these relations are nothing but memories of its
own transitions, the consciousness of the unity of
itself in its movement, and have no objective exist-
ence as connections between the facts. What his
theory yields to us, therefore, are objective data
plus subjective connections, the former given, the
second made.

It is hardly necessary to indicate that against
the assumption of such isolated data, awaiting the
connecting activity of thought, all those arguments
might be brought forward which have been urged
against the associative theory of knowledge. It is
sufficient to say that Lotze himself has used these
arguments. In his criticism of empiricism he shows,
after the manner of Kant, that a priori relations

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 337

of thought enter into all the facts of experience.
" The image of a particular form presented in
space, the succession in time of the notes in a
melody, these too, in every particular and detail
of the picture, are no whit less the product of the
thinking subject, no whit less, therefore, " (;^ /n(?;7." ^
And besides the direct criticism of empiricism we
might cite his view of the function of thought as
a whole. He regards it as the conversion of the
associative into the reflective consciousness, or of
coincident into inwardly coherent experience : a
conversion which he represents as impossible un-
less the relations which thought finds are already
given in the data. Indeed, we have the same
movement here as that which was described in the
earlier chapters. Having said explicitly that the
relation between red and yellow, straight and
curved, can exist only so far as we think it, and
" by the act of our thinking it," he adds a little
later, " we could not so much as bring red and
blue under the general name of colour did not
that common element exist in them, to our con-
sciousness of which we testify in framing the
name." - So long as he is establishing the dis-
parity between the products and the data of
thought, and insisting upon the independence of
reality of the thinking processes, he speaks of a
and a, a and b, " red and red," " red and yellow "
as purely discrete data, and of the relations of
^ Logic, § 326. -See Logic, §§ 338, 339.

338 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

identity and difference as memories of a mental
transition. But when he considers the difficulty of
accounting for the correspondence of the results
of thought with reality, he makes reality yield
relations as well as isolated data. If, for instance,
the relations are mere memories of the mind's
movement to and fro, why should the relation of
a and a be always pronounced to be identity,
and that of a and b difference .'' Memories of
transitions, consciousness of mental unity in mental
activity could not of themselves yield different re-
lations ; and Lotze must therefore find the special
relation required in each case in the material.
But when we bring his views together, and ask
how then, if thought makes these relations, or if
these relations are memories of mental transitions,
they can be also in the material, he draws a
distinction. The relations that are given in the
material, those which stimulate mind into the ap-
propriate activities, have a different character from
those which thought makes. Relations of ideas
exist betiveen them, relations of things exist /;/
them ; and the former express less than the latter.
Thought holds its ideas apart while relating them ;
it does not fuse them, and the connection does
not affect the terms. The relation being ''between''
them, they are separated, so to speak, by an
" interval." But an interval between actual facts
or events, which are really connected in such a
manner as to " influence " one another, is seen by

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

339

him to be impossible. In the case of real relations
there must be no interstices ; the relations must
penetrate the terms in such a way as to enter
into their constitution and be within them. If a
and b are real objects or events, say a cause and
efifect or agent and patient, their differences must
fall within and be a manifestation of a deeper
unity; but if they are ideas there is no unity in
their differences ; it is superimposed upon them
from without by a mental activity.

But this distinction between real and mental re-
lations seems to be a desperate resort. Why should
thought be able to connect the merely different, any
more than reality can ; and how, especially, could it
connect it in such a way as to correspond to reality }
Why should thought, any more than reality, be able
to leap over an interval .'' Or what proof can we
have that real things cannot be externally related
except that such a relation is, in the last resort, un-
thinkable } And why should it be more intelligible
in respect of thoughts than it is with respect to things.''
Above all, how can the mental relations be regarded
as " a weakened form," or as merely " less than " the
real relations, when in the one case the relation is
" between," or " external," and in the other " within "
the terms and constitutive of them } An internal
relation does not pass into an external one by a
process of weakening, nor can the one serve as a
stimulus to the other. In fact, wc find that there is
such a discrepancy between Lotze's view of thought

340

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

and his view of reality as to make any correspondence
between them uninteUigible ; for his theory of the
relations of thought is mechanical, while his theory
of reality is organic.

It is, however, important to bear in mind that this
discrepancy is between an externally combining
thought and an inwardly coherent reality. It exists,
in other words, between reality and a thought which
is formal — to which every datum, be it a thing, or
event, or relation, must be given, and which, when
all is given, can at best only establish relations
between things. But if our criticism is valid, such
thought as Lotze describes, which borrows its
material from a foreign source, cannot even com-
bine. At each successive stage it lapses into
tautology, and Lotze's constant appeal to the
material, whether for stimuli to perception, or guid-
ance in inference, classification, and explanation is
really an implicit admission that the thought which
is unlike reality, and whose activities are not guided
by a principle of reality, is helpless. Nevertheless,
Lotze will not yield up his view of the formal nature
of thought.

I now pass on to the contrast which Lotze en-
deavours to establish between the process and pro-
duct of conceiving, and the data given to thought in
perceptive experience. It seems sufficient, at first
sight, merely to ask the question whether any
realities correspond to our general notions. Con-
ceptions are manifestly universal, and actual objects

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

341

individual. An " animal " as characterless animal, a
vertebrate, a mammal, or horse in general, does not
exist ; and yet in all thinking, strictly so called, we
have conceptions of such objects. Here, then, it
would seem we have a palpable example of the dis-
tinction on which Lotze insists between the products
which thought makes, and what is given to it in ex-
perience. No one can assert that things in general
exist, or deny that the products of thought are
general ideas. It is on this contrast between the
universality of the products of thought and the
individuality of real objects, that Lotze mainly
relies to prove his theory. Nevertheless, it seems to
me that in this instance also, Lotze has exagger-
ated a legitimate and useful distinction in thought
into a difference in kind, and made it absolute.
Once more he treats the perception as particular
only, and the conception as universal only ; and
he assumes that the real object is individual
in the sense of being particular. Of course, if
this assumption is true, there can be no correspond-
ence between the product of thought and the real
object.

Perhaps the clearest way of raising the issue
would be to assert the opposite half-truth of
Lotze's, and to say that conceptions are not gen-
eral, and that perceived objects are not particular.
We can at least challenge any one to produce
any clement in the object which is not universal,
and any element in the concept which is not par-

34^

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

ticular, and thereby bring out the truth that in
every reality, and in every intelligible idea, particular
and universal, difference and unity meet. The
sensible qualities of objects, the special size, weight,
shape, colour, of this horse, seem to be particular;
and they may not be applicable in this conjunction
to any other object whatsoever. But, on the other
hand, it is manifest that all of these qualities
not only are intelligible, but exist only in virtue
of their relation to other objects and to the self.
That is to sa}', if we abstract from the relations
of the object to the system in which it is placed,
if we deprive it of all that it has borrowed, nothing
remains. Except their ujiity, Lotze might reply.
" Everywhere in the flux of thought there remain
quite insoluble those individual nuclei, ....
which we designate by the name Being." ^ Though
each quality of the object must be admitted to be
possible only by its relation to other objects, no
intelligible object can be conceived as a mere col-
lection of qualities. It has an impervious unity
and self-identity as its core and essence, without
which the relations could not subsist. In other
words, although the qualities can be resolved one
by one into relations, the object itself cannot be so
attenuated without at once passing out of exist-
ence and becoming unintelligible. And it seems
to me that the answer is valid, so far as it
shows that relations, apart from points of sus-
^ Mikrokosimis^ Book \'lll., chap. i.

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

343

pension, are unintelligible.^ But it is to be noted,
on the one hand, that this impervious unity,
in which the qualities cohere, is certainly not
given in sense, and, on the other hand, that the
sensible qualities which sense might be considered
to supply, are relations. So that the theory turns
round in Lotze's hand ; and the contrast which
began with attributing the isolated data to sense
and the relations to thought, becomes a contrast
between an impervious unity behind the qualities,
which only thought can yield, and qualities which
are impossible except through the relation of objects
to each other, which mere sense cannot apprehend.
The individual object, in a word, resists the attempt
to treat it either as particular or as universal ; it
is a totality of concrete relations, a unity of uni-
versal, and therefore explicable only in the terms
of thought and as the work of thought. Now, if
we turn to the conception which Lotze contrasts
with real objects, we shall find that in some
respects at least, it has the same character of
concrete thinkable individuality. A conception,
say of a horse-in-general, is not a mere indiscrim-
inate collection of contents, but a unity, more or

^ It is evident that relations plus points related, however
much we insist upon both, cannot solve the problem of their
relation. Such a view remains at the mechanical stage of
explanation, which leaves the unity, implied even in mechanism,
implicit and unexplained. The idea of organism helps us
beyond this dii^culty, even though it brings more difficulties
of its own.

