ESTIMATE OF LEIBNIZ S PHILOSOPHY 193 



to include the phenomena not merely of inorganic and 

 organic bodies, but also of mind. ' The function of 

 mechanism in the construction of the world is, without 

 an exception, universal in its extent 1 .' The conception of 

 mechanism governs all science, for the principle of all our 

 thinking is the principle of contradiction, which can 

 only accept what is given in experience and systematize 

 its laws. 



But Lotze protests strongly against the view that 

 mechanism gives us a final explanation of the reality of 

 the world. The laws of science are laws of phenomena ; 

 they do not account for the things themselves. We may 

 say that the essence of a thing is to stand in relations to 

 other things. But the thing itself is more than the 

 relations, and mechanism gives us an account of the rela- 

 tions only. Thus while * the function of mechanism in 

 the construction of the world is universal in its extent, it 

 is entirely subordinate in its importance*.' As mere 

 thought is by itself inadequate to reality, so mechanism 

 (the system of laws which it is the work of science to 

 discover and express) is not an eternally necessaiy system, 

 constituting the very nature of things, but is merely the 

 way in which the ultimate idea, the good, has freely 

 chosen to realize itself 3 . Not thought, but goodness is 

 ultimate, and ' the establishing of mechanism is the first 

 ethical deed of the Absolute. The fact that there is 

 a kingdom of universal laws appears to me to be compre- 

 hensible only in a world whose ultimate principle is an 

 ethical one ; another world (if I were to try to form for 

 myself the notion of it, which is for me absurd) might, it 



1 Kleine Schriften, iii. 310. 



2 Loc. cit., cf. Microcosmus, Introduction (Eng. Tr., vol. i. p. xvi). 



3 ' Mechanism is but the collection of all the instrumental forms 

 in which God has willed that created beings shall act on one another 

 with their unknown natures, and that all their states shall be 

 welded into the endless chain of a world-history. This view 

 explores the sphere of means, not the sphere of ends to which these 

 minister.' Microcosmus, bk. iii. Conclusion. (Eng. Tr., vol. i. 

 P- 398.) 







