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 »-uKi\tLL STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 No. I. 
 
 Some Problems 
 
 OF 
 
 Lotze's Theory of Knowledge 
 
 EDWIN PROCTOR : ROBINS, M.A. 
 
 Late Scholar and Fellmu of Cornell University 
 
 Edited with a Biographical Introduction 
 
 J. E. CREIGHTON 
 
 ^ehj fork 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1900 
 
r'tm:. 
 
CORNELL STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Some Problems 
 
 Lotze's Theory of Knowledge 
 
 EDWIN PROCTOR ROBINS, M.A. 
 
 Late Scholar and Fellow of Cornell University 
 
 Edited with a Biographical Introduction 
 
 BY 
 
 J. E. CREIGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1900 
 

 PRESS OF 
 
 Thb New Era Printing Company, 
 Lancaster, Pa. 
 
 \v^W«v^^ ^\^,%SX 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 This monograph was written while the author was a graduate 
 student at Cornell University, and was intended as a dissertation 
 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Although the author 
 had intended before publishing to add to the work an historical 
 introduction dealing with the position of philosophy in Germany 
 at the time when Lotze's views were forming, and had- collected 
 some material for this purpose, the study of Lotze which he 
 had undertaken was in all essentials complete at the time of his 
 death. The first chapter had been rewritten and revised, and 
 the remaining chapters, although lacking the author's final touch, 
 would not probably have been changed greatly either in form 
 or substance. In preparing the manuscript for the press, I have 
 made no changes except in occasional passages where the ad- 
 dition or substitution of a word or phrase seemed necessary 
 in order to render the meaning clearer. With regard to the 
 general method and purpose of the study a word may be neces- 
 sary. The author purposely refrained from criticism of par- 
 ticular passages or isolated statements in the system with which 
 he was dealing. The aim of his study was sympathetically to 
 interpret the spirit of Lotze's system as a whole — to do justice to 
 the philosopher by taking him at his best rather than to exhibit 
 the literal inconsistencies of his system. 
 
 Edward Proctor Robins was born at Central Bedeque, Prince 
 Edward Island, July 2, 1872. After passing through the 
 primary and grammar schools of his native place, he entered 
 Prince of Wales College, Charlottetown, at the age of sixteen. 
 In the fall of 1891 he matriculated into Dalhousie College, Hali- 
 fax, N. S. Although his preparation would have enabled him 
 to enter the second year in any Canadian college, he characteris- 
 tically preferred to take the full four years' course. Besides 
 philosophy, to which he devoted special attention during the last 
 two years of his collegiate course, mathematics, physics, botany, 
 
 8S5449 
 
and political economy were the subjects which specially engaged 
 his attention. He received the degree of B.A. from Dalhousie 
 College in 1895, and after another year's residence, that of M.A. 
 in 1896. In the fall of the latter year he came to Cornell Uni- 
 versity and for three years carried on graduate studies in philoso- 
 phy and psychology, being twice elected to a graduate scholarship, 
 and at the time of his death, holding a fellowship in the Sage 
 School of Philosophy. He died on April 19, 1899, after an 
 illness of three days, having nearly completed his twenty -seventh 
 year. 
 
 Besides a number of reports on periodical literature and new 
 books contributed from time to time to the Philosophical Reviezv, 
 Robins published in the same journal a few months before his 
 death an important article entitled " Modern Theories of Judg- 
 ment," In the psychological laboratory he had taken part as 
 subject in several important investigations, and was for some 
 months before his death, himself engaged in studying complex 
 taste-sensations, working especially at an analysis of metallic 
 and alkaline tastes which "have a ' burning ' or ' pricking ' quality. 
 From reports made to Professor Titchener it is certain that 
 his investigation yielded important results. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, these can not be published, as it was found impossible 
 to fully decipher the abbreviated notes in which the records of 
 his experiments had been made. 
 
 It would be out of place to dwell here upon the intellectual 
 
 promise of the author, or to attempt any appreciation of his 
 
 personal character. Apart from the importance which attaches 
 
 to this monograph as a contribution to the history of philosophy, 
 
 for those who knew Robins personally it will have a value as a 
 
 memorial of the man. 
 
 J. E. C. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGR. 
 
 Chapter I. — Problem and Method 1-3 1 
 
 Various interpretations of Lotze, pp. 1-8 ; Lotze's 
 Problem, pp. 8-13; Lotze's Method, pp. 13-23; 
 Methodology and Truth, pp. 23-31. 
 
 Chapter II. — The Appearance of Reality 32-66 
 
 Lotze as mediator between the view of Kant 
 and that of Hegel with regard to Knowledge, pp. 
 32, 33 ; Kant's separation of phenomena and reality, 
 pp. 33-36 ; Hegel's assertion that the phenomenon 
 is reality, pp. 36-42 ; Lotze's criticism of Kant, pp. 
 43-5 I ; Refutation of some misunderstandings, pp. 
 51—54; Lotze's Criticism of the Hegelian Method, 
 pp. 54-65 ; Summary, pp. 65, 66. 
 
 Chapter III. — Reality and Knowledge 67-108 
 
 Lotze's general view of the relation of Knowledge 
 and Reality, pp. 67-71 ; The Nature of Reality, pp. 
 71-93 ; The relation of the cognitive subject to 
 Reality, pp. 93-108. 
 
CHAPTER I. ■— '■• "•' ^ -.'' 
 
 PROBLEM AND METHOD. ' ' ■ '>■'.'.''•. , •'. ]"■•: 
 
 Introduction. 
 
 LOTZE'S many-sidedness at once attracts the notice of the 
 reader. He seems to represent in turn almost every 
 system of philosophy, and also to deny that a system of knowl- 
 edge is possible. Many scholars know Lotze chiefly as a realist, 
 and class his philosophy with the anti-idealism which is so com- 
 mon at the present time. From this point of view he is attacked 
 by critics who regard him as the enemy of all true philosophy, 
 and his realism as the antithesis of sound idealism.^ On the 
 other hand there are those who sympathize with Lotze, and agree 
 that all knowledge is empirical ; but these critics are not satisfied 
 because he does not renounce entirely the philosophical method.* 
 Others who identify his idealism with an abstract monism find in 
 Lotze an explicit reaUsm as the kernel of his system, and main- 
 tain that any attempt to formlilate his philosophy idealistically is 
 wrong, and makes Lotze say just the opposite of that which he 
 intended to uphold. According to this interpretation, Lotze is not 
 a monist (idealist), but a pluralist.^ A fourth class of thinkers find 
 in Lotze the champion of the heart against the head, and regard his 
 philosophy as a resolute and by no means unsuccessful attempt 
 to show that truth is broader than intellect, and that human 
 experience is as extensive as man's total being, and is not limited 
 to the function of understanding or reason alone. Even Lotze's 
 opponents recognize this concession to feeling and will as ele- 
 ments in the mind, but remark sarcastically that now theologians 
 " may take new heart," for this theory " trusts the heart against 
 the head." * Again there are those who regard Lotze as an 
 idealist — they claim that for him the world is a spiritual unity, 
 
 1 Cf. Jones : Phil, of Lotze, Preface. 
 
 ^ Kiilpe : Outlines of Psy. (Eng. trans.), p. 26. 
 
 3 Schiller: Lotze's Motiistn, Phil. Rev., V, pp. 225-245. 
 
 * Jones: Op. cit., Pref., pp. xi, xii. 
 
2 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 and that all individual things have worth and value only in rela- 
 tion to the whole/; '.Lastly, Lotze is termed by some a mere 
 ecl^ct'c, who gathered together a great many different points of 
 ,Yi<-w, biit- iV-as not'; at»le to bring them into a unified system.^ 
 ' Thus it appears that the interpretations of Lotze's philosophy are 
 many. At one time he is called a realist, at another, a faith 
 philosopher, and again he is regarded as an idealist, or even a mere 
 eclectic. Kronenberg sums up the various criticisms in the fol- 
 lowing way : " Our philosopher is on the one side regarded as 
 an Herbartian, on the other as a Leibnitzian, or even as a fol- 
 lower of Spinoza. Some are of opinion that Lotze is a speculative 
 theist or the restorer of ancient rationalism, others assert that 
 he is simply an ordinary eclectic." ^ Whence comes this diversity 
 of opinion, and how are we to explain the fact of so many inter- 
 pretations of Lotze's philosophy ? 
 
 It is a common experience that, for the most part, we find what 
 we look for, and do not observe that which does not interest us.^ 
 This is no doubt one reason why so many various interpretations 
 have been put upon Lotze's philosophy. But the personal equa- 
 tion present in every investigation will not explain the whole fact, 
 though it is a necessary factor. Besides this subjective condition 
 of knowledge, there is an objective basis just as essential.^ 
 Lotze's philosophy is a source from which many 'can draw. 
 He saw the many sides of experience, and was great enough 
 not to desire the reduction of the manifold nature of man 
 to one aspect, which thereby claims to become the basis 
 and explanatory cause of the others.'' Lotze maintained that 
 experience is a function of the entire man, and that it conse- 
 quently possessed many attributes, many forms, and different 
 criteria of value. His aim was to describe human nature as he 
 found it, and to allow each part its due. To this end he weighed 
 carefully the facts on all sides, and desired to avoid all hasty con- 
 
 lyon Hartmann : Lotze'' s Phil., p. 66. 
 2 Stahlin : Kant, Lotze und Ritschl, \ 30. 
 ^ Moderne Philosophen, pp. 4-5. 
 * Metaphysik, \ 42. 
 
 5 Mikrokosmos (Eng. trans.), II, pp. 322, ff. 
 
 6 Merz : Article, " Lotze :" Ency. Brit., Vol. XV, p. 14. 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 3 
 
 elusions.^ When a fact cannot be analyzed without suffering a 
 loss of its complete nature, Lotze accepts it as ultimate." 
 
 It is doubtless true that the various interpretations to which 
 we have referred have some warrant. There must be something 
 in Lotze's philosophy which is the source of such widespread in- 
 terest, and of the material for so many different constructions of 
 his system. At first sight it may seem that he has given only a 
 partial analysis of a wide experience, and has failed to reduce it 
 all to a system. In this way, it may be explained why Lotze has 
 attracted so many and satisfied so few. He has touched life 
 lightly, it may be said, but at many points. According to this 
 view, the scope of Lotze's philosophy is the consequence of his 
 unsystematic eclecticism. He accepts physical law and yet free- 
 dom ; he enthrones feeling and will as well as reason. He will 
 not give up the utterances of experience, and there is nothing so 
 unimportant as to deserve no attention, or to be silenced with 
 the charge of inconsistency with reason. Lotze lets pass no op- 
 portunity to reach a new side or aspect of truth. He moves 
 from point to point and examines reality in its myriad phases, 
 and in its wealth of detail. His interests are universal and his 
 experience comprehensive. Along with the definite detail of 
 science he brings the richness of a mature religious nature.^ 
 This is the source of his comprehensive philosophy. 
 
 In our attempts to set forth a part of this philosophy, it ought 
 to be remembered that it is not our purpose to maintain that 
 there are no inconsistencies in Lotze's doctrines. Such a claim 
 could not be substantiated. But this is no discredit to our 
 author, for a complete system of experience which is comprehen- 
 sible through and through, which compels conviction and leaves 
 no room for doubt, has not yet been formulated, and there seems 
 to be little likelihood that it ever will be formulated — at any rate 
 not till all the facts of experience are in. While, however, we 
 make no such pretensions for the perfection of Lotze's philosophy, 
 it will be our endeavor to set forth as plainly as possible his atti- 
 
 »Cf. Erdmann : Hist, of Phil., I 12, 347. 
 2 Grundriss der Metaphysik, \ 92. 
 ^ Mikrokosmos, II, p. 727. 
 
4 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 tude to philosophy, what he attempted to do towards the solution 
 of the logical problem, and how far he has succeeded. 
 
 For the student of Lotze a difficulty soon arises. What seemed 
 at first clear and luminous grows obscure and perplexing, and we 
 wonder if there is any way in which the different parts can be 
 fitted together and made comprehensible in one system. As we 
 read on from one chapter to another, and from one book to an- 
 other, the efforts we have made by the way to gather up all the 
 threads of his doctrine, and put ourselves at his point of view, fail 
 one by one, and we complete the first reading of his works thor- 
 oughly bewildered. It must indeed be admitted that Lotze has 
 not given us a complete system of philosophy. He has given us 
 an attitude and a method, and it is in this respect that we will at- 
 tempt to interpret him. Furthermore, it must be granted that if 
 we consider only the outer form of his philosophy, and do not 
 seek to sympathetically understand his meaning, his chapters pre- 
 sent a puzzling movement of contradictory scenes in which we 
 may labor in vain to find unity. For example, on the one hand, 
 an uncompromising monism is proclaimed as the only intelligible 
 solution of the nature of' reality, and, on the other hand, as decided 
 a dualism seems to be the basis of his logical discussions. His 
 metaphysic is monistic or idealistic, whereas his logic appears to be 
 dualistic or realistic. This antithesis recurs again and again, and 
 both idealism and realism are in turn urgently insisted upon. Stated 
 in this unqualified way, Lotze's philosophy has the semblance of 
 mere eclecticism. But we can hardly suppose that this interpre- 
 tation expresses his meaning, for it would imply that he was in- 
 attentive to the most obvious contradictions. His logical doc- 
 trine seems to admit that we know only phenomena ; but had 
 Lotze meant this he could have had no legitimate right to discuss 
 the nature of reality. It seems necessary, therefore, to qualify 
 these statements and endeavor to comprehend the meaning that 
 Lotze gives them. His meaning is deeper than appears on the 
 surface, and if we can put ourselves at his point of view many of 
 the apparent contradictions will vanish. 
 
 Sympathetic criticism a great author always deserves. When 
 his meaning has been discovered, a more searching and destruc- 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 5 
 
 tive criticism is valuable and necessary. But until he has been 
 interpreted, until it has been made plain what his purpose is, and 
 how he has regarded reality, until the critic has put himself in 
 the place of the author and has beheld reality as he beholds it, 
 destructive and analytic criticism may be invaluable in construct- 
 ing or supporting another theory, but it can not do justice to the 
 author. Any outline of philosophy can be picked to pieces. 
 Conceptions can be pursued to their logical conclusions and 
 shown to contain contradictions. Such a logical criticism tends 
 therefore to be unfair. 
 
 In this age, indeed, a great deal is said about ' consistency.' 
 A philosophy, at least, must be consistent. Every one grants so 
 much. But what is ' consistency,' and how do we know when a 
 system is consistent ? The moment we inquire into the meaning 
 of this concept, which every one uses so readily, it becomes evi- 
 dent that our notions of ' consistency ' differ, and that what is 
 really made the criterion of truth is not consistency, but our in- 
 dividual conception of what consistency is. It is not easy to 
 discover the true nature of consistency, and careful analyses do 
 not seem to make the concept intelligible. Consistency has 
 been defined as the principle of' non-contradiction,' or ' the incon- 
 ceivability of the opposite.' In this case, to be sure, the criterion 
 of truth is logical or intellectual ; intellect decides, and intellect 
 alone. According to this view, feeling and emotion are disturb- 
 ing elements which lead to biased judgments. If now consis- 
 tency in this sense of the term is made the test of truth, it will 
 be seen that it does not work to complete satisfaction. One 
 of the chief characteristics of rational knowledge is that we know 
 hozv an event occurs, Jwiv a compound is formed or analyzed. 
 This ' how ' is something that can be described and set forth in 
 such a way that an observer can repeat it, and see how, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, the parts go together to compose the whole. We can 
 see how 5-1-4=9; how hydrogen and chlorine form hydro- 
 chloric acid. These processes and their results can be shoivn by 
 analysis and synthesis. But so soon as we ask the further ques- 
 tion as to whether we can understand how composition or unity 
 is possible, we must admit the fact we know ; we may even be 
 
6 LOTZES THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 able to observe the parts unite together, to measure their rela- 
 tive proportions, and understand the synthesis to this extent. 
 But when an attempt is made to understand how parts can form 
 a unity, or how a can be b, it cannot be maintained dogmatically 
 that this unity is comprehensible by means of intellect alone, 
 though it is plain that intellect is a significant function in knowl- 
 edge. If, then, the characteristic mark of intellectual knowledge 
 is that the subject knows Jiozv a result is produced, or liow a proc- 
 ess occurs, it is probable that an intellectual comprehension of 
 unity in difference is impossible. Individual opinion may differ 
 widely on this point ; but the very fact that there is a difference 
 of opinion shows that intellectual consistency alone cannot be 
 regarded as the sole criterion of truth, and of the value of knowl- 
 edge. Even though it should turn out in the end to be the ulti- 
 mate test of all that is comprehensible, it would be simply an 
 unwarranted dogma to assume that all knowledge and all truth 
 must conform to this one touch-stone. 
 
 It seems unfair, therefore, to urge to its logical conclusions cer- 
 tain conceptions, and make the value and results of an author's 
 work stand or fall by the conclusions reached in this way. This 
 further fact also must be borne in mind when a criticism of any 
 work is made. Even though we accept the dialectic method, and 
 hold that all concepts must be organic, and that, therefore, if any 
 two are contradictory one or both must be false ; if, I say, we accept 
 this method, the critic is liable to fall into a common error, in 
 that he puts his own consciousness and his own concepts in the 
 place of those of the author whom he criticises. When a critic 
 examines a philosophical work and finds that the concepts are 
 not organic but self-contradictory, he may reach either one of 
 two conclusions : Either that the writer's work is actually in- 
 consistent, or that the concepts do not mean for the critic what 
 they mean for the writer. Now the latter conclusion is not likely 
 to be drawn ; and so naturally the author is frequently charged 
 with inconsistency when the real source of contradiction lies in 
 the fact that the critic does not give his concepts the meaning 
 which the authoi intended that they should express. Only a 
 small part of one's meaning can be caught and- expressed in lang- 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. J 
 
 uagc ; therefore it is incumbent on all who attempt to interpret 
 an author to get behind the mere words, to give up their own 
 particular notions, and think ivith the writer, to get into sympathy 
 with him, and grasp the underlying conviction which he has en- 
 deavored to designate by concepts in discursive statement. If, 
 indeed, the critic can discover the underlying conviction, he will 
 be able to follow the thread of connection running through the 
 whole system, and making it an intelligible (though perhaps not 
 an ' intellectual ') unity. If, however, he misses the point of view, 
 and seeks to construct it by an inductive synthesis, reading his 
 own private notions into the categories, and coloring them all 
 with his own individuality, it is patent that he will discover con- 
 tradictions everywhere. 
 
 The point to be emphasized is, that the philosopher has an 
 attitude, and that, to interpret him, it is necessary to get into his 
 attitude. It is hard to realize that much of a man's philosophy 
 is his attitude, so accustomed are we to the objectivity of natural 
 science. In science where simple objects are before us, and where 
 the problem is to count, measure, or weigh them, it is compara- 
 tively easy to treat them in an almost purely objective way. The 
 object is simple, and appears to every one in nearly the same way, 
 though even here we reach a limit where uniformity ceases, and 
 individuality shapes the results. This individuality, however, here 
 enters only in a small way, and for all practical purposes little 
 differences can be overlooked, and all phenomena taken as uniform. 
 Where the descriptions are easy every one agrees to them, and 
 their objectivity is obvious. But whenever we are dealing with 
 the personal experience of an individual thinker it is obvious that 
 no such uniformity exists, and, indeed, there is not the same means 
 of compelling assent. The difference, we believe, is only in de- 
 gree, nevertheless there is a difference, and to recognize this is all 
 that is demanded. 
 
 As has now been shown, knowledge has a personal equation : 
 a man's philosophy depends largely on the kind of man he is.^ 
 In other words, much of our knowledge is a personal possession 
 which is not objective, and cannot be objectfied or communicated 
 to another.^ That other may be able, if he is a sympathetic 
 
 1 Cf. Fichte, J. G., Werke, I, p. 434. iMikr., II, pp. 622, 623. 
 
8 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 critic, to reconstruct this knowledge in his own experience, and 
 in this way become an interpreter. This he can accomphsh, 
 however, only if he beholds things from the same standpoint as 
 the writer. Should he, indeed, be unsympathetic, and possess a 
 conception of reality different from that of the author, then it is 
 impossible for him to be an interpreter. Moreover, he is almost 
 certain to observe nothing but contradictions ; for he reads into 
 the terms conceptions of his own which they will not bear. 
 Philosophic knowledge is not simple enough to be spread out in 
 objective perception, or to be expressed adequately in the intui- 
 tive forms of any sense department where direct perception is 
 sufficient to compel agreement. On the contrary, this knowledge 
 is complex, and refuses to be expressed in sensuous forms ; and 
 though it cannot be presented to the eye or the ear, it has a con- 
 tent and a meaning which we can appreciate, though it cannot 
 be firmly grasped in the ordinary categories of science. This 
 knowledge is the individual's interpretation of the infinite and 
 boundless reality with which he is in contact. What he knows 
 does not exhaust the wealth of reality. It is only a fragment of 
 what can be known ; but it is the part he has selected, and 
 elaborated into an experience which is comprehensible for him. 
 He has given this particular interpretation of reality because he was 
 of such a nature, and stood in such a relation to reality, because 
 it was this aspect of reality which interested him, and satisfied 
 him. We may therefore conclude that the further the so-called 
 world of sense is removed from our knowledge, the more the 
 personal equation gives tone and color to the entire construction. 
 
 Our problem, therefore, will be to attempt to discover Lotze's 
 meaning, and to appreciate what he tried to do.^ Accordingly, 
 this chapter will be a discussion of his problem and his method ; 
 and first we will take up his problem. 
 
 I. Lotze's problem is to reconcile oppositions, or to mediate 
 between contrary opinions. It is a synthetic reconstruction 
 of philosophy, which will take account of all departments of 
 knowledge. What President Schurman says of Kant is true of 
 Lotze : "Kant had a primitive bent towards mediation. His 
 iCf. Mikr. (Eng. trans.), II, p. 576. 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 9 
 
 nature led him to compose intellectual differences by mutual con- 
 cessions. His method was to recede somewhat from the rigorous 
 and exclusive claims of either side in order to adopt the truth per- 
 taining to both sides. . . . There was in Kant an instinctive ten- 
 dency to adjudicate all disputes without rejecting the claims of 
 rival contestants." ' Mediation is the form philosophy took in 
 Lotze's time, and Lotze was only one among many who at- 
 tempted a reconstruction of truth. After Hegel's death a disso- 
 lution of his school occurred. The attacks upon Hegel were 
 vital and were aimed at the very heart of his system. Accor- 
 dingly, dissolution occurj^ed in all parts of his philosophy, viz., 
 logic, ethics, politics, and the philosophy of religion.^ There 
 was only one course open, and this was a reconstruction, and the 
 strength of this new attitude is based upon two factors, says 
 Kronenberg. These factors are : " The enormous development 
 of empirical inquiry, especially in the provinces of the natural 
 sciences, and in a negative factor, the dissolution and the disinte- 
 gration of the Hegelian school."^ According to Erdmann, this 
 reconstruction took four forms. The first was a philosophy of res- 
 toration, a return to earlier systems,^ while the second aimed at in- 
 novation. The members of the latter school desired to be original; 
 but they too were really restorationists, for they produced nothing 
 new. Some of them, says Erdmann, " had so little acquaintance 
 with philosophy that they offered as new wisdom doctrines which 
 had long ago been rejected."^ " A third case, and one which 
 would .occupy an intermediate position between these two at- 
 tempts at repristination and these other attempts at giving a new 
 form to philosophy, would occur, if one or several of the systems 
 hitherto considered were to be taken as a starting point and fur- 
 ther developed." ^ This third form of reconstruction is a devel- 
 opment of earlier systems or of an earlier system. Erdmann 
 classifies this third form into two groups : Those who 
 
 1 TJie Critical Philosophy, Phil. Rev., VII, I, pp. 5, 6.' 
 
 2 Erdmann: op. «V., ^? 332-342. 
 '^ Mode me Philosophen, p. 12. 
 
 * Erdmann : op. cii., § 344. 
 
 -Op. cil.,?ii^Sy^^^ 
 ^Ibid., §343, 2. 
 
lO LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 started either from one single system, or from a study of many 
 systems/ and those who also endeavored to mediate between 
 natural science and speculation.' To this latter class belongs 
 Lotze. The fourth case is a retreat from philosophical systems to 
 a study of the history of philosophy. It is the third form alone, to 
 which Lotze belongs, which can lay claim to real originality ; for 
 it alone is truly a reco7istruction of former theories. This recon- 
 struction is at the same time a mediation. Lotze endeavors 
 to combine the truth in the various theories of philosophy 
 with the method of the natural sciences. This was a vital problem 
 for Lotze, who was trained in the two schools of philosophy and 
 science. He was also a student of literature and art, and brought 
 a well-trained mind and a high degree of culture to the solution 
 of philosophical problems. 
 
 The tendency of Lotze's thinking is "to oppose hasty dogma- 
 tizing."^ One form of the reconciliation is that between science 
 and faith. " It is true that the imperfection of human knowledge 
 may compel us, when we have used our utmost endeavors, to 
 confess that we cannot build up the results of cognition and 
 faith so as to form a complete and perfect structure ; but 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 contrary, 
 we must be ever conscious of endeavoring to maintain the rights 
 of each, and to show how far from insoluble is the contradiction 
 in which they appear to be inextricably involved."* Now what is 
 true of the relation of man's spiritual needs to the results of 
 science, is true of every department of Lotze's philosophy. He 
 mediates between the creation conception of the origin of the 
 world and the conception of development. For Lotze, God is 
 not a Dais ex machlna who declares his will in miracles. On 
 the contrary, he manifests himself in the laws of nature.^ This 
 leads to the mediation between mechanism and teleology. God 
 
 1 Op. cit., I 346, I. 
 iJbid., §347, 9- 
 
 ^ Mikr., I, Introd., p. xi.; cf. also Kronenberg : op. cit., pp. 19-21 ; Jones : op. 
 cit., ch. I; Lindsay: Hermann Lotze : Mind, 1S76, p. 369. 
 ^Mikr., II, p. 128. 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. II 
 
 works in nature. The telic purpose of the universe operates by 
 means of a mechanical system. Teleology has a modus operandi. 
 Therefore pure mechanism is an abstraction, and not an ultimate 
 or metaphysical category.' But teleology alone is equally an 
 abstraction and only a methodological conception, or HUfsbegriff 
 which enables us to group certain aspects of reality under a defi- 
 nite rubric.' Both concepts are limited, and both imply one an- 
 other. Mechanism is therefore no power controlling reality, but 
 rather the way in which a purposeful reality realizes itself.^ Again 
 we find the same philosophical problem in Lotze's discussion of 
 monism and pluralism. An absolute monism would contradict 
 experience, which asserts a many, and also change. On the other 
 hand, pluralism is not ultimate ; for experience testifies to the 
 unity of reality. Furthermore, neither of these concepts can 
 logically stand alone. Each implies the other. Unity has no 
 meaning without plurality, and plurality has no meaning apart 
 from unity. The real, Lotze therefore concludes, is one and 
 many, it is a unity of differences. Once more, this tendency to 
 mediate between extremes is found not only in the critique of 
 these higher categories, but is present throughout all Lotze's 
 work.* He breaks down the abstract distinction between physics 
 and physiology, or between the inorganic^ and the organic ; also 
 the distinction between plants and animals f and body and mind.^ 
 There is still another and very important case in which this 
 method is exemplified. Lotze has acted the part of mediator 
 with regard to the notions of appearance and reality. Since 
 Kant's time these concepts have been of vital importance for a 
 theory of knowledge. Appearance and reality were so regarded 
 that a sharp dualism arose between the two, with the result that 
 appearance is known and reality unknown. A little later the 
 attempt to know a reality behind appearance was renounced, 
 and appearance and reality were identified, and thus, of course, 
 
 '^Met., \ 269. 
 ^Ibid., I 92. 
 
 ^ Alikr., II, pp. 620 f; Logic, 7^1 I47 ff. 
 
 ^ Met., \\ 68-81 ; Grundriss der Religionsphil, § 21 ; Mikr., II, pp. 594-599- 
 
 ^ Mikr., Bk. I, Chs. II,-IV; Allgetneine Pathologie, Bk. I. 
 
 s Medicinische Psychologie, \\ II-15. 
 
 •^ Med. Psy., ?i?i 6-10; Mikr., Bk., III. 
 
