658 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



knowledge, as the idealistic school had attempted 

 to do, he nevertheless brought his many-sided con- 

 tributions to philosophy into a systematic whole, and 

 this in a manner which has to a large extent been 

 adopted by other thinkers after him. At the same time 

 he is not so exclusively dominated by the scientific 

 spirit as some more recent thinkers ; in fact, he stands 

 in the middle between those opposed schools of thought 

 which existed during his lifetime, and forms a tran- 

 sition from the religious and exclusively metaphysical 

 philosophy of the first half of the nineteenth century to 

 the scientific and sociological philosophy of the latter 

 half, although he does not really advance as far as the 

 last. 



It will now be useful to explain more exactly the 



characteristics of this intermediate and transitory phase 



of philosophical thought. This task is made easier by 



39. looking at the historical connections, at the antecedents 



Antecedents 



andsur- and surroundings of Lotze's thought. It seems that his 



roundings 



ofLotze. studies were equally directed towards classical and 

 philosophical subjects on the one side and scientific and 

 natural subjects on the other. It is also well at once 

 to point to what I may perhaps be allowed to call 

 the shortcomings of this, in itself, very comprehensive 

 scheme of studies. 



Lotze never really appreciated or entered into that 

 spirit of historical criticism which became, during his 

 lifetime, the ruling tendency of German thought, notably 

 at the universities ; nor did he really appreciate the 

 facts and theories of historical development, either 

 in the earlier Hegelian or in the later Darwinian 



