Rudolf Hermann Lotze

“ Our mind wants that not all in the world be ‘mechanism,’ but that some One be ‘freedom’ as well; that not all be shaped by external conditions, but that some One at least shape its own being and its own future for itself. ”

“ From reasons which we are to estimate later, the thought is held to be insupportable that not merely some casual structure, but even a phenomenon which, like organism, obviously expresses a most significant idea, is assumed not to develop from within itself, but to be merely the inevitable resultant of many conditions in themselves indifferent to one another, and only co-operating as a matter of fact. ”

“ The assumption that one matter fills a limited volume continuously, while being likewise divisible ad infinitum, and yet before division does not consist of parts, but is a real unity, is impossible for the same reasons. Whatever permits of separation from a totality in such manner as to be, when separated, completely independent and able to exercise forces that are qualitatively the same precisely as those of the aforesaid totality,—only diminished in proportion to its magnitude,—that must already have existed in the aforesaid totality itself as an independent element, or system of elements ”

“ We are merely denying that an empty time, existing outside of events and outside of our act of representation, is required in order -that the aforesaid one-sided dependence may take place, or appear to us, as sequence of time.
Even the whole of our life, therefore, is a whole so articulated that all the other parts seem to stand in definite intervals of nearer or more remote relation to that particular consciousness which is filled up with one part of the same whole ”

“ Matter does not, therefore, continuously fill a space; but it consists of discrete elements between which there exist intervals where nothing real is found. Still it would permit of easy demonstration that such a system of interacting particles distributed in space, on occasion of its reciprocal action with other systems similarly composed, or by means of its reactions on an external influence of any kind, would exhibit perfectly the same sensible properties which we customarily suppose should be ascribed only to a ‘matter’ that fills up its space without any break. ”

“ On considering the conception of causality, it was found that the various real beings which underlie the course of nature, when taken together, must be, either directly or indirectly, comparable; that none of them need be a Unicum whose nature were disparate from that of all the rest; but rather that all the contents which constitute the nature of ‘Being’ must form a coherent system in which each of them has its fixed place. It was further shown that all real beings ultimately can only be modifications of one single infinite Reality. ”

“ Every more circumscribed example of development according to a plan, this view regards as a single case in which, out of the general course of nature, and fully accounted for by it, single groups of its elements are arranged into a totality whose cohering unity consists only in the reciprocal actions of the combined elements themselves. ”

“ We certainly do not by any means possess an immediate intuition of infinite ‘Time,’ but merely one that is obtained by help of the intuition of space, and, at the same time, in opposition to it. That is to say: When we conceive of a line in space, the points of which all exist together in like fashion, we gain from it a complete intuitive picture applicable to the precisely opposite case of time, whose line consists of points, of which each one exists only when the other does not exist. ”

“ In order to have an intuition of the supersensible relations of the manifold in the form of space, the soul itself is in no need of space; or,—the soul can bring forth what is spatial, as the product of its own act of intuition, without its productive procedure itself requiring to be spatial. If, on the contrary, we say,—Relations of a manifold, that really have no time-form, appear in time-form, if they act upon a percipient being,—then we presuppose either, at the very least this causal action as an event elapsing in time ”

“ The bare consideration of nature and of its economic coherency would furnish absolutely no inducement to alter this view; metaphysical cosmology, therefore, concludes with it just as properly as the view itself everywhere underlies natural science considered as barely setting forth the facts.
If, nevertheless, our entire spirit is not satisfied with this view, the cause of the repugnance lies in the fact that, although in itself possible and free from contradictions, the view still appears incredible and preposterous when estimated in accordance with its significance and its value. ”

“ In accordance with the logical form of its mental representation, space is distinguished as an ‘intuition’ from the conceptions which we otherwise form of objects.
Every conception comprehends a general rule for the combination of certain marks, and requires obedience to this rule of every exemplar that is to fall under it. Such conception, however, leaves it perfectly indefinite upon how many, and upon what kind of exemplars it is itself to be stamped; nor does it establish between the particular exemplars the slightest reciprocal relation to be of necessity followed by them. ”

“ The idealistic systems, which set their heart only on the significance that the existence of every individual has for the complete expression of the one comprehensive World-Idea, arrive merely at ‘deductions of matter’;—that is to say, they show that the existence of matter is indispensable, if the aforesaid World-Idea is to attain complete expression: but they do not tell in what manner this postulate is actually fulfilled. ”

“ Now it is correct, that we, because we are once for all bound to the form of time-intuition, do always apprehend happening and causal acting as in time, and that happening without time-form is a contradiction of the usages of speech. But, on the other hand, it will be seen that the essential thought which constitutes the conception of causal action,—namely, the thought of the efficient conditioning of one thing by means of another,—does not require ‘time’ to validate it. ”

“ That is to say, even if Things are not themselves spatial, and even if no relations of space subsist between themselves, still there must be other non-spatial or intellectual relations, which can be portrayed in general by means of space-relations, and which in special furnish the reason why, whenever they are apprehended in space-form by any intuition, each thing must appear to be at a determinate point of space. ”

“ Although it is very improbable that the World should appear to other beings as non-spatial and yet intuitive in some other fashion, still the necessity of the intuition of space for every percipient being does not admit of demonstration. ”