12 LOTZES THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 reality is known Avlien appearance is known. Lotze, however, 
 does not accept either of these extreme theories, but adopts a posi- 
 tion which preserves the truth in both. 
 
 Not only do Lotze's sympathetic interpreters admit that medi- 
 ation plays an important role in his philosophic thinking, and 
 commend him for this method, but his opponents equally observe 
 how large a part this method has in shaping his philosophy. 
 This method is plainly acknowledged, for example, by Jones ^ and 
 Lange. The latter extols Lotze for the distinct service he has 
 rendered to science in clearing up the problem, and in providing 
 a method, while condemning him for what Lange considers a 
 return to superstition." In another reference to Lotze, Lange 
 says : " An example of such a scientific police was furnished 
 some years ago by Lotze in his polemic against the anthropol- 
 ogy of the younger Fichte. He made only one mistake, that 
 after he had scientifically quite defeated him he proposed to 
 shake hands and exchange gifts like the Homeric heroes."^ 
 
 There are still a few points concerning mediation which we 
 need to notice before closing this section. Mediation is not a 
 mechanical adjudication by means of which an arithmetic mean 
 is obtained, through each side " yielding a little alternatively," 
 but it is a reinterpretation of the facts, a rethinking of them in 
 new concepts. It is plainly a fresh elaboration of the facts of 
 experience, and in this respect it differs from an eclecticism. In 
 the second place, mediation does not remove all differences, and 
 unite opposite theories and facts on the dead-level of bare identity ; 
 but it takes note of differences, and seeks to emphasize them to 
 their full value. Lotze is always opposed to hasty generaliza- 
 tion, and regards it as no advance when unity is won at the loss 
 of content. Wherever the unity underlying two different con- 
 tents is not clearly known, Lotze regards a generalization un- 
 warranted, and prefers to designate each content by its own concept. 
 As will be seen below, he regards such contents as methodologic- 
 ally distinct, though he admits that ultimately they form a unity 
 in a way which at present is not understood. But in this prin- 
 
 1 Op. cit., Ch. I. 
 
 2Cf. Hist of Materialism (Eng. Trans.), Vol. II, p. 285. 
 
 ^ Ibid., II, p. 347. 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 1 3 
 
 ciple of mediation it is niaiiitainoJ that these opposite contents are 
 not dualistically opposed, and are not incompatible. With this 
 notion the metaphysical problem is solved, and the remaining 
 task devolves upon one or other of the special sciences to show 
 in detail how the mediation is accomplished. Thirdly, the 
 request that philosophy explain Junv the general concepts are 
 formed, and how reality exists as it does exist is far too great a 
 demand. Because we can maintain that reality is a unity in dif- 
 ference, it does not follow that an explanation of hozv this is so 
 can be given. Knowledge is broader than intellectual explana- 
 tion. Many things are known where an explanation of them is 
 not forthcoming. INIediation in Lotze's hands is rather an insis- 
 tence on the facts wherever they are found. It holds to them in 
 the hope that further reflection will display their interdependence. 
 Meanwhile it tones down opposing theories by regarding them as 
 human formulations of certain bodies of facts, or as Hilfshy- 
 pothesen ; and by giving, wherever possible, a reinterpretation, so 
 that the truth on both sides is retained, and both explained. 
 The philosopher must not be over-enthusiastic for the great 
 things, and regardless of the small. Each has its worth in the 
 unity of things and it should be treated as it deserves.^ No 
 theory therefore has any right to tyrannize over the facts, and 
 "any scientific hypothesis that offends our deeper instincts is ipso 
 facto disproved, and classed among those materialistic theories 
 that far outrun possible experience."^ 
 
 II. Lotze's method is the key to all his philosophy. Philos- 
 ophy, he maintains, is •. not a deductive science, and knowledge 
 cannot be deduced a priori from any general principle. Not 
 only can knowledge in its detail not be deduced, but not even an 
 outline can be given a priori. "■ One view, however, believes that 
 it is both able and obliged to divine at the beginning the One 
 Real Principle, on which the world actually depends, and from it 
 to deduce or construe the entire actuality as the sum of its con- 
 sequences. Such a beginning for cognition would be the best if 
 we were gods. On the contrary, as finite beings, we do not our- 
 
 ^Mikr., II, p. 728: 
 
 *Santayana: Lche s Moral Idealism: Mind, Vol. XV (1S90), p. 191. 
 
14 LOTZES THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 selves stand in the creative center of the world, but eccentrically 
 in the hurly-burly of its individual sequences. It is not at all 
 probable, and is never certain, that we should perfectly divine the 
 one true principle of the world in any one fundamental thought, 
 however noble and important, to which some sudden intuition 
 might lead us ; still more uncertain that we should formally 
 apprehend it so accurately that the series of its true consequences 
 should obviously proceed from it. It is rather altogether prob- 
 able that the first expression of the principle will be defective, 
 and that mistakes will always multiply in the course of the deduc- 
 tion ; since one has regard to no independent point of view from 
 which they might be corrected." ^ 
 
 The deductive method is of value for the exhibitioii of a truth 
 already possessed. But since it can only exhibit truth, it is not 
 a suitable method for the discovery of truth and the compre- 
 hension of reality. Man's business is the search for truth, and 
 his method must be able to aid him in its discovery. Man is 
 only an atom in the vast universe, and it is idle for him to 
 endeavor to grasp the complete truth of the universe from which 
 he can deduce all secondary truth. ^ Man's importance has been 
 overestimated. He still bears too much of the celestial dignity 
 with which the illumination has crowned him. Man may be 
 made in the likeness of God, but he is not a deity, and he has 
 no right to claim omniscience. Instead of residing in the center 
 of things from which he can see reality in its completeness, he 
 exists on the periphery of being, and has only a little knowledge, 
 and this is relative to his station, and has been acquired grad- 
 ually.^ If God is truth, it is, on the other hand, man's duty 
 to attain truth. Consequently "the mere search for truth is by 
 no means under the necessity of taking its point of departure 
 from one principle, but is justified in setting forth from many 
 points of attachment that lie near each other. It is only bound 
 to the laws of thought — beyond that, to no so-called ' method ' 
 whatever."^ 
 
 ^Encyk. d. Phil., § 3. 
 
 ^Mikr., II, p. 141. 
 
 ^ Logik., Introd., \ ix. 
 
 ^Ettcyk. d. Phil., \ 3; Mikr.^\\, pp. 714, 715. 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 15 
 
 Furthermore, deduction is a purely intellectual method, and 
 bases every step in the process upon pure concepts. If complete 
 knowledge deifies man, the deductive method of philosophy 
 deifies intellect. This deification of reason is the heritage we 
 have received from the French and German Illumination. The 
 supremacy of intellect is expressed by Sir W. Hamilton in his 
 famous aphorism : "In the world there is nothing great but man. 
 In man there is nothing great but mind." This conception of 
 man makes intellect sovereign, and the rest of his nature a slave. 
 Feeling, emotion, and desire have no rights. As Kant states it, 
 they have only duties to reason. Feeling must always give way 
 to intellect ; emotion is a form of feeling which is very disturb- 
 ing and threatens the supremacy of reason : It is simply a rash, 
 and rank growth of feeling.^ This method endeavors to rationalize 
 everything, to express all experience in terms of intellect, and 
 what does not conform to this criterion is erroneous. Be this 
 as it may, it is a point of view against which Lotze wages an 
 incessant polemic. " It is by Lotze chiefly that the overestima- 
 tion of knowledge has been demolished, a notion which has 
 haunted our conceptions of life from Plato to Hegel. In theo- 
 retical thought, indeed, Lotze refers to the elements of belief in 
 immediate experiences, which lie in the ultimate axioms, and con- 
 sequently he shows the deeper significance which belongs to be- 
 lief in the unity of the soul."" So far from being able to deduce 
 all reality in concepts from one universal principle, thought alone 
 is not able to comprehend many of the ordinary facts of expe- 
 rience. Becoming is a puzzle for thought, so also are causation, 
 existence, unity, etc.^ Reality can be understood only by living 
 it in every part of our being, and not by thought only. Could 
 it be understood by thought, and unfolded from one principle as 
 concepts can be analyzed from a judgment, then reality would 
 be thought. But " the nature of things does not consist in 
 thoughts, and .... thinking is not able to grasp it. . , . It 
 was a long time before living -fancy recognized in thought the 
 bridle which guides the course, steadily, surely, and truly ; per- 
 
 iKant : IVerke (Hartenstein's Ed.), Vol. VII, pp. 571 fif. 
 2 Vorbrodt : Principieit d. Ethik, p. 9. 
 M///Jr., II, pp. 353-355. 
 
1 6 LOTZES THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 haps it will be as long again before men' see that the bridle can- 
 not originate the motion which it should guide. "^ Man, however, 
 is more than intellect. He is feeling, will, emotion, as well. He 
 is a spirit with its complex life, and logic is not sufficient to ex- 
 plain him, or the world to which he belongs. " Reality is in- 
 finitely richer than thought."^ Since reality is of this spiritual 
 nature "the like over-estimate of logical principles, the habit of 
 regarding them as limitations of what is really possible, would 
 oblige us to treat as inadmissible the most important assumptions 
 on which our conception of the world is founded."^ From these 
 and other considerations Lotze concludes that the method of 
 philosophy is not a priori deduction. 
 
 Lotze's criticism of the method of a priori deduction has 
 been misunderstood. It has been regarded as a hostile attack on 
 idealism, and this notion has gained ground largely, I believe, 
 from the circumstance that his philosophy has been called a 
 realism. This criticism, however, is not well founded, and is 
 based upon a misunderstanding of his use of terms, and of his 
 method, in that his method has been confused with his general 
 view of the world. An example of this kind of criticism is seen 
 in the following passage : " Lotze's opposition to Idealism was 
 not based so much on his antagonism to its positive doctrines, as 
 upon his antipathy to its system. To the essentially critical spirit 
 of Lotze a system . . . seems to tyrannize over its component 
 parts . . . His philosophy is a persistent defence of perception 
 against reflection, of the concrete particular against pale and vacant 
 general ideas."* The point of this criticism is : ' Because idealism 
 is a system, and because a system tyrannizes over its parts, Lotze 
 rejects ideahsm.' That this is false will be seen later. But we 
 may say here that Lotze does not object to idealism ; he is well 
 aware that reality is a system, and regards this as its merit : 
 further, he would say that reality as a system does not tyrannize 
 over its parts. Nevertheless, he does maintain that the ideahsm 
 of the schools, since it is a system, does tyrannize over the 
 parts. Let us now endeavor to discover what Lotze means, and 
 wherein the criticism fails. 
 
 ^Mikr., II, pp. 559, 560; Met., § 93. ^ Ibid., § 77. 
 
 •^Met., § 76; Cf. also ^ 83, 88. * Jones : op. cit., p. 9.- 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 1/ 
 
 Lotze's denial of the a priori method is only a modest confes- 
 sion that man is not omniscient, and must renounce all claims to 
 divine knowledge. It is only a confession of limited knowledge, 
 and not a profession of skepticism ; nor docs it sound the knell of 
 idealism as has been asserted. Lotze's position is put strongly in 
 the following passage : " Only a mind which stood at the center of 
 the real world, not outside individual things, but penetrating them 
 with its presence, could command such a view of reality as left 
 nothing to look for, and was therefore the perfect image of it in 
 its own being and activity. But the human mind, with which 
 alone we are here concerned, does not thus stand at the center 
 of things, but has a modest position somewhere in the extreme 
 ramifications of reality."^ The difference between an omniscient 
 mind and the human consciousness is that the knowledge of the 
 former is all-inclusive, and beholds things from the center, 
 whereas the knowledge of the latter is fragmentary (partially-in- 
 clusive), and beholds things from the periphery. Complete and 
 partial knowledge, however, do not differ radically, though they 
 differ in degree of perfection, and in degree of unity. They are 
 more or less alike in structure and content, and possess the same 
 purpose. What Lotze says, therefore, is that human knoivledgc 
 about reality is incomplete and fragmentary : that this knowledge 
 cannot be deduced from a general principle, for this would imply the 
 complete knowledge which is desired. Further, the philosophical 
 system which desires to grasp first of all the ultimate principle of 
 the universe, and grasp it completely, and then unfold out of it 
 all knowledge, makes pretences for human cognition which there 
 is no warrant to allow. Lotze only denies that there is an a 
 priori deduction of knowledge from a general principle, that 
 human knowledge is complete, and a system. Never does he 
 deny or even doubt the validity of knowledge. He is not 
 skeptical. He believes in the attainability of knowledge. Again, 
 Lotze in his reflections on the limitations of human knowledge 
 does not say a word about reality. That knowledge is incom- 
 plete does not imply that reality is incomplete. In all these dis- 
 cussions about the limitations of knowledge, we must ever bear 
 
 ^ Logik, Introd., § IX. 
 
1 8 LOTZKS THEORY OF KAOWLEDGE. 
 
 in mind that Lotze has reference to knowledge and knowledge 
 only. He is not discussing reality. 
 
 With this conception of the nature of Lotze's problem, let us 
 return to the objection mentioned above. It was said that Lotze 
 rejects idealism on account of the tyranny of its system. This 
 criticism is guilty of a confusion. It confuses knowledge and re- 
 ality. It makes a system of knoivledge identical with a system of 
 reality. If, however, these two concepts are regarded inter- 
 changeably, Lotze deserves the above criticism ; for he denies, 
 as has been shown, that our knowledge is a system. It does not 
 all hang on one complete and all-including major premise which 
 contains in itself all that we know or can possibly know. Ac- 
 cording to this criticism, our knowledge is not a system, reality 
 is knowledge, therefore reality is not a system, or a unity. Thus 
 it is concluded that Lotze's conception of reality is a plural- 
 ism, and not idealism. If, however, the distinction between 
 a system of reality or idealism, and a system of knowledge is 
 maintained, then this objection is answered. Lotze may very well 
 deny that we possess a system of, knowledge, and at the same 
 time hold that reality is a unity, and ideal. Now just this is 
 Lotze's position. Knowledge is not a system, but reality is a 
 system. Ontologically the world is a single spiritual being ; 
 and if it could be known completely, this unity would be 
 known, and the function of every part fully comprehended.^ 
 But such complete knowledge no human being has, and, conse- 
 quently, there is no system of knowledge about reality. When, 
 however, knowledge is taken to be a system, and the parts of 
 experience forcibly fitted into its categories, the system does 
 tyrannize over the parts. The system of knowledge is the tyranny; 
 but reality, on the other hand, is a system. This conception of 
 knowledge as fragmentary, and its relation to reality which is a 
 system, is clearly stated by Hobhouse : " Broadly we may say 
 that the function of thought in inference is to connect the given 
 with the result of extending its knowledge over the wider reality 
 which is not given. In the act of inference thought takes the actual 
 relation as also a necessary relation, and as a fragment of neces- 
 
 1 Logik, I 300. 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 1 9 
 
 sary relations. In this mode of functioning, thought has no system 
 ready made, no criterion of necessity lying at hand to apply. It 
 learns the concrete character of the system from the facts them- 
 selves, and hence by slow and laborious degrees with constant 
 mistakes. Its only postulate is that there is a system ; there are 
 relations which are necessary. What the system is it must find 
 out from the facts themselves." ' 
 
 Though Lotzc repudiates the attempt to deduce our knowledge 
 from some one general principle, such as the Idea, he does not 
 go to the opposite extreme and proclaim that such a procedure 
 has no meaning at all.' On the contrary, he sees what meaning 
 there is in it, and gladly admits its value. So far as this method 
 recognizes the unity of the world, it keeps before the philosopher 
 an ideal. ^ It is a regulative principle which means that all knowl- 
 edge aims at unity, ancj should aim at unity. Nevertheless, this 
 unity must never be used as a principle of explanation from 
 which new truth can be deduced. Every such attempt to begin 
 with the idea is a petitio principii, for it is only through the knowl- 
 edge of particulars that we can attain the knowledge of general 
 truth. Knowledge begins with experience and rises gradually to 
 more comprehensive insight.'' Notwithstanding this truth that 
 we must advance in knowledge by the slow and plodding way 
 of experience, an ideal outruns our actual knowledge, and is in a 
 measure its formative principle, and determines its worth. ^ 
 
 The critical method of Locke and Kant is an aspect of a priori 
 deduction. This method makes a systematic enquiry into the 
 capacity of the human mind for the attainment of knowledge. 
 According to it the first problem is to find a theory of knowledge 
 which shall make clear the extent and limitations of human knowl- 
 edge. Locke and some friends were discussing a problem, and 
 reached only bewildering difficulties. "After we had awhile 
 puzzled ourselves," he says, "without coming any nearer a reso- 
 lution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my 
 
 1 Theory of Knowledge, p. 475. 
 
 ^Logik, l\ 322-333- 
 
 ^Ibid., I 365. 
 
 * Met., ^ 93 ; Erdmann : op. cil., \ 347, II. 
 
 5Cf. Mikr., I, pp. 675 ff, 685. 
 
20 LOTZES THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that before we set 
 ourselves upon enquiries of that nature, it was necessary to ex- 
 amine our own abihties, and see what objects our understandings 
 were or were not fitted to deal with."^ Modest as this method 
 may seem, it is as dogmatic as the method it supplants. Reason 
 cannot once for all determine what is knowable, and what is un- 
 knowable. " There is something," says Lotze, " convenient and 
 seductive in the plan of withdrawing attention from the solution 
 of definite questions, and applying oneself to general questions in 
 regard to cognitive capacities, of which any one could avail him- 
 self who set seriously about it. In fact, however, the history of 
 science shows that those who resolutely set themselves to mas- 
 tering certain problems generally found that their cognizance of 
 the available appliances and of the use of them grew keener in the 
 process ; while, on the other hand, the pretentious occupation with 
 theories of cognition has seldom led to any solid result. It has 
 not itself created those methods which it entertains itself with ex- 
 hibiting but not employing. On the contrary, it is the actual 
 problems that have compelled the discovery of the methods by 
 which they are solved. The constant whetting of the knife is 
 tedious, if it is not proposed to cut anything with it."^ We can- 
 not discover or prove by reason that reason is capable or incapable 
 of knowledge. Instinctively or immediately we trust in the unity 
 of reality and set about its disclosure, believing that we are able 
 to accomplish somewhat of the task.^ 
 
 The first form of explanation seeks to explain a fact by deduc- 
 ing it from some general principle. But there is another kind of 
 explanation which explains a fact by constructing it. This method 
 Lotze also rejects, not completely, however, for he gives it a 
 methodological function in so far as it is useful in detecting the 
 elements or aspects of the nature of any object or process. This 
 mode of explanation may be called the- analytico-synthetic 
 method. According to it anything is accounted for when it has 
 been analyzed into its constituents, and when, these elements be- 
 
 ' Essay : The Epistle to the Reader. 
 
 2 Met. Introd., \ IX ; Logik, \ 322 ; Cf. Hegel : Encyk., \l, 10, 41 ; Werke, VI, 
 pp. 15-17 ; 85-89; Seth, A., Hegelianis77i and Personality, p. 90. 
 
 3 Cf. Tuch : Lotze' s Stellung z. Occasionalismus, p. I. 
 
PROBLEM A.\D METHOD. 21 
 
 ing again put together, the thing arises in its true nature. One 
 example will make this plain : The process of becoming has been 
 subjected to this method, and an effort made to analyze it into 
 its elements. As it stands the category is not understood, and 
 the labor of centuries has been spent on attempts to analyze it. 
 For a few years the analysis seemed to have been attained when 
 Hegel imagined he was able to give the synthesis of becoming. 
 It is composed of two elements, he said, being and non-being. 
 In separation these constituents are static, united into a compound, 
 fluid. Plausible, however, as this theory may seem, Lotze opposes 
 it strenuously, and declares that the matter is not really explained 
 at all. Of becoming, he maintains, " we can never put it 
 together out of its component parts, for it has none. The labor 
 expended upon this impossible aim always ends in a vicious circle, 
 since among the materials that are to be used in the construction 
 the very thing that was to be constructed is taken for granted, 
 however much it may be concealed under strange expressions. 
 Thus, for example, in our idea of becoming the two ideas of be- 
 ing and not -being are no doubt united as two connected points 
 of relation ; but if we should try to characterize becoming as the 
 unity of the two we should not attain our object." ^ There is no 
 use in attempting to define a thing, or to get at its essence by its 
 construction out of parts. Such a method may be able to dis- 
 cover what a compound is composed of, but it cannot express 
 what the thing is. This objection is as old as Plato,' and Aris- 
 totle. To use Aristotle's language, the material cause alone is 
 not adequate to explain anything. Furthermore, ' becoming ' is 
 only one instance in which knowledge is broader than intellectual 
 understanding. We can knozu many things which we cannot 
 understand — in the sense that they can be constructed out of 
 elements. As was seen above, intellect desires to " picture the 
 ultimate facts of reality " and show hozv they fit together to form 
 objects.' Knowledge, indeed, does not end here. Much of ex- 
 perience defies such analysis. We can live these experiences, 
 
 1 Logik, ?. 159. 
 
 2 Cf. ThecEtetus, 207, 208. 
 
 3Cf. Gr. d. Religionsphil., g 21. 
 
22 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 but cannot explain them/ Not only does analysis fail to explain 
 some of the more subtle parts of experience, but it is insufficient 
 to explain anything at all. It is only part of the explanation, 
 and as a part it is indispensable, but it must not be taken for the 
 complete explanation. The material cause alone can never be 
 the full explanation of any fact. As an example, the equation 
 a -\- b ^ c may be taken. In this equation c is analyzed into 
 a and b. And when a and b are related so that the quantities 
 they represent are added together their sum is equal to c. But 
 how a -\- b can be equal to c is not explained ; for while the two 
 sides of the equation are numerically equal, they are not identical, 
 otherwise there would be no equation.^ This shows that this 
 method is not adequate for philosophy ; and where it is used, it 
 gives only imperfect results. 
 
 The method is valuable, however, only its results must not 
 be taken as final. Like the method of a priori deduction it has 
 a methodological use ; and its conclusions must be reinterpreted 
 in connection with our broader experience. All that analysis can 
 accomplish is to find out the conspicuous aspects of an object, 
 and direct attention to these. It may be that some characteristic 
 aspect will be isolated, an aspect by which it can be marked, named, 
 and recognized, when it appears again. The analysis however has 
 not manifested the living tissue of the thing. " Reality is richer 
 than thought, nor can thought make reality after it. The fact of 
 becoming was enough to convince us that there is such a thing 
 as a union of being and not-being, which we are not able to re- 
 construct in thought, even when it lies before us, much less could 
 have guessed at it if it had not been presented to us."^ When 
 analysis has done its best, it has resolved an object, e. g., a lemon 
 into certain tastes, odors, colors, pressure sensations, etc., but it 
 has not exhausted the nature of the lemon. And suppose this 
 analysis could continue and discover more qualities, we would 
 be no nearer a knowledge of how these qualities /t^rw, or ure as- 
 pects of, the lemon. The fact that we do not know how to state 
 
 iCf. Mikr., II, pp. 662, 663 ; Met., I 47. 
 ^Logik, II 350-364- 
 ^Mei., §47. 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 23 
 
 the relation of quality and object is a convincing argument that 
 neither thought nor scientific analysis or synthesis is competent 
 to construct an object. This method must always be accompan- 
 ied by a reconstruction and a remodeling of its results.' 
 
 III. So far it has been seen that the various methods and con- 
 cepts must be limited, supplemented, and reinterpreted. This use 
 of concepts is methodological. By a methodological concept is 
 meant a device or regulative principle by means of which the 
 human mind seeks to make intelligible a group of facts. Any 
 body of knowledge possesses only methodological concepts, 
 and does not provide a final or complete explanation of things. 
 All our concepts express a certain aspect of reality ; they help 
 the mind to comprehend things, but in no case are they complete 
 or final. They are Hilfsbegriffe. For this reason they are par- 
 tially true, and to a certain extent report reality correctly. It 
 has been said that nothing corresponds to them in the nature of 
 things ; that they are merely subjective. But if this were Lotze's 
 meaning, then they would not be concepts conveying knowl- 
 edge ; they would be nothing but fictions. They are human 
 ways of understanding reality, to be sure, but as man is a part of 
 reality, these concepts are objective as well as subjective. Since 
 man belongs to reahty, it is not possible for him to think and 
 know in a purely subjective, i. e., in a purely arbitrary, way.' 
 Yet he is only a part of reality, and cannot therefore behold things 
 in the way the deity sees them. His knowledge is for this reason 
 incomplete ; it is methodological. 
 
 A striking illustration of the methodological use of concepts is 
 seen in Lotze's examination of life. In the first place he finds that to 
 a " great extent " " life employs for the execution of its functions 
 the same means by which human mechanical skill produces its 
 works." ^ This mechanism holds not only of the lower, but also 
 of the higher forms of life.* Nevertheless, the phenomena of con- 
 scio.usness demand a higher category than that of mechanism.® 
 The consequence is that mental and bodily phenomena cannot be 
 grouped under the same rubric. Now, bodily and mental phe- 
 
 ^Mikr., II, p. 141. ^■Uid., I, p. 137. 
 
 2 Logik, I 359 ; Mei., g^ 90, 94. ^ Met., § 269. 
 
 ^ Mikr., I, p. 120. 
 
24 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 nomena do not belong to two absolutely distinct spheres, but 
 are ultimately one.^ Lotze, however, prefers to use different cat- 
 egories, each best suited for its own facts. Since, now, all reality 
 is ultimately one, if the concept of mechanism completely ex- 
 plained the corporeal phenomena, then this concept would be 
 constitutive, and would also account for mental phenomena. But 
 it does not adequately explain corporeal facts. It is a Hilfsbe- 
 griff, used to classify a definite group of phenomena. Mental 
 phenomena differ widely from bodily, so a new concept is neces- 
 sary. This also is a^ methodological concept. Our limited 
 knowledge does not show us how all things form a unity ; and 
 consequently it would be only a false craving for unity that would 
 at once merge the sharp contrast between these two concepts in 
 something higher. While we do not know the unity, we must 
 hold our concepts apart and keep them distinct, though in reality 
 the things denoted by them belong to a unity.^ Again the method- 
 ological nature of his conception of the relation of body and soul is 
 striking. Our knowledge does not warrant the concept of causal 
 relation. For this relation, therefore, Lotze uses the concept of 
 occasionalism. This concept is not a metaphysical doctrine. On 
 the contrary, it provides a means of thinking the relation of body 
 and soul, a means which is fairly adequate to the facts as now 
 known. As such it is useful ; as a metaphysical conception it is 
 of no value. ^ 
 
 This recognition of the methodological nature of concepts may 
 be called the critical method ; for it calls in question the right of 
 transferring finite ways of thinking to reality. The invesigator 
 who is not aware that his concepts are in process of formation, 
 that they are human ways of comprehending reality, and there - 
 fere only partially true, being limited to a narrow field of thought, 
 is the real dogmatist. The critical philosopher, on the other 
 hand, is he who is conscious of the imperfection of the principles 
 he uses, is aware of their limited application, and knows that they 
 
 "^Met., \\ 247-252; Mikr., Bk. III. 
 
 ^Mikr., I, p. 167. 
 
 ^ Med. Psy., pp. 76, 77- Cf.,also Tuch : op. cit., pp. 20, 21. The importance of 
 methodological concepts is clearly seen in the discussion on the nature of a thing. 
 Met., I 94. 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 2$ 
 
 represent only one aspect of things. Consequently, he will not 
 extend their use, nor will he regard them as the constitutive prin- 
 ciples of reality. In other words he will not regard his concepts 
 as identical with the concepts which would be used by an omnis- 
 cient being. He admits that his knowledge is to some extent 
 his own way of comprehending things, and regards it as only 
 partially objective. In other words his categories are methodo- 
 logical and not constitutive principles. 
 
