OF THE SPIRIT. 



343 



The balance was, however, restored to a great extent in 



the systematic writings of Lotze, 1 and in the less system- 41. 



Fechner and 



atic, though equally original, speculations of his friend Lotze - 



1 The main philosophic tendency 

 of Lotze's writings may be best 

 expressed by the term used in the 

 text, and suggested by one of the 

 many felicitous and illuminating 

 dicta of the late William James. 

 That small portion of the universe 

 which is accessible to our experi- 

 ence and observation is in Lotze' s 

 sense a texture in which mechanism 

 IB the warp, the threads of which 

 are everywhere to be seen or looked 

 for, whereas the spiritual is, as it 

 vere, the woof which weaves into 

 the system of mechanical threads 

 the actual pattern or living image. 

 His earlier writings, destined to 

 tring clearness into the reasoning 

 cf the biological sciences, emphasise 

 the first of the two factors, the all- 

 pervading mechanism. It was not 

 recognised that the enlivening prin- 

 ciple was really that for which 

 Lotze felt the greater interest. 

 This he clearly unfolded in the 

 second period of his literary labours 

 to which the ' Microcosmus' belongs. 

 In the meantime the actual tracing 

 of the mechanical lines and connec- 

 tions, visible or hidden, in the 

 texture of the existing world, had 

 become so promising an under- 

 taking, not only in natural but 

 also in historical research, that the 

 spiritual came to be regarded as an 

 epi - phenomenon, or even as a 

 fiction, as something which for the 

 scientific understanding of phen- 

 omena could be disregarded. Thus 

 the line of thought taken by Lange 

 and the Neokantians was favoured 

 by thinkers (such, e.g., as Strauss 

 and Zeller), who, starting from 

 historical studies, came in later life 

 under the influence of prominent 

 leaders in the mechanical and bio- 

 logical sciences, such as Helmholtz, 



Kirchhoff, and du Bois Reymond. 

 These, on their part, however, were 

 either much more reticent as to the 

 spiritual side of things or professed 

 a much greater Agnosticism than 

 the philosophers whom they influ- 

 enced. This influence prevented 

 the latter from recognising how 

 much juster and fairer a view was 

 being prepared by Lotze's penetrat- 

 ing, though sometimes over-cau- 

 tious and hesitating, investigations. 

 Notably, as regards the question 

 before us, the existence of the 

 miraculous, neither Zeller nor 

 Lange nor Strauss can have read 

 or appreciated what Lotze said in 

 the second volume of the ' Micro- 

 cosmus' (p. 51 sqq.) But the con- 

 troversy on the miraculous as 

 carried on by Zeller and Ritschl 

 without regard to Lotze's reflec- 

 tions is interesting as revealing 

 that growing tendency of thought 

 to which I have had repeated occa- 

 sion to refer. This I have termed 

 the synoptic aspect (the vue 

 d'enscmble), contrasting it with the 

 combined synthetic and analytic 

 methods. Ritschl, following 

 Schleiermacher, emphatically takes 

 up the former. They start from 

 religion in its individual and 

 historic appearance as a totality, 

 a comprehensive attitude of the 

 mind to the whole of nature and 

 life : notably the Christian view 

 and the Christian history imply a 

 comprehensive order of things quite 

 different from that revealed by the 

 modern methods in scientific re 

 search and historical criticism 

 Now, Zeller was a foremost repre- 

 sentative of the latter and, influ 

 enced by his academic surroundings 

 an admirer of, though not an adept 

 in, the former. The feature com- 



