Metaphysic, in Three Books: Ontology, Cosmology, and Psychology

Hermann Lotze

Translated by Bernard Bosanquet

13 chapters · about 10 h

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The opening

INTRODUCTION.

ON THE CONNEXION OF THINGS.

I. Real is a terai which we apply to things that aie in oppositiotK to those that are not; to events that happen in distinction from those that do not happen; to actually existing relations in contrast with those that do not exist To this usage of speech I have already had occasion to appeal. I recall it now in order to give a summary indication of the object; of the lollowing enquiries. It is not the World of the ihinkable, with the inexliausdblc multiplicity of its inner relations—relations which are eternally valid — that here occupies us. Our considerations are expressly directed to this other region, of which the less palpable connexion with that realm of ideas, ever since the attention of Plato was first fastened upon it, has remained the constantly recurring question of Philosophy. It is a region that has been described in opposite terms. It has been called a world of appearance, of mere phenomena — and that in a depreciatory sense — ^by men who contrasted the variable multiplicity of its contents with the imperturbable repose and clearness of the world of ideas. To others it presented itself as the true reality. In its unfailing movement, and in the innumerable activities pervading it, they deemed themselves to have a more valuable possession than could be found in the solemn shadow-land of unchangeable ideas. This diversity of appellation rests on a deep antithesis of conception, which will attract our notice throughout all philosophy. My only reason for mentioning it here is that the two views, while wholly different in their estimates of value, serve equally to bring to h”ght the centre round which metaphysiml cncjuiries, so far as their essence is concerned, will always move; i. e, the fact of change. While predicable only by metaphor of anything that is merely object of thought, change completely dominates the whole range of reality. Its various forms — ^becoming and decay, action and suffering, motion and development — are^ as a matter of fact and history, the constant occasions of those enquiries which, as forming a doctrine of the fiux of things in opposition to the permanent being of ideas, have from antiquity been united under the name of Metaphysic

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Bernard Bosanquet's English translation, copied word for word.
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