iv LOTZE S MONISM 73 



III. But what shall we say of the metaphysical value 

 of this conception in the explanation of things ? 



(1) It has already been shown that it does nothing to 

 solve the problem of Causation and to relieve the difficulty 

 Lotze discovers in the action of things on one another. 



(2) Does it explain, then, the orderly succession of 

 events ? Lotze labours hard to show this. He regards 

 the changes of the world as being so ordered by the 

 Absolute as to preserve at each moment the unchanging 

 self-identity of the Absolute, the equation M=M, and to 

 give &quot; a new identical expression of the same meaning,&quot; 

 in a harmony which is &quot; not pre-established, but which at 

 each moment reproduces itself through the power of the 

 one existence.&quot; This hypothetical meaning of the Absolute 

 has to explain all the peculiarities about the succession 

 of events which Lotze finds in the world and all those he 

 wishes to find. Nor, obviously, is it possible to gainsay 

 him so long as that meaning is admitted to be inscrutable. 

 One can protest only that an inscrutable meaning is no 

 better than none at all. But for all that I would contend 

 that the introduction of the Absolute had made events 

 not easier to understand but harder. At first indeed it 

 might seem, as Lotze argues (Met. 72), that when one 

 thing in the world changes, the rest must maintain the 

 identical meaning of the world by counterbalancing 

 changes. But what if we raise the question why anything 

 should change at all ? 



(3) It will appear, I think, that no rational case is 

 made out for the existence of change at all. The 

 conception of the Absolute in itself contains no suggestion 

 of change. Its sole aim, apparently, is to keep on 

 affirming its own identity in an eternal tautology, and 

 why it should pretend to change in doing this remains 

 unintelligible. The only thing we know about it, viz. 

 the unchanging identity of the meaning it preserves in 

 the world, distinctly suggests an equal immutability for 

 the expression of that meaning. Thus the fact of change 

 has to be accepted as empirically characteristic of the 

 Absolute, but it is rendered more unintelligible by the 



