a description of what actually occurs there can be no doubt. But there is as little doubt that it is thoroughly inconsistent with Lotze's supposition that the material or data of thought is precisely the same as the antecedents of thought; or that ideas, conceptions, are purely mental somewhats brought to bear, as the sole essential characteristics of thought, extraneously upon a material provided ready-made. It means but one thing: The maintenance of unity and wholeness in experience through conflicting contents occurs by means of a strictly correspondent setting apart of fact to be accurately described and properly related, and meaning to be adequately construed and properly referred. The datum is given in the thought-situation, and to further qualification of ideas or meanings. But even in this aspect it presents a problem. To find out what is given is an inquiry which taxes reflection to the uttermost. Every important advance in scientific method means better agencies, more skilled technique for simply detaching and describing what is barely there, or given. To be able to find out what can safely be taken as there, as given in any particular inquiry, and hence be taken as material for orderly and verifiable thinking, for fruitful hypothesis-making, for entertaining of explanatory and interpretative ideas, is one phase of the effort of systematic scientific inquiry. It marks its inductive phase. To take what is given in the thought-situation, for the sake of accomplishing the aim of thought (along with a correlative discrimination of ideas or meanings), as if it were given absolutely, or apart from a particular historic situs and context, is the fallacy of empiricism as a logical theory. To regard the thought-forms of conception, judgment, and inference as qualifications of "pure thought, apart from any difference in objects," instead of as successive dispositions in the progressive organization of the material (or objects) is the fallacy of rationalism. Lotze attempts to combine the two, thinking thereby to correct each by the other.
Lotze recognizes the futility of thought if the sense-data are final, if they alone are real, the truly existent, self-justificatory and valid. He sees that, if the empiricist were right in his assumption as to the real worth of the given data, thinking would be a ridiculous pretender, either toilfully and poorly doing over again what needs no doing, or making a wilful departure from truth. He realizes that thought really is evoked because it is needed, and that it has a work to do which is not merely formal, but which effects a modification of the subject-matter of experience. Consequently he assumes a thought-in-itself, with certain forms and modes of action of its own, a realm of meaning possessed of a directive and normative worth of its own—the root-fallacy of rationalism. His attempted compromise between the two turns out to be based on the assumption of the indefensible ideas of both—the notion of an independent matter of thought, on one side, and of an independent worth or value of thought-forms, on the other.
This pointing out of inconsistencies becomes stale and unprofitable save as we bring them back into connection with their root-origin—the erection of distinctions that are genetic and historic, and working or instrumental divisions of labor, into rigid and ready-made differences of structural reality. Lotze clearly recognizes that thought's nature is dependent upon its aim, its aim upon its problem, and this upon the situation in which it finds its incentive and excuse. Its work is cut out for it. It does not what it would, but what it must. As Lotze puts it, "Logic has to do with thought, not as it would be under hypothetical conditions, but as it is" (Vol. I, p. 33), and this statement is made in explicit combination with statements to the effect that the peculiarity of the material of thought conditions its activity. Similarly he says in a passage already referred to: "The possibility and the success of thought's production in general depends upon this original constitution and organization of the whole world of ideas, a constitution which, though not necessary in thought, is all the more necessary to make thought possible."[28]
As we have seen, the essential nature of conception, judgment, and inference is dependent upon peculiarities of the propounded material, they being forms dependent for their significance upon the stage of organization in which they begin.
From this only one conclusion is suggested. If thought's nature is dependent upon its actual conditions and circumstances, the primary logical problem is to study thought-in-its-conditioning; it is to detect the crisis within which thought and its subject-matter present themselves in their mutual distinction and cross-reference. But Lotze is so thoroughly committed to a ready-made antecedent of some sort, that this genetic consideration is of no account to him. The historic method is a mere matter of psychology, and has no logical worth (Vol. I, p. 2). We must presuppose a psychological mechanism and psychological material, but logic is concerned not with origin or history, but with authority, worth, value (Vol. I, p. 10). Again: "Logic is not concerned with the manner in which the elements utilized by thought come into existence, but their value after they have somehow come into existence, for the carrying out of intellectual operations" (Vol. I, p. 34). And finally: "I have maintained throughout my work that logic cannot derive any serious advantage from a discussion of the conditions under which thought as a psychological process comes about. The significance of logical forms ... is to be found in the utterances of thought, the laws which it imposes, after or during the act of thinking, not in the conditions which lie back of and which produce thought."[29]
Lotze, in truth, represents a halting-stage in the evolution of logical theory. He is too far along to be contented with the reiteration of the purely formal distinctions of a merely formal thought-by-itself. He recognizes that thought as formal is the form of some matter, and has its worth only as organizing that matter to meet the ideal demands of reason; and that "reason" is in truth only an ideal systematization of the matter or content. Consequently he has to open the door to admit "psychical processes" which furnish this material. Having let in the material, he is bound to shut the door again in the face of the processes from which the material proceeded—to dismiss them as impertinent intruders. If thought gets its data in such a surreptitious manner, there is no occasion for wonder that the legitimacy of its dealings with the material remains an open question. Logical theory, like every branch of the philosophic disciplines, waits upon a surrender of the obstinate conviction that, while the work and aim of thought is conditioned by the material supplied to it, yet the worth of its performances is something to be passed upon in complete abstraction from conditions of origin and development.
IV
THOUGHT AND ITS SUBJECT-MATTER: THE CONTENT AND
OBJECT OF THOUGHT
In the foregoing discussion, particularly in the last chapter, we were led repeatedly to recognize that thought has its own content. At times Lotze gives way to the tendency to define thought entirely in terms of modes and forms of activity which are exercised by it upon a strictly foreign material. But two motives continually push him in the other direction. (1) Thought has a distinctive work to do, one which involves a qualitative transformation of (at least) the relationships of the presented matter; as fast as it accomplishes this work, the subject-matter becomes somehow thought's own. As we have just seen, the data are progressively organized to meet thought's ideal of a complete whole, with its members interconnected according to a determining principle. Such progressive organization throws backward doubt upon the assumption of the original total irrelevancy of the data and thought-form to each other. (2) A like motive operates from the side of the subject-matter. As merely foreign and external, it is too heterogeneous to lend itself to thought's exercise and influence. The idea, as we saw in the first chapter, is the convenient medium through which Lotze passes from the purely heterogeneous psychical impression or event, which is totally irrelevant to thought's purpose and working, over to a state of affairs which can reward thought. Idea as meaning forms the bridge from the brute factuality of the psychical impression over to the coherent value of thought's own content.
We have, in this chapter, to consider
