[1] The word "lottery" is directly derived from Ital. _lotteria_, cf.
Fr. _loterie_, formed from _lotto_, lot, game of chance. "Lot" is in
origin a Teutonic word, adopted into Romanic languages. In O. Eng. it
appears as _hlot_, cf. Dutch _lot_, Ger. _Loos_, Dan. _lod_, &c. The
meaning of the Teutonic root _hleut_ from which these words have
derived is unknown. Primarily "lot" meant the object, such as a disk
or counter of wood, a pebble, bean or the like, which was drawn or
cast to decide by chance, under divine guidance, various matters,
such as disputes, divisions of property, selection of officers and
frequently as a method of divination in ancient times. From this
original sense the meaning develops into that which falls to a person
by lot, chance or fate, then to any portion of land, &c., allotted to
a person, and hence, quite generally, of a quantity of anything.
LOTTI, ANTONIO (1667?-1740), Italian musical composer, was the son of
Matteo Lotti, Kapellmeister to the court of Hanover. He was born,
however, at Venice and as a pupil of Legrenzi. He entered the Doge's
chapel as a boy, and in 1689 was engaged as an alto singer, succeeding
later to the posts of deputy organist (1690), second organist (1692),
first organist (1704), and, finally, in 1736 Maestro di Cappella at St
Mark's church. He was also a composer of operas, and having attracted
the interest of the crown prince of Saxony during his visit to Venice in
1712, he was invited to Dresden, where he went in 1717. After producing
three operas there he was obliged to return to his duties at Venice in
1719. He died on the 5th of January 1740. Like many other Venetian
composers he wrote operas for Vienna, and enjoyed a considerable
reputation outside Italy. A volume of madrigals published in 1705
contains the famous _In una siepe ombrosa_, passed off by Bononcini as
his own in London. Another is quoted by Martini in his _Saggio di
Contrappunto_. Among his pupils were Alberti, Bassani, Galuppi,
Gasparini and Marcello. Burney justly praises his church music, which is
severe in style, but none the less modern in its grace and pathos. A
fine setting of the _Dies Irae_ is in the Imperial Library at Vienna,
and some of his masses have been printed in the collections of Proske
and Lück.
LOTTO, LORENZO (c. 1480-1556), Italian painter, is variously stated to
have been born at Bergamo, Venice and Treviso, between 1475 and 1480,
but a document published by Dr Bampo proves that he was born in Venice,
and it is to be gathered from his will that 1480 was probably the year
of his birth. Overshadowed by the genius of his three great
contemporaries, Titian, Giorgione and Palma, he had been comparatively
neglected by art historians until Mr Bernhard Berenson devoted to him an
"essay in constructive art criticism," which not only restores to him
his rightful position among the great masters of the Renaissance, but
also throws clear light upon the vexed question of his artistic descent.
Earlier authorities have made Lotto a pupil of Giovanni Bellini
(Morelli), of Previtali (Crowe and Cavalcaselle), of Leonardo da Vinci
(Lomazzo), whilst others discovered in his work the influences of Cima,
Carpaccio, Dürer, Palma and Francia. Mr Berenson has, however, proved
that he was the pupil of Alvise Vivarini, whose religious severity and
asceticism remained paramount in his work, even late in his life, when
he was attracted by the rich glow of Giorgione's and Titian's colour.
What distinguishes Lotto from his more famous contemporaries is his
psychological insight into character and his personal vision--his
unconventionality, which is sufficient to account for the comparative
neglect suffered by him when his art is placed beside the more typical
art of Titian and Giorgione, the supreme expression of the character of
the period.
