ON THE PSYCHO-PHYSICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 515 



Wundt differs quite as much from Lotze, who also strove 33. 



Wundt, 



to arrive at a view of the totality of human life and its Fechner, 



and Lotze 



significance. Lotze belonged, in spite of the original com P ared - 

 and independent view which he took of the psycho- 

 physical problem, to the older school of philosophers. 

 Wundt belongs quite to the modern school. 1 Fechner 

 forms the transition. Lotze begins his psychology, and 

 even his physiology of the soul, with a lengthy disserta- 

 tion on the unity of the soul as a special being, just 

 as Herbart begins his psychology with metaphysics. 

 This metaphysical introduction, these definitions relating 

 to the essence of the soul, its unity, and its location, are 

 absent in the modern psychology. Instead of founding 

 psychology on experience, metaphysics, and mathematics, 

 Wundt founds it on experience (including experiment), 

 physiology, and mathematics. In consequence of this 

 altered foundation a new problem has arisen, precisely 

 as a new problem arose for biologists when they dis- 

 carded vital force as a meaningless and useless encum- 

 brance. For the older biologists life was the exhibition 



1 See the preface to the second 

 edition of the ' System der Philo- 

 sophic' (Leipzig, 1897), p. ix : "I 

 have always tried to co-operate in 

 the endeavour to secure for psycho- 

 logy an independent position as 

 an empirical science outside of 

 philosophy, and to see that she 

 should not lack the support of the 

 scientific method in so far as this 

 could be transferred to her. . . . 

 As I started from natural science 

 and then came to philosophy 

 through occupation with empirical 

 psychology, it would have appeared 

 to me impossible to philosophise 

 in any other way than in corre- 

 spondence with this sequence of 



the problems. But I quite well un- 

 understand that the position may 

 be different for him who begins with 

 philosophy and then makes occa- 

 sional excursions into the regions 

 of science or j psychology." Com- 

 pare with this what Lotze says in 

 the Introduction to his ' Streit- 

 schriften' (1857), or the following 

 passage from one of his last essays 

 ('Contemp. Rev.,' January 1880), 

 " Except in rare cases, a prolonged 

 philosophical labour is nothing else 

 but the attempt to justify, scientif- 

 ically, a fundamental view of things 

 which has been adopted in early 

 life." 



