OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 659 



sense. And lastly, he did not grasp the sociological 

 problem or appreciate the importance which the social 

 question would acquire both in theory and practice 

 in modern life. He, by predilection, moved in the 

 traditions of the classical and romantic phases of Ger- 

 man culture, and he found nothing to attract him either 

 in French or English contemporary thought. 



Looking at the special problem of philosophy, he 

 did not limit it to the unification of thought and 

 knowledge ; he inherited from the great idealistic 

 systems the conviction, from which he never departed, 

 that the facts of nature and life must not only be 

 scientifically described and calculated, but must also be 

 understood and interpreted. They must (to use a terra 

 which is not, however, common with him) be viewed 

 " sub specie ceternitatis," i.e., in the light of a ruling idea, 

 of a spiritual principle, which is the abode of supreme 

 truth, beauty, and goodness, and which he terms Holi- 

 ness. This ruling idea is, as it were, in the back- 

 ground of all his scientific as well as of his specially 

 philosophical reasoning. It is an all-pervading, ever 

 present tendency and direction of his thought, but he 

 refuses to recognise any logical scheme by which, as in 

 the philosophy of Hegel, this conception can be brought 

 into full daylight. In this respect he adopts much of 

 the Leibnizian attitude of thought ; more in fact than 

 Herbart before him, into whose metaphysical scheme 

 of a " World of Eeals " the conception of a universal 

 Harmony — which formed an essential feature of the 

 " Monadology " — did not enter. 



Lotze's philosophy is monistic in a sense, and it is at 



