84 HUMANISM iv 



abstract form which subsequently receives a content, but 

 always has a perfectly determinate and concrete value. 

 But if so, why did he use such perfectly abstract 

 arguments in order to prove its existence ? Why did he 

 not derive the Absolute in its concreteness from the 

 concrete facts in which it manifests itself? Had he done 

 so, he would have disarmed most of the above criticism 

 and would have closed the road to many a misconception 

 and many a difficulty. It would have been needless to 

 ask, e.g., why the Absolute should be in motion, for in 

 arriving at it we should have had to state the reason not 

 only for the motion but also for its amount and direction. 

 Again, it would have been superfluous to puzzle ourselves 

 as to how the One united the Many ; for it would have 

 been as a definite mode of combining the Many that we 

 should have found the One. 



No doubt such methods of discovering first principles 

 are less easy, less sweeping, and therefore less attractive ; 

 the philosopher moves more smoothly in a cloudland 

 where he can manipulate abstractions which seem to 

 assume whatever shape he wills. But the philosophic 

 interpretation of the concrete experiences of life is far 

 safer and, in the end, more satisfying. And whatever the 

 defects of his own practice, it is to Lotze as much as to 

 any one that we owe the conviction that even the most 

 imposing castles which philosophers have builded in 

 the air have had no other source than the experience of 

 the actual whence to draw their materials and their 

 inspiration. 



