74 HUMANISM ,v 



the riddle of life has an answer, has always been the 

 common inspiration of religious, philosophic, and scientific 

 minds. To be disabused of it would plunge us into the 

 deepest abyss of negation where scepticism fraternises 

 with pessimism. Hence it is at first reassuring to hear 

 Lotze speaking so emphatically of the meaning of the 

 universe as the supreme law which determines the suc 

 cession of events. It is not until one attempts to work 

 out the conception in connexion with his Absolute, that 

 one is regretfully forced to the conclusion that the 

 meaning of the universe is really unmeaning. 



Lotze tells us that the meaning of the Absolute has 

 to be maintained against the changes set up, we know 

 not how, in its parts. That is the reason why B follows 

 on A in orderly succession. But how can any action of 

 the parts of the whole conceivably imperil the identical 

 meaning of the whole? They have not a TTOV arw 

 outside the universe whence they could break in upon 

 its order and affect its meaning or value. And if these 

 could be in any way jeopardised, why should not any 

 means be as competent to re-establish the equation 

 M = M as any other ? Why should not C or X or F follow 

 as effectively on A as B ? Where there is absolute choice 

 of means, unvarying order becomes inexplicable. One 

 would expect rather an agreeably various or sportively 

 miraculous succession of events. Thus the introduction 

 of an Absolute, on which no laws are binding, because 

 it makes them all, really leaves the order of the world 

 at the mercy of a principle which for ever threatens to 

 reduce it to Chaos. 



Nay, more ; neither the existences nor the changes 

 of the world can have any meaning if they are absolutely 

 dependent on the Absolute, and are merely instruments 

 in the expression of its identical meaning. That 

 meaning may be expressed by one thing as well as by 

 another, it may be preserved by one variation as surely 

 as by another. Thus both events and existences lose 

 all special significance or relation to the supposed meaning. 

 The same holds true of the past of the world with respect 