 IV. Wherever an empirical method is used, an important ele- 
 ment in determining what is true and what is false, is utility. The 
 hypothesis or category that works well is adopted, and the one 
 which works ill is put aside. Man is not yet ready for a pure logic 
 which will enable him to determine the value of every principle and 
 concept by means of an analysis of the Idea. His pursuits are in 
 a far humbler sphere, and he must take a zig-zag road, following 
 at times happy intuitions, and again wandering on an illusory 
 quest. It is only when the mountain top is reached that he can 
 obtain the complete view.' All the way up, to be sure, he gets 
 a partial prospect, or a part of the truth." To continue the fig- 
 ure : the survey from the summit gives constitutive categories, 
 that from the sides, and base, methodological. Though, indeed, 
 pure logic lays bare and brings into consciousness the ultimate 
 principles and the ideal which is implicit in all thinking, it can 
 only provide regulative principles. The whole content, how- 
 ever, of these principles, and the particular laws and concepts in 
 our actual knowledge are derived from a careful analysis of ex- 
 perience. Pure logic, or dialectic, is on the other hand, an eval- 
 uation of experience, and not its basis. It is a reflection on ex- 
 perience in which the categories are already present.^ The 
 dialectic schema, however, is of no aid in discovery except as a 
 regulative principle. But discovery is man's first task. He is 
 met by myriads of facts which he has simply to accept, and group 
 in the way that will best aid memory, and the disclosure of new 
 facts. The ^(?rt/ is a complete system of knowledge "but the 
 different peculiarities of different objects offer resistance to this 
 
 1 Logik, \ 345. 
 
 ^Mikr.,^ I, pp. 334 f. 
 
 ^ Logik, ^l 191-196 ; Cf. Seth : Hegelianism and Personality, Ch. III. 
 
26 LOTZES THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 arrangement ; it is not clear of itself what sum of matter has a 
 claim to form a determinate concept and be opposed to another, 
 or which predicate belongs universally to which subject, or how 
 the universal law for the arrangement of manifold material is to 
 be discovered. AppHed logic is concerned with those methods 
 of investigation which obviate these defects. It considers hind- 
 rances and the devices by which they may be overcome ; and it 
 must therefore sacrifice the love of systematization to considera- 
 tions of utility, and select what the experience of science has so 
 far shown to be important and fruitful."^ 
 
 The laws and hypotheses by means of which knowledge is 
 built up are at first tentative guesses " on the part of the imagi- 
 nation, made possible by a knowledge of facts,"^ which have re- 
 ceived confirmation by their explanation of the facts, ^ They also 
 receive confirmation by extending beyond the immediate facts, 
 which they were introduced to explain, so as to lead to the dis- 
 covery of new facts. Now a question may arise: " How do we 
 know that such and such a law is the only one valid for the 
 series and true ?" Lotze answers that there is no a priori ]\xs\l\^- 
 cation of any law, or any deductive confirmation of its truth. 
 Its only justification is its capability to explain the facts of ex- 
 perience for which purpose.it was invented. "There is no proc- 
 ess of demonstration by which we can find such a law, none by 
 which it could be shown to be what it claims to be. We can 
 never do more than guess at the law, and then by the help of 
 innumerable secondary considerations heighten the probability 
 of its being the true one."* 
 
 Notwithstanding Lotze's treatment of the deductive method, 
 his own procedure has not escaped criticism. According to 
 Krebs, Lotze distinguishes two kinds of truth. ^ One is im- 
 mediate and indemonstrable, resting on self-evidence, the other 
 is derived from this immediate truth. The former truths neither 
 
 ^Logik, Introd., I XII; Cf. also, Mikr., II, pp. 326, 343; Merz : Article Lotze in 
 Ency. Brit., Vol. XV, p. 14. 
 ^Logik, \ 269. 
 ^ Ibid., I 273. 
 ^ Ibid., I 269. 
 ^ Die Wissenchaftsbegriff bei Hermann Lotze, V. f. w. Ph., Vol. XXI, p. t,2) ^- 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 2/ 
 
 need nor are capable of proof, the latter are logically demon- 
 strated from the self-evident truths. Krcbs, therefore, maintains 
 that Lotze's logical criterion of truth must be supplemented by 
 the conception that truth proves itself in the course of enquiry. 
 But so far as I can understand Lotze, this criticism is not just. 
 Further, the method which Krebs recommends is Lotze's own 
 method, as has been seen. Lotze's method is not deductive, and 
 he does not derive the truths of science from general self-evi- 
 dent principles in the way in which Krebs maintains. To be 
 sure, he does use self-evident principles ; but the above criti- 
 cism has misunderstood the use he makes of them. While Lotze 
 uses the empirical method, he is not a mere empiricist, but always 
 recognizes the need of ultimate principles. The mind for him is 
 not a passive spectator of existence. It does not mirror reality, 
 but interprets it. For this reason it requires principles of inter- 
 pretation, which are ideal forms that the mind instinctively strives 
 to realize. They are vague glimmers of the ultimate synthesis.^ 
 These forms are the modes in which the mind knows, and with- 
 out them there could be no knowledge.^ Self-evident truths are 
 the categories of thought — the laws of identity and causation,^ 
 unity in difference,^ intuitive forms of space and time.^ Now' it is 
 evident that these truths are not knowledge from which other 
 knowledge can be deduced. They are, rather, modes of mental 
 activity or synthesis which are immediately admitted to be neces- 
 sary forms of knowing.^ From the law of identity, unaided by 
 experience, nothing can be inferred." Causation without a content 
 is empty. It possesses only hypothetical necessity. " None of 
 these necessary truths reveals to us what is ; as universal laws 
 they speak only of that which must be if something else is ; they 
 show us what inevitably follows from conditions the occurrence 
 
 ^Logik, ??34S-365. 
 
 ^IbiiL, \\ 322-333; Met., \?i 267-274; Mikr., I, pp. 220-239; Cf. also 
 Kant's Deduction of the Categories. 
 ^Mikr., I, p. 671. 
 * Logik, .§§ 356, 363 ff. 
 ^ Mikr., I, p. 226. 
 
 ^ Ibid., pp. 226 ff; 66S ff ; Met., \ 99. 
 ' Logik, \\ 352-361. 
 
28 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 of which they leave wholly doubtful/ Therefore, it can be con- 
 cluded that these immediate truths are not used by Lotze as 
 major premises from which all scientific knowledge is deduced 
 logically. Since, however, Lotze employs self-evident truth in 
 this restricted sense,^ let us see if he uses this species of innate 
 knowledge as a major premise. An example of this truth is 
 mathematics. This kind of truth, indeed, is not discovered by 
 pure thought, but depends upon experience.^ Each step is based 
 upon a perception, and, is not derived from the preceding as from 
 a major premise. For thesQ reasons Lotze does not regard science 
 as a body of a priori knowledge resting upon one or several 
 fundamental principles.^ On the contrary, he maintains that all 
 knowledge is obtained by means of empirical methods — methods, 
 however, guided by the soul's deeper nature which being a unity 
 endeavors to interpret experience as ultimately a unity, and being 
 an end naturally interprets reality in terms of a final unity towards 
 which it strives. 
 
 But it may be said that methodology belongs to scientific 
 method only, and that it does not have anything to do with im- 
 mediate truth. This immediate truth is claimed to rest on a dif- 
 ferent basis, and to have a validity independent of all experience. 
 But again we must keep to the spirit of Lotze, if we mean to in- 
 terpret him. Innate truth is not privileged, and in a strict sense 
 is not truth at all, but rather a form of truth. Knowledge de- 
 pends upon innate ideas. This, indeed, gives them no sanctity 
 for the a posteriori element is just as necessary. Knowledge im- 
 plies toil.^ Innate ideas are "nothing but habits of action,"^; 
 but they do not exist ready-made in the mind.'' Each, on the 
 contrary, has been evolved. It is what it is, and can do what it 
 does because it has been instructed thus by the press of circum- 
 stances.^ What is true of innate ideas in the intellectual world 
 
 ^Mikr., II, p. 575. 
 
 ^Logik, I 357. 
 
 ^ibid., u 352, 358. 
 
 ^Cf. §2. 
 
 ^Logik, U 322-333- 
 
 ^ Mikr., I, p. 669. 
 
 T Logik, I 9. 
 
 sCf. Mikr., I, pp. 227 ff; Logik, ? 324. 
 
PROBLEM AND METHOD. 29 
 
 is true of ethical ideals in the moral cosmos/ To have innate 
 ideas is simply to possess the capacity of knowing. The partic- 
 ular innate ideas a man uses depends on his mental constitution" 
 and also on his environment.^ The soul as such knoivs, and this 
 may be its so-called instinct, but it knows and meets the real 
 world with modes of activity which become increasingly definite 
 with experience.* Thus it is obvious that innate truth is only 
 the form of all truth, and can be no less methodological than the 
 more definite concepts. All alike are human ways of interpret- 
 ing reality"' ; and, as has been shown, .an important aspect of the 
 criterion of truth is its ability to fit in with other truths and as- 
 sist in their explanation. 
 
 V. The failure to understand Lotze's methodological point of 
 view and his notion of the criterion of truth, has been the occasion 
 of much unfair criticism. Many of his critics cannot understand 
 an idealism which is realistic in method. They regard idealism 
 as a systematic deduction of all knowledge (or sometimes of all 
 reality) from a general principle. Idealism is taken to be syn- 
 onymous with ' system ' in the Hegelian sense of the term. But 
 as has been shown (II) the term 'system' has two meanings, a 
 metaphysical and a logical. The former refers to the nature of 
 the world, and the latter to knowledge about the world. Now 
 only a complete and perfect system of knowledge can show how 
 the world emanates from the idea. Man's knowledge is not, how- 
 ever, a system except in a very limited sense. Notwithstanding, 
 however, Lotze's clear and decided conviction on this point, 
 Caspari maintains that he should have constructed a system of 
 knowledge. In summing up his criticism of Lotze's philosophy, 
 he says that Lotze's service consists more in acute suggestions 
 than in its systematic results, and that he has not thought out the 
 relations in which individual things stand to the Idea.^ Achelis 
 raises the same objection, maintaining that Lotze does not ex- 
 plain in a satisfactory manner the origin of existences emerging 
 from the being of the Absolute, and that furthermore he does not 
 
 »Cf. Mikr., II, p. 226. '^Ihid., I 324. 
 
 ^Ibid., I, p. 669. 5Cf. Met., \?i 94, 99. 
 
 3 Logik, § 9, 6 Hermann Lotze in Stellung z. Gesc/i, d. Phil. 
 
30 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 get beyond the theory of preestabHshed harmony.^ All these 
 criticisms regard philosophy as a system of knowledge, and do 
 not distinguish methodology from a constitutive use of the cate- 
 gories. 
 
 In conclusion, it may be said that methodology is the key to 
 Lotze's philosophy. Human knowledge is not an organic system, 
 and cannot be such. It is impossible to see how our experience 
 all fits together into an harmonious whole. At best human 
 knowledge consists of many little fragments into which the 
 special scientists are laboring to induce order. But a science of 
 the whole is still far off We niay have, it is true, a science of 
 the whole in outline only ; but such a science is rather a demand 
 for, and a faith in, the unity which is not yet known. Now 
 philosophy can be little more than this demand for and belief in 
 the unity which is not yet known. It is more than this, how- 
 ever, in that philosophy endeavors to make this demand and 
 beHef consistent with the facts of experience. Compared with 
 experience, philosophical knowledge is a science in mere outline, 
 and does not provide an ultimate principle from which experience 
 can be deduced. The best scientific theory is capable only within 
 limits of being the premise from which knowledge can be derived. 
 Much less, indeed, can philosophical first principles serve for the 
 deduction of knowledge. Lotze, therefore, maintains that the 
 a priori method is useless for philosophy. On the contrary, he 
 holds that all enquiry must follow the empirical method. The 
 qtiest of knoivledge must always proceed from experience to laws 
 and concepts, and not from general principles to the facts of ex- 
 perience. This quest, therefore, necessarily groups its facts in 
 various ways, adopting those forms of synthesis which serve best 
 for the matter in hand. But another enquirer with different pur- 
 poses, or perhaps even with the same purpose, would have ar- 
 ranged them differently, and would have given a different mean- 
 ing to his concepts. Again, different parts of the field differ 
 widely, though all belong together. Now when this is the case, 
 and when the investigator does not know how the various parts 
 all belong organically to one unity, he distinguishes the different 
 
 ^Lotze's Phil., V. f. w., Ph., 1882. Cf. also, Stahlin : Kant, Lotze and Ritschl 
 (Eng. trans.), pp. 118-128. 
 
PROBLEM A AD METHOD. 3 1 
 
 functions by means of categories which are partially or even 
 totally exclusive. It is better to emphasize the characteristic of 
 each, even at the cost of distinguishing them completely, than 
 to lose the characteristic in general conceptions which aim at cover- 
 ing both groups of facts. Such limitations, however, belong to 
 finite knowledge alone. A perfect intelligence would have no such 
 limitations. For such an intelligence each category would denote 
 its object-system, not emphasizing anyone characteristic, but giving 
 every aspect its actual value. Consequently the categories of com- 
 plete knowledge would form a system, just as reality which is 
 known thereby, is a system. In such a case the categories 
 would be constitutive. With human knowledge, as has been 
 shown, it is very different. The concepts do not form a system. 
 Each has grasped only an aspect and has emphasized that. Com- 
 pared, therefore, with complete categories human concepts are 
 distortions, one-sided, and in need of qualification. This limita- 
 tion of concepts Lotze denominates by the term methodological. 
 One illustration shows the importance of this conception. All 
 investigations of bodily and mental functions, explain bodily proc- 
 esses by one set of categories, and mental processes by another. 
 So far little success has been attained in the attempt to unify 
 these two sets of conceptions. Clear thinking demands that 
 they be kept apart. Nevertheless, these concepts must not be 
 made constitutive, for that would mean a dualism between body 
 and mind. They are methodological only, and when this is 
 recognized they are used critically. In no case, therefore, are 
 we pledged to a metaphysical dualism when we are unable to see 
 how two concepts can be united. This conception of methodology 
 solves philosophically, not only the problem of body and soul, 
 but also the problems of appearance and reality, subject and 
 object, sense and thought etc. 
 
 The two following chapters, dealing with the metaphysical ba- 
 sis of Lotze' s theory of knowledge, will enquire into the problem, 
 and the nature of the solution which Lotze has given to the ques- 
 tions of appearance and reality, and of subject and object. The 
 problem of the relation of sense and thought belongs rather to 
 logic and psychology, and .will not be dealt with at present. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 
 
 IN chapter I we discussed the nature of Lotze's problem and 
 method. From the point of view thus gained we will now 
 proceed to interpret his doctrine of the appearance of reality. In 
 order to understand this problem, and the way in which it was 
 solved, let us examine somewhat carefully the intellectual at- 
 mosphere in which Lotze grew up. Since Lotze's philosophical 
 system was constructed as early as 1841, we need not consider 
 problems which arose after that date. In logic two distinct 
 views were advanced. One was phenomenalism, the other abso- 
 lute idealism. Phenomenalism, on its scientific side, was regarded 
 as empiricism. It represented the world of actual fact, knowl- 
 edge of which must be obtained through experience, and by 
 means of the Baconian method.^ This empiricism profoundly 
 influenced Lotze, and gave both him and Herbart their method. 
 On its philosophical side, however, phenomenalism was not so 
 fortunate. Remaining in its Kantian form, it made a knowledge 
 of reality impossible, so that a reinterpretation of empiricism be- 
 came necessary. Neither did absolute idealism solve the prob- 
 lem undertaken by Kant. It ran counter to the empirical ten- 
 dency of the age, and had a contempt for empirical knowledge.^ 
 Before Hegel's death the disintegration of his doctrine that 
 thought is reality, had begun. The new movement developed 
 in some cases in the direction of pantheism and atheism,^ in others 
 towards materialism.^ Now Kantian empiricism with the un- 
 knowability of reality on the one side, and Hegelian specula- 
 tion with its doctrine of the identity of thought and reality on the 
 other, represent the two extreme sides of philosophical specula- 
 tion. Nevertheless these two antithetic systems contain concep- 
 
 1 Cf. Beneke : Erdmann, op. cit., \ 334, I-2. Beneke was one of the first to object 
 to the speculative method of philosophy. 
 
 2 Erdmann: op. cit., l\ 333, 2; 347, II. 
 3/<5/a'., I 338, 1-5. 
 ^Ibid., I 345. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 33 
 
 tions of vital importance ; and as Lotze's own theory of knowl- 
 edge and reality lies somewhere between these two points of 
 view, it will serve to interpret his philosophy if we examine the 
 Kantian and Hegelian theory of knowledge, and then show 
 how his theory is related to these two positions. These two 
 theories dominated German thought when Lotze was at the uni- 
 versity, and it was natural that he should mediate between them, 
 since he sympathized with, and was a careful student of, both 
 empirical and speculative philosophy.' 
 
 I. Kant, holding the common-sense point of view, and also 
 the common-sense interpretation of that point of view, began with 
 the assumption that there are two kinds of reality, material and 
 spiritual existences. These two existences — things-in-themselves, 
 and the ego — have some causal influence upon oneanother; but what 
 this relation implied Kant did not enquire. His aim was chiefly 
 epistemological, and his special endeavor was to discover the ma- 
 chinery of knowing. According to his conception, the external 
 object affects the subject only in sense, and by means of this ac- 
 tivity impressions are made upon sense, which are the data the mind 
 synthetizes by means of its categories. Thus the manifold of 
 sense becomes the unified system of knowledge. In other words, 
 the matter of knowledge is given by the object, the form by the 
 mind, and the union of these two elements is knowledge. But 
 what does this really mean ? Is this unity of sense-data knowl- 
 edge ? According to Kant this mental construction is twice re- 
 moved from reality, and cannot, therefore, be knowledge of reality. 
 If it is knowledge at all, it must be knowledge of itself. Let us now 
 see how he arrives at the doctrine of the subjectivity of knowl- 
 edge. Things-in-themselves, when they produce a percep- 
 tion in consciousness, contribute the manifold to the forms of 
 receptivity. But in entering sense the manifold is in space 
 and time, forms which did not originally belong to it. Conse- 
 quently it bears no resemblance to what it was in reality. A 
 further transformation, however, occurs when the forms of the un- 
 derstanding combine these data into a unity. Since now the thing 
 contributes its data to the subject by which they are categorized, 
 
 ''Ibid., I 347, n. 
 
34 LOTZKS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 this union of matter and form arises zvithin the subject. But as 
 this union of elements is knowledge, knowledge itself is a sub- 
 jective appearance within the subject. It is nothing but a state 
 of the subject, and not an objective account of reaUty.^ It is true 
 that the subject, being self-conscious, knows this state. A state 
 of the subject it is, however, and nothing more. The subject can- 
 not get beyond his own states. All that he can know is phenom- 
 ena. Reality he cannot know ; for the process of knowing brings 
 reality within the subject, where it is transformed into a state of 
 the subject. And this transformed reality is no longer reality, 
 nor even like reality. Now it is this transformed reality which is 
 known. This doctrine, however, is self-contradictory, for it de- 
 clares reality both knowable and unknowable at the same time. 
 Reality is known, for it is regarded as the source from which is 
 obtained the matter of knowledge ; but it is unknowable because 
 knowledge is within the subject.^ 
 
 Presumably, then, on Kant's theory of knowledge, if the matter 
 of knowledge could be got pure and just as it is in the object 
 before it is modified by the forms of sensibility and understand- 
 ing, reality might be known. But since all finite consciousness 
 obtrudes a form upon the matter, the data are so transformed that 
 they are no longer like the thing from which they came ; and, not 
 being a copy of reality, no key is given to show what relation 
 they bear to reaUty. Now, this doctrine of the unknowability of 
 the object presupposes : (i) a false and abstract distinction be- 
 tween form and matter ; ^ (2) the view that appearance only is 
 known, at least directly ; * (3) the dogma that if reality is know- 
 able, it can be known only indirectly through the mediation 
 of appearance which must be an identical likeness or copy 
 of reality ; ^ (4) the traditional dualism, which Kant accepted, 
 between subject and object. The three first objections are 
 logical, the fourth is metaphysical. This logical position is 
 
 "^Gesch. d. Phil., ^36. 
 
 ^Ibid., \ 25 ; Cf. also Seth. A ; Epistemology in Locke and Kant, Phil. Rev., II, 
 pp. 172-186. 
 3 Logik, I 326. 
 ^Ibid., §312. 
 ^Ibid., ^304. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 35 
 
 that of representative perception. On this view appearance is 
 not reality, but in some unknown way floats before reahty, and 
 perhaps is hke reahty, or a copy of it. This is apparently what 
 Kant, working along traditional lines, would wish to make appear- 
 ance. Having, however, laid aside the doctrine of the tabula rasa, 
 according to which the mind is wholly receptive and mirrors 
 reality, and, further, having adopted the notion of the activity of 
 consciousness, Kant is impelled to the position that appearance is 
 a compound of form and matter, and neither like things-in-them- 
 selves which contribute the matter, nor like the mind which 
 furnished the form.^ Knowledge of the ego or of the mind is 
 equally impossible. Consequently, the only object of knowl- 
 edge is appearance. Kant's metaphysical position likewise makes 
 knowledge of reality impossible. He accepted the dualism of 
 subject and object, and thereby so ordered his concepts that 
 reality is unknowable. 
 
 Lotze's answer to Kant, therefore, consists of the following 
 propositions: (i) RealityMs not unknowable; (2) appearance is 
 the knowledge of reality ; (3) there is no dualism between subject 
 and object (this last proposition will be discussed in Chapter HI). 
 
 Lotze rejects Kant's agnosticism. "The theory," he says, 
 " for which the adherents of the popular philosophy of the Kan- 
 tian school become enthusiastic is quite untenable because it holds 
 that only phenomena are perceived, and that the reality, which 
 corresponds to these phenomena, has not the least analogy to the 
 relations which exist between the different parts of these phe- 
 nomena."- Lotze goes beyond Kant and maintains that reality 
 is not unknowable ; on the contrary, reality is known. It ap- 
 pears in perception and in thought to the subject, and is not con- 
 cealed by its representation.^ The existence of reality is necessary 
 for logical theory ; it is also a logical demand that reality is 
 known. Even Kant's philosophy implied reality, though it could 
 not be known because Kant made it unknowable.* 
 
 iZo^//C',?? 322-333. 
 « Gesch. d. Phil., \ 25. 
 
 3Cf. Mikr., II, pp. 322, 349 ff., 629, 697 ; Met., \\ 47, 90, 93, 97 ; Logik, l\ 
 325-358, 359 ; Gr. d. Met., Part III. 
 *Cf. Jacobi : Werke, II, p. 304. 
 
36 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Moreover, there is a demand not only for the existence of 
 reahty, but also for a knowledge of it. If we know, we know 
 something, some reality. But Kant's system made no provision 
 for this knowledge, and allows only a cognition of appearance. 
 Appearance could be known, and as a matter of fact was known, 
 but it contributed nothing to knowledge of reality. Further, 
 thought might elaborate appearance and reduce it to scientific 
 precision, and arrange it under, and comprehend it by, concepts ; 
 but in all this labor and refinement it got no nearer to a knowl- 
 edge of reality. The logical mind might have been content with 
 this lack of knowledge had it not been conscious all the while that 
 there is reality, and that it knows reality. Philosophy cannot 
 dictate what is knowable and what is unknowable, but has 
 the much humbler duty of making intelligible and deepening 
 our comprehension of the things which we already know. So 
 it is in this case ; the Kantian conclusions did not satisfy the de- 
 mands of consciousness, and further attempts were made to get a 
 theory of knowledge which would take account of reality and 
 the thing-in-itself 
 
 Though there was the evidence of consciousness for a knowl- 
 edge of reaUty, there seemed to be no logical justification of it. 
 Moreover, the conclusions which denied a knowledge of reality 
 seemed fairly drawn, and there appeared to be no resource left 
 but to admit the impossibility of knowing the real world. It 
 must, indeed, be admitted so long as the presuppositions on 
 which this conclusion rests are maintained, so long as subject 
 and object belong to different worlds, and so long as appearance 
 alone is known, that of course there is possible no knowledge 
 of the reality which lies behind appearance. 
 
 II. So far we have discussed the thesis which Lotze found 
 current in the philosophy of his time — ' Appearance is not 
 reality and gives no knowledge of reality.' The antithesis main- 
 tained by Hegel and his followers asserts that ' appearance is 
 reality, and that the knowledge of appearance is the knowl- 
 edge of reality.' Kant's successors were not content with his 
 doctrine of the unknowability of reality. Kant, it seemed to 
 them, first divided the world into two parts, appearance and 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 17 
 
 reality, and then tried to put it together again, but found this 
 task impossible because the elements used in the reconstruction 
 of the cosmos had been reduced to abstractions by the act of 
 separating them. Appearance should not be separated from 
 reality, for if this division is made there is no means of passing 
 from a knowledge of appearance to a knowledge of reality. The 
 only way out of this difficulty is to deny that there is any reality 
 behind appearance. This difficulty, to be sure, only arises if we 
 begin with Kant's presuppositions ; but, if we start with these pre- 
 suppositions, the only logical course is to remove the world of 
 things-in-themselves.^ Lotze who was conscious of the contra- 
 diction contained in the conception of unknowable things-in-them- 
 selves remarks : " Later Idealism was therefore consistent in re- 
 nouncing completely the thought of a world of things which are 
 to serve as the transcendental objects of our knowledge. So 
 long, however, as we agree with Kant in opposing the objects of 
 sense or phenomena to things-in-themselves or noumena, we are 
 compelled to assert of noumena that they are at least that which 
 appears. Furthermore, we cannot avoid regarding these things- 
 in-themselves as the operative causes which produce perceptions 
 in us, and we must assert of them by all means then, plurality 
 and manifold relations between the many, on which alone the 
 variety, manifoldness, and succession of our perceptions depend."^ 
 But Lotze immediately goes on to declare this view untenable, and 
 holds that there is no basis for the doctrine that we know mere 
 appearance and that reality remains behind it unknown. The 
 logical course is to deny things-in-themselves, and this is what 
 was done by Post-Kantians. There is nothing beyond appear- 
 ance, this school maintains. Properly understood, appearance is 
 reality, and therefore when appearance is known reality is known, 
 for the one is the other, and there is no hiatus between them. 
 The understanding makes nature, but in a deeper sense than 
 Kant meant, and the Post-Kantians sought to bring out this 
 deeper meaning in mental creation by substituting the term 
 'reason' for 'understanding.' For Kant the understanding 
 
 ' Cf. Seth, A., The Epistemology of Neo-Kantiatiism, Phil. Rev., II, pp. 293-315, 
 2 Gesch. d. Phil., ^25. 
 
38 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 makes phenomenal nature, but for the Post-Kantians reason 
 makes reality itself, for reason is reality, and its logical categories 
 are the metaphysical laws and principles of reality. 
 
 The expression ' appearance is reality ' needs a word of expla- 
 nation. If appearance means nothing more than the presenta- 
 tions that flit before our gaze, or in our imagination, then we 
 admit that no one outside of the school of Berkeley and Hume 
 has ever held such a doctrine. If the esse of things is percipi, 
 and if the percipi is appearance, then Post-Kantian philosophers 
 do not maintain that appearance is reality. But since the Critique of 
 Pure Reason was published, the mere 'bundle of ideas' is not all that 
 is meant by appearance. The appearance which Kant opposed to 
 reality is not a mere group or series of disconnected presentations ; 
 on the contrary, appearance is the tissue of categorized sense-data 
 constructed by the concepts of the understanding. It is the 
 product of form and matter which is appearance or phenome- 
 non. In this sense appearance is the whole world of knowledge 
 which consists of the judgments of experience,^ and is not the 
 mere show-world of sense as is often supposed. It is true, 
 however, that experience includes the visible world, for the visible 
 world exists only as a construction of the understanding, but to 
 maintain that this is the only world given in sense-perception, and 
 in the concepts of thought, would be a wrong limitation. For 
 Kant the understanding makes nature, and this nature is a system 
 of judgments — judgments of experience. Appearance is this 
 mental construction, or continued judgment of experience.^ Ap- 
 pearance is what the mind has made out of the data given in 
 sense, and it is everything that is present to the understanding. 
 Appearance, then, we may regard as man's mental construct.^ 
 
 It may seem that we are taking an unwarranted liberty with 
 terms in defining appearance as a mental construction. But as 
 we have tried to show, this conception follows logically from 
 Kant's own position. We wish to use this mode of expression 
 because it seems to bring out clearly what Lotze's problem was, 
 
 1 Kant : Proleg. to Met., § i8. 
 
 ^Cf. Bosanquet's conception of nature : Logic, Vol. I, pp. 76-79. 
 