“ Matter consists, therefore, of a multiplicity of real beings, each of which is of a super-sensible nature and unextended, and all of which, by means of influence acting at a distance, prescribe to one another the reciprocal position that belongs to each as a spatial expression for all its intellectual relations to all the rest. ”

“ Everything that happens in nature depends upon real elements which, even if they do not belong to one ‘stuff,’ nevertheless admit of being regarded as modifications of a single whole,—that is to say, as measures comparable with each other. ”

“ If the term ‘one matter’ is understood to mean that there is one actuality, from which the apparently different elements in the course of nature actually proceed, and to which they return, in such manner that this (one) ‘matter’ is the unvarying point of transition through which the creative force of the Infinite brings forth the particular elements in time ”

“ Empty time neither is, nor elapses, between events or before them; but, if the living causal action of ‘Things’ upon each other as arranged in definite one-sided relations of dependence become the object of perception for a percipient being, then in each case that which conditions must appear to precede, that which is conditioned to follow, and the total occurrence to elapse within the course of an infinite time. ”

“ Matter cannot consist of real beings separated by intervening spaces. For since these beings could not in such a case act upon each other, they could not possibly have any cohesiveness whatever. But real beings, since they are unextended, can have no contact with each other; they would, if they attempted it, all fall together in a single point, and the ‘matter’ obtain no extension. ”

“ For example, all bits of gold in the world could be regarded as locally different phenomena of a single ‘gold-substance.’ But the experience that what happens to one bit of gold is altogether a matter of indifference to another bit remote from the first, teaches us that no unity of substance belonging to all gold is assumable, in any serviceable meaning of the words ”

“ The realistic systems which seek everywhere for the causal connection of actuality, and accordingly inquire under what conditions aught arises, endures, and perishes, in their explanations arrive at special ‘constructions of matter,’—that is to say, at attempts at comprehending how materiality is constituted out of certain reciprocal effects or activities of elements that are in themselves non-material but real. ”

“ The conception of an ‘impulse’ adjusting the elements in accordance with a plan is undoubtedly permissible; but an impulse never effectuates anything unless that which it wants is, in itself, already the inevitably necessary result of the conditions present at the instant. ”

“ From our point of view such a thing is conceivable only in case the Being either has a consciousness of the final purpose, and, consequently, the idea of the purpose as a living state of this Being is the force which can give conditions to the other states of the Being, and so to its own reactions, too; or else in case the Being works unconsciously indeed, but its unconscious nature is originally constructed therefor in such a manner that the various impressions which various conditions bring to pass in it, undesignedly and necessarily combine into the totality of the development required. ”

“ Elapsing empty time, which takes the events along with itself, can, in fact, neither elapse, since no moment in it is different from another, nor take the events along, since no one of its moments has any more relation than another to any one definite event. ”

“ Finally, if what is said above is true with reference to all the determinate relations in which things appear actually to be standing at a determinate moment of time, and therefore of the space-picture that the world preserves at the aforesaid moment of time, then it is yet much more true of the universal idea of infinite empty space, which as such is merely a possibility of relations. ”

“ Accordingly, if relations of space cannot pass for inner states of ‘Things,’ but are obliged and designed merely to pass for external relations between them, then it follows that they can only exist as inner states of the spirit which is percipient of the things,—that is to say, as forms of our intuition; but they have no such existence of themselves as to make our intuition a mere means for perceiving them. ”

“ According to the ordinary view, therefore, space exists and things exist in it: according to our view, only Things exist, and between them nothing exists, but space exists in them. That is to say, to the individual being the other beings with which it stands, either immediately or mediately, in reciprocal causation, appear arranged in one space according to the kind and magnitude of the effect exercised upon this being by them,—a space which is extended merely within the individual as its intuition, and in which it assigns to itself a definite place. ”

“ All real elements can act immediately at and from any degree of remoteness; and it is just by means of these actions that they prescribe to one another the places in space at which they are to appear. ”

“ Since ‘materiality’ is, rather, simply a formal attribute that presupposes a subject conceivable of itself to which it appertains, this ‘universal matter’ also must be discriminated as a concretely determinate essence from other conceivable but not actual kinds of matter. ”

“ The existence or the elapse of an ‘empty time’ can never make any more intelligible than it would be without this, precisely how an a sets about it in order to condition or produce a b. As soon as the complete reason for b lies within a, then time can have nothing to do with making the existence of b more easy or more difficult. If, in experience, an elapse of time appears to us necessary in order that the cause a may bring forth its effect z, nevertheless time does not in such a case work favorably by means of its empty extension between a and z ”

“ The whole of the course of nature is, on the mechanical view, to be traced back with inflexible necessity to the supposition of an original position and original motion of the elements,—a position and a motion which are taken for granted as primitive and not to be deduced from anything further back;—as well as to general laws, according to which this particular result ensued from this particular beginning, while from another beginning a quite different result would have ensued. ”

“ The one infinite Reality is without media organized into a system of specifically diversified elements. But since its diversity must always admit of comparability, the diversified elements are equivalent one with another (of course, according to a diversified measure) , in relation to one and the same effect chosen for the purpose of comparison. Because they are ultimately equivalent, they always admit of being apprehended as mere modifications or functions of one and the same fundamental Essence ”