That Lotto, who was one of the most productive painters of his time,
could work for thirty years without succumbing to the mighty influence
of Titian's sumptuous colour, is explained by the fact that during these
years he was away from Venice, as is abundantly proved by documents and
by the evidence of signed and dated works. The first of these documents,
dated 1503, proves him to have lived at Treviso at this period. His
earliest authentic pictures, Sir Martin Conway's "Danaë" (about 1498)
and the "St Jerome" of the Louvre (a similar subject is at the Madrid
Gallery ascribed to Titian), as indeed all the works executed before
1509, have unmistakable Vivarinesque traits in the treatment of the
drapery and landscape, and cool grey tonality. To this group belong the
Madonnas at Bridgewater House, Villa Borghese, Naples, and Sta Cristina
near Treviso, the Recanati altarpiece, the "Assumption of the Virgin" at
Asolo, and the portrait of a young man at Hampton Court. We find him at
Rome between 1508 and 1512, at the time Raphael was painting in the
Stanza della Signatura. A document in the Corsini library mentions that
Lotto received 100 ducats as an advance payment for fresco-work in the
upper floor of the Vatican, but there is no evidence that this work was
ever executed. In the next dated works, the "Entombment" at Jesi (1512),
and the "Transfiguration," "St James," and "St Vincent" at Recanati,
Lotto has abandoned the dryness and cool colour of his earlier style,
and adopted a fluid method and a blonde, joyful colouring. In 1513 we
find him at Bergamo, where he had entered into a contract to paint for
500 gold ducats an altarpiece for S. Stefano. The picture was only
completed in 1516, and is now at S. Bartolommeo. From the next years,
spent mostly at Bergamo, with intervals in Venice and Jesi in the
Marches, date the Dresden "Madonna," "Christ taking leave of his Mother"
at the Berlin Gallery, the "Bride and Bridegroom" at Madrid, the
National Gallery "Family Group" and portrait of the Protonothary
Giuliano, several portraits in Berlin, Milan and Vienna, numerous
altarpieces in and near Bergamo, the strangely misnamed "Triumph of
Chastity" at the Rospigliosi Palace in Rome, and the portrait of Andrea
Odoni at Hampton Court. In 1526 or 1527 Lotto returned to Venice, where
Titian ruled supreme in the world of art; and it was only natural that
the example of the great master should have fired him to emulation,
though his experiments in this direction were confined to an attempt at
rivalling the master's rich and ruddy colour-schemes. Even in the
Carmine altarpiece, the "St Nicholas of Bari," which is his nearest
approach to Titian, he retained his individualized, as opposed to
Titian's generalized, expression of emotion. But it was only a passing
phase, and he soon returned to the cooler schemes of his earlier work.
Among his chief pictures executed in Venice between 1529 and 1540 are
the "Christ and the Adulteress," now at the Louvre, the "Visitation" at
the Jesi Library, the "Crucifixion" at Monte S. Giusto, the Madonna at
the Uffizi, the "Madonna and Saints" at Cingoli, and some portraits at
the Berlin and Vienna museums, the Villa Borghese and Doria Palace in
Rome, and at Dorchester House. He is again to be found at Treviso from
1542-1545, at Ancona in 1550, the year in which he entirely lost his
voice; and in 1552 he "devoted his person and all his property to the
Holy Virgin of Loreto" and took up his abode with the monks of that
shrine. He died in 1556. A codex in his own handwriting, discovered in
the archives of Loreto, not only includes a complete statement of his
accounts from about 1539 to his death, but has a most interesting entry
from which we gather that in 1540 Lotto completed the portraits of
Martin Luther and his wife. These portraits could not have been painted
from life; they were presumably executed from some contemporary
engraving.
See _Lorenzo Lotto_, by Bernard Berenson (London, 1901).
LOTTO (Ital. for "lot"), a gambling game usually called _Keno_ in
America, played by any number of persons upon large boards or cards,
each of which is divided into three horizontal rows of nine spaces, four
spaces in each row being left blank and the other five marked with
numbers up to 90. Each card is designated by a general number. The cards
usually lie on the gambling-table, and a player may buy from the bank as
many as he cares to use, each card being registered or _pegged_ on an
exposed table as soon as bought. Ninety small ivory markers, generally
balls flattened on one side, numbered from 1 to 90, are placed in a bag
and shaken out one by one, or, more usually, in a so-called
_keno-goose_, a kind of urn with a spout through which the balls are
allowed to roll by means of a spring. When a number falls out, the
banker, or _keno-roller_, calls it out distinctly, and each player upon
whose card that number occurs places a mark over it. This is repeated
until one player has all the numbers in one row of his card covered,
upon which he calls out "Keno!" and wins all the money staked excepting
a percentage to the bank.