 3 Windelband : Gesch. d. Phil. (Eng. Trans. ), p. 573. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 39 
 
 and how he solved it. Moreover, it is obvious that only an arbi- 
 trary distinction can be drawn between the narrower and the 
 wider use of this concept, and to draw a distinction where none 
 need be drawn, is as great a source of error as the wider use 
 of the term. That only a logical division exists is plain on 
 an examination of mental phenomena. For Kant appearance 
 is a mental construction. Now grant that this means that only ' 
 the sense-object (so-called) is the mental construction which 
 is called appearance ; yet even this object itself is the work of 
 the categories, and is therefore more than an object of mere sense. 
 Already the distinction is broken down, and we feel still more the 
 arbitrariness of this division if we endeavor to distinguish the ob- 
 ject as mental construction from our thoughts about the object as 
 also a mental construction, for if we separate them, both the ob- 
 ject and our thought about the object are mental constructions, 
 and it is not at all apparent how any distinction can be main- 
 tained. In this case the object and our thought of the object are 
 the same. Appearance is reality, or to use the more common 
 phrase, in a certain sense, thought and reality are one. 
 
 This doctrine that there is no thing-in-itself behind appearance, 
 makes the theory of knowledge intelligible ; so the Post-Kantians 
 taught. Since appearance is reality, so soon as we have knowl- 
 edge of appearance we have knowledge of reality. There is 
 therefore no demand to get behind appearance ; that is an im- 
 possible as well as a fruitless undertaking, for our mental con- 
 struction, which is our knowledge, is the real. That which 
 thought thinks is reality, but reality is appearance.^ " The ' phe- 
 nomenon ' is for Kant a human mode of representation, for Hegel 
 an objective externalizing of the Absolute Spirit."^ 
 
 The thing-in-itself for Hegel is not reality as it is for Kant, 
 but only the Aiisich, the thing in embryo. It is /« appearance.^ 
 " Idealism opposes to the realistic acknowledgement of the un- 
 knowable nature of thing, the bold assertion that thought and 
 being are identical."^ Although this does not mean explicitly 
 
 • Hegel : Encyk., \ 22 ; IVerke, VI, pp. 42 f. 
 2\Vindelband : op. cit., p. 61 1, n. 3. 
 ^ Encyk., I 74; Werke, VI, pp. 141-143. 
 *Mikr., II, 351. 
 
40 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 that finite cognition " will sometime succeed in penetrating by 
 thought the existence of all things, and recreating it in idea," it 
 does, however, maintain that so far as human cognition goes, it 
 reveals the very nature of reality. Human thought uses the 
 same categories which exist in real things, and this theory of 
 knowledge holds that the depths of reality can be explored. For 
 a finite being to pretend to do this seems to Lotze presumption, 
 "yet," he says, "to do all this was just what was promised by 
 the bold and striking expression given to the proposition which 
 made being identical with thinking ; it led one to expect that just 
 that by which being as being seemed at first to be irreconcilably 
 differentiated from thinking or from being thought, would finally 
 be presented as a vanishing distinction, and that this being would 
 be altogether resolved into thoughts."^ This idealism is not 
 satisfied with general outHnes of reality, but endeavors to see all 
 things s?ib specie aeternitatis. As Lotze is fond of saying, this 
 philosophy would represent everything as it is in relation to the 
 center, and will not accept a partial or periphery knowledge of 
 things. " With Reinhold, and chiefly through Fichte, arose the 
 prejudice that every true science, and especially philosophy 
 must start out from one single principle T"^ Again Lotze says: 
 " Idealism, the most familiar form of which is found in Hegel's 
 philosophy, is driven naturally in a direction away from realism. 
 . . . Beginning with the prime truth that the world is a whole, ' 
 all of whose parts depend upon a single governing idea, this ideal- 
 ism can find an interest only in beholding all things in the Abso- 
 lute, i. e., in seeking for the meaning which they possess for the 
 realization of the idea in which alone they have their ground and 
 function."* 
 
 Lotze's contention is that absolute idealism deifies human 
 cognition, and takes human concepts as the actual forms of real- 
 ity. He himself, however, maintains that " the name ' concept ' 
 does not seem to deserve in logic that exalted significance which 
 the school of Hegel has given it, and in which it claims to ex- 
 
 ^Mikr., II, 352. 
 
 2 Gesch. d. Ph., § 34. 
 
 ^ Med. Psy., pp. 156, 157. — Cf. Logik, | 150. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 4 1 
 
 press the knowledge of tlie essential nature of the object." * 
 How the concept was deified, and used as an ontological prin- 
 ciple, instead of retaining its methodological use, we will now en- 
 deavor to show. This discussion will reveal Lotze's chief objec- 
 tion to Hegelian idealism. 
 
 As we have tried to show, some Post-Kantians, of whom we 
 may take Hegel as a representative, did not distinguish between 
 appearance and reality. They dropped the doctrine of the thing- 
 in-itself, and affirmed that appearance is reality. Reality is a 
 system of reason ; appearance is the same, and this identity of 
 thought and reality makes knowledge possible. It does not 
 matter, they claim, whether we distinguish between the construc- 
 tion of the Idea, and that of each finite spirit ; for in so far as 
 each is rational, there really is no distinction. The fiitite in so far as 
 it is rational is universal or infinite, and in the perception of truth 
 finite and infinite agree. Just as the Idea develops through a 
 system of concepts organic to each other, so the finite conscious- 
 ness, when it labors dialectically, rises through the same stages 
 as mark the progess of the Absolute, till it reaches the Idea it- 
 self. " From the outset he [Hegel] looked on the motion of 
 our thought in its efforts to gain a clear idea of this still obscure 
 goal of our aspiration as the proper inward development of the 
 Absolute itself, which only needed to be pursued consistently, in 
 order gradually to bring into consciousness all that the universe 
 contains." " Since, now, the human mind reproduces the Abso- 
 lute, appearance is reality, and it cannot be anything else. A 
 further result of this doctrine is that the principles which man 
 uses in his construction of appearance are identical with those 
 present in reality, or in the mind of the Idea.* This means that 
 man's concepts are constitutive principles of reality, and recon- 
 struct reality in his own experience. These principles, therefore, 
 are much more than the methodological concepts by means of 
 which a knowing mind arranges its experience for the purpose of 
 intelligible treatment and communication. They are ontological 
 concepts in the full intent of the word. 
 
 ^Logik, ^27. 
 ^Met., §88. 
 
 ^ Lotze, however, does not admit that the Hegelian Idea is a person. Med. Psy., 
 P- 157- 
 
42 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Some notion of the ontological nature of these concepts, as 
 Lotze interprets Hegel, becomes plain when we glance at the 
 task which Hegel set himself in his Wissenschaft der Logik. 
 Starting with the idea that reality is a unity of organic concepts, 
 Hegel believed that one concept contained implicitly all the rest. 
 If, now, thought grasps one concept, it will gradually unfold from 
 it, whole and entire, the complete universe of concepts. If, now, 
 this were completed, it would be the actual concept-system of re- 
 ality, and every concept would possess its actual worth. For a per- 
 fect intelligence this is possible ; but how can man, by the energy 
 and scrutiny of reason, pass through the same development as the 
 Idea followed ? Man undoubtedly does rise a certain distance in 
 this dialectic, but he must remember that his concepts are very 
 imperfect. Were he, however, to demand that his knowledge 
 should not cease till it reached that of the Idea, he must maintain 
 that all his concepts have the same denotation and connotation as 
 have the concepts of an absolute intelligence. Such concepts are 
 constitutive ; but if they are less than this they are methodo- 
 logical. 
 
 Whether this is a correct exposition of Hegelian philosophy does 
 not matter for our purpose. But that Lotze interprets Hegel in 
 this way seems very evident from the passages in which he criti- 
 cises Hegel, and also from his general attitude towards absolute 
 ideahsm. Moreover, Lotze's criticisms of the Post-Kantians can 
 best be understood if the above is regarded as his interpretation. 
 As we have attempted to show, according to Lotze's comprehension 
 of Hegel, the great apostle of absolute idealism regards reason as 
 the real principle of the cosmos, or even the cosmos itself Any 
 being, therefore, who possesses reason is able to reconstruct re- 
 ality in his own experience, and, furthermore, if this being is a 
 philosopher and uses the dialectic method, he can begin with any 
 concept of his experience and reconstruct the totality of reality, thus 
 reaching the point of view of the Idea, from which he can behold 
 the cosmos from the center, and see it in its true proportions just 
 as it appears to deity. ^ The thinking of reality, therefore, repro- 
 
 ^ Mikr., II, pp. 351-360; Logik, Introd., § IX, also H 20, 27; Med. Psy., 
 pp. 151-160; Geschichte d. Aesthetik, pp. 16S-185. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 43 
 
 duces it or creates it. The concepts of such knowledge are the 
 very concepts in reaHty, the identical principles and laws of re- 
 ality ; they are reality itself. These concepts, therefore, are on- 
 tological or metaphysical, not subjective and methodological, and 
 express absolute, not relative, truth. 
 
 III. Let us now sum up this discussion, and state the results 
 of these two opposite points of view as they appear to Lotze, 
 For Kant, appearance is a mental construction consisting of form 
 and matter, the former element contributed by the mind, the 
 latter by the object. This intellectual construct is known, and 
 it is all that is known. The reality which provides the a posteriori 
 matter is wholly unlike the construct and is unknowable. For 
 Hegel and his school, on the other hand, this mental construct is 
 known, and it is all that is known. But beyond this synthesis 
 there is no thing-in -itself or reality. The only reality is the syn- 
 thesis of form and matter, and this synthesis is at once both the thing 
 known and the knowledge of it. Thus both Kant and the Hegelian 
 school agree that we know appearance and appearance only ; but 
 whereas Kant maintains that there is an unknowable object behind 
 phenomena, the Hegelians contend that knowledge and reality 
 are one, and that we know reality just as it is. Now, from Lotze's 
 point of view, both these theories express a truth partially, and 
 both are one-sided. Kant is right when he upholds the doctrine 
 that appearance is a mental construction, but is not reality. He 
 errs, however, when he concludes that reality is therefore un- 
 knowable. On the other hand, Hegelians are justified in main- 
 taining that appearance is an intellectual synthesis, and that reality 
 is known. But it is too much to affirm that human cognition is 
 reality, or even an absolute knowledge of reality. Furthermore, 
 a comparison of these two theories of knowledge makes it evi- 
 dent that they agree in maintaining that appearance is an intellec- 
 tual construction ; and that it is appearance that is known. ^ 
 
 > It may be asserted that this is an impossible view, and that Kant and Hegel did 
 not hold it ; for appearance, it is said, has a meaning only when contrasted with reality. 
 Now we admit that the idea of appearance implies the idea of reality. But this ap- 
 parent contradiction is easily removed by a change of term. Instead of the word ap- 
 pearance use ' nature,' as Kant did, or ' reality,' as did Post-Kantians, and no contra- 
 diction arises — not that the contradiction is not really present, but the terms are so 
 selected that there does not appear to be a contradiction. 
 
44 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Neither of these doctrines seemed satisfactory to Lotze. If the 
 Kantian Critique robbed knowledge of all significance, and made 
 reality unknowable, the Hegelian system raised human cognition 
 to the skies, and actually deified it. If the former regarded man 
 as mentally impotent, the latter gave him omniscient penetration 
 into the essence of reality. It is Lotze' s purpose to mediate be- 
 tween these two opposite theories. 
 
 IV. Lotze's criticism of Kantian and of absolute idealism brings 
 out his own conception of knowledge, and this is the reason 
 why it seems necessary to devote so much attention to it. From 
 this point his criticism is constructive, though it is based on the 
 discussion of the theories already examined, and may be stated in 
 two propositions, each of which will be considered in turn : (i) ap- 
 pearance is not like reahty, but is knowledge about reality ; (2) 
 the concepts used in knowledge are not the metaphysical 
 principles of reality, but man's way of interpreting the world. 
 
 Appearance is our knowledge about reality. The critical 
 philosophy, and especially its later forms, being unable to get 
 from appearance to reality, denied the existence of everything 
 outside of appearance.^ But according to Lotze knowledge is 
 not confined to appearance, but comprehends reality. Reality is 
 knozvji in appearance? Phenomena are not^ things, nor are they 
 hke things.^ On the contrary, phenomena are an interpretation 
 of things. " Phenomena are, nevertheless, always phenomena 
 of something or other, /i?r some subject or other." * Appearance 
 is the mental construction or knowledge which the subject has of 
 the object ; and there is really no question as to whether appear- 
 ance is like or unlike the object. Such a question should not 
 arise, for the very question implies that knoivledge of an object is 
 like the object. But how can knowledge be compared with a 
 thing ? There is, indeed, an " opposition between the object of 
 our knowledge and our knowledge of that object." ^ But sup- 
 
 1 The category of the Ding-an-Sich is retained, but it is put within appearance. 
 Hegel, Werke, VI, pp. 141-143 ; Encyk. , § 74. 
 2Cf. Erdmann : oJ>. cit., \ 347, II. 
 3 Logik, § 316. 
 *Ibid., §304. 
 
 5 Gr. d. Met., | 33 ; Cf. Mikr., II, pp, 157, 160, 
 ^ Logik, Introd., ^ XIII. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 45 
 
 pose tliat knowledge resembles its object. The consciousness, 
 therefore, which perceives this resemblance must know the ob- 
 ject, and also the knowledge of the object. In this case, how- 
 ever, the object is known independently of the knowing of it. 
 
 At the basis of all this confusion is tiie doctrine, however much 
 it may be disguised, that wc know knowledge. To know ap- 
 pearance and to know knowledge is the same thing, for appear- 
 ance, as understood by Kant, included " the whole compass of 
 human knowledge." Though the word appearance may not always 
 have been used for the whole mental interpretation of reality, 
 still this mental construction, this one continuous judgment, is 
 what appearance really is. This continuous judgment is just the 
 \vay in which reality appears to us. Therefore it is our knowl- 
 edge of reality. For this reason we do not first know appear- 
 ance, and then reality. The truth is, we do not know appearance 
 in any case ; but what we do know is reality, and appeara?icc is 
 our knou'ledge of reality. 
 
 This point is so important that it must be discussed further, 
 even at the risk of tediousness. We desire to show more fully 
 that knowledge or appearance is a mental construction of reality. 
 It is knowledge <?/" reality or an appearance of objects. In think- 
 ing — and by this term I include all the activities of the self — re- 
 ality is known. For Lotze this is a postulate, and it is not given 
 us to understand how a mental construction can be knowledge 
 of reality. " We assume that the process of thinking is deter- 
 mined so as to lead to the knowledge of the true nature of 
 things." ^ Now this knowledge which consciousness constructs 
 is appearance, or, to use a phase commoner in Lotze's writings, 
 a system of ideas. 
 
 Reality can be known only in ideas. Things cannot enter 
 into consciousness and be known before they are known in ideas, 
 "It is indeed even incomprehensible how the intuition of a present 
 thing should make me know this thing as it is in itself, as its 
 properties cannot migrate into my faculty of representation." ^ 
 Even though things could actually come into the mind, they 
 
 1 Gr. d. Logik, I 5. 
 
 2 Kant : Proleg., I 9. 
 
46 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 would not be known until they appeared.^ Our ideas are our 
 knowledge of things, and the only knowledge we can have, and 
 in order to make this plain " we have to show that nothing else 
 but the connection of our ideas can ever be made the object 
 of our investigations." - Our knowledge is a continuous judg- 
 ment about reality, or a system of ideas about reality. " 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 Ideal- 
 ism, we deny the existence of that world, and regard our ideas of 
 it as above reality, or whether we maintain with Realism the ex- 
 istence of things outside us which act upon our minds. On the 
 latter hypothesis as little as on the former do the things themselves 
 pass into our knowledge ; they only awaken in us ideas, which 
 are not Things." ^ Though we know the external object in ideas, 
 it is impossible to compare our ideas with reality in order to see 
 if they are true. " It is not this 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 
 own minds."* In knowledge it is not possible to go outside of 
 our ideas and learn what reality is like without knowing it. Not 
 only are we confined to the circle of knowledge, but every cri- 
 tique of knowledge and all criteria of knowledge are within and 
 immanent, never external and transcendent.^ This point has 
 been worked out so admirably by Bosanquet that is no need to 
 dwell further upon it here. But whereas Bosanquet identifies 
 knowledge — not necessarily the individual's knowledge, but the 
 knowledge of the universal — and reality,^ Lotze distinguishes 
 them and regards the continuous judgment of consciousness as 
 the individual's knowledge of reality, and not reality itself Re- 
 ality is not made or unmade by knowing it : it is quite different 
 
 1 Logik, I 308. 
 
 ^Ibid., I 306, Cf. also ?J 3, 153, 315, 355. 
 
 *Ibid., I 306. 
 
 s Ibid., § 322. 
 
 ^ Logik, I, pp. 3 ff., 41 ff., 76 ff. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 47 
 
 from knowledge. Nevertheless reality is known. It appears to 
 consciousness as a continuous judgment. In saying that a thing 
 appears all that is really meant is that it is known. That we 
 can only know a thing in appearance has been considered a de- 
 fect of the human mind, a defect which higher intelligences do 
 not share. ^ On the contrary, Lotze maintains that there is no 
 knowledge apart from appearance. " We may exalt the intelli- 
 gence 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 category 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." ^ 
 
 A comparison of this theory of knowledge with skepticism serves 
 to show its real nature. So long as ideas are taken as copies or 
 symbols of things-in-themselves, a doubt may be raised whether 
 they really give us knowledge about reality ; but if ideas are al- 
 ready knozvledge about reality, then there is no meaning in imag- 
 ining that they may not give us knowledge of things : for in this 
 latter case we know things so soon as we have ideas of them. 
 If, on the other hand, we can have ideas before they are ideas of 
 a thing, then there is a serious doubt as to whether we can ever 
 know the thing. If, however, skepticism " indulges the appre- 
 hension that everything may be in reality quite different from 
 what it necessarily appears," it "sets out with a self-contradic- 
 tion, 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."^ 
 
 The point of view which we have endeavored to set forth has 
 been put in a curt sentence : ' We only know phenomena.' But, 
 like many another concise statement, this one is easily misunder- 
 stood, and gives a wrong emphasis to the object of knowledge. 
 For these reasons Lotze justly objects to it. He says : "I avoid 
 
 * Cf. Kant' s notion of the limitations of man' s knowledge, and of the Intcllectuelle 
 Anschauuug of God. Werke (Hartenstein's ed. ), Vol. Ill, p. 79; Kr. d. r. V. 
 (2d Ed.), pp. 67, 68. 
 
 » Lo};ik, \ 308. 
 
 ^Ibid., §309. 
 
48 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 that particular form of statement because it still contains a preju- 
 dice which I should wish to see abandoned. . . . The proposi- 
 tion plainly carries the idea of a thwarted purpose. That ' only ' 
 implies that our knowledge which was intended by rights for the 
 apprehension of the higher, the essence of things, has to be con- 
 tent with the lower, the phenomenon. . . . But we can see at 
 once that it is an arbitrary proceeding to place knowledge in the 
 position of a means which is Jiot adequate to its supposed end of 
 apprehending things as they are." ^ Returning to our own way 
 of interpreting Lotze, we would say that the statement : ' We 
 only know phenomena,' does not say what is meant. It is meant 
 to say we know objects ojily in phenomena. We cannot really 
 know phenomena, for phenomena are our mental constructions, 
 or our knowledge of things. We only know things, but we 
 know them only in phenomena. The latter clause only repeats 
 the former, for both have the same meaning : for to know 
 anything is to know it in phenomena. Thus it is clear what 
 Lotze means when he says " that nothing else but the connection 
 of our ideas with each other can ever be made the object of our 
 investigations." ^ His meaning is that we can never get outside 
 of knowledge ; in our logical studies we cannot step outside of 
 our own ideas and look on the process from without. No ex- 
 ternal criticism is possible, knowledge is its own critic.^ Nor is 
 metaphysic or any other sphere of knowledge an exception. To 
 get outside of knowledge, or outside of appearance, is not to pos- 
 sess divine knowledge, it is simply to be ignorant. 
 
 Appearance, therefore, is not reality, it is of reality. Knowl- 
 edge is not reality, it is of reality. " Nothing is simpler than to 
 convince ourselves that every apprehending intelligence can only 
 see things as they look to it when it perceives them ; he who 
 demands a knowledge which should be more then 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 
 
 ^Logik, \i\2. 
 i /did., ^304. 
 ^Ibid., II 305.306; 322. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 49 
 
 know but to be the things themselves ; for in fact he would not 
 even so reach his goal. Could he arrive in some way or other at 
 being that very metal 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 
 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." ^ 
 
 There is another aspect of this question which brings out clearly 
 what Lotze's real position is. Appearance or knowledge is not 
 reality, nor is it a copy of reality. The old theory of representa- 
 tive perception w^hich starts with a knowledge of subjective ideas 
 as the primary datum, was compelled to say that ideas were like 
 things, or copies of things. This theory looks upon mind and know- 
 ing from an external point of view; and shice the observer is outside 
 of a being who perceives some object, he is conscious of both ob- 
 ject and subject, and to him both are objects. Furthermore, he 
 knows that these two objects act upon one another, and that one 
 produces a state in the other (the conscious object). Conse- 
 quently, to this observer the mechanism of knowing consists in an 
 object, a conscious being, and a state of consciousness within the 
 latter. Naturally now he says the state of consciousness repre- 
 sents the object, is a copy of it perhaps, and from a knowledge 
 of the state a knowledge of the object is derived. As I under- 
 stand Lotze, this copy -theory, or this form of representative per- 
 ception, is quite inconsistent with the spirit of his philosophy. 
 Nevertheless, passages from his works can be cited which seem 
 to show that he has not always avoided — at least in form of state- 
 ment — the difficulties of the datum-theory of knowledge. 
 
 That ideas are like things, or are copies of them, Lotze denies. 
 
 From the very nature of knowing, which implies an activity of the 
 
 subject, ideas cannot be like things, nor be a copy of them." The 
 
 ^Logik, §308. 
 
 "^ Ibid., Introd., \ VIII, \ 327 ; Gr. d. Met., \ 77 ; Gr. d. Psy., § 12 ; Miir., I, 
 pp. 563 f., II, 6U-617. 
 
50 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 attempt to treat ideas as copies of things is the root of skepticism, 
 and the same can be held of any form of representative percep- 
 tion which regards knowing as a passage from knowledge of 
 ideas to knowledge of objects.^ This is evident so soon as the 
 question is considered. For if it be asked whether knowledge is 
 like, or whether it looks like reality, or is a correct picture of 
 things, or, in fact, is a picture in any sense, then there is only one 
 answer to these questions, and that is we do not know. Conse- 
 quently, if knowledge of reality depends upon our ability to give 
 an answer to this inquiry, there does not appear to be any way in 
 which skepticism can be avoided. Lotze was aware of this. He 
 says : " The doubting question, therefore, whether things may 
 not be in fact quite different from what they necessarily appear to 
 us, has prima facie an intelligible sense only upon the assumption 
 that human knowledge is intended to be a copy of a world of 
 things." - 
 
 There is no meaning in the question whether or not appear- 
 ance is like reality. It is a question which cannot be an- 
 swered, because it is a question which should not be asked. 
 There is no way in which the appearance of a thing can be com- 
 pared with the thing as it does not appear. Our knowledge of a 
 thing cannot be compared with the same thing when it is not 
 known. It is sometimes said that knowing distorts the thing, 
 and that for this reason things cannot be known. The answer to 
 this objection is two-fold. In the first place, it should be remem- 
 bered that knowledge is not a sort of reality, which can make or 
 unmake things, and so affect the object itself. And, secondly, if 
 it is admitted that knowing does not really distort the object, can 
 it be maintained that knowing distorts our knowledge ? Neither 
 of these alternatives can be supported, and as they both depend 
 for their appearance of validity upon the dogma that knowledge 
 must be like reality, a correct comprehension of this problem is 
 necessary for a theory of knowledge. But it may be said : Can- 
 not things appear in some other way ? This may be possible ; 
 and in fact things do not appear in precisely the same manner to 
 every one. But could things appear in totally new forms ? We 
 1 Logik, 1 304. 2 Ibid., § 304. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 5 1 
 
 simply do not know, but this question itself is an intelligible one, 
 and may conceivably have an answer. Can things be known 
 xvitJiout appearing? This question, we take it, has no meaning 
 and no answer. It is true that we can ask the question, and on 
 receiving no answer, we can, if we will, accept mere skepticism. 
 But this kind of skepticism, which rests on no accepted facts, is 
 what Lotze calls a " groundless skepticism.'" We can suppose 
 if we will that appearance is only an idle show, but it is a ground- 
 less supposition, and a "curious solicitude."^ 
 
 V. Before we take up the second point of Lotze's criticism of 
 the Hegelian philosophy, it will be well to notice a criticism which 
 has been made on Lotze's doctrine of knowing reality in appear- 
 ance. Mr. Eastwood says : " He [Lotze] constantly adopts 
 that ' common-sense ' usage of ' idea ' by which the term is taken 
 to mean a representation, true or false, of an object ; a ' mere 
 idea ' being a representation to which no object corresponds, or a 
 representation considered apart from its object. We hear of ob- 
 jects ' corresponding ' or ' not corresponding ' with conceptions, 
 of things being 'more than' thoughts, of the 'possible,' i. c, the 
 world of conceptions, being ' wider than ' the real ; of ' thing ' with 
 no ' counterpart ' in thought, and thoughts with no ' counterpart ' 
 in things."^ Now the author sees that there is a popular plaus- 
 ibility in this theory which says that ideas represent things, or that 
 things appear to the subject in ideas, and he finds that this seduc- 
 tive speciousness rests upon the false disjunction "either knowl- 
 edge is things in themselves, or knowledge only represents things 
 in themselves."^ Lotze, he says, takes these two alternatives 
 as exhaustive ; therefore " naturally every one, be he inclined to 
 Idealism or Realism, will decide to adopt the second proposition, 
 always provided that zve are compelled to choose either the one 
 or the other." But, he proceeds, we are not compelled to choose 
 either terms of this disjunction. The true alternative is : " thought 
 must be the unity for which the manifold of things exists."* 
 
 ^Logik, ?. 303. 
 ^Ibid., §303. 
 
 3 " Lotze's Antithesis bet-ween Thought and Things,''' Mind, 1892, p. 309. 
 ^ Ibid., p. 310. 
 5 Ibid., p. 475. 
 
52 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 With this analysis, which the author says exhausts all possible 
 cases, Mr. Eastwood continues : "that knowledge could never (5^ 
 things in themselves is perfectly true, because tilings hi themselves 
 are, if they exist at all, a manifold of particulars ; [italics mine] 
 whereas knowledge implies a niiiversalization of particulars [italics 
 mine], and a unity of a manifold, which as such can never be a 
 manifold. But just for the same reason it is true that knowledge 
 can never represent things -in-themselves. A unity of a manifold 
 is a whole, one and inseparable ; but a whole can no more repre- 
 sent any of its parts than it can be any of them. "^ Since, there- 
 fore, the first two alternatives are rejected, there is nothing to do 
 but to adopt the remaining. So far as I can see, however, Mr. 
 Eastwood has given no proof that he has exhausted all possible 
 cases, and that the third is the only true expression of the rela- 
 tion of thought and reality. 
 
 Let us now briefly examine this criticism of Lotze. In the 
 first place, it seems clear that Mr. Eastwood means by an idea 
 something quite different from what Lotze means by it. As we 
 have tried to show, an idea for Lotze is already and in itself a 
 bit of information about reality. Our system of ideas is our 
 knowledge about reality. Mr. Eastwood does not adopt this 
 view. "Of course," he says, "if 'idea' simply =' that which 
 we know ' every one will concede Lotze' s postulate, but a 
 moment's consideration will show that, on this interpretation, the 
 postulate is quite barren and tautologous. We are thus 
 naturally led to ask : Does not Lotze import some additional 
 meaning into the term ' idea ' ? I think every one who reads 
 him must perceive that he does." ^ 
 
 Just what Mr. Eastwood understands by the expression : 
 * idea = that which we know,' is not easy to make out ; for this 
 expression may have two meanings : either (i) that our ideas 
 are our knowledge of reality, or (2) our ideas are the tilings 
 which we know. Both of these views seem to be held in turn 
 by Mr. Eastwood. The criticism quoted from p. 309 seems to 
 have point only on condition that the second interpretation is 
 taken. Again he remarks : " Although I cannot find in the 
 1 Op. cit., p. 475. 2 ibid.^ pp. 308, 309. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 53 
 
 Ontolog}' any explanation why a ' thing ' should be more than 
 or other than a thought, I think I can find the reason why no 
 such explanation is there forthcoming."^ This passage seems 
 to impl)- the same doctrine. But the Hrst interpretation also 
 seems to be maintained ; for he uses synonymously idea, 
 knowledge, and thought. " 
 
 Leaving this point, however, let us return to Mr. Eastwood's 
 criticism of Lotze's disjunction. As was seen above, he says, if 
 there are only the two alternatives : (i) " knowledge w things- 
 in-themselves ; (2) knowledge only represents things-in-them- 
 selves," we must accept the latter, for knowledge can never be 
 things in themselves. His reason for rejecting this alternative is 
 that things in themselves are a mere manifold of particulars. 
 This argument would not be a criticism of Lotze even though 
 Lotze had maintained that knowledge is things-in-themselves ; 
 for Lotze does not mean by things-in-themselves ' a mere mani- 
 fold of particulars.'^ We mention this fact because if Mr. East- 
 wood understands Lotze to mean by things-in-themselves or re- 
 ality ' a mere manifold of particulars,' then we agree with the 
 critic in saying thought cannot represent such a reality as this. 
 This, however, does not decide the point against Lotze. Again, 
 let us notice what Mr, Eastwood means by knowledge. For him 
 knowledge is an " universalization of particulars ^ This phrase 
 either indicates a dualism of synthesis and data, or knowledge is 
 not raised above particulars. Since now things are a mere man- 
 ifold, and since knowledge is the unity of a manifold, the imity 
 which is knowledge cannot represent the manifold which, is reality. 
 For Lotze, however, knowledge is not mere unity, and reality is 
 not mere manifold, consequently the above criticism of Lotze is 
 simply due to a misapprehension on the part of the critic. 
 
