ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 503 



follow up the philosophical reasonings of Lotze beyond 

 the limit of the psycho-physical mechanism, so little 

 were these at the time of their appearance heeded by 

 many of his readers, some of whom he seems to have 

 converted to or confirmed in a purely materialistic con- 

 ception of the phenomena of the inner or mental world. 

 Lotze had banished " vital forces " from biology ; why 

 not follow him, and banish all other higher principles, 

 and revive as Carl Vogt did l the dictum of Cabanis 

 about the analogy between the functions of the brain 

 and the kidneys ? Why should the " anima " of Stahl 

 not have the same fate as the " vital force " of Bordeu 

 and Bichat? 



This was a misconception of what Lotze had intended. 

 He had, indeed, banished 2 the principle of life as a 

 factor useless in physiological explanations ; but not the 

 principle of organisation, which must have presided over 

 the beginning of all organic forms. This might be 

 neglected by physiologists, who had nothing to do with 

 origins but only with existing relations. It was quite 

 different with mental phenomena, which, manifesting 

 themselves alongside of physical processes, required to be 

 dealt with and recognised as actually existing and con- 

 current events. 3 Herbart's psychical mechanism might 



1 On this, see the account given 

 in Lange's ' History of Materialism ' 

 (Engl. transl., vol. ii. p. 285) and 

 Lotze's reference to it in ' Med. 

 Psychol.,' p. 43. 



2 "There ia no doubt that a 

 legitimate attack upon ' vital force ' 

 has marked in our days that line of 

 reasoning, which has by the law of 

 inertia carried many of our con- 

 temporaries far beyond the correct 



limit on to a negation of the exist- 

 ence of a soul" (ibid., p. 41). 



3 These various points are very 

 fully discussed in Lotze's earliest 

 philosophical work, ' Metaphysik ' 

 (Leipzig, 1841), pp. 251, 255, 259 ; 

 and again in the ' Med. Psychologic ' 

 (1852), p. 78. Referring to the 

 last chapter, in which I dealt with 

 the development of the theories of 

 life and organisation, two points 



