ESTIMATE OF LEIBNIZ S PHILOSOPHY 195 



we should have to regard all nature as merely machinery 

 for the drama of human consciousness a view which 

 could never satisfy our 'longings' and i cravings.' But 

 this monadology or t hypothesis of unextended atoms' can 

 never ; for Lotze, be more than a hypothesis. Thought 

 can never determine its truth, because it is a hypothesis 

 regarding the nature of things, and thought has to do 

 only with their relations. The monadology is i a concep- 

 tion of whose essential truth we are convinced, yet to 

 which we can hardly expect any further concession than 

 that, among the dreams of our imagination, it may be 

 one of those which do not contradict actual facts V 



Lotze is here manifestly more in harmony with Kant 

 than with Leibniz 2 . And he further differs from Leibniz 

 in maintaining that the Monads are not completely isolated 

 from one another, so that each contains its own relations 

 within itself. If Leibniz's doctrine be true, * while none 

 of the members [of the real world] condition each other, 

 everything goes on as if they all did so ; accordingly, 

 while it does not really form a whole, yet to an intelli- 

 gence directed to it, it will have the appearance of doing 

 so ; and, in one word, its reality consists in a hollow and 

 delusive imitation of that inner consistency which was 

 pronounced to be, as such, the ultimate reason why its 

 realization was possible 3 .' Accordingly for Lotze 'every 

 single thing and event can only be thought as an activity, 

 constant or transitory, of the one existence, its reality 

 and substance as the mode of being and substance of this 

 one existence, its nature and form as a consistent phase 

 in the unfolding of the same 4 .' The pre-established 

 harmony of Leibniz is thus set aside by Lotze 5 . Its place 



1 Microcosmus, bk. iii. ch. 4, 3 (Eng. Tr., i. 360; cf. i. 363). 



2 For an excellent account of the general relation of Lotze to 

 Kant, see Jones, Philosophy of Lotze, pp. 64 sqq. 



8 Metaphysic, bk. i. ch. 6, 79 (Eng. Tr., vol. i. p. 184). Cf. the 

 whole context. 



* toe. cit. 



5 'Only if the course of all, even of the most trivial, events 

 were fixed by immutable predestination, could the assumption of 



O 2 