 Having in this w^ay laid aside the two first alternatives, Mr. East- 
 wood brings forward the third possibility, which he considers the 
 
 ' Op. cit., p. 321. 
 
 *Cf., pp. 308, 310, 475. Mr. Eastwood's notion of things is so peculiar, and so 
 different from Lotze's that his criticism really misses its point completely, as will be 
 seen below. 
 
 3 Met., \\ 68-9«. 
 
54 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 only remaining, viz: "thought must be the unity for which the man- 
 ifold of things exists." The first states, according to the writer, 
 that form is the manifold or matter ; the second, that form repre- 
 sents (is like) the manifold ; the last that form is for the manifold. 
 The definition then of knowledge will be : knowledge is ih&fot'm 
 for which the manifold of mere particulars exist. If, now, form 
 can exist alone, and if the manifold can exist alone, then there is 
 a dualism. If, on the other hand, they can exist only in union, 
 there can be no things-in-themselves, no reality, nor can there be 
 any thought. There can be only the union of these two, but 
 what this union is we are not told. It is not things, for they are 
 the manifold ; it is not knowledge, for that is the form. If, how- 
 ever, it is objected that form and matter cannot be separated, and 
 that their union is the real, what can we say about knowledge ? 
 Is it the form of the real ? But according to definition, " thought 
 must be the unity for which the manifold of things exists"; con- 
 sequently, it is the manifold and not reality that is known. This 
 criticism shows that the writer misunderstands Lotze in several 
 points. These misrepresentations refer to: (i) what the term 
 ' represent ' means ; (2) the nature of the object or reality ; (3) the 
 nature of knowledge. The whole criticism goes to show, more- 
 over, that some such position as that of Lotze must be taken up. 
 It may be stated thus : The human mind knows reality — how 
 this is possible we do not know ; our knowledge is not reality, 
 but is aboict or of reality. To say that we know reality, and 
 that reality appears to us is one and the same thing.^ 
 
 VI. We come now to Lotze's second criticism of idealism. 
 The first dealt with Kant chiefly ; and in it Lotze's contention is 
 that appearance is not like reality-, but is knowledge about reality. 
 Lotze's second proposition is, that the concepts employed in human 
 knowledge are not the metaphysical principles of reality. On the 
 contrary, he claims that these principles are methodological, and 
 do not express the complete truth of reality. They are simply 
 man's way of comprehending the universe. The discussion in 
 this connection is directed against the idealistic school of whom 
 Hegel is regarded as a representative. 
 
 1 Mikr., I, p. 192. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 55 
 
 Lotze's criticism of absolute idealism may be divided into two 
 main contentions: (i) knowledge is not reality, (2) human con- 
 cepts are methodological. 
 
 Knowledge is not reality. Ideas are not real things. It 
 may appear to some that this is so obvious that any discussion 
 of it is unnecessary ; but it is not so plain as may at first appear. 
 Realism, which holds that Ideas are real, is still maintained, 
 and wc talk of the reality of the concepts. A thing, according to 
 this modified form of Platonic Realism, is no longer a reality in 
 itself, but a system of categories or a judgment. Thus it ap- 
 pears that absolute Idealism is a form of Mediaeval Realism. Of 
 this Idealism Lotze remarks : " Idealism is right when it defends 
 the conviction that the real in itself cannot construct the ground 
 of the world. It is true that it is only the Ideal which is 
 real. But the war against the absurd thought of a primitive 
 reality has proceeded so far that all concrete content has disap- 
 peared out of the ideal ground of the world, and there remains 
 no longer the Ideal {Jdcalcs) but the Idee as the creative ground 
 of the world, whose task is to develop the formal nature of the 
 Idee, just as in a poor realism it consists in being the consequence 
 of the formal concepts of the real." ^ Knowledge is put in the 
 place of reality, the abstract is put in the place of the concrete. 
 The logical concept is made real. The deity is no longer a per- 
 son but the Idee. 
 
 The habit of thought which leads to this reification of concepts 
 and judgments is common. " Whenever men have believed 
 themselves to have discovered a principle which appears to repre- 
 sent the universal element in the constitution and development of 
 the real world, they invariably go on to exalt it into the position 
 of an independent reality, and to represent it as a pure form of 
 being, in comparison with which the individual things retire into 
 a position of subordinate and even unreal existence. I need not 
 even refer to the latest phase of German philosophy which aspired 
 to set on the throne of the Platonic Ideas the one absolute Idea ; 
 for the same tendency is apparent enough in spheres of thought 
 outside the circle of philosophy. How often do we hear in our 
 
 '^Med. Psy., p. 157. 
 
56 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 own day of eternal and unchangeable laws of nature to which all 
 phenomena and their changes are subjected ; laws which would, 
 indeed, cease to manifest themselves if there were no longer any 
 things for them to control, but which would even then themselves 
 continue in their eternal validity and would revive with their old 
 effective power the moment a new object presented itself from any 
 quarter for them to apply to ; nay, there is not even wanting on 
 occasion, the enthronement of these laws above all existing real- 
 ities in that very super-celestial habitation which with Plato is the 
 home of the Ideas."^ 
 
 This reification of concepts is based on a confusion in respect 
 to the meaning of the term ' reality.' As the term ' real ' is ordi- 
 narily used, it covers a wide range of meaning, and groups under 
 one rubric objects of thought which should be kept distinct. 
 " We call a thing Real which is, in contradistinction to another 
 which is not ; an event Real which occurs or has occurred, in con- 
 tradistinction to one which does not occur ; a relation Real which 
 obtains, as opposed to one which does not obtain ; lastly, we call 
 a proposition Really true which holds or is valid, as opposed to 
 one of which the validity is still doubtful. This use of language 
 is intelligible ; it shows that when we call anything Real, we mean 
 always to affirm it, though in different senses according to the 
 different forms which it assumes, but one or other of which it must 
 necessarily assume, and of which no one is reducible to or con- 
 tained in the other. For we never can get an Event out of simple 
 Being, the reality which belongs to Things, namely Being or 
 Existence, never belongs to Events — they do not exist but 
 occur ; again a Proposition neither exists like things nor occurs 
 like events ; that its meaning even obtains like a relation, can 
 only be said if the things exist of which it predicates a relation ; 
 in itself, apart from all applications which may be made of it, the 
 reality of a proposition means that it holds or is valid and that its 
 opposite does not hold."^ 
 
 So far as the human mind can distinguish, in the sphere of ob- 
 jects of thought which are called real, there -are these three cat- 
 egories — being, occurrence, and validity. Now Lotze's conten- 
 1 Logik, 1 320. 2 jiid^ ^ g 316. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. S7 
 
 tion is that \vc cannot go behind these concepts, and reduce them 
 all to some one more general concept which will include all 
 three and express by the laws of its nature the relation of being, 
 occurrence and reality to one another/ If this rule is not fol- 
 lowed in the formation of a concept, we get an abstract concept.^ 
 Each concept is s?n generis for us at present. So far as I can 
 understand Lotzc, he maintains no more than that for us, with 
 our present knowledge, these concepts are ultimate. Never- 
 theless, for Lotze these concepts are only human ways of com- 
 prehending reality. They are therefore methodological and not 
 metaphysical. 
 
 Since these concepts are/c^/- jnan ultimate, since he cannot un- 
 derstand how they are related, and does not know the law of 
 their dependence, all he can do is to use them as if they were ul- 
 timate. They divide the province of knowledge into three well- 
 defined fields, and the investigator will therefore best avoid error 
 if he maintains the definite distinctions which mark them off, and 
 does not mix up the three categories as if they were interchange- 
 able, since, in some way unknown to him, he believes they be- 
 long together in one system of knowledge. If we had a system 
 of knowledge, then we might be able to know how these cate- 
 gories are related, but since our knowledge is only fragmentary, 
 and is not a system, their interdependence is not known, and we 
 ought not to treat them as if it were known. The failure to 
 observe the distinction is, according to Lotze, the source of the 
 error which he is combating. " Now misunderstandings must 
 always arise, when under the persuasion that the object which 
 we are considering must have some sort of reality or affirmation 
 proper to it, we endeavour to attribute to it, not that kind of 
 reality which is appropriate to it, but a different kind which 
 is alien to it." '^ 
 
 This investigation has provided an explanation of the doctrine 
 that knowledge is reality. This doctrine is due to the ambiguity 
 of the term 'reality.' Reality, i. e., the world, the universe, 
 
 1 Cf. Logik, I ZZ- 
 
 2Cf. md., U 20-33. 
 
 ^Ibid., ?3i6. 
 
58 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 is real in the sense that it exists. It is a being with hfe, and is 
 spiritual as we shall see in the next chapter. Whereas, on the 
 other hand, knowledge is real in the sense that it is vahd. It has 
 validity but not existence. Now validity and existence are concepts 
 which zue cannot equate with one another, and each for human 
 cognition is ultimate. "As little as we can say how it happens 
 that anything is or occurs, so little can we explain how it comes 
 about that a truth has Validity ; the latter conception has to be 
 regarded as much as the former as ultimate and underivable, a 
 conception of which everyone may know what he means by it, 
 but which cannot be constructed out of any constituent elements 
 which do not already contain it." ^ Consequently, since validity 
 and existence are methodologically ultimate concepts, the one 
 cannot be substituted for, or predicated of, the other. For this 
 reason the proposition ' knowledge is reality,' is guilty of con- 
 fusing these two notions, and is therefore an impossible judgment 
 for the human understanding. 
 
 It is not necessary to suppose that Lotze maintains that thought 
 and reality have no relation to one another ; for him they belong 
 to the same world ; but what he does hold is, that we do not 
 know hozv the one expresses the other, how thought is valid of 
 existence. Furthermore, he declares that " the relation does not 
 consist in this, that a fixed number of concepts as existing are to 
 us things, and as tliought are the ideas of things ; on the contrary, 
 our concepts may be increased indefinitely without any addition 
 to the sum of existence. And, further, setting out from innum- 
 erable arbitrarily chosen standpoints, we may build up the same 
 whole by constructions of particular ideas, varying according to 
 the variety of these standpoints ; and thus there may be many 
 definitions which define the same object with equal accuracy and 
 exhaustiveness. None of these definitions is the nature of the 
 object, though each is valid as to it, because there is no object of 
 which the nature can be conceived by means of an Idea that is 
 isolated, and unconnected with all others, and characterized only 
 by eternal self-identity." ^ It may be supposed, however, that this 
 failure of knowledge to be reality is due to the fact that we have 
 
 ^Logic, I 316. ^Mikr., II, p. 327. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. $9 
 
 considered only ideas, and not judgments and syllogisms. Ihxt 
 Lotze maintains that neither judgments nor syllogisms are reality/ 
 But what can be said is that judgments and syllogisms more 
 adequately rcprcsoit or express reality /// kitozv/cdi^e.'^ 
 
 The second part of Lotze's criticism of absolute idealism is 
 that human concepts are methodological, and cannot be taken, 
 just as they are and without modification, as the complete prin- 
 ciples by means of which reality can be exhaustively known. 
 Absolute idealism, holding — and quite justly — the belief that 
 reality is an ideal system in which all parts unite to form the 
 whole, and have their value in relation to this whole, sets out to 
 interpret this system of reality in a system of knoivledge. Its 
 purpose is to comprehend all things in their eternal relations, and 
 see them just as they really are, i. e., as they would appear to a 
 being who had a perfect knowledge of the whole system. How 
 Lotze replies to this theory, we will now endeavor to explain. 
 
 In chapter I it was shown that Lotze uses concepts methodo- 
 logically, and does not take them to be exhaustive analyses of the 
 objects of knowledge. Thus it may occur that concepts seem 
 ultimate. If they seem so, Lotze affirms, accept them as such, 
 always, however, with the reservation that they are methodo- 
 logical, and necessarily are not ontological principles or final 
 concepts. Complete or final they cannot be, for they are merely 
 parts of human cognition. Nevertheless, accept them in practical 
 scientific work of discovery as ultimate, for only in this way can 
 we attain to definite notions. This advice is simply a caveat 
 against hasty generalization, and does not mean that we are to 
 accept as ultimate any conceptions, and renounce all further effort 
 to understand their relation to one another. Lotze would be the 
 last to deny the interdependence of our concepts. But he says 
 we do not know in any a priori way what this dependence is, and 
 since we are ignorant of their relation, we must frame our con- 
 cepts more or less independently of each other, and base the law 
 of their structure upon the mass of material which we have at 
 hand, and for which we are seeking an explanation. If then we 
 
 ^Logik, U 343-345- 
 
 iMikr., I, p. 669; II, pp. 328, ff. 338; LogiVe, U 56-74- 
 
6o LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 bear in mind these two facts of method : (i) concepts are methodo- 
 logical ; (2) opposition to hasty generalization — it seems to me 
 that we can understand Lotze's divisions of knowledge. 
 
 There are four ways, says Lotze, in which there can be a syn- 
 thesis of the manifold in knowledge:^ (i) "the synthesis of 
 apprehension" brings "the manifold together into a simultane- 
 ous possession of consciousness, without combining any two of 
 its elements in a different order from any other two." What 
 Lotze aims to describe is what has been called receptivity or ap- 
 prehension of the manifold. That he is not committed to the 
 datum-theory is evident if we recall the fact that his concepts 
 are methodological, and that he would consider it a hasty gen- 
 eralization to subordinate this ' synthesis of apprehension ' to a 
 higher synthesis. This synthesis of apprehension is the work of 
 the mind,^ and, moreover, there is reason to believe that Lotze re- 
 gards the mind as unitary, and supposes it to act as a whole. The 
 alternative to this view is that Lotze held to the faculty-psychol- 
 ogy.^ (2) "The synthesis of perception." This stage denotes 
 that the unifying of the manifold has proceeded further than in 
 the first stage. The impressions of sense are sorted and united 
 into the perception of definite objects in a definite world of 
 things. This process of unification has been carried on below 
 the level of conscious direction by means of thought. Lotze's 
 words are: "This connection also is supplied by the inward 
 mechanism of consciousness without any action of thought, and 
 however firmly defined and finely articulated it may be, it exhibits 
 nothing but the fact of an external order, and reveals no ground 
 of coherence justifying coexistence in that order." '" (3) "Syn- 
 thesis of thought" has for its object "to separate the merely 
 coincident amongst the various ideas which are given to us, and 
 to combine the coherent afresh by the accessory notion of a 
 ground for their coherence." '" This synthesis works upon the 
 
 1 Logik, \ 20. 
 ^Mikr., I, pp. 226 f. 
 ^ Ibid., I, pp. 168-192. 
 
 * Logik, § 20. Cf. ibid., {,\ 121-123. If we remember Lotze's use of concepts there 
 is no need of difficulty here. These four stages are only a logical classification. 
 5 Logik, § 20. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 6 1 
 
 actual plane of life, and among the actual facts, and endeavors to 
 understand, and determine how they are related to one another. 
 As the first two syntheses dealt with what we may call facts — 
 sensations and perceptions — so this "logical form of synthesis" 
 departs from the merely given, and seeks to explain the facts 
 given by the two first forms of mental construction. This log- 
 ical form of synthesis deals with concepts, judgments, and syl- 
 logisms, /. c\, with the interpretation of the given facts. It deals 
 with the movements of the mind among its facts, and its aim is 
 to discover the laws and principles of this synthesis, to understand 
 how one part depends upon another, and if possible to express 
 this relation in the form of a law, concept, judgment or syllogism. 
 The mind begins with the facts, and passes from the knowledge 
 of the one to that of the other, in order to observe the connec- 
 tion that is between them. This is the sphere of the search for 
 truth, and the only method which is available is the realistic. 
 The human mind is in this position and is compelled "to collect 
 its knowledge piecemeal by experiences 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." ^ 
 In this search for truth all concepts are methodological, and 
 must not be taken for more than rough approximations to the 
 complete truth. (4) " The complete synthesis of thought " is the 
 last and highest degree of synthesis. Simply stated, it is the last 
 form of synthesis carried out to completion. This is not an 
 actual synthesis for human cognition, it is the goal of all syn- 
 thesis, and, so far as man is concerned, it is an ideal toward 
 which he can work, but which he can never attain. This syn- 
 thesis, if reached, would be the system of knowledge which 
 some idealists have supposed was within the grasp of the human 
 understanding. " In such a synthesis we would have before our 
 mind, not the mere fact of manifold elements in order, but also 
 the value which each element possessed in determining the 
 coalescence of the whole. If what we thus apprehended were 
 an object in real existence, we should see which were the prior, 
 determining, and effective elements in it, in what order of depen- 
 
 ' Logik, Introd., \ IX. 
 
62 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 dence and development the others followed from them, or what 
 end was to be regarded as their authoritative center, involving in 
 itself the simultaneous union or successive growth of them all. 
 ... It is easy to see that a synthesis of this sort would be 
 neither more nor less than the knowledge of the thing ; as the 
 goal of all intellectual effort, it lies as far above the province of 
 logic as the first and second modes of connection lay beneath 
 it." ^ This synthesis is nothing less than perfect knowledge 
 which would behold all things in their eternal relations, and com- 
 prehend them as members of one complete system. In such a 
 knowledge all things would be seen in unity, and philosophy 
 would be all of one piece. 
 
 Of these four degrees of synthesis, the latter falls beyond the 
 reach of man, yet it is just this fourth and unattainable knowledge 
 which absolute idealism pretends to have. At any rate such is 
 Lotze's interpretation of absolute idealism.^ Inreply to this as- 
 sumption Lotze observes: "Only a mind which stood at the center 
 of the real world, not outside individual things but penetrating 
 them with its presence, could command such a view of reality as 
 left nothing to look for, and was therefore the perfect image of it 
 in its own being and activity." ^ But the human mind is not at 
 the center, and does not behold reality sitb specie aeternitatis. It 
 gathers its knowledge piecemeal, and for this purpose uses tenta- 
 tive concepts, and many circuitous devices to unify its knowledge. 
 In fact much of our concept-system is little more than the scaf- 
 folding of knowledge ; and our categories are all methodological.* 
 
 The concepts and forms of thought, or the intellectual syn- 
 theses which are used in human cognition, simply express imper- 
 fect and incomplete ways of viewing reality. " They are con- 
 densed expressions for a definite union of separable elements, which 
 act and react upon each other according to constant and universal 
 laws, and give rise in one combination to one set of results, in 
 another to another." ^ We can idealize our concepts till they are 
 
 1 Logik, \ 20. 
 
 ^Gesch. d. Phil, \ 34. 
 
 ^ Logik, Introd., \ IX. 
 
 4Cf. Ibid., I IX ; Gesch. d. Phil., \ 34. 
 
 5 Logik, I 144. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 63 
 
 complete, but they would be only ideal, and not the concepts 
 which we use. " The name ' concept ' does not seem to deserve 
 in logic that exalted significance which the school of Hegel has 
 given it, and in which it claims to express the knowledge of the 
 essential nature of the object. . . . There may be a privileged 
 concept [italics mine] , which follows the thing itself in its being 
 and development, or takes up a point of view at the very center 
 of the thing, the fountain-head of its self-determination and self- 
 organization ; but it is not the function of logic to reserve its 
 concept-Z'^i/v;/ for so very select a filling. By the logical concept 
 we understand such a form of apprehending any matter of 
 thought, from whatever point of view, that consequences admit 
 of being drawn from it which coincide again at certain points with 
 results flowing from that matter, that is, from the thing itself; 
 and as the thing projects itself differently at every different point of 
 view, there may be various equally right, and equally fruitful 
 concepts of the same object." ^ This passage shows definitely 
 the methodological nature of the concept. It may be expressed 
 in this way. (i) Each concept expresses only an aspect of a 
 thing, since there can be several equally right and equally fruit- 
 ful concepts of it. (2) Since the concept manifests only a part of 
 the nature of the thing, it beholds it only from the periphery, and 
 not from the center. It does not reveal the object as it is. (3) 
 All such concepts, therefore, are liable to change and modifica- 
 tion, and can gradually develop and express more and more of 
 the nature of the thing. 
 
 Not only did absolute idealism undertake too much when it 
 accepted the categories as the constitutive principles, or the in- 
 tellectual representations of these forms and their content, but it 
 undertook an impossible task when it made the attempt to dis- 
 cover all these principles by the dialectic method. What Lotze 
 says of classification of concepts will apply here, for his remarks 
 are quite general. " Lastly, it will be asked, 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 
 
 1 Logik, \ 27. 
 
64 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 large. To this we can only answer, that by way of mere logic 
 it is quite impossible to arrive at such a certainty. The form of 
 classification, like all logical forms, is itself an ideal, an ideal 
 which is demanded by thought, but which can only be realized, 
 so far as it can be realized at all, by the growth of knowledge 
 [italics mine]. Nor indeed is this an exceptional condition, such 
 as would lay this first of our systematic forms under a disadvan- 
 tage."^ Lotze goes on in this paragraph to say that this defect 
 which was found in the concept applies also to the judgment and 
 the syllogism. In no case does either of these forms exhaust the 
 nature of the thing, and provide the knowing mind with a con- 
 cept which fully expresses reality. Were there such a concept, 
 then it would contain implicit in itself all knowledge, and such a 
 concept would become explicit by the dialectic method, and out 
 of it would unfold the complete system of concepts about real- 
 ity. Since, however, each concept is framed from only a limited 
 knowledge of reality, and expresses only the nature of reality ob- 
 served within narrow limits, it contains a very small portion of 
 knowledge. Now such a concept can be unfolded, but no de- 
 velopment will get out of it more than is contained in it. Fur- 
 thermore, this concept was formed from definite problems and 
 definite knowledge, and in some definite field of enquiry. To 
 this field it belongs exclusively ; and even here it is only par- 
 tially true. Consequently, were this concept developed, and ap- 
 plied generally, we would be using hasty generalization, a pro- 
 cedure which Lotze especially condemns. The obvious conclusion, 
 therefore, is that our concepts, judgments, and syllogisms are 
 methodological devices which the human understanding employs 
 in knowing reality. They are only imperfect attempts to repre- 
 sent the nature of things ; they obtain and express, as it were, 
 only an aspect of reality, and in no case do they manifest that 
 aspect completely. A complete concept, i. c, a concept which 
 contains implicitly in itself the whole system of concepts, judg- 
 ments, and knowledge of reality, implies every other complete 
 concept. For any intelligence, therefore, to be in possession 
 of this " privileged concept," as Lotze calls it,^ would require 
 ^ Logik, ^ 12,^. ^Ibid.,\2T. 
 
THE APPEARANCE OF REALITY. 65 
 
 nothing less than omniscience. Such a concept would reveal the 
 complete nature of reality, so that there would be nothing further 
 to know. It would reveal things just as they are. This con- 
 cept, if indeed it exists, would be constitutive, for it would reveal 
 perfectly the essence of things. On the other hand, the concepts 
 which are present to human thought fall far short of this perfec- 
 tion. They grasp only a meager portion of reality, and reveal only 
 a particle of its nature. For this reason they are not constitu- 
 tive. They are not the very principles in reality ; they do not 
 even express these principles to any degree of accuracy, but are 
 being continually changed, and re-adapted with the growth of 
 knowledge. All our knowledge, therefore, is subjective, and is 
 an account of reality as it appears to human beings.^ Therefore 
 the metaphysician " has to guard against the mistake of regarding 
 abstractions, by means of which he fuses single determinations of 
 the real for his use, as constitutive and independent elements, 
 which he can employ, by help of his own resources, to build up 
 the real."' 
 
 VII. In conclusion, let us briefly summarize the chief points 
 in this chapter. Lotze's problem was to mediate between two an- 
 tithetic doctrines. The first is that reality is unknowable, and only 
 appearance is known. Kant, who held this view, maintained that we 
 know only phenomena, for since all the categories of knov^ledge be- 
 long to the realm of appearance, there is no possible way in which 
 reality can be known, or brought under the categories. The 
 second doctrine admitted the Kantian position that we know only 
 phenomena, but called the phenomena reality, and denied that 
 there is any reality behind phenomena. Appearance is reality for 
 this school of thinkers. Now Lotze objects to both of these ex- 
 treme views. He does not deny the knowledge of reality like the 
 first, nor maintain that appearance is reality like the second. 
 His position is that reality is know7i in appearance. 
 
 Absolute idealism is the logical development of the Kantian 
 doctrine that we know only appearance, i. e., the mental con- 
 struction of reality. Since only appearance is known, then the 
 thing which is behind appearance is unknowable ; and the later 
 
 iCf. Am>-., II, 333 ff. 2 Me/., ^83. 
 
66 LOTZKS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 idealism was fully justified (starting as it did with the Kantian 
 dogma that only appearance is known), in denying the existence 
 of the thing-in-itself. But we must remember that this denial of 
 the thing in itself is the rejection of reality in so far as it is not 
 appearance. But this dogma demands a re-interpretation. If it 
 is true, then absolute idealism is sound. The conclusions of this 
 idealism, however, led Lotze to examine the presuppositions of 
 this school of thought. Now the underlying principles of the 
 critical philosophy and its developments is the assumption that 
 only appearance is known. This assumption Lotze attacked, and 
 concludes that in truth we do not know appearance at all. Reality 
 is known, and known in appearance. 
 
 This criticism of absolute idealism explains an important prob- 
 lem. If appearance is reality, then our concepts are real also ; 
 and it is possible for any one who subjects his ideas to examina- 
 tion to develop out of them a complete concept-system. Lotze 
 denies this. Appearance, he asserts, is not reality. It is only a 
 partial manifestion of reality. Our concepts and our knowledge 
 are therefore only partial. They are methodological and not 
 constitutive. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 In the preceding chapter it has been shown that Lotze regards 
 reahty as known. Ideas and thoughts arc our knowledge of 
 reahty, and when we have tlioughts or ideas we possess thoughts 
 and ideas about reahty. They arc not thoughts about nothing, 
 nor are they thoughts about themselves, but they are about 
 reality. Furthermore, Lotze has demonstrated that thoughts are 
 not real things, but they are about real things, and exist in a 
 conscious being as "habits of action" or cognitive activities. 
 