344

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

less systematic, of consistent thoughts. And its
content is specific, at least to the extent that we
can distinguish between it and another concept,
such as that of an ox-, or an oak-, in-general.
Finally, every element in the content is ultimately
derived from sense, and explicable only in thought.
Wherein, then, lies the difference between the real,
or perceived, or experienced object, and the con-
ception 1 Lotze replies that the elements in the
perception are all special and definite, while those
in the conception are abstract and universal. The
real horse combines this colour, with t/iis size, this
shape, this weight and particular structure ; while
the conceived or general horse combines a colour
with a shape, size, weight, and so on. And the
fact that the contents of conceptions are ultimately
derived from sensuous experience, or that the sens-
ible qualities, apprehended by perception, are
possible only in virtue of the relations of objects
to objects, does not abolish this distinction. Ex-
planation of the source of particular sensible
qualities does not change them into universal
entities. Explanation is not elimination, nor does
it attenuate the perceptions into conceptions. On
the contrary, it leaves the qualities of objects just
as they were, namely, particular and specific ; and it
leaves them equally unchanged, whether they origin-
ate in the objects themselves, as they do if the
objects are complete or absolute, or are derived
from elsewhere and only take temporary embodi-

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

545

ment in the objects, as they do if these are finite.
The universals of sense, or, if the term be misleading,
the real connections between objects which are
their qualities, are not abstract but concrete, and
they inhere in their fulness only in individual
objects. But, as we are told, the very essence of
a conception is that it is a combination of univer-
sals, each of which is abstract, and each applicable
to any object that falls into the class. We must,
therefore, conclude that, although the sensible qual-
ities of objects which perception gives are due to
their relation to other objects, and explicable only
in their connection to the whole system of real
things, they are still not universals as the contents
of conceptions are. If we indicate them by the
term sense-universals, and regard them as given
in the data, we must not confuse them with the
universals which thought makes.

This distinction, within its own proper limits, is
undeniable ; but that the distinction is such as to
justify us in attributing the contents of perception
to the data or material of knowledge, or to reality,
and the contents of conception to the activities of
a thought which abstracts from sense and proceeds
alone on its way, cannot be proved. Each of the
universals in a concept is indefinite, and, owing to
this indefiniteness, it is applicable to every object of
the class and completely true of none. But, on
the other hand, no one of them is merely in-
definite and general : colour in general is still

346 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

colour, although it is not necessarily redness, or
blueness, or any particular colour. The conception
does not, any more than aught else, derive its
essential feature from negation, and exist in virtue
of what it excludes. The characteristics of a con-
cept lie, after all, in what the universals contain,
and all these are, in a manner, as truly particular
as the contents of a perception. Colour is a par-
ticular quality as contrasted with weight, or size,
or shape, although it is universal as compared with
redness or blueness. So that the distinction be-
tween a conception and a perception is only a
difference in degree of definiteness, and it arises
neither from the nature of the elements combined,
nor from a different combining unity, nor from a
difference in their mode of combination ; and we
cannot attribute the one to a thought which is in-
dependent of things, and the other to a perception
which is purely or mainly receptive. In fact, per-
ception and conception pass into each other. Any
possible element of thought, or any real object
presented to it, may be regarded either as a per-
ception or as a conception. Redness, if we con-
trast it with colour, is a particular perception, but
if we contrast it with its own shades of crimson,
scarlet, and so on, it is a universal conception.
The difference does not lie in the last resort, even
in the degree of indefiniteness ; for a conception
may be more definite than a perception, and con-
tain more elements more explicitly combined. The

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

347

distinction lies in tlie fact that in conceivinij
we are azvarc of the incompleteness and indefinite-
ness of the mental representation, whereas in per-
ceiving we seem to be apprehending- the object
as it is. In truth, however, both perceptions and
conceptions are incomplete and abstract, and, in
that sense, they are both creations of thought, and
valid of no real objects. But in the one case the
abstraction is conscious, we omit the obvious and
aggressive relations of time and space and our
sensible affections ; while in the other case the
abstraction is unconscious, we omit the general
laws which scientific or philosophic thought might
be able to discover in the object. And, in so far
as the abstraction in conception is conscious, the
perception is of the two the most abstract, and it
omits the elements that are most vitally explana-
tory of the nature of objects. For conscious
abstraction is, in a way, comprehension ; we ex-
clude only what is irrelevant to our immediate
purpose in order to confine our attention to other
elements that we regard as constitutive. And the
shadow of what we exclude lingers on what is
allowed to remain. In perceiving we seem to be
dealing with the particular, the ultimate, and real,
only because the synthetic and analytic activities of
thought have not been consciously applied to the
object. But immediate!}' these activities are exer-
cised, the object will reveal itself as a unity of
universal qualities, ever}' one of which becomes a

348 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

class attribute predicable of other objects and
entirely true of none. In fine, perceptive thought
seems to give the whole reality only because it is
ignorant of the problems present in its objects; while
conception seems to give mere thoughts because the
abstraction of spatial and temporal elements is as
obvious as it is, in many cases, comparatively
insignificant to the true understanding of things.
The perceptive presentation of the world is mani-
festly not fuller and truer than that of the sciences
and of philosophy, but more abstract and less
valid. Its apparent superior correspondence to
reality is due merely to the absence of reflection.
No one is so sure that he perceives facts and
immediately grasps reality, as he is who has never
been made aware of their inner complexity, or of
their relation to his intelligence. There is nothing
so secure as ignorance. In fact, we have in this
sense of certainty and self-confidence of ordinary
consciousness the counterpart of the sclf-sufficienc}"
of the morally undeveloped consciousness. The
implicit trust in perception, like the simple moral
contentment of the child, is due to the fact that
the unity of consciousness has not been broken
or disturbed by the emergence of the ideal which
reveals the imperfection and incompleteness of the
elementary forms of our intellectual and moral life.
This view of the relation of perception and con-
ception may be justified to some extent by the
consideration that there are two wavs in which we

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

349

may ascend to universals. One is easy and broad,
and leads to the extinction of thought. Its highest
universal is pure being, which means nothing in
particular, and it is reached by the process of
omitting the content. The other way is the difficult
way of scientific and philosophic thought, which
seeks universals that are concrete and in which the
specific content persists and is explained. The goal
of this method is a principle which is the source
of the reality and the truth of the world. Now
Lotze is quite aware of this distinction, and he
employs it in discriminating between Classification
and Explanation.^ Nevertheless, the contrast between
real or perceived objects and the conceptions which
are the products of thought is valid only if we take
conception in the sense which he definitely condemns,
namely, as a process of omission." No doubt the
thought which abstracts becomes the less true of
reality the emptier it becomes, and inasmuch as all
conception is abstraction, at least from our sensi-
bility, all conceptions are untrue. This is the
aspect on which Lotze insists. But the other aspect
he is prone to ignore, the aspect, namely, that the
emptier a thought is, or the more it is conceptual
in this abstract sense, the less it is a thought. But,
in reality, the thought and its object gradually
vanish together, and throughout the whole movement
of abstraction we are departing from real thought
just as truly as we are departing from actual objects.
' See chapter v. - See Logic, § 23.

350

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

So that the correspondence between reality and
thought remains unbroken, even when we regard
conception as an abstracting process directed towards
an empty universal. The apparent disparity between
real things and the thought product arises not from
what thought makes, but from \vhat it omits and
excludes. On the other hand, to the degree in
which we correct the abstraction and complete the
thought, to that degree the reality for us grows in
significance. In fact, everywhere in our experience
reality and living thought always develop together.
And it is only by confining our attention to the
abstract side of the process of conceiving, and by
forgetting that abstraction extinguishes thought no
less than reality, that conception comes to wear the
appearance of being a mere mental creation, less
true than that which perception yields.

Thus the contrast which Lotze strives to institute
between the product of thought in conceiving and
the given reality fails, even when we regard con-
ception as a process of omitting differences. It
fails still more obviously if we take conception in
its higher sense, in which alone it is employed in
the endeavour to comprehend facts and has real
value as thought. That contrast fails not only
because no reality whatsoever is given apart from
thought, and conception enters into perception, but
also because perception enters into conception.
The reality which we are said to " encounter in
perception " is carried over into conception in all

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 351

effective or [genuine thouglit, and it guides that
process. No doubt, as I have ahxady admitted, the
sensuous elements seem to disappear in conception ;
but that disappearance is never complete, neither
does it take place at all except in the case of data
which are recognized as alien to the immediate
purpose of our investigation. The irrelevant elements
in ordinary investigation into the nature of objects
are the time, place, and manner in which objects
affect our sensibility, and the absence of these
elements has been taken as the characteristic of all
conception. In ordinary perception, on the other
hand, these sensible relations between objects and
ourselves constitute the readiest criteria for dis-
tinguishing between reality and illusion. Never-
theless, I should hesitate to say that we "encounter
reality in perception," and not in conception. The
consciousness of loss of contact with reality can
come when perception in itself is clear enough, as
for instance, when on waking from a deep sleep in
a strange room we fail to connect what we see
with our past experience. Indeed, it alwaj^s comes
when the continuity of consciousness seems to be
suspended, as in recovery from a swoon. It is, I
conclude, not in perception as such that we en-
counter reality. TJie co7isciousncss of reality is tJie
consciojisness of the unity of onr psyeJiical life. And
consequently, the omission of these sensuous ele-
ments would not involve loss of contact with reality,
except where these elements, as in ordinary life,

352

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

are the most relevant to our immediate intelligent
purposes.

