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BULLETIN OF DENISON UNIVERSITY. 
The “idealistic construction of the universe”, which Lotze regards 
as the attainable end of philosophy, does not construe the “dependence 
of the reals,” (otherwise the order of nature) as referable to a fixed and 
arbitrary law — this is unattainable — but reaches only derived laws. 
Thus Lotze is world-wide from the older idealists. Indeed, this ad- 
mission is fatal to a purely idealistic system, as its author evidently felt, 
and thus he was forced to elevate experience to a place from which the 
more consistent earlier idealists banished it. For the purely system- 
atic creations of Aristotle and Kant he has little respect, regarding the 
categories, even as supplemented by Kant, as mere hap-hazard con- 
trivances of psychologists.* 
It is certainly a matter of surprise that he should chose, as his 
fundamental statement, the reality of the distinction between spirit and 
nature, as the two elements in our universe, and begin with the as- 
sumption that no period of human exisence is conceivable when man 
did not feel himself in opposition to an external world — a psycholog- 
ical rather than a metaphysical determinant, f 
This double inconsistancy is again more apparent than real, for 
he proceeds to reduce everything to a common character of inter- 
dependence as immanent in the Infinite, from which some real beings 
(spirits) are elevated (without being liberated) into the sphere of tran- 
scendent existence — a realm of conscious freedom in real dependence, 
of which more anon. j 
Then, admitting the complete human subjectivity of our knowl- 
edge, he insists on its necessary validity in its own sphere, and builds 
unhesitatingly on it the structure which is subjected to a final search- 
ing test from an ethical point of view. 
It is at present, however, with his doctrine of being that we are 
especially occupied. “Since sensation is the sole causa cognoscendi of 
being, we might make the mistake,” says Lotze, “of identifying being 
with that which reveals it.” The question pertinently arises what be- 
comes of being when the only evidence we have of it is re- 
moved ? The simplest form of answer lies in an appeal to the con- 
sensus of sentient beings. This informs us that the conditions of 
sensation are not solely incident to our individual nature. Just as the 
more concrete concept of substance is formed from the concurrent tes- 
timony of isolated senses, the separate but concordant testimony of 
various beings is the basis for an act of judgment, out of Vvdrich rises 
the concept of independent being as a cause of subjective states. 
Essence, says Lotze, must be prior to interaction, but it is equally 
true that the being of things is only to be found in the reality of cer- 
tain relations between one and another. The quality of things by 
■''■'See for valuable critical notes on the categories, Ui.Rici, System der Logik. 
tNevertheless,he does not agree with Ulrici in taking the antinonies of con- 
sciousness as a starting point. 