LOTUS, a popular name applied to several plants. The lotus fruits of the
Greeks belonged to _Zizyphus Lotus_, a bush native in south Europe with
fruits as large as sloes, containing a mealy substance which can be used
for making bread and also a fermented drink. In ancient times the fruits
were an important article of food among the poor; whence "lotophagi" or
lotus-eaters. _Zizyphus_ is a member of the natural order Rhamnaceae to
which belongs the British buckthorn. The Egyptian lotus was a
water-lily, _Nymphaea Lotus_; as also is the sacred lotus of the Hindus,
_Nelumbium speciosum_. The lotus tree, known to the Romans as the Libyan
lotus, and planted by them for shade, was probably _Celtis australis_,
the nettle-tree (q.v.), a southern European tree, a native of the elm
family, with fruits like small cherries, which are first red and then
black. _Lotus_ of botanists is a genus of the pea-family
(_Leguminosae_), containing a large number of species of herbs and
undershrubs widely distributed in the temperate regions of the old
world. It is represented in Britain by _L. corniculatus_, bird's foot
trefoil, a low-growing herb, common in pastures and waste places, with
clusters of small bright yellow pea-like flowers, which are often
streaked with crimson; the popular name is derived from the pods which
when ripe spread like the toes of a bird's foot.
LOTUS-EATERS (Gr. [Greek: Lôtophagoi]), a Libyan tribe known to the
Greeks as early as the time of Homer. Herodotus (iv. 177) describes
their country as in the Libyan district bordering on the Syrtes, and
says that a caravan route led from it to Egypt. Victor Bérard identifies
it with the modern Jerba. When Odysseus reached the country of the
Lotophagi, many of his sailors after eating the lotus lost all wish to
return home. Both Greeks and Romans used the expression "to eat the
lotus" to denote forgetfulness (cf. Tennyson's poem "The Lotus-Eaters").
There has been considerable discussion as to the identification of the
Homeric lotus. Some have held that it is a prickly shrub, Zizyphus
Lotus, which bears a sweet-tasting fruit, and still grows in the old
home of the Lotophagi. It is eaten by the natives, who also make a
kind of wine from the juice. P. Champault (_Phéniciens et Grecs en
Italie d'après l'Odyssée_, p. 400, note 2), however, maintains that
the lotus was a date; Victor Bérard (_Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée_,
1902-1903, ii. 102) is doubtful, but contends that it was certainly a
tree-fruit. If either of these be correct, then the lotus of _Od._ iv.
603-604 is quite a different plant, a kind of clover. Now Strabo
(xvii. 829a) calls the lotus [Greek: poan tina kai rhizan]. Putting
these two references together with Sulpicius Severus, _Dialogi_ i. 4.
4, R. M. Henry suggests that the Homeric lotus was really the [Greek:
poa] of Strabo, i.e. a kind of clover (_Classical Review_, December
1906, p. 435).
LOTZE, RUDOLF HERMANN (1817-1881), German philosopher, was born in
Bautzen on the 21st of May 1817, the son of a physician. He received his
education in the gymnasium of Zittau under teachers who inspired him
with an enduring love of the classical authors, as we see from his
translation of the _Antigone_ of Sophocles into Latin verse, published
when he had reached middle life. He went to the university of Leipzig as
a student of philosophy and natural sciences, but entered officially as
a student of medicine. He was then only seventeen. It appears that thus
early Lotze's studies were governed by two distinct interests. The first
was scientific, based upon mathematical and physical studies under the
guidance of E. H. Weber, W. Volckmann and G. T. Fechner. The other was
his aesthetical and artistic interest, which was developed under the
care of C. H. Weisse. To the former he owes his appreciation of exact
investigation and a complete knowledge of the aims of science, to the
latter an equal admiration for the great circle of ideas which had been
diffused by the teaching of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Each of these
influences, which early in life must have been familiar to him, tempered
and modified the other. The true method of science which he possessed
forced him to condemn as useless the entire form which Schelling's and
Hegel's expositions had adopted, especially the dialectic method of the
latter, whilst his love of art and beauty, and his appreciation of moral
purposes, revealed to him the existence of a trans-phenomenal world of
values into which no exact science could penetrate. It is evident how
this initial position at once defined to him the tasks which philosophy
had to perform. First there were the natural sciences, themselves only
just emerging from a confused conception of their true method;
especially those which studied the borderland of physical and mental
phenomena, the medical sciences; and pre-eminently that science which
has since become so popular, the science of biology.