But omission is, in an}^ case, a misleading term.
I do not conceive that the scientific investigator
who is intent on discovering the physical laws of
colour leaves the sensible world behind him. He
omits and leaves to the psychologist and the
physiologist the problem of the relation of the
coloured object to the sentient being, but he
carries with him into his apprehension of motion
its sensuous evidence. And, in a similar way, each
of the other sciences carries up into its theory
the sensuous aspect of the fact whose explana-
tion it is seeking. In so far as the sciences deal
merely with such aspects, they are all abstract
and untrue, and their laws are mere creations of
the mind. In this respect there are no facts
corresponding to the general conceptions of any
one of the sciences ; and all the sciences are hypo-
thetical because they begin by mutilating the
object "encountered in perception." But in so far
as each does explain an aspect of reality it carries
up that aspect into its ultimate laws. The physi-
cist, it is true, does not have a sensation of
blueness when he detects the number of the vibra-
tions per second which is its physical condition ;
but the sensation of blueness was no part of his
datum. His datum was purely physical, and an
abstraction. What zoas a part of his datum he
carries with him to the solution, and it finds its

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

353

expression in the law. For the law is no empty-
abstraction, but a law of the data, distinguishable
from the laws of other data. Each law finds its
own character in the content, the universal mani-
festing itself in the system of particulars — quantity
in mathematics, matter and motion and space in
physics, morphological phenomena in biology, and
so on. If perception seems to give reality, and
scientific explanation by universal laws only ab-
stractions, that comes, not from the fact that
when we explain we leave the reality encountered
in perception behind us and enter into an adjec-
tival world, but from the fact that science, because
its aim is to explain, takes up only one aspect at
a time ; while perception sets complex problems
for all the sciences. But as little as the known-
unknown of perception is the ideal of knowledge,
so little is its object reality. The ideal of know-
ledge would be reached in the re-combination of
the aspects (every one of which, as a real content,
lives in the forms of the sciences) into a science
of sciences which reveals a concrete universal prin-
ciple ; and it is then, and then only that thought
would reach the real. Conception and science and
thought seem to be merely "hypothetical," and per-
ception alone seems to "encounter"' reality, only be-
cause the abstraction in the one case is conscious and
in the other unconscious. Neither conception nor
perception is true, but perception is the less true ;
neither is entirelv false, nor the invention of the

354

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

mind set to work by itself, but reality guides both
processes, and uses thought in all its forms as the
vehicle for expressing itself Logical conception
proceeding along the via negativa of abstraction
is, I admit, unlike reality both as a process and
product ; but logical conception is the logician's
invenlion. Living thought proceeds after another
fashion and does not omit by explaining, but
articulates the indefinite into a system.

Before passing on to the consideration of Lotze's
arguments for the subjectivity of judgment and
inference, I have one more remark to make. Lotze
speaks as if objective or valid truth can be obtained
only from the hill-top, or, to translate his metaphor,
as if necessarily coherent truth can only be given
as the last result of thinking. Indeed, as Lotze
admits, prior to the emergence of thought, the
question of the truth or untruth of our experiences
cannot arise, both being alike impossible to a
purely associative consciousness. But this is as
much as to say that, apart from thought and its
necessary connections, we have no criterion of
reality. Reality cannot be given at the beginning,
nor can it be given at all except to a consciousness
which connects its contents by means of relations of
thought. For reality is itself related to thought, and
cannot be set against it in mere contrast. Neverthe-
less, such is the ambiguity of Lotze's treatment of
the elementary processes and the primary data of
our intelligent life, that what is thus beiozv the dis-

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

355

tinction of truth and error, reality and illusion, is
erected into a criterion, by reference to which
thought and its activities are pronounced to be
merely subjective. No doubt Lotze insists that
subjectivity does not imply illusiveness ; but, on
the other hand, he has failed, and necessarily
failed, to prove his conviction. It is because
thought fails to give facts that he has recourse
to feeling ; and his proof that thought does not
give facts, but ideas and ideal connections, rests
on the contrast between thought and its products
on the one hand, and what is given to it on the
other. And yet, what is given is neither true nor
false ! The question thus arises, what does Lotze
mean by reality } Is reality given before thought
begins its work, or after it has completed it } Is
it given at the base of the hill, or from the hill-top }
Lotze is sufficiently explicit as to the pure sub-
jectivity of the arbitrary ways from the one to the
other ; but he is not explicit as to the beginning
and the end of the process. For if reality is so
given by experience or perception as to serve for
the criterion of the processes and products of
thought, on what grounds can it be denied that
these are supererogatory.'' If perception gives the
real, why should we undergo the labour of reflec-
tion .'' And, on the other hand, if leality is not
given until thought has completed its work and
climbed to the hill-top, how can its processes be
condemned by reference to a criterion which thought

356 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

itself constitutes ? The fact is that Lotze uses
"reahty" in two inconsistent ways. It is now what
is given at the beginning, now what is reached at
the end ; it is now perceived, or even felt, it is
now attained, in part, by the reflective processes of
science and philosophy ; it is now the starting
point, and now the far-off goal of our intelligent
life. We might try to avoid this difficulty by
saying that while reality is given in perception, it
is not given as perceived. But this will not serve
the end of Lotze ; for unless it is given as per-
ceived, then it cannot serve as the criterion for
thought. The reality sinks into a mere word which
means less than " something." If, on the other
hand, it is not given as perceived or felt, then, I
presume, it is either given as thought or not given
at all. But if it is given as thought then the percep-
tion or feeling which has least of the characteristics
of thought, or, on Lotze's theory, none of them, is
the least true. Lotze's implicit assumption, which
really gives its basis to his whole theory of the
subjectivity of thought, is the sensational hypothesis
of a reality immediately given in the sensuous
consciousness ; but the sceptical issues of such a
hypothesis, to which Lotze is not blind, and the
condemnation of the whole labour of reflective
thought, and of the whole of the principles and
methods of science and philosophy which it involves,
force the acknowledgment from him that reality is
given, to the degree in which it is given, only from

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

357

the hill-top, as the result of thought. 15ut this, in
turn, implies the idealistic view of the nature of
reality ; it implies, that is to say, the repudiation
of all reality except that which is given in thought.
Reality is on this view the thinkable, or in other
words, the rational ; in fact it is thought, unless
we presume that thought can think a something
other than itself, which we cannot in any manner
characterize. Lotze wavers between these views.
When he remembers that the associative or merely
perceptive consciousness is incapable alike of truth
and error, and that reality and unreality come in
only with the objectifying and systematizing activ-
ities of thought, the reality seems not to be given
but to be sought after, and sought after b}' thought.
When he has in his mind the formal character of
thought, as he defines it, and the emptiness of its
forms, he looks back to perception and immediacy
for reality ; and by contrast with these he pro-
nounces the activities of thought subjective, and
regards them as artificial means whereby we en-
deavour, by a process which is radically self-stultify-
ing, to escape relativity and reach fact. Both theories
cannot be true. Nor is there any way of escaping
the contradiction except by conceiving reality, as
indeed, given in perception, but also as given ever
more fully as we develop its content by means
of thought. But I pass on to the remaining forms
of thought, namely, Judgment and Inference.

The arguments by which Lotze tries to prove

358 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

that Judgment and Inference are unlike real objects,
and that reality takes no part in the process of
forming them, or that these activities are merely
subjective movements of our spirit whereby it en-
deavours to escape from its eccentric position, are,
in the last resort, the same as those which we have
just examined in dealing with Conception. They
are based upon the same fundamental assumption
regarding the nature of thought. It is held that
its work is to combine, that the connections it
forms are purely its own additions to fact, instigated
indeed by objects, but none the less unreal as they
stand. Just as "c? and a, a and b, red and red, red
and yellow " are first given, and just as thought
moving to and fro between- them and remembering
its own transitions forms the purely ideal connec-
tions of identity or difference ; so there are givai to
judgment two ideas, and it adds a constant con-
nection, namely, the copula " is " ; and there are
givefi to inference two judgments, and it proceeds
to form a third judgment by means of them.

Now, that a judgment consists of two ideas plus
a. relation is not true, although logic may find two
ideas and one connection, and, indeed, many more,
in any judgment which it pleases to analyze. Nor
(2) is it true that a judgment consists of reality
given in the subject, p/us ideality or validity, or an
adjectival entity in the predicate. Nor (3) do we
add a copula which is an abstract " is." On the
contrary, we begin in judgment with the copula

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

359

which is a universal, and whose ciiaractcr varies
with every object on which thought happens to be
engaged. ^ If we start with the presupposition
that judgment is a combining function, then the
difference between its process and the relation of
real events is undeniable. If we start with the
view that thought seizes upon an indefinite reality
and articulates it into a system, this insurmount-
able discrepancy disappears. The reality expands
with the thinking process and guides it. Thought
is at no point formal or out of " contact " with
reality, and reality is at no point not ideal. The
whole issue thus turns upon the nature of the act
of Judgment.

