500 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



from this active principle the forms of actual existence 

 in the world, but maintains with Herbart that for us 

 there remains an inherent dualism between the forms 

 and things which exist or appear to exist and the 

 . rules and precepts of that which ought to exist. He 

 bridges over this dualism by the initial thesis of all his 

 teaching: that we have to comprehend though not 

 to construct the phenomenal world in the light of 

 the idea of that which ought to be : the world of 

 things and forms which are, finds its interpretation 

 in the world of worths or values which ought to be, 

 and, vice versa, the latter are realised for us only in 

 the former. 



We thus see how Lotze continues and brings together 

 lines of thought which found independent and frequently 

 one-sided development in the systems of his predecessors. 

 Though he believes with the idealists in the existence of 

 an Absolute or highest reality, of which the real world is 

 merely a reflection or appearance, he replaces their at- 

 tempts to construct the phenomenal by the more modest 

 task of merely interpreting it ; yet he does not believe, 

 with Herbart, that we can by a mere process of remould- 

 ing empirical notions arrive at an adequate conception 

 of the underlying reality. Of the latter we not only 

 require to have, but actually possess, an intuitive, 

 though fleeting and fluctuating, knowledge. It is the 

 object of philosophy to insist on this primary insight or 

 possession, to try to fix it more precisely and, in the 

 light of it, to effect that reconstruction, rearrangement, 

 and completion of our empirical knowledge which 

 Herbart proposed to carry out by a purely logical 



