616 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



These two worlds, of which the second is constructed 

 by the human intellect through the observation and study 

 of the first, become, as thought progresses, more and more 

 separate : the world of forms, the laws of nature, appear 

 as necessities, as a fixed and unalterable framework in 

 which individual things and occurrences are encased. 

 The other, the world of things, the endless examples in 

 which these forms and laws seem to be realised, appear 

 on the other side as if they might also have been quite 

 different. 



It is conceivable to the human mind that the rigid 

 and eternal laws of nature might also be realised in 

 numberless other worlds than the world which sur- 

 rounds us. The " this," the " here," and the " when " 

 present themselves accordingly as something fortuitous, 

 however much the many instances and examples may be 

 subject to the same fixed rule and order. To escape, 

 however, from this conception of a merely fortuitous 

 concourse of things, from this doctrine of chance, a 

 further system of realities offers itself to the unbiassed 

 human observer. These are not the things and processes 

 outside of us nor yet the phenomena of an inner life, but 

 the standards of value or worth which the human soul 

 involuntarily applies in its judgments, and in the culture 

 of which man finds the real task of civilisation. The 

 existence of this world of poetical and ethical values or 

 ideals furnishes, according to Lotze, the solution of the 

 world problem and also of the problem of nature in the 

 sense anticipated by Schelling, and the formula would 

 thus be : that the things which surround us are the 

 material in which, the laws of nature the forms through 