Lotze's first essay was his dissertation _De futurae biologiae
principibus philosophicis_, with which he gained (1838) the degree of
doctor of medicine, after having only four months previously got the
degree of doctor of philosophy. Then, secondly, there arose the question
whether the methods of exact science sufficed to explain the connexion
of phenomena, or whether for the explanation of this the thinking mind
was forced to resort to some hypothesis not immediately verifiable by
observation, but dictated by higher aspirations and interests. And, if
to satisfy these we were forced to maintain the existence of a world of
moral standards, it was, thirdly, necessary to form some opinion as to
the relation of these moral standards of value to the forms and facts of
phenomenal existence. These different tasks, which philosophy had to
fulfil, mark pretty accurately the aims of Lotze's writings, and the
order in which they were published. He laid the foundation of his
philosophical system very early in his _Metaphysik_ (Leipzig, 1841) and
his _Logik_ (1843), short books published while he was still a junior
lecturer at Leipzig, from which university he migrated to Göttingen,
succeeding Herbart in the chair of philosophy. But it was only during
the last decade of his life that he ventured, with much hesitation, to
present his ideas in a systematic and final form. The two books
mentioned remained unnoticed by the reading public, and Lotze first
became known to a larger circle through a series of works which aimed at
establishing in the study of the physical and mental phenomena of the
human organism in its normal and diseased states the same general
principles which had been adopted in the investigation of inorganic
phenomena. These works were his _Allgemeine Pathologie und Therapie als
mechanische Naturwissenschaften_ (Leipzig, 1842, 2nd ed., 1848), the
articles "Lebenskraft" (1843) and "Seele und Seelenleben" (1846) in Rud.
Wagner's _Handwörterbuch der Physiologie_, his _Allgemeine Physiologie
des Körperlichen Lebens_ (Leipzig, 1851), and his _Medizinische
Psychologie oder Physiologie der Seele_ (Leipzig, 1852).
When Lotze published these works, medical science was still much under
the influence of Schelling's philosophy of nature. The mechanical laws,
to which external things were subject, were conceived as being valid
only in the inorganic world; in the organic and mental worlds these
mechanical laws were conceived as being disturbed or overridden by other
powers, such as the influence of final causes, the existence of types,
the work of vital and mental forces. This confusion Lotze, who had been
trained in the school of mathematical reasoning, tried to dispel. The
laws which govern particles of matter in the inorganic world govern them
likewise if they are joined into an organism. A phenomenon _a_, if
followed by _b_ in the one case, is followed by the same _b_ also in the
other case. Final causes, vital and mental forces, the soul itself can,
if they act at all, only act through the inexorable mechanism of natural
laws. As we therefore have only to do with the study of existing
complexes of material and spiritual phenomena, the changes in these must
be explained in science by the rule of mechanical laws, such as obtain
everywhere in the world, and only by such. One of the results of these
investigations was to extend the meaning of the word mechanism, and
comprise under it all laws which obtain in the phenomenal world, not
excepting the phenomena of life and mind. Mechanism was the unalterable
connexion of every phenomenon a with other phenomena _b_, _c_, _d_,
either as following or preceding it; mechanism was the inexorable form
into which the events of this world are cast, and by which they are
connected. The object of those writings was to establish the
all-pervading rule of mechanism. But the mechanical view of nature is
not identical with the materialistic. In the last of the above-mentioned
works the question is discussed at great length how we have to consider
mind, and the relation between mind and body; the answer is--we have to
consider mind as an immaterial principle, its action, however, on the
body and vice versa as purely mechanical, indicated by the fixed laws
of a psycho-physical mechanism. These doctrines of Lotze--though
pronounced with the distinct and reiterated reserve that they did not
contain a solution of the philosophical question regarding the nature,
origin, or deeper meaning of this all-pervading mechanism, neither an
explanation how the action of external things on each other takes place
nor yet of the relation of mind and body, that they were merely a
preliminary formula of practical scientific value, itself requiring a
deeper interpretation--these doctrines were nevertheless by many
considered to be the last word of the philosopher who, denouncing the
reveries of Schelling or the idealistic theories of Hegel, established
the science of life and mind on the same basis as that of material
things. Published as they were during the years when the modern school
of German materialism was at its height,[1] these works of Lotze were
counted among the opposition literature which destroyed the phantom of
Hegelian wisdom and vindicated the independent and self-sufficing
position of empirical philosophy. Even philosophers of the eminence of
I. H. Fichte (the younger) did not escape this misinterpretation of
Lotze's true meaning, though they had his _Metaphysik_ and _Logik_ to
refer to, though he promised in his _Allgemeine Physiologie_ (1851) to
enter in a subsequent work upon the "bounding province between
aesthetics and physiology," and though in his _Medizinische Psychologie_
he had distinctly stated that his position was neither the idealism of
Hegel nor the realism of Herbart, nor materialism, but that it was the
conviction that the essence of everything is the part it plays in the
realization of some idea which is in itself valuable, that the sense of
an all-pervading mechanism is to be sought in this, that it denotes the
ways and means by which the highest idea, which we may call the idea of
the good, has voluntarily chosen to realize itself.
