506 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



after having arrived at a satisfactory answer to this 

 question, he puts the further question : How does Eeality 

 manifest itself or appear to us in the actual world ? 

 By his answer to the first question, he becomes the true 

 follower of Fichte, who developed in a pronounced manner 

 the idea thrown out by Kant in his doctrine of the primacy 

 of the moral Will or the practical Eeason. In his answer 

 to the second question, he is, among the metaphysicians 

 of the nineteenth century, the first, and probably the 

 greatest, representative of the scientific spirit, and in his 

 method of solving this question he adopts the formula of 

 Herbart, according to which philosophy consists in a re- 

 moulding of our empirically gained conceptions of Reality 

 so as to make them consistent. In addition to this 

 Lotze exercises a growing influence upon recent philo- 

 sophical thought through many suggestive single ideas 

 which he has thrown out in almost every department of 

 speculation, and not less through enriching philosophical 

 language by many happily chosen terms and expressions. 

 By the latter he has succeeded in fulfilling, to a large 

 extent, that task which he announces in his earliest 

 writings viz., to give definite expression to ideas and 

 conceptions which exist for us mostly only as fleeting 

 opinions, or in the form of a hidden, but none the less 

 real and important, meaning. 

 45. The contributions to the solution of the problem of 



The problem -,-.,. 1-11 i , i -r 



of Reality Reality which have appeared since the time of Lotze 



since Lotze. 



are neither many nor conspicuous for their originality. 

 Their value is mostly to be found in an analysis of the 

 different leading ideas which have, since the seventeenth 

 century, appeared in the successive philosophical systems 