Now, I have already criticised this first view and
endeavoured to show that formal or combinatory
thought ends in being tautologous and helpless.
It cannot connect what is given as different. The
highest forms of inference fell back into syllogistic
thought, whose tautology is explicit ; and the Dis-
junctive and Hypothetical Judgments were as little

' This view of the concrete copuhi is implied in the whole
treatment of the hypothetical judgment and of reasoning in
Mr. Bosanquet's great work on Logic ; and it constitutes, if I
may venture an opinion, the main advance towards a completer
idealism, and a fuller reconciliation of reality and ideality, of
fact and truth, which Mr. Bosanquet's Logic makes upon Mr.
Bradley's. But, for the explicit expression of this view as the
true starling point of knowledge, I am indebted to Mr. Edward
Caird. It is found to underlie his whole criticism of Kant, and
it gives him his point of departure and regulating principle in
his account of the Evolution of Religion.

36o THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

capable of uniting differences as the Categorical. It
remains now to indicate the opposite view. On
this view thought takes its departure from a single
fact or a single idea, or rather from both ; for the
fact must be presented to thought before thought
can start from it, that is to say, it must be an idea,
and the idea must be ^ a fact, else it will be
empty of all meaning. Indeed, it is because the
datum of thought must thus be both ideal and real
that the only form of thought which is capable of
expressing it is the Judgment. For the judgment,
as distinguished from the concept, gives this internal
schism ; and inference gives no more. And because
every object of thought must have these two
aspects, i.e., must be both objective and subjective,
all the products of thought are judgments. We can-
not get beneath judgment while remaining within
the intelligible world. The cry, "Wolf!" is a judg-
ment ; for, if it is understood, it is an idea that
points to an object ; and even the Interjection,
"Alas!" or "Hurrah!" is a judgment, for it
indicates an object of thought, namely, the state
of consciousness of the person who utters it. And,
on the other hand, the analysis of the most abstruse
and concrete products of advanced thought would,
of course, show that they consist of judgments.

If this is true then the combinatory view of
judgment, as given by Lotze, is manifestly not
correct. The idea that is presented as the subject
and that which is given in the predicate are already

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 361

judgments; they are both intelligible and both
facts ; each of them is both ideal and real. And
consequently judgment is not the combination of
two ideas. On the contrary, judgment is necessary to
form one idea, and it never in one operation forms
more than one. Nor is the reality given first in the
subject and then characterized in the predicate ; that
is to say, we cannot regard the subject as 2:»ure reality
and the predicate as pure ideality, nor have we
first a substantive and then an adjective. For the
reality that is said to be given in the subject is
given also as ideal, or as known, so far. It is not
there unless it is given, and it is not given except
as ideal. There is no " that " which is not also
a " what," and even a " something " has some
meaning with the complete elimination of which it
would vanish. The object of thought disappears
with the activity of thought, and the activity with
the object. In other words, thought cannot begin
its movement except at the instigation of reality,
and the only reality that can excite its activity
must be given to it, and, therefore, be so far ideal.
In a mere "that" both reality and ideality are at
the vanishing point. What we cannot characterize
except indefinitely, we cannot assert to exist except
tentatively.

On this question of the priority of reality /// any
sense to ideality there depend the most important
issues, and, indeed, the issue on which we are here
engaged, namcl}-, the adjectival nature of thought

362 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

and its unlikeness to reality ; for Lotze presupposes
that the data are given prior to their ideal com-
bination by thought. If only we could catch a
judgment in the making, it might help us to
determine this issue. Such a judgment in the
making was, as we have seen, given by Lotze in
the Impersonal Judgments: "It rains," "It is un-
pleasant." Now, in these instances, the process is,
I believe, that of further characterizing a "some-
thing"; in other words, it is a process of discover-
ing distinctions within an indefinite subject. There
is not connection but development of content, and
thought proceeds not by aggregation but by
evolution.

Nevertheless, it may be urged, the reality seems
to be given, however indefinitely, in the subject,
and predication seems to be its ideal extension.
That is to say, the reality is supplied, and what
thought adds seems to be an adjective, valid
indeed, but not real. The "that" seems to be
given before the "what"; and the "that" seems to
be given, while the " what " seems to be made. I
reply that, in any case, the unity of the act of
judgment is exposed in this process, and the judg-
ment is not the combination of two ideas — of an
"it" with "unpleasantness" — by means of a third
element, namely, the copula "is." We have not
grasped the "it" until the judgment is complete,
and during the whole process we have been engaged,
not with two objects, but with one ; we have not

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 363

been combining but evolving. But further ex-
amination will show, I believe, that the reality is
not given in the subject, but in the judgment as
a whole, or, in other words, in the "something"
which is articulated into subject and predicate,
neither of which is prior to the other. In other
words, judgment does not consist in the application
of a conception to a perception, nor in the sub-
sumption of a perception under a conception.
Perception and conception, reality and ideality, are
given only together ; or in other words, their unity
is prior to the difference, though it reveals its
character only in the differences.

Let me endeavour to illustrate this view that the
real or perceptive element is not given first in the
subject, and the adjectival or conceptual super-
added in the predicate. I write the word " Peter,"
and the reader, by the very fact of understanding
the word, instantaneously forms a judgment. That
judgment indicates a certain reality characterized
in a certain way, and which is both a "that" and
a " what." What then is " the reality " thus " given
in the subject .'' " The answer will probably be
that it is a person, possibl}- the apostle from the
shores of the Sea of Galilee. But I complete the
sentence and write, " Peter is a Greek word mean-
ing a rock." And immediately the original
"reality" in the reader's mind is absolutely re-
jected, and another substituted in its place. Now,
this seems to me to imi)ly that the reality cannot

364 ^^^ PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

be said to have been there before the complete
judgment ; and that it would not have appeared
to be there except for the fact that we form
judgments immediately on the first hearing of the
subject, and anticipate the expression of it in the
complete act of judging. I shall illustrate this by
one more example. I set down the words " The
three brothers." Once more a judgment is in-
stantaneously formed, although in being formed, it
is held in hand as reversible, and the mind has
not rested in a complete judgment ; that is to say,
it has not completely grasped the reality before
the act of judgment, (which is single although it
takes time to perform,) is finished. When the
words, " The three brothers," are spoken the reality
which is called up before the mind, though with
the possibility of its rejection, is probably, three
persons. But I proceed : " The three brothers is
the name of a hiring boat that plies on the
Menai Straits." Once more the originally assumed
reality is entirely rejected and another substituted,
when the judgment is complete.

If in this way we can really detect the process
of judgment it seems to be impossible to say that
the reality is given in the subject and that we
then attach an ideal content to it, or combine
another idea with it. That there was an idea
and a reality when the mere subject was given
is undeniable ; the reality could not be given
except as ideal, and there is no thought except

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 365

judgment. But that one idea is given in its
completeness, and that another idea is joined to
it by an external copula seems to me to be un-
tenable. Throughout the act of judgment we deal
with one content, and the reality of that content,
no less than its meaning, is only given when this
single but progressive act of thought is finished.
The reality is from beginning to end involved in
the meaning, it grows with the growth of the
meaning, and it also guides the process of evolv-
ing the meaning by means of judgment.

Lotze is no doubt right in insisting that real
objects are not related to one another as the ideas
are connected in a judgment, if judgment consists
of two ideas first given separately and then con-
nected b)' a copula. But this difference might be
taken as an indication of the necessity of review-
ing the theory of judgment, instead of as a reason
for asserting a discrepancy between that function
of thought which is employed in all knowledge,
and the objects which, after all, as Lotze con-
fesses, we ultimately reach by means of it. The
discrepanc}-, however, lies once more between reality
and a thought which combines externall}-, deriving
its activities solely from itself and moving in
obedience to private laws of its own in formal
abstraction from its data. But that thought, as
we have tried to prove, is neither living nor real
thought ; for external combination is impossible, and
thought severed from real content is absolutely

366 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

helpless. External combinations of subject plus
predicate plus copula are, indeed, unlike the re-
lations of objects in the real world ; but living
thought issues in no such external combinations.
It deals with a universal which by its instru-
mentality sunders into subject and predicate and
remains nevertheless a single concrete totality, or
systematic unity of differences.

