494 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



39. But to characterise Lotze fully, we must take into 



Defect in _ _ . 



historical consideration the above-mentioned defect in his philo- 



sense. J^ 



sophical attitude, through which he, to a large extent, 

 placed himself out of the current of philosophical thought 

 as it existed during the last third of the century. The 

 latter was dominated by the idea of Evolution, which in 

 many instances was narrowed down by the watchwords 

 of Darwinism and the categories of the theory of De- 

 scent. For this narrowing down of the larger idea of 

 development as it had enlivened the writings of Leibniz, 

 Herder, and Schelling, within the limits of a purely 

 mechanical and automatic succession, which is termed 

 evolution, Lotze had no more appreciation than he had 

 for the logical triads of the Hegelian philosophy. This 

 in itself is not a defect of his philosophical temperament; 

 it becomes such only to the extent that it implies an 

 absence of the genuine historical sense. The latter, as I 

 have had repeated occasion to remark, has grown enor- 

 mously during the nineteenth century, with the result 

 that the in itself meritorious exposition of the successive 

 phases and stages of thought and art, of religion and 

 life, has largely taken the place of a genuine interest 

 in these things themselves, culminating in the marked 

 tendency of many modern philosophical writers to see 

 in a continual unfolding process the essence of existence, 

 the definition of all ultimate Eeality. Those who are 

 satisfied with this revival of an idea represented in 

 antiquity by Heraclitus and the Sophists, will have little 

 understanding for the ever-repeated assurance with which 

 Lotze urges that the truly Eeal is a definite something, 

 a substance, not merely a shifting unreality, an existence 