The misinterpretations which he had suffered induced Lotze to publish a
small pamphlet of a polemical character (_Streitschriften_, Leipzig,
1857), in which he corrected two mistakes. The opposition which he had
made to Hegel's formalism had induced some to associate him with the
materialistic school, others to count him among the followers of
Herbart. Lotze publicly and formally denied that he belonged to the
school of Herbart, though he admitted that historically the same
doctrine which might be considered the forerunner of Herbart's teachings
might lead to his own views, viz. the monadology of Leibnitz.
When Lotze wrote these explanations, he had already given to the world
the first volume of his great work, _Mikrokosmus_ (vol. i. 1856, vol.
ii. 1858, vol. iii. 1864; 3rd ed., 1876-1880). In many passages of his
works on pathology, physiology, and psychology Lotze had distinctly
stated that the method of research which he advocated there did not give
an explanation of the phenomena of life and mind, but only the means of
observing and connecting them together; that the meaning of all
phenomena, and the reason of their peculiar connexions, was a
philosophical problem which required to be attacked from a different
point of view; and that the significance especially which lay in the
phenomena of life and mind would only unfold itself if by an exhaustive
survey of the entire life of man, individually, socially, and
historically, we gain the necessary data for deciding what meaning
attaches to the existence of this microcosm, or small world of human
life, in the macrocosm of the universe. This review, which extends, in
three volumes, over the wide field of anthropology, beginning with the
human frame, the soul, and their union in life, advancing to man, his
mind, and the course of the world, and concluding with history,
progress, and the connexion of things, ends with the same idea which was
expressed in Lotze's earliest work, his _Metaphysik_. The view peculiar
to him is reached in the end as the crowning conception towards which
all separate channels of thought have tended, and in the light of which
the life of man in nature and mind, in the individual and in society,
had been surveyed. This view can be briefly stated as follows:
Everywhere in the wide realm of observation we find three distinct
regions,--the region of facts, the region of laws and the region of
standards of value. These three regions are separate only in our
thoughts, not in reality. To comprehend the real position we are forced
to the conviction that the world of facts is the field in which, and
that laws are the means by which, those higher standards of moral and
aesthetical value are being realized; and such a union can again only
become intelligible through the idea of a personal Deity, who in the
creation and preservation of a world has voluntarily chosen certain
forms and laws, through the natural operation of which the ends of His
work are gained.
Whilst Lotze had thus in his published works closed the circle of his
thought, beginning with a conception metaphysically gained, proceeding
to an exhaustive contemplation of things in the light it afforded, and
ending with the stronger conviction of its truth which observation,
experience, and life could afford, he had all the time been lecturing on
the various branches of philosophy according to the scheme of academical
instruction transmitted from his predecessors. Nor can it be considered
anything but a gain that he was thus induced to expound his views with
regard to those topics, and in connexion with those problems, which were
the traditional forms of philosophical utterance. His lectures ranged
over a wide field: he delivered annually lectures on psychology and on
logic (the latter including a survey of the entirety of philosophical
research under the title _Encyclopädie der Philosophie_), then at longer
intervals lectures on metaphysics, philosophy of nature, philosophy of
art, philosophy of religion, rarely on history of philosophy and ethics.
