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A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Lotze, the Doctrine of Thought

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A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Lotze, the Doctrine of Thought 3 1822 027054949 Is.:MjS*: ?'). '-.:'^" Br, :V, „:C'; .1'%; •; •) ."'V-A'" "^ / N ^ LIBRARY ^ UMVERSITY OF . SAN DIEGO , ^¥^,iru^^A<^C >^ . .Y- p.F AU FOR Nl A, SAN DIEGO UN ly E RSIT P ^ ^ Y , „, llill ililin III liliiii 111 3 1822 02705 4949 THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE THE DOCTRINE OF THOUGHT PUBLISHtD BY JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW, publishers to the elntbersit;). MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK. London, • • • Simpkin, Hamilton and Co. Cambridge, • - J\Iacmiiian and Solves. Edinburgh, • • Dougias and Foulis. MDCCCXCV. A CRITICAL ACCOUNT OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOTZE THE DOCTRIXE OF THOUGHT BV HENRY JONES, M.A. PROFESSOR OK MORAL PHILOSOPHY ,1N THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW AfTHOR OF "browning AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHER GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS J3iiblishcrs to the clnitiErsitg 1895 All rights reserved IS DEDICATED BY ONE OF HIS PUPILS TO THE MEMORY OF ^ ©reat teacher JOHN NICHOL PREFACE In this volume I attempt to give a critical account of Lotze's exposition of the nature of thought. That exposition forms, for Lotze, a part of a larger undertaking. Before he could proceed to his main endeavour, and give a metaphysical account of the nature of Reality, it seemed to him necessary to clear the ground of false pretensions set up for thought, partly by the scientific men of his day but mainly by Hegel and his followers. For these writers, as he understood them, had identified thought with reality, and converted the rich and living world of concrete facts into a fixed system of abstract categories. Lotze, therefore, subjects thought to a most search- ing analysis, with a view of discovering what in reality is its nature and what, if any, are the limits of its powers. He finds, in the first place, that thought is not an ontological principle. It does not constitute reality, but represents it—more or less inaccurately. Thought mirrors the world of being, produces an imafje or ideal reflection of it in man's conscious- viii PREFACE ness. That ideal representation of reality we call truth ; but the world of truth, though it may- correspond to the real universe, does not constitute it or any part of it. Thought is thus simply a function of man's intelligence. In the second place, it is only one function amongst several others. There is more in mind than thought, and the processes of thinking do not exhaust our intelligent activities. Besides thinking, there are feeling and volition, elements of mind neither less original nor less essential than thought. Nor are the processes of sensation and perception and imagination to be identified with thought without inaccuracy and confusion. For these deal with the individual and the concrete, while thought is exclusively occupied with what is universal and abstract. Thought conceives, judges, and reasons, and besides this it does nothing further ; and the conceptions, judgments, and reasonings which it produces are only relations between the phenomena of mind. In the third place, these functions which are allowed to remain for thought, it performs only with the help of the other intelligent powers which we have named, and upon which thought is entirely dependent. Some of these powers, such as sen- sation and perception, furnish thought with its " material or content ; and others, such as faith," or "the feeling which is appreciative of worth," provide it with its ideal, its impulse, and its criterion, and PREFACE ix they give the only guarantee of the validity of its conclusions. When thus provided with the material on which it has to operate, and with the ideal which it has to realize, thought can rearrange the given data in accordance with general laws, grouping the phenomena of experience in classes, and connecting them in an order of sequence or simultaneity which is necessary. But its function is wholly and ex- clusively formal ; all that it does is to rearrange, substituting a rational, or ideally necessary, for a contingent connection between mental phenomena. In the fourth place, the systematic world thus created by thought from the data supplied to it, is purely ideal. It is a world of ideas, and not a world of things. There are no things called classes in the outer world of reality; there are none which can be called subjects, and none which can be called predicates, and none which correspond to the copula ; nor are reasonings which connect ideas to be confused with causes which connect real objects. The products of thought are not even similar to anything which exists in the sphere of reality. Nor are real things in any way responsible for