502 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Heibartian, nay, even as a materialist.-^ After having 

 answered the question, What is the nature of the ti'uly 

 Eeal or Absolute ? he proceeds to answer the further 

 question. What is the nature of the apparently Eeal ? 

 His answer to this question is not a monistic one. For 

 Eeals are things which exist, events which happen, 

 relations which endure, conceptions and truths which 

 are valid. But relations which endure and events that 

 happen, imply things in and between which they subsist. 

 And if we further try to understand what we mean by 

 the essence of these things, we find that no answer is 

 forthcoming, that the question concerning the Thing in 

 itself has no meaning : the reality of things reduces itself 

 in fact in our minds to a system of relations of things. 

 That is Eeal which stands in relation to other things, to 

 all things ; to exist means to stand in relations. Thus 

 it is this network of relations in space and time — i.e., 

 their geometrical and causal connections, which con- 

 stitutes the reality of the empirical world. If we 

 further consider that these relations cannot exist as the 

 invisible threads of a network of indefinable entities, we 

 are driven to the conclusion that we must resort to the 

 conception of a universal Order, of one underlying all- 

 comprising Substance, of which the apparently separate 

 things are the states, parts, or modi ; and that the ap- 

 parent action of one thing on another is really only what 

 happens in the interior of this universal substance — i.e., 

 within the sphere of this universal order. Further than 

 this conception of a universal substance, in which Lotze 

 unites the Monadology of Leibniz with the Pantheism of 



^ See above, chap. iii. p. 264. 



