76 HUMANISM 



IV 



explanation that has any scientific or philosophic value. 

 It resolves no difficulties, it aggravates many, it creates 

 some of an utterly insoluble character. And by undoing 

 his own work in the case of conscious beings and insisting 

 on detaching them from his Absolute, Lotze himself may 

 be considered to have afforded practical confirmation of 

 this view. 



IV. It remains to discuss the identification of the Unity 

 of Things with the Deity. In the Outlines of the PJtilosophy 

 of Religion Lotze accepts the Unity of Things which 

 renders interaction possible as the basis of the conception 

 of God, thereby making his metaphysical argument his 

 means of proving the existence of God. One might have 

 expected him therefore to go on to develop the conse 

 quences of this conception and to show how they agreed 

 with the religious notions on the subject. This is not, 

 however, what Lotze actually does. He makes no attempt 

 to show that the Unity of Things, as discovered by 

 metaphysics, must be susceptible of the religious predicates, 

 must be conceived as personal, holy, just, and wise, nor 

 that these attributes may be empirically inferred from the 

 manner in which the Absolute unites the universe. Instead 

 of this, he contents himself with entitling his second chapter 

 Further Determinations of the Absolute/ and then goes 

 on to prove that God cannot rightly be conceived as other 

 than spiritual and personal. Now against the contents of 

 this chapter I have not a word to say ; his argument in 

 it seems to me most admirable and cogent. What I do 

 wish to protest against is the way in which he shifts his 

 ground, is the per d/3 avis et? aXXo 761/05 which his method 

 at this point involves. For instead of developing a 

 metaphysical conception, he here passes over to a criticism 

 of popular conceptions of and objections to the nature of 

 the Deity, and these are in every case disposed of by 

 arguments which have nothing to do with the Absolute s 

 function of unifying the world. Thus the spirituality of 

 God is proved by showing that materialism is inadequate 

 and dualism sterile ; His personality, by showing that 

 while no analogy in our experience justifies conceptions 



