BULLETIN OF DENISON UNIVERSITY. 
I4I 
which they reveal themselves is due to change. The basis of his 
whole idea of essence is found in the statement, long since published, 
that '‘things do not exist by virtue of a substance contained in them, 
but that their existence consists in the power to produce a given ap- 
pearance.” This, in point of fact, is equivalent to identifying being 
with energy. Reality is another name for behavior. Such are some 
of the various ways of stating the same idea. • 
If being consists in activity, the being of two things in one uni- 
verse would imply interaction — space is but another name for variety 
in the modes of this interaction. Our minds compel us to think of 
energy as a resident in substance. This is a necessary postulate of our 
minds, the correctness' of which it is idle to discuss. The power of ac- 
tion and reaction resides in one infinite substance. All the elements 
of nature are immanent in this Absolute and the gradations of their ex- 
istence depend on the intensity of the portion of the absolute within 
them. 
An absolutely inactive soul would thus be a nonexistent souk 
Immortality becomes a mere potentiality or, as the author himself sug- 
gests, a melody with pauses — every lifetime of this soul is a deed of 
the primal external force.* 
There are several points in the conclusion reached which require 
interpretation, and some which seem neither to grow out of the premises 
nor to correspond with the positions elsewhere taken. In fact, in ap- 
plying the system, Lotze seems at times to lean to the very verge of a 
mechanical construction which regards the soul as a condition, and then 
to fling himself to the other limit of regarding it as a self-centred being 
with unconditioned spontaneity. 
Let us construe the problem of being on the basis suggested by 
Lotze, but following a slightly different path and remembering that 
the ultimate criticism of a system must be on the basis of its adapta- 
tion to the needs and postulates of the thinking subject. If we cannot, 
as Lotze claims, predicate from what ought to be what is, yet it will 
be generally admitted that if our subjective standards of reality fail, 
there is to us an end of philosophy. 
Philosophy has been defined as world-wisdom, but it would be 
more unambiguous to define it as self-wisdom. “Self” is the necessary 
postulate and foundation of all knowledge. (Though we may agree with 
Biran that self reveals itself and the non-ego simultaneously in a sense 
of effort and its occasion.) This is the thinking object-subject, and 
knowledge of it is immediate and constitutes consciousness. Con- 
■'=''As regards the doctrine of being, many of Lotze’s statements were antici- 
pated by Cousin and (more correctly interpreted) by Maine de Biran. CEuvres 
Philosophiques. Paris, 1841. It is especially in reference to the human will that 
Biran becomes explicit on this head. “Effort made by the will and directly per- 
ceived constitutes the individuality, the ego, the primary fact of the inner sense.” 
The idea of force is the corrolary to that of effort. It seems to us that this forms a 
valuable supplement to Lotze’s idea. 
