LOTZE'S "MICROCOSMOS."*
THE difficult work undertaken by Miss Hamilton and Miss Jones has been carefully and competently done. Lotze's work abounds in technical terms, both scientific and philosophical, and is full of subtile distinctions and close reasoning. It was thus no easy task which fell to the translators. They have succeeded in a remarkable manner. We may read Lotze in English, and we are not constrained, as in some instances, to have recourse to the German to find the meaning of the English translation. The translation is worthy to take its place beside the translation of Lotze's System if Philosophy, already pub- lished by the Clarendon Press. Higher praise than this it is not in our power to give.
The appearance of the Microcosmos in English is exceedingly opportune at the present time. It is fitted to enrich and deepen our English philosophy. It lays stress on many topics which our English writers frequently ignore, and gives only a sub- ordinate place to others which are made prominent by English thinkers. We might compare his system, as set forth in the lificrocosmus, with the system of Mr. Herbert Spencer. The comparison would not be to the advantage of the English thinker. Mr. Spencer seeks to deduce all the phenomena of the universe from the single assumption of the persistence of force. Lotze essays the humbler task of seeking " to investigate and ascertain the entire significance of human existence from the combined consideration of the phenomena of individual life, and of the history of the civilisation of our race." Mr. Spencer is constrained to show how the manifold qualities of matter have been evolved from the persistence of force; how life evolves itself from non-living matter; how moral character arose from the non-moral; and how spiritual life, with its categories of freedom, foresight, and self-determination, is a result of the persistence of force. Such a deduction could be effected only by making life, morality, and freedom change their meaning, and of making consciousness to be a mere powerless accompaniment of physical changes. We find in Lotze a very different mode of treatment, and a very different result. To him the sufficient ground of all being and all action is the idea of the Good. And the explanation of the world is found in Ethics. His system is teleological, and the universe moves on to the fulfilment of a purpose. He does not deny the existence or the rule of law, or the universal extent of mechanism in the universe. He affirms that mechanism is absolutely universal in extent, and at the same time affirms that the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world is of quite subordinate significance. He does not think that the work of philosophy is accomplished when it has ascertained the mechanism of matter, the mechanism of the organism, the mechanism of mind, and how these are inter- related in the great mechanism of the universe. When this is accomplished, the proper task of philosophy is only begun. The next question is,—What is the end for which mechanism exists P And the answer of Lotze is,— It exists for the realisation of moral worth in the uni- verse ; and by moral worth he means not merely conduct, but character. He recognises ideal, aesthetic, and moral states which require to be realised. Lotze, unlike Spencer, does not think that mechanism explains itself; nor does he think that a history of the order of events in the universe is philosophy. He thinks that one .particular universe exists, because in its facts and by its laws those standards of moral and spiritual
• Microcosmus: an Essay concerning Man and his Relation to the World. By Hermann Lotze. Translated from the German by Elisabeth Hamilton and E. E. Constance Jones. 2 vols. Edinburgh : T. and T. Clark.
worth are being realised which the Maker of the universe has had in view.
It is obvious that Lotze is free to recognise elements the recognition of which would be destructive to such a philosophy as that of Mr. Spencer. He has no difficulty in recognising a permanent self and the unity of self-consciousness as presup- positions of a true philosophy and a rational explanation of the world of man. It is not necessary for him to dis- integrate the self, and to resolve it into a series of states of consciousness. His scheme of thought makes room for necessity ; but it also makes room for freedom, and he is able to show that the supposed antagonism between the con- ception of nature which physical science demands, and that demanded by art, morality, and religion, rests on a misunder- standing. To indicate the grounds of this misunderstanding, and how it is obviated by Lotze, would be to give the contents of the Microcosmos and also of his System of Philosophy. This for us is obviously an impossible task. He refuses to see in mechanism anything more than the "form of procedure which is given by the highest reality to the living development of its content, which content can never be exhaustively expressed by this form alone." In other words, mechanism always implies something beyond itself, and the philosophy which is content with the expression of mechanical relations has not arrived at the stage of being rational. This charge may be justly brought both against Materialism and Idealism. It is equally irrational to seek for the source from which all else proceeds, in soulless atoms, blind forces, and mathematical laws of action, or to seek it in necessary notions of any kind, in relative or absolute ideas, and the jugglery of their dialectical movements ; such schemes make Nature and history unreal. For Lotze " the true reality that is and ought to be, is not matter and still less idea, but is the living personal spirit of God and the world of personal spirits which He has created."