Now it is evident that this view of judgment
would reverse the whole treatment of thought by
Lotze ; for it strikes at the root of his conception
of its combinatory function, and repudiates entirely
the separation of ideality and reality. To estab-
lish it we should be obliged to attempt a task
beyond our power and present purpose, namely,
that of following in detail the process by which
the content of thought, or reality, enters vitally
into and dominates the thinking process in all its
forms. We should have to follow the view so
admirably expounded by Mr. Bosanquet, accord-
ing to which the real content manifests itself
even in hypothetical judgments, where the thought
sequence, or the necessary connection is shown to
issue from the reality presupposed in the protasis,
and in disjunctive judgments in which the reality
first shows itself as explicitly systematic. In a
similar way we should have to elaborate the view
already suggested, that inference also is the evolu-
tion of a single content, and try to show that
while thought obeys laws which arc universal, each

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 367

proof derives its character from its material, and
is completely cogent only if that material shows
itself as a unity of differences, or a systematic
totality whose evidence lies in the necessary mutual
implication of its constitutive elements.^

But there is a grave objection to this intimate
identification of reality and thought which we can-
not thus pass over. This view we have suggested
seems to imply that things themselves change with
our process of comprehending them. But it seems
to be undeniably plain that reality is not one thing
when the process of thinking begins and another
when it ends. Even if it be admitted that for us
the reality expands with its explanation, or that
conception, judgment, and inference are the processes
whereby the indefinite content gradually realizes
itself in thought as a systematic whole which con-
tains explicit differences explicitly combined in a
unity by necessary relations, the question still arises.
Is not such an expansion merely the expansion of
a subjective datum.' Is it not the original idea of
reality that has moved with our thought .' Surely
reality itself, as Lctze contends, is indifterent to our
activities. No one can hold that real objects actuall}-
participate in these processes. Did the earth begin
to go round the sun when the modern astronomical
theory was discovered .'' Or did the plants and
animals first form a systematic kingdom when
Darwin wrote his Origin of Species }
^ See above, chap. vii.

368 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LGTZE

I at once admit the negative. Such a prepos-
terous identification of the real movement of events
with the dialectical movement of our thought can-
not be held. Nor would it have been attributed
to idealistic writers except for the presupposition,
already criticised, that thought begins with ideas
and must determine reality in correspondence to its
subjective contents. But another view is possible.
The correspondence between the real and ideal,
which not even the Sceptic can utterly deny, may
conceivably arise in two ways. Oiw tJiought may
determine 7'eality, or reality may determine our
thought. On the first view reality would come to
be in the act of thinking it. And it is this first
view alone which Lotze considers. This is the
view he attributes to Idealists ; and it is against
giving to thought a power adequate to make reality,
or to convert the phenomena of a subjective con-
sciousness, or a world of ideas into actual facts
that he directs his whole polemic. Neither in his
criticism of Idealism nor in the exposition of his
own theory does he conceive any other than a
subjective starting point for knowledge. Conse-
qucntl}- he obtains objects at all only by "objecti-
fying" and "positing" states of consciousness, and
his ultimate account of them still leaves them
subjective phenomena. He asserts indeed that they
arc valid of reality ; but he neither accounted for
that validity, nor showed any such way of con-
ceiving thought and reality as to make their

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 369

co-operation in producing knowledge intelligible.
His assertion of "validity" is therefore purely dog-
matic, and he has in the last resort to trust in a
faith which his philosophy cannot justify. Now,
unless the criticism we have advanced is funda-
mentally erroneous, neither thought nor feeling nor
intuition can correct the error of Lotze's original
assumption, namely, that knowledge begins with an
inner world of subjective states, and then strives to
find a way outwards. Such an outlet into the world
of facts we deemed impossible, and its possibility is
certainly not demonstrated by Lotze : we are
absolutely confined to the spectacle of an inner
play of changing states, and even these we cannot
know without, in the very act of knowing, convert-
ing them into objects. Knowledge is both subjec-
tive and objective, and every object of knowledge
is both presented to thought and by thought, is
both real and ideal. It is the theory that en-
deavours to step from thoughts to things which
takes a mairoais pas that no logic can justify.

Now, it was in the consciousness of the impass-
able barrier which intercepts all movement from
within outwards, or from ideality to reality, that
Idealism took its rise. Convinced of the self-
contradictory scepticism that awaits a theory which
starts from a subjective origin, it is as frank!}-
realistic as is ordinary consciousness, or Materialism;
and, without hesitation, it conceives that, in all his
thinking, however inadequate it may be, man thinks

370

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

of objects. Rut it refuses to define these objects
in such a manner as to make the problem of
thinking tliem insoluble ; that is to say, it denies
the ordinary assumption that reality implies the
exclusion of the ideal. Starting from the fact, to
which all the knowledge we have seems to bear
witness, and with the denial of which the fact of
knowledge is unaccountable, namely, that its object
is both subjective and objective, it refuses to par-
tition real being into two elements, and to make
over reality to things and ideality to thought.
It finds that knowledge is the self-revelation of
reality in thought, and that our thought is the
instrument of that self-revelation. And it thus
escapes the impossible task which a subjective
view of the origin of knowledge inevitably brings
both to Lotze and to the Sceptics whose argu-
ments he failed to meet, namely, that of showing
how the thought of man can so determine reality
that objects shall correspond to ideas. Its problem
is to show how reality determines our thinking, or,
put in a logical form, how the content of concep-
tion, judgment, and reasoning guides the reflective
processes.

I may, in concluding, be allowed to illustrate
this point by a reference to Kant. Kant conceived
that the cardinal error of Associationism lay "in
the assumption that our cognition must conform
to objects." " Let us then," he says, " make the
experiment whether we may not be more success-

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

3/1

fill in Metaphysics, if we assume that the objects
must conform to our cognition."^ Me consequently
endeavoured to discover the nature of reality from
the conditions of its intelligibility, and in doing so
he constructed the world of objects, step by step,
on the plan of the world of knowledge. But he
did not thereby discover anything more than the
conditions of a world intelligible to us. That it
actually existed could not be proved by any such
process. On these premises reality must remain
hypothetical, and the content of our knowledge
through and through phenomenal. In a word,
the subjective origin of Kant's speculative effort
rendered it a vain and impossible endeavour
to reach things as they are, or things in them-
selves, which, so far from " conforming to our
cognition," remained absolutely beyond its reach
as unknowable and empty entities. What Kant
succeeded in demonstrating was that "our cog-
nition does not conform to objects " if objects are
to be regarded as they were conceived by Iluvie and
the Associationists, that is to say, if they are con-
ceived as independent facts and events really
disconnected, though outwardly and contingently
combined in our knowledge by means of purely
mental relations. He showed, as against his pre-
decessors, that the only Nature which could be
knowable by us is a Nature which is .systematic,

' I'reface to the Second Edition of the Cn/ic/iic of Pure
Reason.

372 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

and which owes its s)-stcmatic cb.aracter to a prin-
ciple that is analogous to the supreme unity of
self-consciousness.^

Now Idealists have accepted this reconstruction
of Nature from the hands of Kant, and they start
from the assumption which Kant's process of proof
seems to have justified, namely, that reality is
intelligible only as a rational system in which, as
in an organic whole, a single principle lives and
everywhere manifests itself And they have made
this conception of the systematic and rational co-
herence of reality their starting point, in such a
manner that they do not doubt, any more than
men of science do, that the endeavour of thought
will lead to truth, or that reality will yield its
treasures to the enquiring intellect. The uncer-
tainty and suspicion of intelligence, which must
characterize every theory that makes the subjective
side of knowledge its starting point and repre-
sents the processes of thinking as an inward
movement of a spirit left to itself, is found to
have no better justification than that violent
" divorce of thing and thought " which every effort
after knowledge ignores and which all acquired
knowledge, whether empirical or reasoned, contra-
dicts. Hence Idealists return once more to the
attitude of ordinary consciousness and of science,
and commit their thinking to the guidance of

^ That he conceived that unity as formal is undeniable. But,
inii:)ortant as this point is, I may pass it over in this discussion.

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT

fact. They may even be said to have returned,
in one sense, to the attitude of Hume and his
predecessors, and to be enga^^cd in solving the
problem "how our cognition conforms to ob-
jects."

ViVX, taught by Kant, they conceive these objects,
which constitute the data of thought and dominate
its processes, in a manner fundamentally different
from Hume. The reality which is given in per-
ception, and which is given no less in every act of
thought, is no longer a collection of independent,
mutually exclusive, or even unrelated objects and
elements, but a rational system. It is, therefore,
to that system that they commit themselves. But
to commit themselves to a rational system is, so
to speak, to commit reason to the charge of reason.
The conformity of cognition to objects is its con-
formity to objects which are themselves conceived
as manifestations of an intelligent or spiritual prin-
ciple. From this point of view the Idealist ma)',
not less than the Materialist, regard man as a
natural product, and not less than the Associa-
tionist, regard mind as the recipient of truth, and
its activities as governed by facts. But on the
other hand, the nature whose product he is con-
ceived to be is a Nature which is spiritual, and
the facts which are pressed upon mind by its
natural environment, arc themselves rational. Nor
is there any enslavement of intelligence, if it
is subordinated onl\- to intelligence. Mind may

374

THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE

freely communicate itself to mind. Neither by
making himself an instrument of the Good that
is working in the world, nor by making himself
the vehicle of its truth, does man give away his
freedom, or eliminate his spiritual nature. On
the contrary, it is by that path that he realizes
himself

From this point of view, the correspondence
between knowlege and reality may prove to be
intelligible. Reality will not, indeed, change with
our comprehension of it, nor will objects and
events become connected pan passu with the con-
catenation of our thouglits into judgments and
inferences. But it will guide these processes stejj
by step, and reveal itself ever more fully as our
knowledge advances. For, in one sense, reality is
there at the beginning. Without it thought could
make no advance, and, set to work in vacuo, it could
not even spin its " spider-webs " of mental relations.
In another sense, reality is not present to thought
even at its best. Man aspires after truth as he
aspires after goodness, and we cannot assert that
he ever reaches them. Set, as we know him, at
the point of collision between evil and good, error
and truth, having process and evolution as the ver}-
essence and inner necessity of his life, a com-
plete truth is as unattainable to him as complete
goodness. Nevertheless, he does not fail utterly ;
incomplete knowledge is still knowledge, as the
least good is still good. And that which stands

REALITY DETERMINES THOUGHT 375

between him aiul failure is just this fact of his
vital ontological relation in all his intelligent life
to the Reality which lives and moves in all things,
revealing itself everywhere, but most completely, so
far as human experience shows, in the spiritual
life of Man.

