OF REALITY. 501 



analysis. And lastly, we may remark that Lotze's 

 philosophy, like all other important systematic attempts, 

 owes its influence to certain characteristic terms in 

 which it has crystallised its central ideas. By untiringly 

 putting forward the notions of Value and Worth, by 

 opposing to the world of Things the world of Values, 

 he has introduced into recent philosophy a leading 

 thought which has become more and more the central 

 theme of speculation. 



But Lotze is not content merely to give an answer to 

 the question, What is the truly Eeal ? This, the meta- 

 physical problem, is indeed to him the central problem 

 of philosophy, the point from which his speculation 

 starts and to which it returns again in the end. The 

 earliest and the latest of his works dealt with Meta- 

 physics — i.e., with the problem of Eeality. But having 

 quite early in life risen to a conception of what the truly 

 Eeal in the world is — to a conception indeed which he 

 saw no reason in after life to forsake— he for a time 

 abandons the highest problem of philosophy in order to 

 study and understand Eeality in the world of phenomena 

 which surrounds us. For he had fully imbibed the 

 modern scientific or exact spirit which seeks for know- 

 ledge only in the world of many things which we can 

 observe, measure, and calculate. In other words, after 

 having settled in his own mind what the truly Eeal is — 

 the core and essence of reality — he now descends into 42. 



c 1 • 1 • 1 • Detailed 



the actual manifestations of this highest reality in the interest in 



phenomena. 



world of many things, many forms, and many processes. 

 To some of his contemporaries he then appeared, not as 

 an idealist, as we know him to be, lut as a realist, a 



