OF REALITY. 



499 



Schelling and Hegel, Lotze adopts the conception of the 

 Absolute i.e., of something expressive of supreme reality, 

 and he conceives with them the existing world of things 

 and processes which surround us to be a realisation of 

 this truly Real. In the emphasis which he lays upon 

 the practical side of life and upon the ethical value of 

 this supreme Eeality as the beginning and end of the 

 world-process, he reminds one of the energy with which 

 Fichte developed, in his philosophy, the active principle, 

 the self-restrained freedom of the human Will. But 

 Lotze does not follow Fichte in attempting to deduce 



Thought, it is, together with the 

 above-mentioned ' Streitschriften,' 

 by far the most important of 

 Lotze's writings, and this for two 

 reasons. It shows that in addition 

 to the special interests which led 

 to the publication of his biological 

 and medical treatises, his whole 

 thought stood on the firm ground 

 of an original conviction which, 

 as he himself says, he found in 

 later life no reason to change 

 materially. And further, it shows 

 the distinct transition from the 

 position occupied by Hegel and, 

 especially, the influence of the 

 ' Phenomenology.' Students of 

 Hegel in the present day may 

 rightly see in Lotze's ' Metaphysik ' 

 a paraphrase of the Introduction 

 and the earlier sections of Hegel's 

 first great work, as indeed Lotze's 

 later ' Microcosmus ' repeats like- 

 wise, on a larger scale and with 

 more abundant material, Hegel's 

 attempt to trace the life and 

 workings of the mind in all the 

 labyrinthine and devious paths of 

 its growth and development in the 

 history of the human individual 

 and the human race. What T. H. 

 Green conceived to be the task of 

 philosophy a generation later, that 

 the work of Kant and Hegel had 



all to be done over again, was 

 exactly what Lotze attempted in 

 a concise manner in his earliest 

 'Metaphyeik' (1841), and 'Logik' 

 (1843), and, more fully, in his 

 ' Microcosmus. ' In the interval of 

 more than thirty years which 

 elapsed between his earliest works 

 and his later " system," the interest 

 in Hegel had almost entirely dis- 

 appeared in Germany, and the refer- 

 ences to Hegel's logical and meta- 

 physical deductions, so frequent 

 in the earlier work, have gradu- 

 ally disappeared, as indeed they 

 were then no longer likely to facili- 

 tate an understanding of the main 

 objects of speculation or the task 

 of philosophy which Lotze had in 

 view. A recognition, however, of 

 these historical connections seems at 

 the present moment to be particu- 

 larly opportune, and is certainly of 

 prime importance in a history of 

 Thought. It can only be hinted 

 at in this connection. A republica- 

 tion of Lotze's early ' Metaphysik,' 

 with full references to passages from 

 Hegel's and Herbart's writings, 

 supplemented also by relevant ex- 

 tracts from the 'Streitschriften,' 

 would indeed be a useful perform- 

 ance in the present state of philo- 

 sophical thought. 



