330 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



tion, to give a more definite expression to his under- 

 lying conviction that the highest form of existence can 

 be satisfactorily represented to the human soul only in 

 that of Personality. On many occasions in his writings 

 and lectures he recurs to this thesis, trying to defend it 

 against criticisms which had been variously applied to 

 it. These criticisms can all be brought back to the 

 dictum of Spinoza, that individuation is identical with 

 limitation. This idea had been introduced and more 

 emphatically urged in idealistic philosophy by Fichte, 

 who put in the place of the Divine Person, as 

 the centre and ruler of the universe, the idea of a 

 Divine Order which he considered to be a higher and 

 nobler conception than that of a Personal Deity as 

 represented in the narrow anthropomorphising theology 

 of his day. Though admiring the elevation and purity 

 of Fichte's conception, Lotze does not agree with him in 

 denying to the Absolute the highest epithet of person- 

 ality. According to him, the attributes by which we 

 try to describe the essence of the Divine spring from 

 two distinct sources : " Metaphysical attributes such as 

 unity, eternity, omnipresence, and omnipotence determine 

 the Divine as the ground of all reality in the finite ; 

 ethical attributes such as wisdom, justice, and holiness 

 satisfy our desire to find in the highest Reality that also 

 which possesses the greatest value for us. ... The 

 desire of the soul to conceive as real that which it is 

 permitted to regard as the highest cannot be satisfied by 

 any other form of existence than that of personality." * 



1 See Lotze ' Microcosmus,' 1st 

 ed., vol. iii. p. 559. The defence 



of the notion of Personality con- 

 stitutes one of the main efforts of 