them, for they take no part in their creation. Things do not conceive, nor enter into classes, nor range themselves as subjects and predicates, premisses and conclusions. These arrangements are mere products of thought, and they constitute a world of their own which is at no point in contact with that real world which the}- in some way represent. X PREFACE In the last place, the results of thought would not be recognized even as representing reality were thought the only intelligent power w^hich man can exercise. For the knowledge tJiat things are is due to other mental functions ; furnished with the facts, or intelligible data, thought may proceed to show zvJiat they are, to reveal their meaning or ideal significance. But the meaning of a thing is never that which it is, but only that which it appears to be when translated out of the sphere of reality into that of ideality. And even that meaning which thought extracts is no true or direct representation of objects as they really are. For thought is not immediate, but discursive and indirect. It never reveals what an object is in and of itself, but it shows whether it is like or unlike, equal or unequal to, or otherwise related to other objects, which, in turn, are just as little apprehended in themselves, or as they are. The core of reality in the individual thing entirely escapes the grasp of thought. An in- tuitive or perceptive intelligence might give us that inner core in things, and ri'-present that impervious personality which constitutes the inner essence of intelligent beings. But our intelligence is not in- tuitive; it is discursive or reflective, condemned to creep from one fact to another, instituting relations between them, but absolutely incapable of seizing the real being of any one of them. Thought is not, therefore, constitutive even of intelligence as such. It is rather an indirect and devious process, of PREFACE xi which man is obHi^ed to avail himself, in order to make up for the absence of an adequate perceptive intuition with which, for some unknowable reason, man is not endowed. Thought is, therefore, a symbol of man's mental incompetence, as well as his only means of acquiring such knowledge as is possible for him. Now, if this view of thought be true, conse- quences of the most important kind follow from it. In the first place, the power of that idealistic reconstruction of belief which has so strongly influenced the modern mind is entirely broken. Thought, instead of being the substance of things seen, and the principle which lives and moves in all objects of all intelligence, is only a part, and a comparatively insignificant and dependent part, of man's mental equipment. Hence the work of meta- physics must be done over again from the begin- ning. Philosophers must seek some other ontological principle, more adequate than thought to the being and to the explanation of the exhaustless and ever-changing content of the real world. And, in the second place, the theologians who had all along striven against the reduction of God, the soul of man, and the world into logical processes of thought and mere pulsations of an impersonal reason, may now take new heart. For, side by side with, nay, dominant over, the merely formal and systematiz- ing thought, there is room and need for that intuitive perception, that immediate consciousness. xii PREFACE which alone makes us aware of reahty—supersen- suoLis no less than sensuous. The accent and emphasis must now fall, especially in spiritual matters, not upon the power which rearranges the content of our experience and can do nothing more, but on those activities which supply us with that content. The experience itself is more vital and valuable than any exposition of it which thought can afterwards give. Hence, for those thinkers who have accepted sivipliciter the results of Lotze's exposition, thought is, comparatively speaking, of little importance. And we have—in Germany only as yet —a new theology which trusts the heart against the head, and which, having removed the data of the religious life from the sphere of a thought that is only formal, can regard its operations with complete indifference. Reason has nothing to do with religion, though it may have with the theology which explains it. But Lotze's investigation of thought has had other and more valuable consequences. It has led modern writers to investigate the nature of thought for themselves, with the result that, particularly in this country, there has been a remarkable develop- ment of logical theory on Lotze's own lines. I refer more specially to the logical works of Mr. Bradley and Mr. Bosanquct, to whom I express with great pleasure deep obligations. This develop- ment of Lotze's position seems to me to issue in its refutation ; and there are indications that the PREFACE xiii main contribution of Lotzc to philosophic thought, the only ultimate contribution, consists in deepen- ing that Idealism which he sought to overthrow.
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