OF THE SPIRIT. 32^ 



original scheme of Hegel, — to show how the Absolute 

 revealed itself to the thinking human mind by its 

 gradual ascent from purely subjective and finite sensa- 

 tion through the forms of logical thought and their 

 objectivation in nature, history, art, science, life, and 

 philosophy, — had been prematurely brought to an end, 

 inasmuch as what was there called the absolute mind 

 was really only the highest manifestation of the objective 

 mind, and that it would have been necessary finally to 

 sliow " that the absolute mind as the third and last 

 stage of development would return again in greater 

 depth and fulness to that form of Being which it 

 possessed in the first stage as personal, though there 

 only in the form of finite, individual minds." ^ 



Accordingly Weisse undertook " to introduce again 

 the conception of a personal Deity ; but his speculations 

 received comparatively little attention, though already 

 before him Krause had made a similar attempt, and had 

 designated his system as Panentheism to distinguish it 

 from the Pantheism of Hegel. 



Lotze himself has said that he received from Weisse 35. 



His rela- 



— rather than from Herbart, with whom his critics had tjonsto 



Weisse. 



associated him — an original grounding which he had 

 found no occasion or desire to abandon in all his sub- 

 sequent speculations, however little they might manifest 

 that influence. His later writings, notably his ' Micro- 

 cosmus,' had the object, after a lengthy detour through 

 the realms of natural phenomena and historical evolu- 



^ See Lotze ' Geschichte der 

 Deutsche!! Philosophie seit Kant ' 

 — Lecture Notes 1882, p. 71. 



- In his larger work : ' Philo- 



sophische Dogmatik oder Philo- 

 sophie des Christenthums ' (3 vols., 

 1855-1862). 