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acceptable to the physiologist and the siud^.ni." —Scotsman.

MACKINTOSH— The Natural History OF THE Christian
Religion, being a Study of the Doctrine of Jesus as
developed from Judaism and converted into Dogma. By
William Mackintosh, M.A., D.D. Demy Svo. los. 6d
nett.

"No more revolutionary book has ever appeared in Scotland. Dr.
Mackintosh's positions are stated with an almost brutal plainness which
leaves no room for misunderstanding." — Glas^^oiu Herald.

" It will be impossible for his readers to deny the high intellectual quality
of this book, and the truly Christian temper in which it is written. It is in
this respect an example of how much may be conceded on the dogmatic side
of Christianity without losing its real essence." — Christian World.

1 8 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

MACLEHOSE — Tales from Spenser, chosen from The
Faerie Queene. By Sophia H. MacLehose. Second
Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Ornamental Cloth Boards, gilt top,
3s. 6d.

Also a Fourth and Cheaper Edition. Paper Boards, with
Illustrated Title Page. Fcap. Svo. is. 6d.

'■ The tales are charmingly and very dramatically told." — Times.

" This is a charming book of stories from the ' Faerie Queene," It is just
the sort of book for a good uncle to give to niece or nephew."— -Sro/j
Observer.

MACLEHOSE — The Story of Marie Antoinette,
Dauphiness and Queen. By Sophia H. MacLehose.
With Maps and Portraits. \ In preparation.

MATHER— Two Great Scotsmen. The Brothers William
and John Hunter. By George R. Mather, M.D.,
F.F.P.S.G. Fcap. 4to. los. 6d. nett. With Five Etchings
by D. Y. Cameron, Four Portraits, and numerous Illus-
trations.

" ' Two Great Scotsmen ' is in every respect worthy of its theme and
purpose. Dr. Mather's biography, while minute and faithful in regard to
the Hunters' antecedents, deals fully with their professional careers. To
the other merits of the volume must be added those of beautiful type and
artistic plates." — Times.

MOIR— A Lady's Letters from Central Africa: A
Journey from Mandala to Ujiji, Lake Tanganyika, and back.
By Jane F. MoiR. Illustrated. Crown Svo. is. 6d.

MORISON — Through THE Postern. Poems. By Walter
MORISON, D.D. Fcap. Svo. 3s. 6d.

A/ESS f!S. MACLEIIOSE AND SONS. jg

MULLER — Outlines of Hebrew Syntax. By Dr. August
MiJLLER, Professor of Oriental Languages in the University
of Konisberg. Translated and Edited by James Robertson,
M.A., D.D., Professor of Oriental Languages in the Uni-
versity of Glasgow. Demy 8vo. Fourth Edition. 6s.

" It may be recommended as an able and thoroughly trustworthy intro-
duction to Hebrew syntax."— Professor S. R. Driver in The Academy.

MURRAY— The Property of Married Persons, with an
Appendix of Statutes. By David Murray, M.A., LL.D.,
F.S.A.Scot. Medium 8vo. 9s.

MURRAY — Old Cardross. Large paper copies, 6s. nett.

MURRAY— A Note on some Glasgow and other Pro-
vincial Coins and Tokens. Fcap. 4to. 3s. 6d.

NEWTON — Sir Isaac Newton's Principia. Edited by
Lord Kelvin, D.C.L., LL.D., P.R.S., Professor of
Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow, and
Hugh Blackburn, M.A. Crown 4to. 31s. 6d.

NICHOL— Tables of European Hlstory, Literature,
Science, and Art, from a.d. 200 to 1888, and of
American History, Literature and Art. By John Nichol,
M.A.Oxon., LL.D., late Professor of English Literature
in the University of Glasgow. Fourth Edition, greatly
enlarged. Royal 8vo, printed in Five Colours. 7s. 6d.

"The Tables are clear, and form an admirable companion to the student
of history, or indeed to any one who desires to revise his recollection of
facts." — Times.

" In a word, the great leading facts of European history for nearly seven-
teen hundred years are here compressed with wonderful clearness into a
single slim volume. The book is a triumph of systematization. " — Scotsman.

"About as convenient a book of reference as could be found." — Spectator.

"A great boon to students." — Dundee Advertiser.

BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

NICHOL — Tables of Ancient Literature and History,
FROM B.C. 1500 TO A.D. 200. By the late Professor
NiCHOL. 4to, Cloth. 4s. 6d.

NICHOL— The Death of Themistocles, and other Poems.
Extra fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d.

OLRIG GRANGE. See Smith.

PATERSON — Nithsdale. A Series of Reproductions in
Photogravure from Water-colour Drawings by James
Paterson, R.S.W. With accompanying Letterpress.
Folio, proofs on French and Japanese, ^5 5s. nett; Ordinary
impression, £1 2s. nett.

PATRICK— Medi.^val Scotland. By R. W. Cochran-
Patrick, LL.D., Author of 'Records of the Coinage of
Scotland.' Demy 8vo. Illustrated. 7s. 6d. nett.

"A distinctly useful and interesting publication." — Antiquary.
"Every chapter is brimful of the most valuable information, conveyed in
the clearest and most admirable %\.y\<i.'''' —Scottish Geog. Magazine.

" A good book by a thoroughly competent man."' — Matichester Guardian.

RAN KINE— Songs and Fables. By W. J. Macquorn
Rankine, late Professor of Engineering in the University
of Glasgow. With Portrait, and with Ten Illustrations by
J. B. (Mrs. Hugh Blackburn). Second Edition. Extra
fcap. 8vo. 6s.

RAWNSLEY— Valete: Tennyson and other Memorial
Poems. By Rev. Canon Rawnsley. Crown Svo. 5s.

"The individual poems are always lofty in thought, suave in expression,
and full of suggestions of what is great in contemporary life.'' — Scotsman.
"A volume of exceedingly dignifiedand beautiful verse." — St.James' Gazette.

M£SSA'S. MACLEHOSE AND SONS.

RAWNSLEY — Literary Associations of the English
Lakes. By the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, Vicar of Cros-
thwaite, Honorary Canon of Carlisle. With Map. 2 vols.
Crown 8vo. ids. nett.

Vol. I — Cumberland, Keswick, and Southey's Country.
Vol. n. — Westmoreland, Windermere, and the Haunts of
Wordsworth.

" The good guide-books of the w orld, fortunately for travellers, are not
few in number. Canon Ravvnsley's ' Literary Associations of the Enghsh
Lakes' is second to none of these [Ford's 'Handbook to Spain,' Hare's
' Florence,' ' Venice,' etc.] We can only assure pilgrims to ' Wordsworth-
country and Southey-land ' that Canon Rawnsley's guide-book will add a
thousandfold to the interest of every step they take there, and double the
delight of every sight they see." — Leader in Daily Chronicle.

ROBERTSON— Life and Letters of Rev. William B
Robertson, D.D., of Irvine. See Brown.

ROBERTSON— Hebrew Syntax. See jMuller.

ROSS— Stories of Norwegian Life. By C. M. Ross.
Crown 8vo. \_In the Press.

SCHLOMKA— A German Grammar. With Copious

Exercises, Dialogues, and a Vocabulary. By Clemens

SCHLOMKA, M.A., Ph.D. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo.

4s. 6d.

" Wonderfully clear, consecutive, and simple. We have no hesitation in
strongly recommending this grammar." — School Board Chronicle.

SCHLOMKA— German Reader. Exercises for translating

German into English and English into German. With

Vocabularies for both. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 3s.

"Well arranged, and furnished with a good vocabulary. This work
forms a worthy companion to its author's German Grammar.'' — S'£-(7/jW(ZW.

BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Ipoems bp the JVuthor of "ODlrig Grange."
SMITH, WALTER C— New Uniform Edition of Poems
by Walter C. Smith, M.A., Author of " Olrig Grange.
Fcap. 8vo, cloth, gilt top.
OLRIG GRANGE. Fourth Edition. 5s.
HILDA. Fourth Edition. 5s.
KILDROSTAN. 5s.

"That it is characterized by vigorous thinking, delicate fancy, and happy
terms of expression, is admitted on all hands." — Times.

