194 INTRODUCTION 



appears to me, have arisen a world without this thread 

 of consecutiveness, without this veritas in the sense of the 

 old metaphysicV Accordingly for Lotze the ultimate 

 reality is a personal God, who sets before Himself the 

 highest moral ends, and has established the ' absolutely 

 valid system of laws which rules the world ' as the best 

 means of securing these ends. Thought is a means of 

 attaining to complete experience ; mechanism is a means 

 of realizing the best. l There is no " nature of things " 

 outside of God,' limiting the sphere of His choice. But 

 on the other hand, His choice is not arbitrary, but is 

 governed by His perfect idea of what is absolutely 

 best. 



In this the influence of Leibniz is so manifest that it 

 does not surprise us to find Lotze writing to the younger 

 Fichte : i I went willingly through the splendid gateway 

 which he [Herbart] is convinced that he has been able to 

 erect as an entrance to his metaphysic ; the gateway of 

 the Leibnitian Monad-world V Thus, according to Lotze, 

 we are constrained to conceive the real world as a world 

 of Monads, which are ultimately one in nature. In addition 

 to mechanism, or the system of laws governing (or ex- 

 pressing) the relations between things, there are the things 

 themselves, the facts, which may be conceived as Monads. 

 And both of these (the laws and the facts) presuppose 

 a universal and all-pervading substance, which is merely 

 a postulate of thought, but is a reality for feeling, and 

 which (being intelligible only through the idea of a 

 personal Deity) realizes the highest moral ends in the 

 sphere of the facts by means of the laws. Things are to 

 be thought of as Monads, because nature is to be con- 

 ceived as animated throughout; all things are endowed 

 with 'modes of sensation and enjoyment 3 .' Otherwise 



1 Streitschrift, p. 57. 



2 Ibid. p. 7. 



8 Microcosmus, bk. iii. ch. 4, 3 (Eng. Tr., vol. i. p. 360). Cf. 

 Lotze's early writing Pensees dun Idiote sur Descartes, Spinoza et 

 Leibnitz. (Kleine Schriften, vol. iii. p. 564.) 



