iv LOTZE S MONISM 81 



is theoretically tenable and any other view is extremely 

 difficult ! 



Yet he is quite right ; that is all the encouragement he 

 is able to give. He cannot account for the existence of 

 Evil ; he cannot deny that it conflicts utterly with hig : 

 conception of God. For he has from the very first scorned 

 the common philosophic device of calling God a powej- 

 which has no moral attributes or preferences. His Gocj 

 is intended to be theistic and not a mere cloak forf 

 pantheism. Yet by identifying God with the Absolute] 

 he inevitably opens the way for this very kind of pantheism. 

 Once equate God with the totality of existence, and no! 

 one can understand how there can be in the All art 

 element which is alien to the All. All the phases of 

 existence, therefore, are alike characteristic of the All; 

 God is evil as well as good, or better still, non-moral and 

 indifferent, manifesting himself in all things alike. But 

 this conception, to which its premisses irresistibly drive 

 Lotze s argument, no less than every other form of Monism, 

 is certainly neither the God of what is commonly under 

 stood as religion, nor can it do the work of one. It is as 

 impotent as a practical power as it was sterile as a 

 theoretical principle. Its sole value would seem to have 

 been to have drawn attention to certain incompatibilities 

 and inconsistencies in the existing conception of the Deity. 



And the importance of this service should not lightly 

 be disparaged. If Lotze s careful, candid, and yet sym 

 pathetic examination failed to clear away the incompati 

 bilities alluded to, we may be sure that others will not 

 succeed, and that it is time to consider whether the 

 requirements both of religion and of philosophy may not 

 be better met by a different conception of the Deity. 

 We must not be tempted by the ease with which an 

 (unmeaning) Absolute is arrived at to accept it in lieu of 

 the more difficult demonstration of a real God. And I 

 believe that a clearer conception of the Deity, more clearly 

 differentiated from the All of things, could not fail also to 

 be of the greatest practical value. At present the con 

 ception of the Deity is not clearly defined ; it melts away 



G 



