68 HUMANISM 



IV 



conception of the Unity of Things, the point of capital 

 importance is the process whereby the unity becomes 

 hypostasized into a real existence superior to the plurality 

 which it unites. To explain interaction there is only 

 needed a unity in the Many, not a One creating and 

 embracing the Many, a union, not a unit. And, as we 

 have seen, this union does not need explanation. Lotze, 

 I however, having failed to see that in its general and 

 abstract form the possibility of causation needs not to be 

 deduced, has to reject transeunt action as inexplicable 

 and to try to substitute immanent action in its place. 

 We are accordingly told that the interactions of things 

 become intelligible when regarded as the ways in which 

 the Absolute changes its states. The question as to why 

 it is intrinsically a more intelligible conception that a 

 being should change its own states rather than those of 

 another is not raised in this connexion. We are merely 

 told that de facto we do not &quot; scruple about accepting it 

 as a given fact&quot; ( 68, Trans, p. 164). Yet in 46 

 Lotze had clearly seen that while we treat &quot; this immanent 

 operation, which develops state out of state within one 

 and the same essential being, as a matter of fact calling 

 for no further effort of thought,&quot; &quot; this operation in its turn 

 remains completely incomprehensible in respect of the 

 manner in which it comes about.&quot; &quot; We acquiesce in the 

 notion of immanent operation, not as though we had any 

 insight into its genesis, but because we feel no hindrance 

 to recognizing it without question as a given fact.&quot; Does 

 not this pretty decisively admit that the superior in 

 telligibility of immanent as compared with transeunt 

 action is not logical but merely psychological, and due to 

 the familiarity with it which we seem to find in our own 

 inner experience ? 



But is it permissible to argue that because immanent 

 action passes unchallenged in our own case it should 

 therefore do so likewise in the case of the Absolute ? 



Perhaps we shall be able to decide this when we have 

 analysed the reasons why it seems natural to us that one 

 state of our consciousness should be followed by another. 