 So far this discussion has brought us. But were it to be left 
 here, Lotze's position would be given only imperfectly. It is our 
 purpose, therefore, to continue our exposition of Lotze's theoiy 
 of knowledge in order to discover more definitely what his positive 
 doctrine is. To this end it is important to understand his concep- 
 tion of reality, and the relation in which the knowing subject stands 
 to it. This is important because the theory he advocates is a de- 
 parture from a good deal of the idealism of the day. This departure 
 from accepted lines can be stated in this way : Kant and some 
 Post-Kantians finding that things, as more than phenomena, are 
 unknowable, held that the phenomenal world only is known. 
 Consequently, the categories belong to appearance and cannot be 
 applied to the world of real things. It is true that this school 
 affirms that categories constitute the nature of objects, but ob- 
 jects are only phenomenal. Or to speak psychologically, objects 
 are ideas, and groups of ideas, associated ideas, or even a union 
 of peripherally and centrally aroused sensations. The object is 
 plainly the mental construct, express it as we may. Therefore, 
 we may claim that the characteristic distinction between critical 
 and absolute idealism is that the former retains the notion of a 
 reality behind phenomena, whereas the latter does not. But, as 
 we have seen, Lotze mediates between these two positions. He 
 denies that knowledge is confined to phenomena. In truth 
 
68 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 knowledge is not of phenomena, but of reality ; and phenomena 
 are an appearance or knowledge of real things. This change of 
 standpoint implies a great change of logical theory, (i) It pro- 
 vides for a metaphysic in a way that the Kantian theory did not. 
 According to the conception of Kant and Post-Kantians, the only 
 reality is the mental construction, consequently the only metaphy- 
 sic is logic. For Lotze, on the other hand, thought is not reality 
 and metaphysic is not logic. (2) Since knowledge is of reality, 
 the categories apply to reality, and connect or separate real things. 
 For example, not merely phenomena, but real things are caus- 
 ally related. VlS) Things are not selfless. They are a unity of 
 states and possess in some degree the nature of selfhood. All 
 things that exist have selfhood. Selves, however, though 
 Fursiclisein are not Herbartian reals. They form a unity in 
 interaction, and are causally related. (4) It is this inter- 
 related world of selves, then, which is knovv'n — known inade- 
 quately of course, but known. (5) A change in one self is 
 known in another self because the former interacts upon the 
 latter, and produces an idea in it. This idea is the awareness by 
 theoneself of the other — how, we do not know. Because reality 
 consists of selves, then, it can be known by a self. 
 
 Before we take up Lotze' s discussion of the nature of reality, 
 and its relation to knowledge, however, it is advisable to refer to 
 an objection which will arise. The charge may be made that 
 Lotze is now attempting a task which he maintained was impos- 
 sible. He has over and over again insisted that human knowl- 
 edge is methodological, and is not a system of knowledge. 
 Now, however, it may be affirmed that he regards these same 
 concepts as constitutive, and proceeds to give a metaphysic of 
 reality. 
 
 Let us endeavor first of all to ascertain Lotze's own position, 
 All human knowledge, he maintains, is subjective. It is the hu- 
 man way of comprehending reality.^ This indeed is true, not 
 only of ordinary knowledge, but of metaphysic as well. We may 
 go further and maintain that if our most concrete knowledge is 
 subjective, metaphysic is still more subjective. But the question 
 
 "^Met., \ 94. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 69 
 
 arises : How can there be a methodological metaphysic ? Is not 
 this a contradiction in terms ? It is certainly a contradiction in 
 terms if metaphysic is a system of knowledge in the sense 
 which absolute idealism meant by a 'system.' But this is not 
 what Lotze understands by metaphysic. " I readily admit that 
 I take philosophy to be throughout merely an inner movement 
 of the human spirit. ... It is an effort, within the presupposed 
 limits, even to ourselves absolutely unknown, which our earthly 
 existence imposes upon us, to gain a consistent view of the world. 
 . . . An absolute truth, such as the archangels in heaven would 
 have to accept, is not its object, nor does the failure to realize 
 such an object make our efforts bootless."^ " For we do not 
 possess either of Nature or of History such complete knowledge, 
 as would enable us to guess the whole of the divine plan of the 
 universe ; the attempts that have been made to determine this 
 from meagre earthly experience betray only too plainly the un- 
 favorable nature of our standpoint, which, with all the one-sided- 
 ness of its limited outlook, wishes to be taken for that topmost 
 summit, from which the whole world may plainly be seen spread 
 out below. "^ Metaphysic, therefore, is not a complete system of 
 knowledge of such a nature that all knowledge and all reality can 
 be deduced from one single principle such as Fichte demanded.^ 
 This no doubt may be the complete metaphysic, but it is not that 
 which Lotze attempts to outline. Metaphysic, therefore, like all / 
 
 our knowledge, is methodological. We may define metaphysic y/ 
 from Lotze's point of view as an outline of reality as a whole. It 
 is an attempt to subject our concepts and knowledge to a com- 
 prehensive criticism, and to get a glimpse of what they all 
 mean. Such a definition would be for the most part formal. 
 We may admit then with Merz that the drift of philosophy is 
 "to tiy to bring unity and harmony into the scattered thoughts 
 of our general culture, to trace them to their primary assump- 
 tion, and follow them into their ultimate consequences, to con- 
 nect them altogether, to remodel, curtail, or amplify them, so as 
 
 1 Met. , ? 94. 
 
 ^Mikr., II, pp. 723-4. 
 
 3 Ueber den Begriff der IVissenscha/tslehre, ^2. 
 
70 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 to remove their apparent contradictions, and combine them in the 
 unity of an harmonious view of things, and especially to make those 
 conceptions from which the single sciences start as assumptions 
 the object of research, and to seek for the limits of their applica- 
 bility."^ But it must not be assumed that this ideal means a system 
 of knowledge.^ A system of knowledge is not man's posses- 
 sion. " Our cosmic theory has not the unity necessary for knowl- 
 edge, and our hopes lack that confirmation which would make them 
 strong and vigorous. , . . We must to a large extent content 
 ourselves with making clear what it is that we mean and that we 
 require, without being able to show how that which we require 
 and mean can be ; we shall not be able to prove throughout the 
 necessity of that which we are seeking, and to develop its whole 
 content with the certainty of a strict logical deduction from un- 
 deniable premises, but must be content to remove the difficulties 
 that hinder a living faith in its existence, and to exhibit it as the 
 goal to which we have to approximate, although we may not 
 reach it."^ 
 
 Now it may be asserted this does not confirm the consistency 
 of a 'methodological metaphysic' Furthermore, it may be con- 
 tended that such a use of terms is simply a dogmatic statement. 
 Consequently, it may be admitted that Lotze understands meta- 
 physic in this way, and yet it may be maintained that such a con- 
 . junction of concepts is a contradiction in terms. In reply to this 
 criticism we may grant that if complete knowledge is necessary 
 before an outline comprehension of reality is possible, then a meta- 
 physic in subjective concepts is impossible. But it is not at all 
 evident that metaphysic implies any such complete knowledge. 
 On the other hand the very opposite seems to be true. A very 
 imperfect knowledge may be metaphysical, just as a very limited 
 knowledge may be scientific. It is not the quantity of knowledge 
 
 ^Ency. Brit., Article, " Lotze." 
 
 * By a system of knowledge we mean complete knowledge, such as an Absolute Ideal- 
 ism claims to have. In such a system of knowledge each concept contains implicitly 
 all knowledge. When such a "privileged concept '' develops it will unfold a system 
 of the universe. But such a development is impossible for our methodological con- 
 cepts. 
 
 ^ Mikr., II, p. 576. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. ?! 
 
 that makes a scientist or a metaphysician, but rather the problem 
 he is deaUng with. Moreover, the experience of everyone who 
 considers his relation to the universe, goes to prove that some 
 sort of a metaphysic is possible. We do have some notion of 
 the totality of existence, and think of it in this way. No mind 
 is ever confined to the bare particular. In some degree or other 
 every enlightened human mind has a conception of reality as a 
 whole, and in a general way knows its significance and mean- 
 ing. That we have a philosophy at all is sufficient proof of this 
 fact. We may conclude, therefore, that human beings have meta- 
 physical insight. Are they therefore possessed of constitutive 
 concepts ? This I presume is a question that philosophers will 
 divide upon. But this ' division' seems the proof that human 
 concepts and human knowledge are not constitutive, but, on the 
 contrary, are methodological. For were they constitutive, did 
 they express the complete essence of reality, it is difficult to un- 
 derstand how there could be so much difference of opinion 
 among scholars. With this brief statement then it seems evident 
 that we must accept the doctrine that we are in possession of a 
 metaphysical theory of reality, and that this theory is methodolog- 
 ical. It gives the outline merely. And these outlines form no 
 set doctrine, but change as our knowledge of their concrete con- 
 tent changes. At any rate this is Lotze's position, and it is with 
 his doctrine that we are concerned. 
 
 Having now learned that Lotze regards metaphysic as an out- 
 line survey of reality as a whole, it will be our purpose in this 
 chapter to develop his conception of reality, and his notion of 
 the relation in which each cognitive subject stands to it. There 
 will therefore be two parts : (i) the nature of reality, and (2) the 
 theory of knowledge. 
 
 I.' Though human knowledge is fragmentary, and not a system, 
 it poi)its toivards a system. All knowledge is a process of unifying 
 our experience. " Every myth that gives a new and poetic form 
 to some phenomena, bears witness to the activity of human cog- 
 nition, that can seldom be satisfied with direct perception."^ 
 Knowledge is always striving for the ideal, for it is in unity that 
 ^ Mikr., II, pp. 306, 307. 
 
72 LOTZES THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 we behold the significance of things. " Youth strives to get from 
 particulars to the whole, and not to the universal ; it seeks more 
 earnestly for the one meaning of every phenomenon than for the 
 numerous conditions of its realization ; and it would always much 
 sooner discover the unity of the thought which binds together the 
 disconnected fragments of the cosmic course as living members 
 of a beautiful and harmonious whole, than inquire after the un- 
 attractive conditions upon the universal validity of which depends 
 the possibility of all beauty and of all connection of parts into a 
 whole."^ This unifying activity of the mind which is the essence 
 of knowledge "has been at work at all times, and whenever a 
 view of the world more or less like the theory of mechanical ex- 
 planation has developed itself, this impulse has met it with the 
 reiterated demand that the world and all things in it should be 
 regarded as a //W;/^ development."^ Everywhere in knowledge 
 the aim of the mind is to bring together, and relate in conscious- 
 ness our knowledge of reality, to bind together our separate 
 experiences or cognitions of reality into a complete unity of 
 knowledge. This must not be taken to mean that some kind of 
 knowledge can exist prior to unity. All knowledge implies a 
 degree of unity, and all progress in knowledge is a development 
 of this unity. Everywhere, then, the knowing mind strives for a 
 wider and more comprehensive knowledge. of reality. But at 
 best it can attain only a very imperfect unity of knowledge. Just 
 as it is striving for unity, it is conscious of unity in outline and 
 comprehends reality as a whole. But such a final unity is only 
 an ideal which we can think in general terms, or know in outline, 
 but cannot know in detail. It can never be known so con- 
 cretely that the whole of knowledge can be deduced from it.^ 
 Nevertheless this "idealism of youth " has often made extrava- 
 gant claims for human cognition, and has thought itself " able to 
 bring all reality into subjection to its fairest dreams." This tem- 
 per, however, " is broken in upon by the realism of riper age 
 which gives calm recognition even to what is unimportant when 
 
 '^Mikr., II, p. 309. 
 ^Logik, ^150. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 73 
 
 it occurs as a fact, as one of the unalterable fashions of the world's 
 course."' While it is true that the extravaf^ant hopes of idealism, 
 as a s}'stem of knowledge, have been restricted by sober realism, 
 the fact remains that all the forms of knowing point towards a 
 unity. Unity is the goal, it is what we aim at. It is the ideal, 
 and when it is attained in knowledge we shall possess a system of 
 knowledge. Since all knowing points towards it, it is a conscious 
 end which we can outline in conception, but only in general terms. 
 Though we do not know it as we know a particular bit of con- 
 crete experience, still as an ideal it appeals to us, and we accept 
 it as the goal. Though we do not know how it will be realized, 
 or what will be its concrete filling and its final form, yet, 
 since all knowledge points towards it, we can believe in that 
 whose solution we do not now understand.^ " Nor is the validity 
 of these ideals at all impaired by the fact that human knowledge 
 is not able to apply them to every given instance."'^ 
 
 Our enquiry now has shown that, in so far as we know reality, 
 we know it as related ; and the fuller our knowledge is the more 
 is the unity manifest. Now the objection may be raised that it is 
 only knowledge which tends towards a unity. It may be ad- 
 mitted that kiioiviiig is a unifying process, and that our mental 
 construction has the nature of a unity, while the unity of reality 
 may be denied. It may be urged that we have no right to go from 
 the unity, or partial unity, of knowledge to the unity of reality. 
 This argument, indeed, is unanswerable if we start out first with 
 a knowledge of appearance, and secondly attempt to obtain a 
 knowledge of reality. On this theory not only is the judgment 
 about the unity of reality unjustifiable, but we are not warranted 
 in passing any judgment whatever about reality. Reality is simply 
 unknowable, and this objection proves more than was intended. 
 But as has been shown above, this is not Lotze's conception of 
 knowledge. Knowledge is never of phenomena only, it is first 
 and essentially knowledge of reality. Consequently, this charge 
 against Lotze's position has no weight. If now we know reality 
 
 1 Mikr., II, p. 312. 
 
 2Cf. Mikr., II, pp. 717. f. 
 
 ^Logik, I 151 ; Cf. U 120-151. 
 
 / 
 
74 LOTZES THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 as a unity, there is nothing illogical in saying that reahty is a unity. 
 If knowledge does not mean this, then we have no knowledge. 
 Again, we must insist that this theory does not make our knowl- 
 edge constitutive, i. e., express the complete nature of reality. 
 We may know reality to be a unity, but have little knowledge of 
 the details of this unity. Our knowledge so far as it goes teaches 
 that reality is a unity. Now we can go beyond this actual 
 realized knowledge, and on the basis of this knowledge construct 
 an ideal of reality as a whole. All the reality we know is unitary, 
 i. e., holds together in one system, and nothing is independent. 
 An ideal therefore constructed on positive knowledge and based 
 upon the longings of the human mind ^ outruns actual knowledge, 
 and finds rest only in a comprehensive outline which to some 
 degree observes reality as a whole. ^ This ideal, then, even 
 though we do not and cannot know it as it is, we can believe 
 in, and seek to know it more and more completely, and compre- 
 hend it in truer outline. That we may not know reality, and that 
 a criticism of the ability to know reality is required before we 
 have any right to construct a metaphysic is an attitude which Lotze 
 rejects. If we know at all we know reality.^ There is another 
 important reason why we should believe in the unity of reality, 
 even though we do not know it to be a unity, or cannot prove it 
 to be a unity. Man interprets realit}^ in terms of his own nature, 
 i. e., anthropomorphically. Since now the world is understood in 
 terms of man, it will be reasonable to expect to find the nature of 
 reality most intelligible when it is conceived after the highest in- 
 terpretation of the self Now Kant showed that knowledge and 
 experience imply the ujiity of the self. Lotze also accepts the 
 same doctrine.* Unity is the essential nature of the self With- 
 out the unity of cojtsciousness " the sum-total of our internal 
 states could not even become the object of our self-observation." ^ 
 
 JCf. Afikr., II, pp. 305-311 ; Logik, | 151. 
 
 2Cf. Logik, II 120-151. 
 
 3Cf. Met., Introd., I IX. 
 
 * It has been customary to regard unity as abstract, and some of the criticisms of 
 Lotze derive all their force from this tacit assumption. For this reason it is necessary to 
 refer to Lotze' s conception of unity. In no case does he regard unity as abstract and 
 devoid of differences. On the contrary, unity for him is a unity of differences. Cf. 
 Mikr., I, pp. 152 ff. ; Met, U 68-98; Logik, \\ 351-365- 
 
 ^ Mikr., I, p. 152. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 75 
 
 " We come to understand the connection of our inner life only by 
 referring all its events to the one ego, lying unchanged alike be- 
 neath its simultaneous variety and its temporal succession. Every 
 retrospect of the past brings with it this knowledge of the ego as 
 a combining centre ; our ideas, our feelings, our efforts are compre- 
 hensible to us only as its states or energies, not as events floating 
 unattached in the void." ^ Furthermore, there is not only this 
 critical deduction of the unity of the self, but we know, as clearly 
 as we know or perceive anything, that the self is a unity, and the 
 subject of diverse activities, ideas, and interests. Thus in the self 
 we have direct experience of a real thing which is the subject of 
 changing states, is in interaction with other selves, and behaves 
 like any real thing. In this self we find that its essence is its 
 unity. This reality at any rate is one. Consequently, when we 
 interpret the larger reality, we must interpret it in terms of our 
 own self. But since the self has many aspects, and since we can 
 methodologically separate them, and consider these elements 
 more or less independently, we can read the nature of the uni- 
 verse in terms of each of these aspects of the self. Nevertheless, 
 in whatever way we view it, we are constrained to see in it some 
 kind of a unity. If, however, w^e interpret it in terms of the self 
 as a living whole, we will view the universe as a unity in the high- 
 est sense of the word that we know. As, indeed, we do not know 
 licnv the elements of the self form a unity, so we do not know ^ 
 enough about the unity of the world to be able to deduce its con- 
 crete content from the one principle of unity. Notwithstanding, 
 we do know the self to be a unity even though we cannot see hozv 
 this unity is constructed. Now there is no contradiction in hold- 
 ing the self to be a unity, while at the same time acknowledging 
 that the concrete filling of this outline is beyond human insight. 
 Nor is there any contradiction in believing in the unity of the 
 cosmos when knowledge of the details of this unity is not forth- 
 coming. Not only is there no contradiction in this notion of unity, 
 but oxiY faith in this unity is firmly grounded ; for such a faith turns 
 
 1 yl///(v-., I, p. 154. A distinction usually obscured must be maintained. The critical 
 deduction only proves that knoivlcdge implies and is made by the unity of the self. But 
 it is often stated that the mind makes tiafiire. Nature and knowledge are not dis- 
 tinguished clearly enough in this statement. 
 
 ^ 
 
76 LOTZKS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 , out to be the indispensable presupposition of all knowledge. If we 
 % did not believe in the unity of the world, there could be no con- 
 ceivable meaning in knowledge ; for in every instance in which we 
 know an object we know it in some degree as a unity. If the 
 objects to which the knowing mind is turned do not belong to 
 a unity, but were incommensurable, then they could never be 
 known. ^ We may then accept Xht faith in the unity of reality. V 
 But Lotze is often termed a realist as opposed to an idealist. 
 It is maintained that his philosophy is realism and not idealism. 
 If idealism is taken in the Post-Kantian sense, then Lotze is not 
 an idealist ; but, on the other hand, if realism is taken in the 
 Herbartian sense then Lotze is not a realist. Consequently, the 
 attribution of either of these terms to his philosophy does not 
 signify much till the precise meaning of the terms is known. If, 
 however, idealism means that the world is a system, in which all 
 the individual existences have a place and value in relation to 
 the whole, then Lotze is an idealist. Furthermore, if realism is the 
 conviction that reality is more than the individual, but that it can 
 be known only through individual experience, then Lotze is a 
 realist. From these points of view he is both realist and idealist. 
 Lotze mediates between idealism and realism, and for this reason 
 his philosophy has been called 'ideal-realism.'^ Achelis as- 
 serts that Lotze' s philosophy is "an idealism on a mechanical 
 basis." ^ 
 
 The question may be asked : How can a philosopher be an 
 idealist and a realist at the same time. The answer is that Lotze is 
 a metaphysical idealist and a logical realist. While he accepts the 
 unity of reality, and claims that all things belong to one system, he 
 still maintains that our knowledge is no such complete unity, and 
 that we must adopt the empirical method in order to know 
 reality. Reality is an idealistic whole, and knowledge must pro- 
 ceed realistically. In other words, idealism denotes a system of 
 reality, \^\\\\& realise n is a method of enquiry. A great deal of con - 
 
 iCf. Logik, \\ 13, 19, 346, 349. 
 
 2 Cf. Lindsay : Hermann Lotze, Mind, Vol. I, pp. 363-382 ; Vorbrodt : Principien 
 d. Etkik, p. 4. 
 
 ^ Lotze' s Philosophie, V. f. w. Ph., 1882, p. 27. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. T7 
 
 fusion has arisen by not distinguishing ideahsm as an ontological 
 system, from realism which is a method of inquir}\ Absolute ideal- 
 ism has frequently confused these two views. It rightly affirms that 
 reality is a system, but extends the term ' system ' to our knowl- 
 edge about realit}'. The result has been that a ' system of reality ' 
 and a ' system of knowledge ' have been used interchangeably, and 
 idealism has come to mean a system of knowledge. But, as we 
 have seen, there is no justification on Lotzc's theory for this 
 identification of knowledge and reality. Idealism applies primarily 
 to reality, and not to knowledge. Lotze, therefore, maintains 
 that reality is a system, and that knowledge must advance em- 
 pirically.^ We will now endeavor to substantiate these conclu- 
 sions from Lotze's own works. 
 
 In Lotze's criticism of Fichte, and of the deductive method in 
 philosophy, he affirms : " this prejudice, which has become ex- 
 ceedingly harmful, confuses the idea which we must hold {Jicgcii) 
 concerning the essence of things, with our subjective efforts to 
 know the thing. We believe that reality is a unity in the sense 
 that all its content, however different it may be, must follow from 
 the plan of the whole in a definite place as a necessary link of 
 the whole. But only a spirit who stood at the center of the 
 world and beheld everything, could deduce serially from this one 
 supreme thought the details of reality. But man who is in the 
 whirl of particular things, will, on the other hand, make use of 
 many circuitous ways and small artifices in order to discover 
 fragments of that system of the world, and to piece them together 
 as well as possible." ^ Again, he affirms that idealism accepts 
 the unity of reality, and that all individuals have their existence, 
 value, and function, in their relation to reality as a whole.^ There 
 is no doubt in Lotze's mind about the system of reality. But the 
 situation is very different when we come to our knowledge of 
 reality. " What the soul does, it does in virtue of the commis- 
 sion which it has received from the highest Idee. It will continue 
 to exist, not in so far as it is a substance, but in so far as self- 
 preservation is its appointed function or task {aiifgegebejie Lcis- 
 tung). But we are in possession of neither an adequate expres- 
 
 1 Cf. Lindsay : op. cit., pp. 365 f. « Gcsch. d. Ph., \ 34. ^ Cf. Med. Psy., pp. 151-160. 
 
78 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 sion of the highest Idee, nor of a knowledge of the definite 
 vocation {Beriifs) which it places upon its moments, its individual 
 creations. It is therefore impossible to determine a priori what 
 universal laws the activity of the soul will follow. They must 
 be regressively derived from experience to which realism owes 
 everything."^ Other passages could be quoted which prove 
 that Lotze distinguishes between the nature of reality and the 
 nature of knowledge, and regards the former as a system in 
 which all the parts have their worth and value in relation to the 
 whole, whereas the latter is fragmentary, and proceeds inductively 
 or experientially." 
 
 This unity of the world can therefore be conceived in two ways 
 — idealistically or realistically. When it is conceived so that the 
 unity is emphasized, and the whole is made the important factor 
 which gives reality and worth to the individuals contained in it, 
 it is conceived idealistically. When, however, the parts are 
 taken most into account, and the problem is to rise from the 
 knowledge of the parts to the knowledge of the whole, the world 
 is regarded realistically. Plainly, the latter is the method of 
 research, while the former indicates a general belief in regard 
 to reality. Lotze puts this matter in a clear way : " there are 
 two general ways, however, of understanding the matter, alike 
 admissible consistently with our assumptions of the unity of the 
 world, which remain to be noticed here. I will indicate them 
 symbolically by means of our previous formulae, M=^ f [A, B, R'\ , 
 and the converse, (p \_A, B, R] = M. By the former I mean to 
 convey that M is to be considered the form-giving Pri7is, of 
 which the activity, whether in the form of self-maintenance or 
 development, at every moment conditions the state of the world's 
 elements and the form of their combination, both being variable 
 between the limits which their harmony with 31 finds for them. 
 In the second formula, M is presented as the variable resulting 
 form, which the world at each moment assumes through the re- 
 ciprocal effects of its elements — this form again being confined 
 
 1 Med. Psy., p. l6o. 
 
 2Cf, Gr. d. Met., ^28; Gr. d. Aesth., §§7-10; Cf. also Seth, A.: Phil. Rev., 
 Ill, pp. 58-62 ; Royce : Spirit of Mod, Phil., pref., pp. xiii f. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 79 
 
 within limits which the necessity, persistently and equally prev- 
 alent in these effects, imposes. I might at once designate these 
 views as severally idealism and realism, were it not that the fa- 
 miliar, but at the same time somewhat indefinite meaning of these 
 terms, makes a closer investigation necessary."^ Now these two 
 ways of viewing reality are necessary. It is through the unity 
 of the world that it has a meaning,- and that everything in it has 
 a meaning, and it is because we believe that the world has a 
 meaning that we attempt to discover in detail what this meaning 
 is. But a belief in the unity of reality will not of itself disclose 
 the nature of reality. Furthermore, if we rely on deduction from 
 the nature of the highest Idee for our knowledge of the concrete 
 nature of reality, we shall not find it, for such a method is a 
 hysteron-proteroii , and presupposes what it sets out to discover.^ 
 Since knowledge cannot begin with the whole, it must begin with 
 the parts. It begins with the facts of experience, and its aim is 
 to combine them according to law. " The mode of their com- 
 binations may become known to us through the elaboration of 
 experience : and this knowledge gives us as much power of an- 
 ticipating the future as satisfies the requirements of active life."* 
 This method therefore groups facts, classifies them and combines 
 them according to law. But " realism does not enquire how the 
 course of the world came to be determined as it is. It contents 
 itself with treating the collective structure of the world at any 
 moment as the inevitable product of the forces of the past op- 
 erating according to general laws."^ If realism were taken in 
 this extreme sense, and did not have reference to an ultimate 
 unity, " an understanding of the universe is not what this method 
 will help us to attain. . . . But, even within the range of realistic 
 views, the invincible spiritual assurance asserts itself that the 
 world not merely is, but has a meaning." Although realism 
 must be supplemented by idealism, and is itself nothing more than 
 
 ^MeL, ^89. 
 
 3Cf. Met., §93. 
 
 *Met., §93; Cf. Klein: Lotze' s ontologische Ansichten in ihrem Verhdllniss zur 
 Lehre Herbarts, pp. 34-38. 
 
 5 Met., \ 93 ; Cf. also Med. Fsy., p. 152. 
 
 i^ 
 
 ^ 
 
8o LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 the method of ideahsm, " at the same time it is only enquiries 
 conducted in the spirit of reahsm that will satisfy the wishes of 
 idealism. They will indeed never unveil the full meaning of the 
 Idea. But there is nothing but recognition of the dc facto rela- 
 tions of things that can make our thoughts at least converge 
 towards the center of the universe."^ 
 
 Having now seen that Lotze conceives of reality idealistically, 
 let us follow him in his development of the nature of reality, and 
 ascertain more in detail his outline view of the nature of things. 
 If we recall the fact that all knowing is an anthropomorphic inter- 
 pretation of reality, we can maintain that the idealistic conception 
 of reality is as complete an anthropomorphic interpretation as we 
 can possess. This interpretation is in terms of the complete 
 man, and will consequently reveal the imperfection of all theories 
 based upon a partial anthropomorphism. Materialism is found 
 insufficient because it interprets reality in corporeal terms alone. 
 All forms of Eleaticism endeavor to understand the world in 
 terms of thought, mysticism in terms of feehng. Lately Scho- 
 penhauer has attempted to explain the world as will. But all these 
 systems of philosophy have taken an aspect of man and seek to 
 explain the order and nature of reality in terms of this one aspect. 
 Lotze, on the other hand, has made an effort to understand it in 
 terms of man as man." 
 
 Now how must this unity of the work be conceived ? We have 
 seen that it is a true unity, a unity in difference. The problem 
 is therefore to discover the nature of this unity ; and it is found 
 that one form of unity which we customarily use is that of the 
 Idee. In art, unity is conceived of as the Idee. It is the Idee 
 which is the unifying principle in knowledge.^ May not this Idee 
 then be the unifying principle of things, and also of reality as 
 a whole ?■* If now the Idee is the formal or unifying principle 
 it itself is not reality. " It would therefore be incorrect to 
 call the Idea, simply as the Idea, the supreme principle of the 
 
 ij/^^., §93. 
 
