HERMANN LOTZE AND THE MECHANICAL 

 PHILOSOPHY. 



A NOT unimportant contribution towards the elucidation 

 of that great question, ' What is the most rational 

 conception of nature possible for us ? ' has been lately made 

 accessible to English readers unfamiliar with German. We 

 refer to a translation which has recently appeared of Hermann 

 Lotze's great work entitled Microcosnius : an Essay concern- 

 ing Man and his Relation to the World} The opinions of the 

 author with respect to this question have a special interest, 

 because he has been so long and industrious a worker in the 

 field of scientific philosophy, because his eminence has been 

 so widely recognised, and because he has been so zealous and 

 able an advocate of a mechanical conception of nature. 



Rudolph Hermann Lotze was born May 21, 1817, at 

 Bautzen, in Saxony. He studied medicine and philosophy 

 at the university of Leipsic, where he graduated in both 

 subjects in 1838, and became a university lecturer in both 

 the following year. He became a professor at Leipsic in 

 1842, which ten years afterwards he left for a professorship 

 at Gottingen.2 



The study of medicine made him feel the absolute neces- 

 sity of a knowledge of physical and biological science for any 

 one who would aspire to philosophy, and forced upon his 



1 In two volumes, translated by Elizabeth Hamilton and E. E. Constance 

 Jones. Published by T. & T. Clark, of Edinburgh, in 1885. 



- For further details see Dr. Friedrich Ueberweg's History of Philosophy , 

 vol. ii. 



