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IV

LOTZE'S MONISM[1]

ARGUMENT

Lotze's proof of Monism fails because (1) be was not entitled to postulate an underlying unity of things; (2) his argument for it is unsound and contradictory; (3) it has no scientific value, nor (4) can it be equated with God; nor (5), even when it has been, does it contribute anything to religious philosophy. (1) A Unity of the Universe or Absolute, on Lotze's own showing, is not needed to explain the interaction of things, and in its sole tenable form is insufficient to refute Pluralism. Lotze's own view of Substance refutes his Absolute. (2) Lotze not entitled to bypostasise his unity, nor is its immanent causality more intelligible than the transeunt causality of things. The argument from commensurability invalid. Can commensurability be conceived as a fortuitous growth? (3) The Absolute guarantees neither causality, nor orderly succession, nor change, nor rationality, nor the existence of spiritual beings. (4) Its identification with God assumed and not proved, and really impossible. (5) It aggravates the problem of Freedom, Change, and Evil. A real 'God' must be a moral being and provable a posteriori from the facts of our actual world. All the a priori proofs worthless because too wide.

Lotze's reputation as a sound and cautious thinker deservedly stands so high that any attempt to question the cogency of his argument is naturally received with suspicion, and needs to be fully and clearly established before its conclusions can win acceptance. As, however, no true view is in the long run strengthened by stifling the objections against it, and no false view can in the end be considered beneficial to the highest interests of mankind without thereby implying a profoundly pessimistic divorce between Truth and Goodness, I will venture to set forth my reasons for denying the success of Lotze's proof of Monism. And while I trust that my criticism

  1. ↑ Reprinted (with some additions) from The Philosophical Review of May 1896.
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