2 8o Hermann Lotze and the Mechanical Philosophy 



mind the complete untenableness of Hegelianism. At start- 

 ing he appeared to be a thoroughgoing upholder of the 

 mechanical view of nature. In his Pathology ^ he sought to 

 show that the processes observable in the living body are in 

 no way fundamentally different from those of insensient 

 nature, the only difference being in the arrangement of the 

 parts upon Avhich the physical forces act. * Vital force/ he 

 taught, ' is not to be understood as any distinct force, but 

 rather as the sum of the effect of numerous partial forces 

 acting under given conditions.' Naturally enough his writ- 

 ings were quoted with cordial approbation by men of the 

 materialist school; but already in his Physiology^ he re- 

 pudiated materialistic dogmatism, and promised to enter 

 more fully into the subject subsequently. This promise was 

 fulfilled by the publication of the work^ to some of the 

 contents of which we here wish to call attention. The judg- 

 ments expressed in it led materialists, who had accustomed 

 themselves to reckon Lotze as one of themselves, to denounce 

 him as an apostate. He has not, however, really repudiated 

 his former teaching as to mechanism, and certainly he has 

 in no way weakened his denunciations of vitalism. The head 

 and front of his offence in the eyes of those who deem him a 

 renegade, is his endeavour to show that the mechanical 

 conception of nature, as understood by him, is not in any 

 necessary contradiction with a spiritualistic conception of the 

 universe. We would by no means be understood to express 

 approval of the work generally — a work in writing which the 

 author appears to have considered nothing human as foreign 

 to his subject, so wide is its scope and so multifarious the 

 matters treated of in it. With many of his views we differ 

 toto ccdo ; and as to others with which we agree we deprecate 



^ AUg. Pathologie und Therapie ah Meclianische Naturicissen-schaften, 1842. 

 2 Allg. Physiologie des KOrperlichen Lebens. Leipsic, 1851. 

 ^ MikroJcosmos : Ideen zur Naturgeschichte tind Geschichte der Menschheit. 

 S vols. Leipsic, 1856-1864. Second Edition, 1868. 



