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.