In these lectures he expounded his peculiar views in a stricter form,
and during the last decade of his life he embodied the substance of
those courses in his _System der Philosophie_, of which only two volumes
have appeared (vol. i. _Logik_, 1st ed., Leipzig, 1874, 2nd ed., 1880;
vol. ii. _Metaphysik_, 1879). The third and concluding volume, which was
to treat in a more condensed form the principal problems of practical
philosophy, of philosophy of art and religion, never appeared. A small
pamphlet on psychology, containing the last form in which he had begun
to treat the subject in his lectures (abruptly terminated through his
death on the 1st of July 1881) during the summer session of 1881, has
been published by his son. Appended to this volume is a complete list of
Lotze's writings, compiled by Professor Rehnisch of Göttingen.
To understand this series of Lotze's writings, it is necessary to
begin with his definition of philosophy. This is given after his
exposition of logic has established two points, viz. the existence in
our mind of certain laws and forms according to which we connect the
material supplied to us by our senses, and, secondly, the fact that
logical thought cannot be usefully employed without the assumption of
a further set of connexions, not logically necessary, but assumed to
exist between the data of experience and observation. These connexions
of a real not formal character are handed to us by the separate
sciences and by the usage and culture of everyday life. Language has
crystallized them into certain definite notions and expressions,
without which we cannot proceed a single step, but which we have
accepted without knowing their exact meaning, much less their origin.
In consequence the special sciences and the wisdom of common life
entangle themselves easily and frequently in contradictions. A problem
of a purely formal character thus presents itself, viz. this--to try
to bring unity and harmony into the scattered thoughts of our general
culture, to trace them to their primary assumptions and follow them
into their ultimate consequences, to connect them all together, to
remodel, curtail or amplify them, so as to remove their apparent
contradictions, and to combine them in the unity of an harmonious view
of things, and especially to investigate those conceptions which form
the initial assumptions of the several sciences, and to fix the limits
of their applicability. This is the formal definition of philosophy.
Whether an harmonious conception thus gained will represent more than
an agreement among our thoughts, whether it will represent the real
connexion of things and thus possess objective not merely subjective
value, cannot be decided at the outset. It is also unwarranted to
start with the expectation that everything in the world should be
explained by one principle, and it is a needless restriction of our
means to expect unity of method. Nor are we able to start our
philosophical investigations by an inquiry into the nature of human
thought and its capacity to attain an objective knowledge, as in this
case we would be actually using that instrument the usefulness of
which we were trying to determine. The main proof of the objective
value of the view we may gain will rather lie in the degree in which
it succeeds in assigning to every element of culture its due position,
or in which it is able to appreciate and combine different and
apparently opposite tendencies and interests, in the sort of justice
with which it weighs our manifold desires and aspirations, balancing
them in due proportions, refusing to sacrifice to a one-sided
principle any truth or conviction which experience has proven to be
useful and necessary. The investigations will then naturally divide
themselves into three parts, the first of which deals with those to
our mind inevitable forms in which we are obliged to think about
things, if we think at all (metaphysics), the second being devoted to
the great region of facts, trying to apply the results of metaphysics
to these, specially the two great regions of external and mental
phenomena (cosmology and psychology), the third dealing with those
standards of value from which we pronounce our aesthetical or ethical
approval or disapproval. In each department we shall have to aim first
of all at views clear and consistent within themselves, but, secondly,
we shall in the end wish to form some general idea or to risk an
opinion how laws, facts and standards of value may be combined in one
comprehensive view. Considerations of this latter kind will naturally
present themselves in the two great departments of cosmology and
psychology, or they may be delegated to an independent research under
the name of religious philosophy. We have already mentioned the final
conception in which Lotze's speculation culminates, that of a personal
Deity, Himself the essence of all that merits existence for its own
sake, who in the creation and government of a world has voluntarily
chosen certain laws and forms through which His ends are to be
realized. We may add that according to this view nothing is real but
the living spirit of God and the world of living spirits which He has
created; the things of this world have only reality in so far as they
are the appearance of spiritual substance, which underlies everything.
It is natural that Lotze, having this great and final conception
always before him, works under its influence from the very beginning
of his speculations, permitting us, as we progress, to gain every now
and then a glimpse of that interpretation of things which to him
contains the solution of our difficulties.
