OP THE SPIRIT. 327 



and this not only because Lotze lectured regularly on the 

 subject throughout his long academic career, but mainly 

 because his teaching has gradually and almost imper- 

 ceptibly influenced theological literature in Germany 

 as well as in England and America. It is true that 

 Lotze had no genuinely theological interest. He does 

 not seem to have been much influenced by Schleier- 

 macher ; his interest in the problem of the Spirit came 

 through the teachings of Weisse, and it does not appear 

 that he ever entered sympathetically into Schleier- 

 macher's peculiar line of reasoning. His estimate of 

 Schleiermacher's aesthetics betrays also a want of ap- 

 preciation of ideas which otherwise frequently resembled 

 his own speculations. 



The main contribution of Lotze to the problem of the 34. 

 Spirit or the religious problem is his exhaustive and "Person- 

 repeated analysis of the idea of personality. With this 

 analysis he follows in the footsteps of Weisse, who, 

 though a disciple and admirer of Hegel, was nevertheless 

 influenced by the lifelong and strenuous opposition which 

 Schelling, in his later writings and his lectures in Berlin, 

 offered to Hegel's position. With Schelling this opposi- 

 tion expressed itself in the formula that Hegel's was a 

 negative philosophy which ought to find its consumma- 

 tion in a positive philosophy : this, in analogy with the 

 natural sciences, was to be founded upon a definite but 

 higher experience. This higher experience acquires in 

 Schelling's conception the character of a Revelation 

 which, in the individual as well as in the collective 

 human soul, affords assurance for the existence of a 

 supernatural and personal Supreme Being, the Deity of 