"A poem of remarkable power." — Briiish Quarterly Revicjj.

" It is to ' Hilda,' however, that we must turn for the mo3t tragic concep-
tion of actual life that has hitherto been fashioned into verse. No modern
poet, it may safely be said, has plunged so deeply into the innermost heart
of living men and women, and none has used such remarkable materials for
his drama." — Scottish Review.

"These poems are really dramatic, genuinely pathetic, and will bear
reading over and over again." — Westminster Review.

" ' Kildrostan ' has all the interest and excitement of a novel." — Scotsman.

SMITH, WALTER C— A Heretic, and Other Poems.

Extra fcap. 8vo. Cloth. 7s. 6d.

"A more appetising volume of verses it would be impossible to pro-
duce."— Christian Leader.

SMITH, WALTER C. — Selections from the Poems of
Walter C. Smith. Crown 8vo. Cloth. 3s. 6d.

"These pieces are mostly of the lyrical order and are really the cream
of the works from which they are drawn. They are fresh, breezy, and
masterful, and show Dr. Smith in the most pleasing and inspiring light."
— Glasgow Herald.

''It affords abundant examples of Dr. Smith's finest poetical pieces." —
Scotsmari .

"A graceful anthology, and sure of a welcome from his many admirers."
— The Times.

"It was an excellent idea to give us this selection from the Scottish
Browning. Like the Southron, he has sounded the deeps of doubt and
soared to the heights of faith ; but there is a bright, sweet, joyous confidence
here, and combined therewith a terseness and a music full of delightful
surprises. ' ' — Liverpool Mercury.

MESSRS. MACLEHOSE AND SONS.

SCOTTISH NATIONAL MEMORIALS. Extra pott folio,
with 30 full-page Plates, and 287 Illustrations in the Text.
£1 I2S. 6d. nett.

(The Edition on Japanese Paper, published at ^21,
and the Large Paper Edition, at ^5 5s., are both out of
print.)

The work is edited by Mr. James Paton, with the assistance of Sir Arthur
Mitchell, K.C.B., Joseph Anderson, LL.D., the Rev. Father Joseph Steven-
son, S.J., Mr. John M. Gray, Curator of the Scottish National Portrait
Gallery, Mr. D.Hay Fleming, Mr. J. Dalrymple Duncan, F.S.A., Mr. Alex.
J. S. Brook, David Murray, M.A., LL.D., Mr. J. O. Mitchell, Mr. C. D.
Donald, and Professor Ferguson, LL.D., F.S.A.

'' It will be enjoyed in equal measure by the Scotchman who is a student of
archaeology and history, and by the Englishman who has time to saunter
through the sections into which it is divided, to sit down here and there,
and drink in the significance of the pictures of Scotch life in the past that
are presented to him in rich abundance and under the most fascinating
guise. " — Spectator.

" The closer and the more carefully the volume is examined, the stronger
becomes the impression that they no longer do these things better in
France." — Glasgow Herald.

SMITH, J. Guthrie— Strathendrick, and its Inhabitants
FROM Early Times : An account of the parishes of Fintry,
Balfron, Killearn, Drymen, Buchanan, and Kilmaronock.
By the late John Guthrie Smith, F.S.A.Scot., author
of ' The Parish of Strathblane.' With Memoir and Portrait.
Crown 4to. With numerous Engravings, Woodcuts, and
Family Trees, ^i iis. 6d. nett. [/« the Press.

SPENS — Employers and Employed : an Exposition of the

Law of Reparation for Physical Injury. By Walter C.

Spens, Advocate, Sheriff- Substitute of Lanarkshire, and

Robert T. Younger, M.A., LL.B., Advocate. Crown

8vo. 14s.

"A most complete compendium of the Law of Employers and Employed
as regards reparation for physical injury." — Glasgoiu Herald.

BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

SPENSER — Tales from Spenser, Chosen from The
Faerie Queene. By Sophia H. MacLehose. Second
Edition. Fcap. 8vo, ornamental cloth, gilt top, 3s. 6d.

Also a Fourth and Cheaper Edition. Paper Boards, with
Illustrated Title Page. Fcap. 8vo. is. 6d. 1

" A delightful book for children. It could not have been better executed
had it been the work of the Lambs." — Saturday Rcvie-w.

"A dainty volume. It makes a charming introduction to a great
poem. " — Guardian.

STANLEY, Dean — The Burning Bush : a Sermon. 8vo. is.

STANNARD— The Divine Humanity and other Sermons.
By the late Rev. J. T. Stannard, Huddersfield. Edited by
the Rev. John Hunter, Glasgow. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d.

STEVEN — Outlines of Practical Pathology. An Intro-
duction to the Practical Study of Morbid Anatomy and
Histology. By J. Lindsay Steven, M.D. Cr. Svo. 7s. 6d.

"To the earnest student bent on seeing for himself the facts of which he
reads, such a manual as that of Dr. Steven's will be invaluable." — Lancet.

"This is a sensible, practical, useful book." — Bristol Medico-Chirurgical
Journal.

STORY — Creed and Conduct : Sermons preached in Ros-
neath Church. By Robert Herbert Story, D.D.,
Regius Professor of Church History in the University of
Glasgow. Crown Svo. Cheap Edition. 3s. 6d.

VEITCH— The Tweed, and Other Poems. By the late
John Veitch, LL.D., Professor of Logic and Rhetoric
in the University of Glasgow. Extra fcap. Svo. 6s. 6d.

MESSRS. MACLEflOSE AND SONS.

VEITCH — Lucretius and the Atomic Theory. Crown
8vo. 3s. 6d.

VEITCH— Hillside Rhymes. Extra fcap. 8vo. 5s.

WADDELL — The Parmenides of Plato. After the Paging
of the Clarke Manuscript. Edited, with Introduction, Fac-
similes, and Notes, by William Wardlaw Waddell,
M.A., Glasgow and Oxford, one of Her Majesty's Inspectors
of Schools. Medium 4to. £\ us. 6d. nett.

"We may unreservedly compliment both Mr. Waddell and his publishers
upon the production of a book which, typographically considered, has no
rival among Glasgow publications since the large-paper Foulis /Eschylus of
1795."^ — Titnes.

"The rescension is one which does honour not only to its editor, but to
the University with which he has chosen to associate his work. . . . Not
only has Mr. Waddell gone more minutely and more carefully than anyone
else known to us into the matters which he takes up, but he also brings to the
investigation the strength and the originality of a new mind which, so far as
appears in the results which his book has attained, is untrammelled by any
particular adherence to academic authority, and has not to keep in view the
specialities of any particular academic requirements." — Scotsman.

WADDELL — Verses and Imitations in Greek and
Latin. By William Wardlaw Waddell. Fcap. 8vo.
2s. 6d.

WALKER — Three Centuries of Scottish Literature.

By Hugh Walker, M.A., Professor of English in St.

David's College, Lampeter. Crown Svo. 2 vols. los. nett.

Vol. I. — The Reformation to the Union.

Vol. II.— The Union to Scott.

" The book is as entrancing as a novel, and no one can rise from its
perusal without being mentally richer from having made a survey of our
native literature under the guidance of the accomplished author. . .
All who are interested in this line of study — and who is not? — must go to
the book itself, and they will find a rare intellectual treat in store for them."
— Aberdeen Free Press.

26 MESSRS. MACLEBOSE'S PUBLICATIONS.

WATSON — First Epistle General of St. John : Notes
of Lectures to serve as a popular Commentary. By Rev.
Charles Watson, D.D., Largs. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

" Ripeness shines from every page of this volume. Since Kingsley's
' Sermons ' we have had no such pellucidly simple English. As a popular
commentary on ' First John ' nothing better can be desired. In a word,
the commentary is worthy of the text." — Dr. Marcus Dods in the British
Weekly.

WATSON, Prof. John— Selections fro.m Kant. See Kant.

WATSON — Kant and his English Critics, a Comparison,
of Critical and Empirical Philosophy. By JOHN Watson,
M.A., LL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in Queen's
LTniversity, Kingston, Canada. 8vo. 7s. 6d.

" Decidedly the best exposition of Kant which we have seen in Eng-
lish. We cannot too strongly commend it." — Saturday Rniew.

" C'est I'ceuvre d'un penseur et dun maitre. . . . Nous avons lu le livre
de M. Watson avec un vif interet et une grande sympathie." — Kevue Phil-
osophique.

WATSON — Comte, Mill, and Spencer: an Outline of
Philosophy. By Professor Watson. Crown 8vo. 6s. nett.

"The present work travels over a wide field, but is full of important
matter, carefully thought out. . . . There can be no doubt that the Ijook
is a very effective criticism of the theories to which it is opposed, as well as
an able exposition of the Cairdian philosophy." — Scoisma>i.

"It is admirably done. A handbook which, in the lucidity and compact-
ness of the general view which it gives of a wide field, ought to be of much
use to students." — Daily Mail.

WOTHERSPOON— The Divine Service. A Eucharistic
Office according to Forms of the Primitive Church. Ar-
ranged by the Rev. H. J. Wotherspoon, M.A., Minister
of Burnbank. Fcap. 8vo, Paper Boards. 6d.