 2 It is through our many-sided nature — thought, feehng, activity, etc. — that we can 
 know what reahty is. Mikr., II, pp. 354, 355. 
 ^Logik, §§313-321. 
 *Met., I 90. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 8 1 
 
 world. Even the absolute Idea, although in opposition to 
 the partial Ideas which it itself conditions as constituents of 
 its meaning, it might fith- be called unlimited, would not on 
 that account be free from a definitely concrete content, with 
 which it fills the general form of the Idea."^ Form imphes con- 
 tent, and in no sense can the highest reality be mere form. 
 To consider the empty Idee as the highest reality would be to 
 substitute for reality an abstraction, to separate form from its con- 
 tent, and to place over against reality the laws and principles 
 which express its activity and nature. Such a reality as this 
 could " only be reached by an extinction of all content whatever." 
 Such an attempt, however, to understand the world has been 
 made by all forms of Eleaticism. This philosophy proceeds by 
 pure thought alone, and will accept no material content. But 
 all these attempts put a logical concept in the place of reality. 
 "These ways of thinking are only justifiable so far as they imply 
 a refusal to ascribe to the supreme M, as a sort of presupposition 
 of its being, a multitude of ready-made predicates, from which 
 as from a given store it was to collect its proper nature.^ It is 
 no such doctrine that we mean to convey in asserting that the 
 supreme principle of reality is to be found in a definitely concrete 
 Idea, M, and not in the Idea merely as an Idea."^ Since form 
 and content cannot be separated, the Idee as such cannot be real. 
 Of course, a logical distinction between the Idee and its content 
 can be made ; but such a distinction is made only for purposes 
 of discussion. It is not a distinction which exists in the nature 
 of things. Reality is the " content of the Idea," or the concrete 
 Idee. 
 
 If, however, this conception of reality as concrete Idee is so 
 obvious, why has any other conception of its nature been taken ? 
 Why has the Idee been called the real ? It is simply a case of 
 
 J Alet. , § 90. 
 
 2 The refusal to assign attributes to reality in as far as it means a refusal to make 
 our methodological concepts constitutive principles of its nature, is a very valid and 
 legitimate refusal. But this refusal raises concepts to constitutive principles when it 
 affirms that reality is form only. We can deny that we know what the definite con- 
 tent of the Idee is, and at the same time maintain that all content belongs to the Idee. 
 
 3 Met., \ 90. 
 
82 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 making our concepts constitutive. What we can separate in 
 thought we conclude can exist apart, and this is a necessary con- 
 sequence of the doctrine that thought is reahty. Since man is a 
 unity similar to reality, and can consequently be regarded as a 
 concrete Idee, he is able to distinguish the form and content of 
 reality. "Jf being in existence, or in consequence of its exist- 
 ence, it becomes possible for our thought, as included in it, to 
 apprehend that which M is, in the form of a sitminum genus to 
 which J/ admits of being subordinated."^ But the M ox reality 
 itself is a real existence, and not a major premise or siinumim gcmis 
 from which can be deduced that actual concrete content of M. 
 Mis rather the Idee in the content, or the concrete embodiment 
 of the Idee. If, however, the Idee is used as a logical category, it 
 is a form of reality, and not a genus in any strict logical sense.^ 
 In regarding reality as a concrete Idee, Lotze does not mean 
 that reality is, after all, thought, or a concrete thought. It has 
 already been shown that reality is not a thought, but is that 
 about which the thought is valid or may be invalid. As we 
 shall discover later, thought or knowledge is a state of a real 
 being or subject, and knowledge of another real existence or 
 object, and, consequently, not itself reality. For this reason, 
 therefore, when he regards reality as a concrete Idea, he 
 does not mean that reality is ultimately only a category. 
 In a passage already quoted from the MediciniscJie Psychologie, 
 he maintains that the substitution of the Idee for reality 
 is erroneous ; ^ what, then, does he mean by claiming that 
 reality is a concrete Idee ? This term denotes or expresses 
 an effort of logical thought to think the unity of reality. And 
 in so far as thought {Denkeii) is a real function of the self, 
 its efforts are availing, and do succeed in grasping the nature of 
 reality, but just because human cognition exists on the periphery 
 of being, and, furthermore, because thought is only one of the 
 functions of the self, its conception of the nature of reality is im- 
 perfect, and is, therefore, tentative and methodological. In 
 maintaining, therefore, that reality is a concrete Idee, Lotze aims 
 at giving a conception of reality as a unity. Everyone who 
 
 ^Met., \ 90. ^Ibid., §91. ^ Med. Psy., p. 156. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. S3 
 
 knows the use of a concept can understand how it unites many 
 individual perceptions aud other concepts under one law, which 
 is the law of the unity of the various elements. In employing 
 the term Idee to express the nature of reality, Lotze wishes to 
 emphasize the fact of unity in difference, and finding a type of 
 such a unity in the concept, he avails himself of the term Idee. 
 This point is clearly maintained in the discussion on the nature 
 of a real thing. "Reality," he says, "is that ideal content, 
 which, by means of what it is, is capable of producing the ap- 
 pearance of a substance lying within it, to which it belongs as 
 predicate. ... If by the term ' Ideal ' we understand such a 
 content as can be exhaustively reproduced in thought, then such 
 an ' ideal' (even if it be not apprehended as a universal proposi- 
 tion, law, or truth, but as completely individualized, somewhat 
 like the idea of a definite work of art) would always remain a 
 mere thought ; and even if it were ' posited ' as actual, it would 
 not, in this way, obtain that capability for producing effects and 
 for being affected, which we are forced to consider as the most 
 essential characteristic of ' thing.' " ^ "Or expressed somewhat 
 differently : If we designate the essence of a thing as Idea, we 
 must have regard to the two-fold iheaning which the expression 
 'Idea' then has. For, of course (i), the Idea, which we form 
 from the nature of things, is always a mere image of thought, 
 which, even if thought of as actualized, would still always be 
 only an existing thought, and not an energizing thing. We 
 mean specifically, however, by this word (2), just that essence 
 of a thing itself which is never to be metamorphosed into thoughts 
 in general, or quite exhausted in them ; and we call it Idea 
 merely because, if some thought-image of it is to be formed, it 
 must not take the shape of a monotonous intuition, but rather 
 that of a systematized conception, in which one law-giving formula 
 brings a multiplicity of difierent determinations together into a 
 unity." - It seems obvious, therefore, that the term Idee is used 
 methodologically, as expressing partially, though inadequately, 
 the nature of reality. This term must, indeed, be used with care, 
 and not taken as an exhaustive or constitutive concept of reality. 
 
 1 Gr. d. Met., \ 28. 2 Cr. d. Met., I 28 n. 
 
 / 
 
^l 
 
 84 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Useful as this concept of the Idee is in rendering intelligible 
 the unity of reality, it must not be taken as the real existence. 
 " Things are not the thoughts of a thinker, but their being is so 
 constituted that if knowledge of their content were possible at 
 all, it could be adequate only in the form of a thought, combin- 
 ing many individual ideas by definite relations into one significant 
 whole." ^ Though reality is represented in the form of an Idea, 
 we cannot jisjiy this Idea. "A thought, in order to become a 
 thing, needs not merely the affirmation of reality, which requires 
 only to take it as it is found and posit it, but the thought itself lacks 
 something in order to be that which when posited would be a 
 a thing. The thought, however "affirmed, posited, or realized, 
 would remain an existing thought and no more, and that this is 
 riot quite what we mean by the name '-thing,' we certainly feel, 
 although we may find it hard to point out what is lacking." ^ 
 Were reality a reified Idea it would be a motionless system of 
 concepts, " whereas what reality shows us is a changing medley^ 
 of the most manifold relations and connections between the mat- 
 ter of ideas taking first one form and then another without regard 
 to their place in the system."^ Reality is not a static position, 
 but, on the contrary, is a ceaseless becoming, and a dynamic in- 
 teraction of facts.'* It is therefore suggested that reality is an 
 "operative Idea." Let thought develop, give it the power to 
 act, then it can be maintained that thought in this sense is reality. 
 Lotze, however, rejects this theory : " If we express," he says, 
 " the being of things as actively efficacious Idea, we do, it is true, 
 express correctly enough what we need, but as a matter of fact 
 active efficacy does not on that account accrue to the Idea with 
 the ease and speed with which we can bestow it on the Idea in 
 speech by means of an adjective. On the contrary, it remains 
 doubtful whether the name of ' operative Idea,' without addition 
 or omission, denotes anything which exists or can exist ; the pre- 
 sumption is against its validity, for it is plain that in it we trans- 
 fer to ideas regarded not as thought but as existent, a power 
 which demonstrably belongs to an Idea only when it is thought." '" 
 
 ^Mikr., II, 630. *Met., H 37-67. 
 
 2 Mikr:, II, 631. ^Mikr., II, p, 632. 
 
 ^Logik, ^34. 
 
/ 
 
 REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 85 
 
 The Idee is therefore an indispensable notion or category which 
 assists the mind in attaining an intelHgible grasp of the unity of 
 reahty. This concept is useful in thinking reality, but it must 
 not be used to construct or deduce reality. It is an aspect 
 " which truth wears to finite mind, and not the very form of truth 
 itself.'" Already we hav^e an experience of our own self, and 
 this teaches us that the Idea does not denote the highest form of 
 unity. The Idea is only a logical unity ; but the self is a real 
 unity.^ The self is an actual existent being, whereas the Idea 
 has validity. Now so far as human cognition has been able to 
 grasp reality, the concepts of existence and validity are ultimate, 
 and no remodeling of 'validity' can change it into 'existence';^ 
 nor can we predicate the one of the other. 
 
 This discussion plainly demonstrates that reality cannot be 
 understood as a logical category. The category of the Idee 
 helps us to think reality as a unity, and so far as it enables us to 
 ■do thfs it is correct and a workable conception. But just because 
 it does not allow us to mean by reality all that we do mean by 
 it, this concept must give way to another mode of thinking reality. 
 If reality is only a concrete thought {Idee), then it lacks much that 
 we mean by reality. Reality is operative, efficient, exerts causal 
 influence, changes, and is yet a unity. These attributes the con- 
 crete thought does not account for. Moreover, there is another , 
 reason why thought is not reality. Thought is monistic and static ; ^ 
 reality is pluralistic and in motion. If, therefore, thought were 
 the unity, this unity would be merely nominalistic, and the world 
 would be made up of independent real existences. Such a view 
 would resemble that of Herbart. Such a notion of reality, how- 
 ever, Lotze rejects. Experience teaches that there are real things, 
 and, therefore, reality must be regarded as a unity of these real 
 things. But what is a real thing ? 
 
 The self gives us an example of what a real thing is. " Our 
 ideas, feelings, and efforts appear to be in their nature the states 
 
 1 Mikr., 11, p. 654. 
 
 2 When this logical unity is reified we have what Professor A. Seth calls a ^^ focus 
 imaginarius^'' : Hei^elianism atid Personality, p. 28. 
 
 '^Logik, ?^ 316 ff; Mikr., II, pp. 327. 
 
86 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 of a being, of the necessary unity of which, as contrasted with 
 them, we are immediately conscious. . . , For these inner 
 events appear to us as states only through the marvellous nature 
 of mind, which can compare every idea, every feeling, every pas- 
 sion with others, and just because of this relating activity with 
 reference to them all, knows itself as the permanent subject from 
 which, under various conditions, they result." ^ 
 
 Because man is a self, a living, acting, knowing, feeling, emo- 
 tional being, he knows what it is to be real ; for he feels, wills, 
 acts, and knows reality in his own person. In his experience he 
 knows one real thing.^ Now, the problem arises, can he inter- 
 pret reality from this point of view ? The idea or conception has 
 been discovered to be too abstract and too rationalistic to ac- 
 count for reality as we know it. 
 
 This reinterpretation of reality in terms of the self will be 
 understood if we review the three possible ways in which Lotze 
 conceives that reality can be understood.^ (i) Reality may cause 
 an appearance to arise in the mind ; but this appearance has 
 only a subjective validity. On this theory reality exists, but is 
 unknowable. This is the Kantian doctrine of knowledge, and 
 we have already given Lotze's criticism in chapter II. (2) 
 Since there does not seem to be any way in which the mind 
 can go from knowledge of appearance to knowledge of reality, 
 this second theory renounces the thought of things in so far as 
 they are not appearances. This is the doctrine of idealism, as 
 interpreted by Lotze. Lotze's criticism of this conception also 
 has been given.* (3) " Or, finally, we supplement the notion of 
 things in such away that it includes the conditions under which 
 
 1 Mikr., II, p. 633 ; Met., \ 96 ; Cf. also Krestoff : Lotze' s inetaph.' Seelenbegriff, 
 pp. 18-24. Krestoff attacks Lotze's conception of the self from the scientific point 
 of view. A metaphysical concept is not adapted to become a scientific hypothesis. 
 He maintains that Lotze has not shown the necessity for the soul {^Seelendinges), nor 
 considered whether psychology needs to inquire after a substrate (Cf. pp. 25, 26). 
 
 ^Mikr., II, pp. 354,355- 
 
 ^ Mikr., II, pp. 637-647. 
 
 * Both these theories regard things as phenomena or as ideas : Esse = hitelligi. 
 The logical outcome of this view is solipsism, for things = ideas, and persons are 
 known only as space-filling objects, and therefore they are simply ideas in the tlrink- 
 er's mind. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 87 
 
 those demands upon their nature which we could not retract be- 
 come capable of fulfillment.'" This third path " amounts to 
 this, that we add to our idea of things that which their contents 
 seemed to lack in order to make realness possible for them. In 
 fact, if the doctrine of Idealism reserves to spiritual beings the 
 realness which it refuses to selfless things (and this it tacitly 
 does), what hinders us from finding in this mental nature that 
 addition which the previous empty notion of things needed / 
 in order to become the complete nature of something real? 
 Why should we not transform the assertion that only minds are 
 real, into the assertion that all that is real is mind — that thus 
 things which seemed to our merely external observation as work- 
 ing blindly, suffering unconsciously, and being self-contradictory 
 through their incomprehensible combination of selflessness and 
 realness, are in fact better internally than they seem on the exterior 
 — that they, too, exist not merely for others but also for themselves, 
 and by this self-existence are capable of being after the fashion ' 
 which we have felt compelled to require of them, though hitherto 
 without any hope that our requirement could be fulfilled?"" 
 
 The first object we know is the self or "spiritual subject, 
 which exercises the wonderful function not merely of distinguish- 
 ing sensations, ideas, feelings, from itself, but at the same time of 
 knowing them as its own, as its states, and which by means of its 
 ow^n unity connects the series of successive events in the compass 
 of memory." ^ Experience, however, gives us examples of other 
 unities which are called things, and persons ; but it is not till they 
 are all regarded as selves that they can be taken as unities at all, 
 or be considered real. Whatever is real is mind. It was neces- y^ 
 sary to take account of things, for they appeared to us as unities 
 which persist through change, and which are the subject of vari- 
 ous states. It is in order to understand our experience that it is 
 necessary to regard the objective unities as things or selves. ^/ 
 Anything which is not a self does not exist.'* 
 
 ^Mikr., II, 637. 
 
 ^ Mikr., II, 642. Cf. Klein: op. cit., p. 63. 
 
 "i Met., ?, 96. 
 
 *Stahlin claims that Lotze's reals must be denied existence since they are mere 
 becoming (0/. «/., \ 30). His criticism on this point, however, is too brief to be 
 quite intelligible. 
 
88 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Since now the conception of the Idee fails to explain reality, a 
 new difficulty arises, for the world seems to be a pluralism. How 
 can unity be conceived ? If Lotze had regarded things as inde- 
 pendent reals, his conception of reality would have been the same 
 as Herbart's. This independence would have despiritualized the 
 reals, and have made them mere ' position.' ^ Furthermore, abso- 
 lute pluralism is self-contradictory, for pluralism has meaning only 
 in reference to unity. 
 
 The first way in which a unity of selves can be conceived is 
 under the concept of ' relation.' Real things stand in relation to 
 one another. This conception, Lotze finds, is not satisfactory, 
 (i) It seems to imply that the terms related may exist prior to 
 the relation. But he maintains that position is meaningless apart 
 from relations. Further, if things exist apart from relations it is 
 inconceivable how they could enter into relations.^ (2) ' Rela- 
 tion ' is a methodological concept, and does not serve to denote 
 precisely how one thing is connected with another. It must, 
 therefore, be guardedly used when the attempt is made to apply 
 it to the real. Most of our concepts of relation have been drawn 
 from the spatial attributes of things.^ But space is only a form 
 of perception, and does not apply directly to reality.* Conse- 
 quently, concepts and types of connection found in spatial intui- 
 tion cannot be attributed just as they stand to real things. The 
 term relation, drawn as it is from the spatial manifestation of 
 things, carries with it the notion of a ' between.' Relations are 
 between things which otherwise would be unrelated. But to be 
 related they must be held apart and yet held together. This is 
 an example of the Hegelian antithesis in every concept. Re- 
 lation implies a ' between,' and is the work of the conscious 
 subject.^ In perception this idea of relation is given as a spatial 
 between. As thought rises higher it carries its imagery with it, 
 and thinks of relation as a tie or bond between things. And just 
 
 1^/^/., §§8-14. 
 
 ^ Met., II 10, 13. 
 
 ^ Mikr., II, 617-623; Met., \\ 79-81 ; Logik, 337, 338. 
 
 ^Met., § 113 ; Mikr., II, 603 ff. 
 
 * Klein : op. cit,, p. 58 ; Green : Proleg. to Eth., ^§ 28, 29. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 89 
 
 as the spatial 'between' is the work of the subject, so the concep- 
 tion of ' between ' is still a methodological conception or a Hilfs- 
 hvpothcse which the finite mind uses to make intelligible the real 
 world. " For it is thought and thought only which, passing 
 from the idea a to the idea d, and becoming conscious of the 
 transition, creates that which we call here a ' between,' and pre- 
 sents it as a mental picture which thought finds intelligible ; ac- 
 cordingly it must always be a vain endeavor to attempt to 
 ascribe to this relation, which at once separates a and b and 
 brings them together, and which is nothing more than the recol- 
 lection of an act of thought performable only by the unity of our 
 consciousness — to ascribe, I say, to this relation a real validity 
 in the sense of being something in itself apart from the conscious- 
 ness which thinks it." ^ For sensuous spatial connections, which 
 hold only of phenomena, have been substituted " supersensuous 
 intellectual relations." But a supersensuous intellectual relation 
 is practically on the same level as spatial relations, and can- 
 not be taken as expressing the nature of reality, though it is 
 sufficient to allow us a fragmentary knowledge of real things.^ 
 (3) A third objection to the notion of relation as a constitutive 
 principle of reality maintains that it leads to an infinite regress, for 
 if a thing depends upon relations, or if action of one thing on 
 another depends upon relations, then this dependency has noth- 
 ing to rest upon.^ Lotze therefore concludes that the concept of 
 relation cannot be applied to reality. 
 
 Relation is a concept which applies to the spatial world, and 
 also to our knowledge of the world. But the spatial world is 
 plainly our mental construction of reality,^ and is, therefore, our 
 sense- knowledge of the real world. For this reason, then, the 
 term ' relation ' is applicable only to the structure of our sense 
 knowledge, and should not be referred to the connection of 
 things as they are known to the deity, or even as they can be 
 thought by human minds. Nevertheless, knowledge affirms that 
 things are related. The question then may be raised : How can 
 it be maintained that things are not in relation ? This may seem 
 
 ^Logik, ? 338. ^ Mikr., II, 620. 
 
 2Cf. Mikr., II, 635 ; Met., \ I16. ^ Met., Bk. II. 
 
90 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 to make things unknowable : for if things are known as in rela- 
 tion, and if in reality they are not in relation, they must be un- 
 knowable. If, indeed, this were a correct statement of Lotze's 
 position it would be useless to endeavor to follow him any 
 further. But it does not seem to me that this is Lotze's position. 
 Here, also, it is true that his point of view will be quite intelligible 
 if we keep in mind his methodological use of conceptions. To 
 human consciousness things appear in relation, alongside of one 
 another, but Lotze maintains that if it were possible for us to 
 have complete knowledge, then we would see them as they are, 
 and we would then know that the term relation comes short of 
 expressing the connection in which things stand to one another. 
 Reality is fuller, and deeper, and richer than its appearance to 
 us in our knowledge would indicate.^ It is not totally different 
 from what we know it to be, but it is vastly different. Notwith- 
 standing its limits, our knowledge is valid so far as it goes, and 
 represents aspects of reality. Our union with reality causes it to 
 be translated into our perceptions, ideas, judgments, and syllo- 
 gisms f and the more perfect our cognition the more adequately 
 is reality known. The objection to making relation a constitutive 
 concept is not that it is totally inadequate, but that it lacks the 
 completeness of a constitutive concept. If it is applied to reality 
 it cannot be thought without contradiction, which proves that it is 
 a Hilfsbegriff? Its character as a relation depends on our limited 
 knowledge of reality, and on the sensuous appearance of reality 
 to human consciousness. However, there is something in reality 
 which this concept inadequately represents, for the real is known 
 in finite concepts. What it is in reality that corresponds to our 
 interpretation of its nature as a relation, is of the nature of a j-ela- 
 tioUy but it is more than a relation. " This supposed ' relation ' 
 can only subsist independently of our consciousness, or objec- 
 tively, if it is something more than relation, and then it subsists 
 not betzveen a and b (for this * between ' has no existence except 
 in us), but rather in them, as an influence which they reciprocally 
 
 ^Met., g|76, 77. 
 
 '^Met., \l 81, 105, 116, 123, 170; Logik, I 328; Mik)-., II, pp. 611 ff. 
 3 Herbart and Bradley both maintain that appearance is not reality because it is 
 self-contradictory if taken as real. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 9 1 
 
 exert upon and receive from each other. It is merely for us 
 when we think it that such inlluence takes logical shape in the 
 weakened form of a relation, which no longer expresses its full 
 significance."^ " We saw that the notion of a condition is inade- 
 quate to denote that which we mean by a relation which subsists 
 in actual fact between two real elements ; so to subsist, it would 
 have to be more than a relation, it would have to be nothing less 
 than interaction. This being so, it was in that real connection 
 between the real elements that the cause resided which brought 
 their phenomenal appearances for us into that particular formal 
 relation which we now, employing a merely logical term, call a 
 conditioning of the one by the other."^ "In this case the con- 
 clusion is unavoidable that this objective relation C, to which we 
 appeal, cannot be anything that takes place bettvccn a and b, and 
 that just for that reason it is not a relation in the ordinary sense 
 of the term, but more than this."^ Consequently, Lotze con- 
 cludes, interaction of one real thing on another expresses the 
 nature of reality more truly than does the idea of relation. 
 " Apart from consciousness " relations " have not themselves an 
 independent existence betiveen the things related or relatable, but 
 there is a foundation for them in the nature of things which are 
 so framed that consciousness is constrained and enabled by their 
 influence upon it, to connect and estimate by means of these re- 
 lations the impressions which those things make upon it."* 
 y Reality, therefore, is an organization of selves which interact 
 on one another. The implications of this theory do not belong 
 to our subject, but are developed by Lotze. ^ 
 
 All things belong together and are in interaction. Everything 
 is therefore at once active and passive. Since, however, things 
 interact, a change in one implies a change in another. If, for 
 
 ^Logik, ?338. 
 
 2Z^^^•/^•, §345. 
 
 ^Met., I 81. 
 
 <Mikr., II, p. 619; Cf. also Gr. d. Met., \ 20. 
 
 ^Gr. d. Religionsphil., W 20-32; Met., \\ 71 ff. Stahlin controverts this po- 
 sition, (l) Reals, he finds, are viodi of Infinite Substance, yet independent, which 
 is a contradiction (0/. cit., § 28). (2) There can be no unity of reals in an Infinite 
 Substance, for substance is that which abides in change whereas the reals become. 
 Becoming is self-contradictory (^ 29). 
 
 / 
 
V- 
 
 92 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 example, A and B react upon one another, when A changes from 
 a state « to a state a, B will change from a state <5 to a state /9. 
 In this interaction, to be sure, A is not solely active and B 
 merely passive. But they are at once both active and passive. 
 Consequently, when A changes from a to a, it is not through A 
 alone that this change arises, for A does not stand alone, and 
 cannot be regarded apart from the rest of reality. Moreover, 
 when B changes from b to ^9, through the causal activity of A, it 
 is active, and from its own nature contributes to the changes 
 from ^to /?. For it is not in the nature of A alone to produce a 
 change from b to /?. This is obvious when A's relation (to use this 
 term) to C is considered. Under these conditions A will not 
 change b into ^, but its effect upon C'will cause C to change 
 from state c to state j-. One thing, therefore, cannot change from 
 one state into another without a corresponding change taking 
 place in another thing with which it is in interaction. "A state 
 a, which takes place in an element A, must, for the very reason 
 that it is in A, likewise be an * affection ' in B ; but it does not 
 necessarily have to become such an ' affection ' of ^ by means of 
 an influence issuing from A." ^ Thus it occurs that a state of 
 one thing has its equivalent in another being. In other words, 
 one object produces a state in another which corresponds or is 
 equivalent to the amount of change in the first. This can occur 
 only on " the assumption that all individual things are substan- 
 tially One. . . . The formal consequence of this assumption is 
 as follows : The element A is only = i^/(,), the element B = M^^ ~^, 
 etc. Every state a which takes place in A is therefore likewise 
 a state of this M; and, by means of this state, Mis necessitated 
 according to its own nature to produce a succeeding state /9 which 
 makes its appearance as a state of B, but which is in truth a 
 state of this M, by means of which its preceding modification 
 Mf^y-^ is changed." ^ Now it must be remembered that this is only 
 a formal or a schematic representation of what Lotze means by 
 an organization of real beings. ' His object it not to show ho7JV 
 they are related, and hozu such a unity is possible. Nor is it his 
 purpose to construct a universe according to a materialistic or 
 1 Gr. d. Met., \ 48. 2 Qy^ d. Met., ^ 48. 
 
' REALITY AXD KNOWLEDGE. 93 
 
 viechanical plan. The real selves with which he is dealing 
 are not lifeless bits of a huge machine, but living beings ; 
 and the unity which he believes in is a uitity which he can think 
 in outline only. We miss his purpose if we think he is striving to 
 understand the essence of this unity and discover how it works. 
 His aim is much less ambitious. He is only eager to maintain 
 that reality is a unity, and that it is only in and through their 
 ultimate unity that things can interact or have any influence upon 
 one another. If A and B did not belong to the same universe, 
 and share the same nature, if, in other words, they were not ulti- 
 mately one — in some way that we do not and cannot compre- 
 hend — they could not be in interaction, and could not affect one 
 another ; nor could the one be aware of the existence of the 
 other. This one reality is a unity of the many, for both interac- 
 tion and the many imply unity. ^ Those who maintain that this 
 unity is a " substantial One," and an hypostatized conception, by 
 no means do jastice to Lotze's thought." Moreover, this criticism 
 appears to disregard Lotze's method, his tentative procedure, and 
 his methological use of concepts. Lotze, himself, does not pre- 
 tend to have " privileged concepts " which express the whole na- 
 ture of reality ; nor does he maintain that his concept of unity is 
 adequate to exhaust the nature of reality.^ All he hopes to do 
 is to suggest, and make clear what he means by reality.* 
 
 n. From the first part of this chapter we have learned that 
 reality is a system or organization of selves. This doctrine conse- 
 quently can be stated in four propositions : (i) A real thing admits 
 of change, and unifies changing states f '(2) " Reality is that ideal 
 content, which, by means of what it is, is capable of producing 
 the appearance oi ^/substance lying within it, to which it belongs 
 as a predicate;"'' (3) " Reality means for us the being of a some- 
 
 1 J/^zf., \\ 6S-75. 
 
 2e_ g, ^ Schiller: Lotze^ s Monisvi, Phil. Rev., V, 3, pp. 225-245. 
 
 3Cf. Klein: Op. cit., pp. 56, 57. 
 
 *Mikr., II, p. 576 ; Met., H 73-75 ; Gr. d. Religionsphil., § 21. 
 
 ^Met., \\ 24, 96. 
 
 6 Gr. d. Met., \ 28 ; Cf. Met., g 31. 
 
94 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 .what which is capable of being affected and of producing effects ;"^ 
 / {^ "It is in the consciousness of unity, and not in the mere 
 unity itself, that the essence of things lies."^ " Only by sharing 
 this character of the spiritual nature can they [things] fulfil the 
 general requirements which must be fulfilled in order to constitute 
 a thing. "^ 
 
 All these metaphysical results are of vital importance for Lotze's 
 theory of knowledge. All real things are spiritual, and are in 
 interaction with one another. This interaction is mutual, and de- 
 pends equally upon each member of the unity, and upon the spiri- 
 tual nature of each. If now we change our point of view from 
 that of ontology to that of logicj'^very real thing is seen to be at 
 on'ce both an object and a subject. If interaction is the joint or 
 reciprocal action of objects or things, it is equally true that inter- 
 action is the joint or reciprocal action of subjects or beings which 
 are aware of their union with other subjects. Subject and object 
 are consequently only relative terms, and do not connote meta- 
 physically different kinds of beings. These terms, like all other 
 categories, are only Hilfsbcgriffc, and are not constitutive. For 
 far too long a time they have been regarded as constitutive of two 
 different kinds of existence, whereas in truth they denote only 
 different aspects of one and the same kind of existence. In so 
 far as they are known they may be regarded as objects ; but in 
 so far as they are aware of other beings, or of their own states, 
 they are subjects. Now this is the only conclusion from Lotze's 
 conception of reality. 
 
