666 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



in the largest sense of the word, and the spiritual, which 

 is based upon religious experience. As stated in a 

 previous chapter, the latter finds its most pronounced 

 expression in the theological system of Albrecht Eitschl. 

 The great influence which both these quite indepen- 

 dent speculations had upon natural knowledge on the 

 one side, upon positive theology on the other, exceeded 

 that of the philosophical scheme of Lotze which really 

 does justice to both. It is only now when we are 

 able to look at the course of philosophical thought in 

 the distance of time that we can recognise in Lotze's sys- 

 tem the only adequate attempt to give the rationale of 

 scientific thought on the one side, of religious thought on 

 the other, and to bring the two aspects together into some 

 intelligible scheme or formula. This formula, expressed 

 in a few words, is this. The world of things finds its 

 most adequate description or logical expression in an 

 all-pervading mechanical Order, but it finds its interpre- 

 tation through the world of values : the latter has its 

 true reality only in the idea of a personal Spirit, a 

 Deity, and of a world of Spirits which He has created. 

 44. There is, however, a deeper reason why Lotze's scheme 



Lotze's 



scheme not did not receive at the time the recognition which it 



recognised. 



deserves. Though present to the mind of its author 

 in his earliest works it was only slowly matured, and 

 still more slowly published. This did not suit the 

 impatient spirit of the age, which, turning away from 

 the barren speculations of the Hegelian school, hailed 

 with delight the more promising methods that had been 

 so successfully introduced into natural science. These 

 had, notably in Germany, been applied to the phenomena 



