OF THE SOUL. 



267 



that he should have been the first among the then 

 living thinkers to take up the soul problem when it 

 reached its acute form in the beginning of the second 

 half of the century, and that a large portion of his 

 writings should be devoted to effecting a clearance in 

 the materialistic controversy. 



The circumspection which is characteristic of his 51. 



His circum- 



dealing with this as with many other polemical ques- spection. 

 tions explains how he was frequently misunderstood, 

 classed now with the materialists, now with the obdurate 

 metaphysicians, and again called a disciple of Herbart 

 or of Leibniz, or of other earlier or latter-day thinkers. 

 Again, he has, though uninfluenced by them, some points 

 in common with the French eclecticists ; adopting, as he 



answers by insisting on three points. 

 First, the existence of phenomena 

 of consciousness which are utterly 

 incomparable with those of the 

 outer world ; secondly, the exist- 

 ence of a unity through which they 

 are connected ; and thirdly, the 

 active principle for which we claim 

 a certain amount of freedom. He 

 admits that the last is not a proven 

 fact, as the two former ones are, 

 but that it acquires its importance 

 through the overwhelming ethical 

 interests which attach to it. The 

 problem of the soul is thus for him 

 not a purely scientific one, as is the 

 case with other subjects of research 

 — it is one in which we have a 

 special interest for reasons which 

 lie beyond both the empirical and 

 the metaphysical, the descriptive 

 and the explanatory, treatment of 

 the subject. At the end of his 

 earliest tract he sums up the object 

 of psychology in words something 

 like these : a complete psychology 

 would have to put and solve the 

 following problems, (1) a dialectic 

 deduction of the phenomena of 



psychical life, and an interpretation 

 of their ideal importance in the 

 significant totality of things ; (2) a 

 consideration of the phases of de- 

 velopment of psychical life. This 

 would include an investigation 

 whether a reality is conceivable, 

 the inner nature of which is not 

 essentiallj' psychical ; (3) a descrip- 

 tion of the phj-sical and mechanical 

 conditions with which in our ob- 

 servation the life of the soul is 

 connected, a physiology of the 

 soul ; (4) a mechanism of psychical 

 life, leaving it doubtful whether 

 this applies in all individual cases 

 and is not dependent on subject- 

 ive coefficients ; (5) a psychology 

 of individualities such as has been 

 hitherto left to works of fiction ; 

 (6) a confirmation of our ideas re- 

 ferring to the fate of souls in the 

 totality of things (see ' Kleine 

 Schriften,' vol. ii. p. 203). These 

 problems remained before the mind 

 of Lotze through all his writings, 

 but he is fully aware of the limits 

 placed in the way of the solution of 

 some of them. 