 This doctrine is in plain contrast to that of the Kantian meta- 
 physic. And as the Kantian conception is prevalent in the philoso- 
 phy of this century, it will be well to discover just wherein Lotze's 
 theory differs from it. Kant claimed that wherever the categories 
 are applied to things-in-themselves, i. e., to real things, an 
 antinomy arises. This antinomy is removed when the cate- 
 gories are restricted in their use to the phenomenal world. 
 Causality, therefore, on this theory, obtains only in phenomena. 
 It denotes a relation of phenomena to one another, but cannot be 
 applied to things-in-themselves, nor to egos, nor to the rela- 
 
 1 Gr. d. Met., § 26. 2Tuch : oJ>. cit., p. 44. ^ Met., I 96. 
 
 /■ 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 95 
 
 tion of the ego and the non-ego. Furthermore, since the object 
 spoken of means, generally, the object of thought, the object is 
 the phenomenal object. Consequently causality holds between 
 objects. The subject however is never a phenomenon, and can 
 never be a phenomenon ; therefore, causality does not apply to 
 it, nor can it apply to it. The subject is the source of the cate- 
 gory, and for that reason the category cannot condition it. Sub- 
 ject and object are therefore different in nature. The former is 
 self-consciousness, an active living being, whereas the latter is a 
 creation of the subject, a mere phenomenon which, therefore, has 
 no existence on its own account. Thus, this theory concludes 
 that only objects can stand in the relation of cause and effect, 
 and that consciousness can never be anything but a subject. It 
 is impossible on this theory for a subject and an object to be 
 causally related ; for were they so related the subject would cease 
 to be a subject, and become an object. Neither can two or more 
 subjects be related causally ; for only objects can be related in this 
 way. For the subject, however, according to this doctrine, to 
 become an object, it would have to become a phenomenon. As a 
 subject it exists out of time, but a phenomenon exists only in 
 time. A subject exists above the categories, and is the source of 
 the categories ; but a phenomenon is under the categories, and is 
 conditioned by them. A subject is real, and exists on its own 
 account ; a phenomenon on the contrary does not exist, but oc- 
 curs /;/ a subject. A subject, therefore, can not become a phe- 
 nomenon, and is necessarily outside the categories. It cannot 
 enter into causal relations with any existence without ceasing to 
 exist. 
 
 Such was the account of causality given by Kant. If, how- 
 ever, we examine this theory it will be seen to be unsatisfactory, 
 and must be supplemented by some such notion as Lotze has 
 adopted, (i) According to Kant, only objects are causally re- 
 lated. Subjects do not exist in causal relation. By object he 
 means a phenomenon, or a complex of phenomena. Conse- 
 quently, causality holds only between phenomena. Further, 
 phenomena have no existence outside of the mind which thinks 
 them, therefore causality applies only to the presentations in con- 
 
96 . LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 sciousness. It is plainly only a relation between the parts of our 
 knowledge, and does not apply to objects at all. (2) Because 
 causality is within phenomena; there does not seem to be any 
 conceivable relation in which the subject stands to the rest of the 
 world. Nor is it clear how knowledge can arise, since the object 
 as a real thing is not related to the subject. Kant himself was 
 convinced that subject and object are causally related, though he 
 did not seem to be conscious of the contradiction. But Fichte 
 pointed out the contradiction.^ (3) Those who maintain that 
 causality exists only between phenomena, and cannot apply to 
 things -in-themselves, do not inform us how reality is a whole, 
 and in what relation the various subjects are. (4) This concep- 
 tion seems to rob causality of all its significance. By causal con- 
 nection we mean that one real thing exerts an influence upon 
 another real thing. We think of it as a power or an influence 
 which one thing exerts upon another. Causality is dynamic, 
 and consists in an interaction of real things, whatever they may 
 be. If, on the contrary, causality is only a relation between states 
 of consciousness, and not within real things, its whole mean- 
 ing seems to have vanished. The plausibility of this no- 
 tion of causality as obtaining between phenomena rests upon 
 the fact that most philosophy since Berkeley's time has re- 
 garded subjective presentations as real objects. It seems all 
 right to maintain that causality holds between objects or be-' 
 tween phenomenal objects. But this ostensible validity depends 
 upon an association which the word ' object' carries with it. 
 When, however, in place of the term ' object' its equivalent, a 
 'state of consciousness,' or a system of such states, is used, the 
 specious validity of the doctrine is at once perceived. Neverthe- 
 less, this is the logical conclusion of the Kantian position. (5) 
 Lastly, this doctrine not. only extends a logical principle and 
 uses it in an ontological sense, but it does worse than this. If 
 it only used a methodological conception as constitutive it would 
 utter a partial truth. But this view does not extend a concept, 
 but reifies it. When we think an object, it is a real object. 
 There is no object z« consciousness. What is in conscious- 
 
 1 Sdtnmtliche Werke, I, p. 4S6. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. • " 97 
 
 ness is knowledge about an object. But on the Kantian theory 
 this is not so ; there is no object except the phenomenal ap- 
 pearance in consciousness. This appearance is called the ob- 
 ject. Now phenomena occur in time, /. c, these objects occur in 
 consciousness in a temporal series. Causality, therefore, is the 
 temporal sequence of phenomena according to a rule.' It does 
 not connote influence or a dynamic effect of any kind. How 
 could a phenomenon exert an influence upon another phenome- 
 non ? For this reason causality taken as a temporal succession 
 of phenomena according to a rule, is not a concept of the relation 
 of things which are not phenomena but real. Since then it is not 
 a concept of things it cannot be extended to things. Were it a 
 methodological concept of the causal relation of things, then it 
 could be extended, but of course inadequately. It would be the 
 same fallacy if we were to use a psychological law of association 
 as a law of the relation of things. 
 
 Lotze abandons the notion that causality is a relation between 
 phenomena, and maintains on the other hand that real beings are 
 causally related. Things, not phenomena, stand in causal union. 
 This union, as has been shown, is interaction. 
 
 Since, indeed, interaction, or causality, is the way in which 
 real things exist together, all real things causally affect each 
 other, and produce changing states in one another. But real 
 things are for Lotze either subjects or objects according to the 
 standpoint from which we view them. Consequently objects are 
 causally related. The same, however, is true of subjects. Sub- 
 jects are causally related, and interact on one another. Further, 
 speaking from the point of view of a subject, which regards or 
 may regard all other real beings as objects, we can maintain that 
 subjects and objects are causally related, and interact upon one 
 another. For what is held to be a subject from one point of view 
 \i. e., as knowing] is from another point of view an object [/. e., as 
 known]. Subject and object interact. Referring to Kant, Lotze 
 remarks : " Now it is, indeed, true that Kant has made the idea of 
 an interaction of things upon us impossible, since he undertook 
 the fruitless task of ascribing to the course of time only a subjec- 
 
 1 Cf. Kant's Schema of Causality. 
 
98 * LOTZKS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 tive validity, and since, likewise, the concept of causality is ap- 
 plicable only under the schema in temporal succession."^ 
 
 Before we proceed to develop the conception of the interaction 
 of subject and object, let us notice two objections to the posi- 
 tip'n which Lotze holds — that things are causally related with the 
 ^/^ubject which knows them. (i) Green accepts the Kantian 
 dictwn that the ' understanding makes nature.' Kant, however, 
 added to this dictiwi the qualifying phrase : " out of a material 
 which it does not make." Green, on the other hand, cannot come 
 to any terms with a ' material ' ; ^ for nothing can be causally re- 
 lated to the self ^ There is therefore no material in the construc- 
 tion of nature. Nature is not real in the sense that a self is real ; 
 but it is real when its parts are related as they appear to be re- 
 lated.^ But the parts are only phenomena, and not real existences.^ 
 Since, however, causality is only in nature, it holds only between 
 phenomena, and not between real existences such as selves. But 
 this theory provides for no unity of the world in any real sense. 
 What is unified, however, is the experience of a single self, and 
 that is all. To maintain that real things or selves are not caus- 
 ally related, because causality is a relation which exists only be- 
 tween phenomena begs the whole question. (2) Another objec- 
 1/ tion we will notice because it is made with direct reference to 
 Lotze. Mr. Eastwood, in his articles in Mind already mentioned, 
 affirms that Lotze adopts the prejudice of common sense, and 
 asserts the actual existence of real things independent of the 
 knowing mind. Furthermore, he claims that, according to Lotze, 
 these existing things produce ideas and thoughts in the subject 
 according to the general principle of cause and effect. Against 
 this position of Lotze' s, Mr. Eastwood holds that only objects 
 can stand in the relation of cause and effect, and that con- 
 sciousness can never be anything but a subject.'' We have 
 already seen that this criticism will not hold ; but let us ex- 
 amine briefly Mr. Eastwood's own position. By an object Mr. 
 
 1 Gesch. d. Ph., I 36. 
 
 ^Cf. Seth, A. : Hegelianis7n and Personality, pp. 79-83. 
 
 3 Green : Proleg. to Eth., H 38-54, 
 
 * Green : Ibid., § 12 ff. 
 
 ^Ibid., I 52. 
 
 ^Loc. cit., pp. 313-14. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 99 
 
 Eastwood means a manifold of particulars united by thought (p. 
 475). Causality therefore obtains between the elements in a presen- 
 tation. Since then consciousness is not a manifold, but a unity, 
 causality cannot attach to it. We may conclude from this sur- 
 vey of the doctrine that causality belongs to phenomena only, 
 that this theory is based upon the notion that appearance or 
 knowledge is reality. Phenomena are taken to be real things, 
 and phenomena seem on this view to depend entirely on con- 
 sciousness. Thought is reality. But this doctrine rests plainly 
 upon a dualism. According to it, there are two kinds of reality : 
 (i) phenomena, i. c, nature ; (2) selves or self-consciousnesses. 
 But the reality of nature turns out to be no reality at all, but only 
 an appearance in a subject. 
 
 Returning now to Lotze's doctrine of the interaction of subject 
 and object, we will endeavor to show how his theory of 
 knowledge rests upon his metaphysic. " Cognition is only the 
 particular case of such action between things and the ideating 
 mind."* This thesis it is our purpose to exhibit in detail. It 
 will be necessary, however, to keep in mind what Lotze means 
 by things. Kant and Post-Kantians mean by things phenomena. 
 Things in this sense, however, cannot be in causal relation to 
 the self, and can never be a cause of phenomena. But, as we 
 have seen, Lotze me^fis by things something entirely different 
 form phenomena. i/Things are selves, and have real existence ; 
 whereas phenomena exist only in a thing or a self, and as states of 
 a self they are knowledge of that self or of selves, or of things in 
 interaction with that self. The criticism therefore which affirms 
 that things cannot causally affect the self because causality be- 
 longs only to phenomena, is not a criticism of Lotze ; for it uses 
 terms in a way totally different from that in which he employed 
 them. 
 
 Lotze never doubts that things act upon the subject, and 
 consequently, his problem is not to show tJiat this is possible, 
 but his aim is to explain in outline how this relation can best be 
 thought. We have already seen that this relation between sub- 
 ject and object is not properly a relation at all, but is more than 
 
 ^Mikr., II, 348. 
 
lOO LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 a relation, it is interaction. But let us give Lotze's own account 
 of this process. As he himself says, his aim is to render intel- 
 ligible '• the mode in which the object of knowledge may be con- 
 ceived as operating upon the subject which apprehends it.^ " To 
 /make his meaning plain, Lotze gives an express statement of his 
 V conception of interaction. " Whenever^ between two elements y^ 
 and B of whatever kind any event which we call the influence of 
 A upon B occurs, such influence never consists in a constituent 
 element, or predicate, or state a separating itself from A to which 
 it belonged, and just as it is, and without undergoing any change 
 passing over to B, to attach itself thenceforth to this new object, 
 or be adopted by it, or become one of its states (however we 
 like to'phrase it) ; what happens is, that a, the property residing, 
 or change arising in A, becomes the cause by reason of which, 
 given a relation C, already established or coming for the first 
 time into play between A and B, B also is necessitated in its turn 
 to evolve out of its own nature and as a part of itself its new 
 state b. . , . That principle however gives us this result, that 
 the form of the effect b can never be independent of the object B 
 which experiences it ; it changes with that object ; and the same 
 relation C which obtained between A and B, will as between A 
 and B' produce in B' a new effect b' quite distinct from b. As little 
 is the effect b independent of the nature of the active agency A or of 
 the relation C ; it changes with both ; if ^' instead oi A enters with 
 B into the relation C, it will become /?, and ^' if B and A enter into 
 the relation C. But all these different b, b', ^, /3' will make up 
 in themselves a complete series of events which are only possible 
 in B, and A and C are only to be regarded as exciting causes, de- 
 termining which of the many effects of which the nature of B is 
 susceptible are to be realized at a given moment, and in what 
 order they are to come about." ^ Now when Lotze has given this 
 definite notion of the nature of interaction, and has shown that, 
 when two things interact, the resulting effect is due to both 
 things, he asserts that " the operation of objects of knowledge 
 upon a subject apprehending them comes under this general 
 principle."^ 
 
 ^Logik, I 325. ^Ibid., I 325. ^Ibid., §326. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. lOI 
 
 When two or more objects act upon one another, they re- 
 ciprocally affect each other, and states of each are produced which 
 depend upon the two objects and their mode of interaction, or their 
 relation to one another. But as all thinijs are objects or subjects, 
 according to the point of view from which we regard them, we may 
 say that when a subject is brought into connection with an object, 
 the latter acts upon the former, and the result of- f\vi\i: i-siivtual' 
 or combined influence is that states are aroused in 'each. ^ 'Sinc^ie:; : 
 however, we wish to consider the object or the self Which is" 
 taken as the subject, it will be well to confine attention to the 
 state which is evoked in the subject. From what has just been 
 said, this state of the subject depends upon the nature of the 
 object which produced it. Were the object different, then this 
 state w^ould be different ; if the object changes, then this state 
 changes. This is so obvious that it does not need further discus- 
 sion. Not only, however, does the state of the subject depend 
 on the nature of the object, and change when the latter changes ; 
 but just as truly does this state depend upon the nature of the 
 subject in which this state occurs. If this subject were different 
 in any way from what it is, then the effect of the object on it 
 would be different. This all follows necessarily from the notion 
 of interaction which Lotze has given. 
 
 Both of these truths, however, have been overlooked. yOn 
 the one hand, the nature of the subject is left out of account, and 
 knowledge is explained in terms of the object alone. The classi- 
 cal representative of this school of thought is Locke. Locke 
 regards the subject as a tabula rasa, which simply receives the 
 impressions which the object produces on it. According to this 
 doctrine the state a in the object A seems to migrate into the 
 subject, and is there in the form of a copy or image of a. In 
 criticism of this theory, however, Lotze declares that, " Every . 
 assumption, to begin with, is wholly inadmissible, which places 
 the origin of our knowledge exclusively in the object ; a very 
 little attention will discover to us that even in the 'tabula rasa,' 
 to which the receptive soul has been compared, or in the wax, 
 which it has been supposed to resemble in being a mere recipient 
 of impressions, a spontaneous reaction of the recipient subject is 
 
 /" 
 
I02 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 indispensable. Only because the tablet, by virtue of certain 
 modes of operation peculiar to its nature and consistence, retains 
 the colored points and prevents them running into each other, 
 only because the wax, with its cohesive elements, presents the 
 properties of an unelastic body readily receptive of the stamp and 
 capable of regaining it — only by virtue of this peculiar nature of 
 ^ichei^'S'.arf the tablet and the wax adapted to receive the colors of 
 
 ithe.^tamp m^ressed upon them." ^ It is plain, therefore, that \y^ 
 the nature of the subject must be regarded in every case of in- 
 teraction. A contrary notion, just the reverse of the conception 
 of a tabula rasa, leaves out of consideration the nature of the y^r 
 object, and endeavors to account for the states or phenomena in 
 the subject by means of the subject alone. *^ichte may be taken 
 as the representative of this point of view. On this theory the 
 theoretical process begins with a free act of self-limitation. This 
 free act being the first is groundless and, therefore, unconscious. 
 This unconscious self-limitation of the subject is the world-pro- 
 ducing activity of reason, or the productive imagination ; and this 
 groundless free act is sensation. This is only one of many at- 
 tempts which absolute idealism has made to explain the effect of 
 the object upon the subject. How satisfactory these efforts have 
 been is still a matter of dispute, and we are not now required to 
 settle this point. 
 
 From the above discussion, however, we are able to understand 
 what is the nature of Lotze's theory of knowledge. When subject 
 and object interact, states are produced in the former. But the 
 state of a subject is a state of consciousness, or an idea. Ideas, 
 therefore, are aroused in the subject by the causal activity of the 
 
 ■/object upon it. But it has been shown (chapter II) that ideas are 
 knowledge of an object ; therefore knowledge of an object arises 
 in a knowing subject by means of the causal activity of the ob- 
 ject. In regard to this question, Lotze maintains the point of 
 view we have endeavored to outline : " Now our ideas are ex- 
 cited in the first instance by external influences, and this leads us 
 to regard thought as a reaction of the mind upon the material 
 supplied by those influences and by the results of their interac- 
 
 '^Logik, \ 326. ^Ibid., Introd., | III. 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. I03 
 
 tion already referred to."^ "All our information as to an exter- 
 nal world depends upon ideas which arc only changing conditions 
 of ourselves. . . . Our ideas arise from action and reaction 
 with a world independent of ourselves. . . . Whenever action 
 and reaction takes place — and cognition is only the particular 
 case of such action between things and the ideating mind — the 
 nature of the one element is never transformed, identical and un- 
 changed, to the other ; but that first element is but as an occa- 
 sion which causes the second to realize one single definite state 
 out of the many possible for it — that state, namely, which ac- 
 cording to the general laws of the nature of that second element 
 is the fitting response to the kind and magnitude of stimulus 
 which it has received. Hence definite images in us, and pro- 
 duced by us, correspond to the causes which act upon us ; and to 
 the change of those causes there corresponds a change of those 
 inner states of ours. But no single idea is a copy of the cause 
 which produces it."^ ^^Everything, then, which acts upon the 
 mind produces a state of consciousness, or an idea in the mind, 
 just in the same way as the sun produces a state of what we call 
 warmth in a stone. It must be remembered, however, that in 
 using any such illustration as that of the sun warming a stone, a 
 distinction must be drawn. In the case of the sun and a stone 
 we regard both as objects ; whereas in the case of a tree and my 
 own consciousness, we regard the tree as an object, and the mind 
 as a subject. In the former example sun and stone are sun and 
 stone as knaivn to the observer, and the stone is not perceived 
 from its ozvn poi?it of view. But in the case of the tree and con- 
 sciousness, consciousness is considered from its own point of 
 view. Now what is true of the relation of the sun and a stone is 
 true, so far as a subject independent of both can know, of the re- 
 lation of a tree and any person whom I may be conscious of. So 
 far as actual direct knowledge goes, persons are as much objects 
 in my consciousness as the so-called things are. The discrep- 
 ancy arises through a confusion of the aspects of a thing. But, 
 as we have seen, everything is both object and subject. Con- 
 sequently, when regarded as an object it appears differently than 
 it would if taken as a subject. But these are only partial views 
 
 lyl/zV&r., II, 347-8. 
 
104 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 of its nature and of its relations, and we cannot therefore rightly- 
 pass from one point of survey to the other without allowing for 
 the new circumstances, or the changed aspect. 
 
 Because a self or thing is both an object and a subject, these 
 two aspects are not identical. It is sometimes maintained that 
 the relation of subject and object is simply a mechanical 
 connection such as is found between object and object. Things, 
 according to this view, are spatially joined or related, and the re- 
 lation of subject and object is claimed to be just a particular case 
 of this principle. The principle of explanation, on this theory, 
 purports to be derived from the relation of objects as objects, and 
 it is this principle, so it is said, which is extended to explain the 
 relation of mind and its object. But this is an instance where the 
 attempt is made to explain the partially known by the less known. 
 If, indeed, this were Lotze's theory ; if he regarded the relation 
 between objects — I mean the relation as it appears to us — as 
 the primary and fundamental relation, and if he explained the re- 
 lation of subject and object by this relation derived from what 
 seems to be an alien source, he could be justly charged with ma- 
 terialism, or with attempting to explain mind in terms of matter, 
 and on principles of bare mechanism. Lotze, however, does 
 not do this. He does not apply a notion derived from things 
 as objects, i. c, as known in spatial forms, to real things. In 
 other words, he does not interpret the relation of mind to its 
 object by means of categories derived from the spatial aspect of 
 things. He does not explain the higher categories in terms of 
 the lower, but the lower in terms of the higher. Lotze's inter- 
 pretations of reality are anthropomorphic. He derives his cate- 
 gories from the self, and not from things as selfless. By this 
 method, moreover, he does not degrade the self, but things are 
 raised to the level of selves. For Lotze, therefore, the relations 
 in which things stand are more than what is ordinarily under- 
 stood by the term relation. Things are selves, and their mode 
 of relation is interaction. Consciousness is not explained in 
 terms of selfless things, but things are explained by means 
 of mind, and become selves. To be sure, it may still be de- 
 manded why Lotze holds that "the operation of objects of 
 
REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE. 105 
 
 knowledge upon a subject apprehending them come^ under this 
 general principle" of interaction. The answer to this objection 
 is that interaction never takes place between mere objects. Inter- 
 action is a function of selves. Lotze does not say that there is a 
 wider kind of interaction than that between subjects and objects. 
 According to his theory, all interaction is an activity in which 
 nothing but selves take part. And since each self is either a sub- 
 ject or an object according to the point of view from which we re- 
 gard it, it is one and the same whether we affirm that objects inter- 
 act, subjects interact, or that interaction is a function of objects 
 and subjects. If we regard one self as knowing another, then this 
 knowing self is taken as subject, and the known self as object. 
 But they differ only in point of regard. If, therefore, interaction 
 is considered as a functional relation of things, and if the relation 
 of subject and object is looked upon as a case of this general 
 principle, the charge cannot justly be made that Lotze is explain- 
 ing cognition by a form of union which obtains only in the 
 material world. Plainly there is no interaction of real things 
 which are less than selves. To say then that the relation of sub- 
 ject and object is a case of the principle of interaction in which 
 things stand, is quite consistent, and, further, it is what we would 
 expect. Lotze's meaning comes out in the following passage : 
 " The first thing we have to do is to endeavor to establish what 
 meaning it is possible for us to attach to knowledge in its widest 
 sense, and what sort of relation we can conceive to subsist between 
 the subject which knows and the object of its knowledge, con- 
 sistent with those yet more general notions which determine the 
 mode in which we have to conceive the operation of anything 
 whatever upon anything else. What we have to do is to obtain 
 the last mentioned conception, which amounts to a metaphysical 
 doctrine, and treat the relation of subject and object as subordinate 
 to it," ^ Thus we discover the nature of Lotze's problem, and 
 this knowledge of his aim makes clear what he means by subor- 
 dinating the relation of subject and object to the general principle 
 of the relation of things. For the purpose of making plain his 
 meaning let us examine closely this quotation. This seems nec- 
 
 1 Logik, \ 322. 
 
Io6 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 essary on account of an attack made upon Lotze at this point. ^ 
 Now, the aim is to understand the relation between subject and 
 object. That the one acts upon the other Lotze' s never doubts. 
 He assumes this as necessary, for without this assumption ex- 
 perience is left unexplained. ^ How can subject and object be 
 related? Lotze could have begun with this problem, and when 
 it was solved he might have gone on to discuss the relation of 
 objects to one another. But he did not choose to do this, and he 
 gives his reasons for not doing so. ^ He prefers to begin with 
 things, and discover the mode of their relation. This enquiry, as 
 has been seen, led him to conclude that things are selves, and that 
 interaction is the only intelligible mode of relation between them. 
 So long, then, as anything exists and is related to any other 
 thing, all these things are selves, and are in interaction. With this 
 theory of reality Lotze comes to the solution of a logical problem. 
 That one self can know another is evidence that these two selves 
 — or if preferred, subject and object — causally affect each other, 
 and therefore exist in some kind of union. How can this union, 
 or influence of one upon the other, be understood ? Clearly, 
 Lotze maintains, this causal relation is just a case of interaction. 
 The argument, therefore is : All things are in interaction ; sub- y 
 ject and object are things, Ergo, etc. Li this sense then the rela- 
 tion of subject and object is a case of the relation of all real things, 
 and is subordinated to this general principle. The phrase " those 
 yet more general notions" need cause no trouble. It means that 
 interaction obtains not only between things regarded as subjects, 
 and things regarded as objects, but is the mode of all things that 
 exist. But all things are after all selves, so this principle has the 
 same connotation whether it is regarded as the function of things 
 or of things and a self. 
 
 These states of consciousness produced by the interaction of 
 subjects and objects are ideas. But we have seen that an idea is 
 a bit of knowledge of reality. The nature of an idea is cognitive. 
 By means of it the subject is conscious of an object. We know 
 reality in ideas, and it can be known in no other way. In mak- 
 
 iCf. Eastwood: op. cit., Mind, 1892, p. 478. 
 •^Logik, I 328; Cf. also \\ 322-333. 
 ^Met., Introd., H VII-IX. 
 
REALITY AND KXOWLEDGE. I07 
 
 ing this statement, idea may be used in the broadest possible 
 sense, and it remains true that only in idea can reality be known. 
 If we use idea to connote any form of mental construction — let 
 it be faith, feeling, will, or thought — which reacts to the influence 
 of the object (and Lotze regards all these functions as mental 
 constructions '), it is obvious that reality can be known only in 
 idea or a mental construction. To know in idea is simply to 
 know. As Lotze has shown, knowing is not and never can be 
 a mirroring of reality. Ideas are not copies of things, nor are 
 sensations copies of things. Again, knowledge is not that of 
 which it is knowledge. Knowledge arises in the mind when ob- 
 jects causally move the mind to perceive and think them, for our 
 ideas are our knowledge of reality. Once we have an idea we 
 possess knowledge of reality.^ 
 
 The conclusion may be stated thus : When an object acts 
 upon a subject it produces an activity in this subject. Now this 
 subject is a knowing being. Consequently the subject knows 
 either the activity or the object. If the activity, the object is 
 unknowable, but if the object, then reality is known. How the 
 subject knows at all is an unsolved problem. But it is no more 
 an enigma that the subject should know reality than that it should 
 know an activity of itself In other words, it is just as easy, so 
 far as we can comprehend, for reality to be known as for an 
 activity of the self to be known. In fact the former sentiment 
 appears to be the more intelligible. The mind is a knowing ac- 
 tivity, and an idea is a process or form of this activity. A state 
 of consciousness is not a thing to be known, but, on the other 
 
 ^ Mikr., II, p. 662. 
 
 2 This, it seems to me, is the fairest interpretation to put upon Lotze' s theory of 
 knowledge ; for it is a conception which seems to run through his writings. More- 
 over, this interpretation seems more consistent with the general spirit of his philosophy. 
 Nevertheless, the candid reader must admit that there are many passages which 
 appear to conflict with this exposition, and with which it is difficult to harmonize 
 them. These conflicts, however, may be only apparent, due largely to his form 
 of statement. Lotze is not always careful of his terminology; e. g., 'Relation' is a 
 term which he insists belongs only to knowledge, and is not adequate to denote the 
 unity of things. Notwithstanding, however, this definition of the term, he uses it to 
 denote interaction [Logik, §322). A good deal of confusion in Lotze' s philosophy, 
 it seems to me, can be traced to this inexact use of terms. [In this connection 
 the reader should compare the author's treatment in an earlier article entitled " Mod- 
 ern Theories of Judgment," Phil. Rev., Vol. XII, pp. 595ff. Editor.] 
 
 ^ 
 
Io8 LOTZE'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 hand, it is rather the particular cognitive activity of the self in 
 which the self knows a particular object. Thus it would seem 
 that an idea is simply a cognitive activity in which an object is 
 known. It may, therefore, be concluded that when an idea or 
 state of consciousness is produced in a self by means of the ac- y 
 tivity of another self or object, this idea so produced is knowledge 
 of that other self or object. 
 
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