The key to Lotze's theoretical philosophy lies in his metaphysics, to
the exposition of which important subject the first and last of his
larger publications have been devoted. To understand Lotze's
philosophy, a careful and repeated perusal of these works is
absolutely necessary. The object of his metaphysics is so to remodel
the current notions regarding the existence of things and their
connexions with which the usage of language supplies us as to make
them consistent and thinkable. The further assumption, that the
modified notions thus gained have an objective meaning, and that they
somehow correspond to the real order of the existing world which of
course they can never actually describe, depends upon a general
confidence which we must have in our reasoning powers, and in the
significance of a world in which we ourselves with all the necessary
courses of our thoughts have a due place assigned. The principle
therefore of these investigations is opposed to two attempts
frequently repeated in the history of philosophy, viz.: (1) the
attempt to establish general laws or forms, which the development of
things must have obeyed, or which a Creator must have followed in the
creation of a world (Hegel); and (2) the attempt to trace the genesis
of our notions and decide as to their meaning and value (modern
theories of knowledge). Neither of these attempts is practicable. The
world of many things surrounds us; our notions, by which we manage
correctly or incorrectly to describe it, are also ready made. What
remains to be done is, not to explain how such a world manages to be
what it is, nor how we came to form these notions, but merely this--to
expel from the circle and totality of our conceptions those abstract
notions which are inconsistent and jarring, or to remodel and define
them so that they may constitute a consistent and harmonious view. In
this endeavour Lotze discards as useless and untenable many favourite
conceptions of the school, many crude notions of everyday life. The
course of things and their connexion is only thinkable by the
assumption of a plurality of existences, the reality of which (as
distinguished from our knowledge of them) can be conceived only as a
multitude of relations. This quality of standing in relation to other
things is that which gives to a thing its reality. And the nature of
this reality again can neither be consistently represented as a fixed
and hard substance nor as an unalterable something, but only as a
fixed order of recurrence of continually changing events or
impressions. But, further, every attempt to think clearly what those
relations are, what we really mean, if we talk of a fixed order of
events, forces upon us the necessity of thinking also that the
different things which stand in relations or the different phases
which follow each other cannot be merely externally strung together or
moved about by some indefinable external power, in the form of some
predestination or inexorable fate. The things themselves which exist
and their changing phases must stand in some internal connexion; they
themselves must be active or passive, capable of doing or suffering.
This would lead to the view of Leibnitz, that the world consists of
monads, self-sufficient beings, leading an inner life. But this idea
involves the further conception of Leibnitz, that of a pre-established
harmony, by which the Creator has taken care to arrange the life of
each monad, so that it agrees with that of all others. This
conception, according to Lotze, is neither necessary nor thoroughly
intelligible. Why not interpret at once and render intelligible the
common conception originating in natural science, viz. that of a
system of laws which governs the many things? But, in attempting to
make this conception quite clear and thinkable, we are forced to
represent the connexion of things as a universal substance, the
essence of which we conceive as a system of laws which underlies
everything and in its own self connects everything, but imperceptible,
and known to us merely through the impressions it produces on us,
which we call things. A final reflection then teaches us that the
nature of this universal and all-pervading substance can only be
imagined by us as something analogous to our own mental life, where
alone we experience the unity of a substance (which we call self)
preserved in the multitude of its (mental) states. It also becomes
clear that only where such mental life really appears need we assign
an independent existence, but that the purposes of everyday life as
well as those of science are equally served if we deprive the material
things outside of us of an independence, and assign to them merely a
connected existence through the universal substance by the action of
which alone they can appear to us.
The universal substance, which we may call the absolute, is at this
stage of our investigations not endowed with the attributes of a
personal Deity, and it will remain to be seen by further analysis in
how far we are able--without contradiction--to identify it with the
object of religious veneration, in how far that which to metaphysics
is merely a postulate can be gradually brought nearer to us and become
a living power. Much in this direction is said by Lotze in various
passages of his writings; anything complete, however, on the subject
is wanting. Nor would it seem as if it could be the intention of the
author to do much more than point out the lines on which the further
treatment of the subject should advance. The actual result of his
personal inquiries, the great idea which lies at the foundation of his
philosophy, we know. It may be safely stated that Lotze would allow
much latitude to individual convictions, as indeed it is evident that
the empty notion of an absolute can only become living and significant
to us in the same degree as experience and thought have taught us to
realize the seriousness of life, the significance of creation, the
value of the beautiful and the good, and the supreme worth of personal
holiness. To endow the universal substance with moral attributes, to
maintain that it is more than the metaphysical ground of everything,
to say it is the perfect realization of the holy, the beautiful and
the good, can only have a meaning for him who feels within himself
what real not imaginary values are clothed in those expressions.