CLASSIFIED LIST OF BOOKS IN
THE FOREGOING CATALOGUE.

BIOGRAPHY.

PAGE

Brown, J. Baldwin, Stoics and Saints, 5

Brown, James, D.D., Life of a Scottish Probationer, ... 6

Brown, James, D.D., Life of William B. Robertson, D.D., - - 6

Brown, R. Scott, James Brown, D.D., 6

Glaister, Dr. John, M.D., Dr. William Smellie and his Con-
temporaries, .---..--.- 10
King, Rev. David, Memoir of, by his Wife and Daughter, - - 15
Leckie, Rev. Joseph, Life and Religion, with Biographical Notice, 15
MacLehose, Sophia H., The Story of Marie Antoinette, - - 18
Mather, George R., M.D., Two Great Scotsmen — The Brothers

William and John Hunter, 18

POETRY.

BiRRELL, C. J. Ballingall, Two Queens, 5

Buchanan, David, Poems, ...----- 6

Freeland, William, A Birth Song and other Poems, - - - 10

Hamilton, Janet, Poems, Essays, and Sketches, - - - - 12

MORISON, Walter, D.D., Through the Postern, - - - 18

NiCHOL, John, The Death of Themistocles and other Poems,- - 20

Rankine, W. J. Macquorn, Songs and Fables, - - - - 20

Rawnsley, Canon, Valete : Tennyson and other Memorial Poems, 20

28 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Smith, Walter C, Olrig Grange, 22

Smith, Walter C, Hilda, .-.-.... 22

Smith, Walter C, Kildrostan, - - 22

Smith, Walter C, A Heretic and other Poems, - - - - 22

Smith, Walter C, Selections from the Poems of, - - - - 22

Veitch, Professor, Hillside Rhymes, 25

Veitch, Professor, The Tweed, and other Poems, - - - 24

GENERAL LITER A TURE.

Argyll, The Duke of, What the Turks are, 4

Blackburn, Mrs. Hugh, Caw, Caw, 5

Blackburn, Mrs. Hugh, The Pipits, 5

Eggs 4d. a Dozen, and Chickens 4d. a Pound, all the Year Round, - 10

Jacks, William, M. P., Lessing's Nathan the Wise, - - - 13

MacCallum, Professor, Tennyson's Idylls and Arthurian Story, 15

MacCunn, Professor, Ethics of Citizenship, 16

MacLehose, Sophia H., Tales from Spenser, - - - - 18

MoiR, Jane F., A Lady's Letters from Central Africa, - - - 18

Rawnsley, Canon, Literary Associations of the English Lakes, - 21

Ross, Chevalier C. ^L, Stories of Norwegian Life, - - - 21

Walker, Professor Hugh, Three Centuries of Scottish Literature, 25

PHIL OSOPHICAL.

Begg, W. Proudfoot, The Development of Taste, - - - 4

Cairo, Principal, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, - 7

Caird, Edward, Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, - - 8

Cairo, Edward, The Evolution of Religion, 8

Cairo, Edward, Essays in Literature and Philosophy, - - - 8

Caird, Edward, Social Philosophy and Religion of Comte, - - 9
Jones, Professor Henry', Browning as a Philosophical and

Religious Teacher, - - - - 14

Jones, Professor Henry', A Critical Account of the Philosophy of

Lotze, 14

A/£SSA'S. MACLEHOSE AND SONS.

Mackenzie, John S., An Introduction to Social Philosophy. - - 16

Veitch, Professor, Lucretius and the Atomic Theory, - - 25

Watson, Professor John, Selections from Kant, - - - 14

Watson, Professor John, Kant and his English Critics, - - 26

Watson, Professor John, Comte, Mill, and Spencer, - - - 26

THEOLOGICAL.

Bathgate, Rev. Wm., Progressive Religion, 4

Hrown, James, D.D., Sermons, 6

Cairo, Principal, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, ■ 7

Cairo, Principal, Sermons and Lectures, 7

Cairo, EowARD, The Evolution of Religion, 8

Dickson, Professor, St. Paul's Use of Terms Flesh and Spirit, - 9

Grant, Rev. William, The Lord's Supper Explained, - - - 12

Hunter, Rev. John, Hymns of Faith and Life, - - - - 13

Hunter, Rev. John, Devotional Services for Public Worship, - 13

Hunter, Rev. John, Sermons, 13

Jeffrey, Rev. R. T., The Salvation of the Gospel, - - - 14

Jeffrey, Rev. R. T., Visits to Calvary, ------ 14

Leckie, Rev. Joseph, Sermons preached at Ibrox, - - - - 15

Leckie, Rev. Joseph, Life and Religion, 15

Mackintosh, William, M.A., D.D., The Natural History of the

Christian Religion, 17

Stanley, Dean, The Burning Bush, 24

Stannard, Rev. J. T., The Divine Humanity and other Sermons, 24

Story, Professor R. H., Creed and Conduct, . - - - 24

Watson, Rev. Charles, First Epistle General of St. John, - - 26

Wotherspoon, Rev, H, J., The Divine Service, - - - - 26

LA IV.

Black, W. G., The Law Agents' Act, 1873, 5

Murray, David, The Property of Married Persons, - - - 19

Spens, Walter C, & R. T. Younger, Employers and Employed, 23

BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

MEDICAL.

PAGE

Anderson, Dr. J. Wallace, Lectures on Medical Nursing, - - 3

Anderson, Dr. J. Wallace, Essentials of Physical Diagnosis, - 3
Anderson, Professor T. M'Call, Affections of the Nervous

System, 4

Barr, Dr. Thomas, Manual of Diseases of the Ear, - - - 4

Cleland, Professor J., Evolution, Expression, and Sensation, - 9
Cleland, Professor J., and Professor Mackay, \ Text-Book

of Anatomy, 9

DovvNiE, J. Walker, M.B., Clinical Manual of Diseases of the Throat, 9

Gairdner, Professor W. T., The Physician as Naturalist, - - 10

Gairdner, Professor W. T., Disciplina Medica, - - - - 10

Leishman, Professor Wm., A System of Midwifery, - - . 15
Macewen, Professor Wm. , Pyogenic Infectious Diseases of the

Brain and Spinal Cord, 16

Macewen, Professor W.M., Atlas of Head Sections, - - - 16

M'Kendkick, Professor J. G., Text-Book of Physiology, - - 17

Steven, J. Lindsay, Outlines of Practical Pathology, - - - 24

TOPOGKA PHICAL.

Bell, Dugald, Among the Rocks round Glasgow, ... 5

Deas, James, C.E., History of the Clyde, 9

Glasgow Publications —

Memoirs and Portraits of One Hundred Glasgow Men, - - 11

The Old Country Houses of the Old Glasgow Gentry, - - 11

The University of Glasgow, Old and New, - - - - 11

Glasgow Archaeological Society's Transactions, - - - ii

A Century of Artists, by W. E. Henley, .... 12

Scottish National Memorials, Edited by James Paton, - - , 23

Graham, R. C, The Carved Stones of Islay, ----- 12

Murray, David, Old Cardross, ....... 19

Murray, David, Glasgow and other Provincial Coins and Tokens, 19

Paterson, James, R.S.W., Nithsdale, 20

Patrick, R. W. Cochran, Medieeval Scotland, - - - - 20

Smith, J. Guthrie, Strathendrick and its Inhabitants, - - . 23

AfESSRS. MACLEHOSE AND SONS.

UNIVERSITY AND OTHER TEXT-BOOKS.

E'AGE

Bannatyne, Lt.-Col. J. Millar, Guide to Examinations for Pro-
motion in the Infantry, . . - 4

Forsyth, David, Test Papers in Perspective, 10

Forsyth, David, Instruction in Linear Perspective, - - - 10

Glasgow University Calendar, 11

Grant, Professor, Catalogue of 6415 Stars for Epoch 1870, - 12

Grant, Professor, Second Catalogue of 2156 Stars for Epoch 1890, 12

Jebb, Professor, Homer — An Introduction to the Iliad and Odyssey, 13

Jebb, Professor, The Anabasis of Xenophon, - - - - 14
Leitch, James, Practical Educationists and their Systems of

Teaching, 15

MiJLLER, Dr. August, Outlines of Hebrew Syntax, Translated and

Edited by Professor James Robertson, 19

Newton, Sir Isaac, Principia, Edited by Lord Kelvin and Ex-
Professor Hugh Blackburn, 19

NiCHOL, John, Tables of European History, Literature, Science,

and Art, 19

NiCHOL, John, Tables of Ancient Literature and History, - - 20

Robertson, Professor James, Hebrew Syntax (see Miiller), - 19

ScHLOMKA, Clemens, A German Grammar, 21

SCHLOMKA, Clemens, German Reader, 21

Waddell, W. W., Verses and Imitations in Greek and Latin, - 25

VVaddell, W. W., The Parmenides of Plato, - - - - 25

n^^^m^r^'

PUBLISHERS ^
I GLASGOW

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