We are unable to indicate the steps of the argument by which he arrives at this conclusion. We may, however, call attention to the last three books in particular. The general titles of these are " History," " Progress," " The Unity of Things." At every
point of the discussion on history we are reminded of Buckle's 4. History of Civilisation ;" and yet Buckle is never mentioned,
though the foundation ou which he builds is upset, and the assumptions which he makes are continually shown to be invalid. Take the following about statistics :—
" If (as has been done) we regard the commission of a certain number of offeuces as an inevitable necessity imposed upon society, it does not help us at all to add that this necessity only necessitates the actions, but does not predetermine the agents. If human freedom cannot get rid of the sum-total of offences, the fact that the particular agents are not predetermined does not leave individuals free, the only thing that still remains doubtful is—Whose unfreedom will be taken ad- vantage of next ? It has been said that if an insect were to creep over any part of the circumference of a circle drawn with chalk, it would see all round it nothing but irregularly distributed molecules of chalk, though for an eye that took all there in at once, from some distance, they would be arranged in the regular definite order of a circle. If these dots were beings endowed with souls, it might be imagined that taken separately they have scope for free choice of their position in the circle, while taken altogether they were bound to contribute to the formation of a predetermined outline. We reply that if an orderly arrangement of many elements actually exists (for the circle has been drawn), it is indeed easily intelligible that this arrangement can only fully be taken in from particular points of view. But the unorder of the elements, when looked at from other points of view, is not by any weans the same thing as the freedom of those elements. All these dots of c balk are perfectly fixed in such relations as are necessary for the structure of the whole ; they all lie iu a narrow, ling shaped zone, con- fined both internally and externally by a boundary-line which has no breadth. How they are grouped within this zone is, as regards the form of the whole, to a certain extent indifferent, and it is just to the extent of this indifference that they are indeterminate. Now, if the dots are living beings, this comparison would only teach the simple truth that they had freedom of action in those directions in which nothing bad been fixed by general laws ; thus, if it chanced that such a law required in any society a certain number of thefts, the agents would be free, not with regard to their thievish resolutions, but with regard to whether, for instance, their thievish exploits should be accom- plished on horseback or on foot." (Vol. II., pp. 199.200.) This is a specimen of the manner in which Lotze disposes of the arguments which have been so often drawn from statistical
observations. We call attention to the thoughtful review of the history of the world which closes the seventh book, and to the discussions on truth and science, work and happiness, beauty and art, the religious life, and political life and society, which make up the eighth book. This book might be well called " A Statesman's Manual."
The only chapter in the last book which we notice is that on the " Personality of God," and we refer to it mainly because of the importance of the question. It is well known that modern speculation has avoided the discussion of this question. In Germany, since the time of Fichte, personality has been re- garded as a limitation, and to ascribe it to infinite spirit is looked on as a degradation of that spirit. The Religions- Pliilosophie has stripped the absolute spirit of the attributes of personality, self-consciousness, consciousness. We refer to such works as Biedermanu's Christliche Dogmatik, Pfleiderer's Religions-Philosopleie, and Hartmann's Die Religion des Geistes We take these works, partly because of the eminence of the writers, and partly because, widely as they differ on other points, they are in agreement here. Personality, they think, con- tradicts the absoluteness of God ; nor is the case different among ourselves. ' Tbeologians like Mansel, philosophers like Spencer and Graham, repeat the statement, and crowds of inferior writers seem to regard it as an axiom, as something which has passed beyond the pale of argument. Lotze has reopened the question, has argued it afresh, in the full know- ledge of all that has been written on it, and has given good reasons for his belief that personality, instead of being a degradation of the conception of the absolute, is an essential element of that conception :- " The course of development of philosophic thought has put us who live in this age in the position of being obliged to show that the conditions of pc rsonality which we meet with in finite things are nor lacking to the Infinite; whereas the natural concatenation of the matter under discussion would lead us to show that of the full per- sonality which is possible only for the Infinite, a feeble reflection is given also to the finite ; for the characteristics peculiar to the finite are not producing conditions of self.existence, but obstacles to its unconditioned development, although we are accustomed, unjustifiably, to deduce from these characteristics its capacity of personal exist- ence. The finite being always works with powers with which it did not endow itself, and according to laws which it did not establish,— that is, it works by means of a mental organisation, which is realised, not only in it, but also in innumerable similar beings. Hence, in n fleet- ing on self, it may easily seem as though there were in itself some obscure and unknown substance—something which is in the Ego though it is not the Ego itself, and to which, as to its subject, the whole per- sonal development is attached ; and hence there arise the questions, never to be quite silenced,—What are we ourselves ? What is our soul ? What is our self, that obscure being incomprehensible to our- selves, that stirs in our feelings and our passions, and never rises into complete self. consciousness ? The fact that these questions can arise shows how far personality is from being developed in us to the extent which its notion admits and requires. It can be perfect only in the Infinite Being which, in surveying all its conditions or actions, never finds any content of that which it suffers, or any law of it working, the meaning and origin of which are not transparently plain to it and
capable of being explained by reference to its own nature In point of fact, we have little gronnd for speaking of the personality of finite beings ; it is an ideal, which, like all that is ideal, belongs un- conditionally only to the Infinite, but, like all that is good, appertains to us only conditionally, and hence imperfectly."
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