Hermann Lotze and the Mechanical Philosophy 287 



physical processes, as universal and necessary truths.' The 

 ample satisfaction afforded to our imagination by the enter- 

 taining variety of successions of images too often makes us 

 forget how wholly unsatisfying they are to our reason. 



Our extracts have already shown that Lotze speaks freely 

 of the existence of a ' soul ' in living things. Indeed he 

 boldly maintains that view, and regards the indisposition of 

 many to admit it as being due to those prejudices to which 

 we have just adverted. Thus he observes:^ 'In granting 

 that the essence of the soul is unknown, we do so only in a 

 sense that includes the impossibility of saying what would 

 be the essence of anything in the entire absence of the 

 conditions that are the exciting occasions of its manifes- 

 tations. Just as impossible as to tell how things look in the 

 dark, is it to know what the soul is before it enters on any of 

 the situations in which alone its life unfolds.' To this ' soul ' 

 he also unhesitatingly attributes pre-eminence,^ saying the 

 'rejection of a false conception of the mode in which the 

 soul takes part in the construction of the body need not 

 prevent us from holding such participation to be in itself 

 great and important. The soul by reason of its more signifi- 

 cant nature must always have a place of vantage.' He 

 teaches ^ that the soul of every animal is that immanent 

 principle of individuation, the existence of which we have 

 again and again asserted, saying that the animal's soul un- 

 questionably concentrates the multitude of impressions ' in a 

 unity,' feels pain and pleasure in respect of them, and uses 

 them as starting-points for future action. What is much 

 more important, he denies* that the human soul has any 

 material ' organ.' ' The perfection of mental life is indeed 

 (which has never been denied) connected by myriad roots 

 with the soil of its bodily existence ; but the soul does not, 

 besides the general nutrition which it affords, send upwards 



1 Vol. i. p. 190. 2 /5/^_^ p 288. 3 /7„-^^^ p 633^ ^ Ihid.,^.2>'lZ. 