We have still to mention that aesthetics formed a principal and
favourite study of Lotze's, and that he has treated this subject also
in the light of the leading ideas of his philosophy. See his essays
_Ueber den Begriff der Schönheit_ (Göttingen, 1845) and _Ueber
Bedingungen der Kunstschönheit_, ibid. (1847); and especially his
_Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland_ (Munich, 1868).
Lotze's historical position is of much interest. Though he disclaims
being a follower of Herbart, his formal definition of philosophy and
his conception of the object of metaphysics are similar to those of
Herbart, who defines philosophy as an attempt to remodel the notions
given by experience. In this endeavour he forms with Herbart an
opposition to the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, which
aimed at objective and absolute knowledge, and also to the criticism
of Kant, which aimed at determining the validity of all human
knowledge. But this formal agreement includes material differences,
and the spirit which breathes in Lotze's writings is more akin to the
objects and aspirations of the idealistic school than to the cold
formalism of Herbart. What, however, with the idealists was an object
of thought alone, the absolute, is to Lotze only inadequately
definable in rigorous philosophical language; the aspirations of the
human heart, the contents of our feelings and desires, the aims of art
and the tenets of religious faith must be grasped in order to fill the
empty idea of the absolute with meaning. These manifestations of the
divine spirit again cannot be traced and understood by reducing (as
Hegel did) the growth of the human mind in the individual, in society
and in history to the monotonous rhythm of a speculative schematism;
the essence and worth which is in them reveals itself only to the
student of detail, for reality is larger and wider than philosophy;
the problem, "how the one can be many," is only solved for us in the
numberless examples in life and experience which surround us, for
which we must retain a lifelong interest and which constitute the true
field of all useful human work. This conviction of the emptiness of
terms and abstract notions, and of the fulness of individual life, has
enabled Lotze to combine in his writings the two courses into which
German philosophical thought had been moving since the death of its
great founder, Leibnitz. We may define these courses by the terms
esoteric and exoteric--the former the philosophy of the school,
cultivated principally at the universities, trying to systematize
everything and reduce all our knowledge to an intelligible principle,
losing in this attempt the deeper meaning of Leibnitz's philosophy;
the latter the unsystematized philosophy of general culture which we
find in the work of the great writers of the classical period,
Lessing, Winkelmann, Goethe, Schiller and Herder, all of whom
expressed in some degree their indebtedness to Leibnitz. Lotze can be
said to have brought philosophy out of the lecture-room into the
market-place of life. By understanding and combining what was great
and valuable in those divided and scattered endeavours, he became the
true successor of Leibnitz.
The age in which Lotze lived and wrote in Germany was not one
peculiarly fitted to appreciate the position he took up. Frequently
misunderstood, yet rarely criticized, he was nevertheless greatly
admired, listened to by devoted hearers and read by an increasing
circle. But this circle never attained to the unity of a philosophical
school. The real meaning of Lotze's teaching is reached only by
patient study, and those who in a larger or narrower sense call
themselves his followers will probably feel themselves indebted to him
more for the general direction he has given to their thoughts, for the
tone he has imparted to their inner life, for the seriousness with
which he has taught them to consider even small affairs and practical
duties, and for the indestructible confidence with which his
philosophy permits them to disregard the materialism of science, the
scepticism of shallow culture, the disquieting results of
philosophical and historical criticism.
See E. Pfleiderer, _Lotze's philosophische Weltanschauung nach ihren
Grundzügen_ (Berlin, 1882; 2nd ed., 1884); E. von Hartmann, _Lotze's
Philosophie_ (Leipzig, 1888); O. Caspari, _H. Lotze in seiner Stellung
zu der durch Kant begründeten neuesten Geschichte der Philosophie_
(Breslau, 1883; 2nd ed., 1894); R. Falckenberg, _Hermann Lotze_
(Stuttgart, 1901); Henry Jones, _A Critical Account of the Philosophy
of Lotze_ (Glasgow, 1895); Paul Lange, _Die Lehre vom Instincte bei
Lotze und Darwin_ (Berlin, 1896); A. Lichtenstein, _Lotze und Wundt_
(Bern, 1900). (J. T. M.; H. St.)