To understand this series of Lotze's writings, it is necessary to begin with his definition of philosophy. This is given after his exposition of logic has established two points, viz. the existence in our mind of certain laws and forms according to which we connect the material supplied to us by our senses, and, secondly, the fact that logical thought cannot be usefully employed without the assumption of a further set of connexions, not logically necessary, but assumed to exist between the data of experience and observation. These connexions of a real not formal character are handed to us by the separate sciences and by the usage and culture of everyday life. Language has crystallized them into certain definite notions and expressions, without which we cannot proceed a single step, but which we have accepted without knowing their exact meaning, much less their origin. In consequence the special sciences and the wisdom of common life entangle themselves easily and frequently in contradictions. A problem of a purely formal character thus presents itself, viz. this--to try to bring unity and harmony into the scattered thoughts of our general culture, to trace them to their primary assumptions and follow them into their ultimate consequences, to connect them all together, to remodel, curtail or amplify them, so as to remove their apparent contradictions, and to combine them in the unity of an harmonious view of things, and especially to investigate those conceptions which form the initial assumptions of the several sciences, and to fix the limits of their applicability. This is the formal definition of philosophy. Whether an harmonious conception thus gained will represent more than an agreement among our thoughts, whether it will represent the real connexion of things and thus possess objective not merely subjective value, cannot be decided at the outset. It is also unwarranted to start with the expectation that everything in the world should be explained by one principle, and it is a needless restriction of our means to expect unity of method. Nor are we able to start our philosophical investigations by an inquiry into the nature of human thought and its capacity to attain an objective knowledge, as in this case we would be actually using that instrument the usefulness of which we were trying to determine. The main proof of the objective value of the view we may gain will rather lie in the degree in which it succeeds in assigning to every element of culture its due position, or in which it is able to appreciate and combine different and apparently opposite tendencies and interests, in the sort of justice with which it weighs our manifold desires and aspirations, balancing them in due proportions, refusing to sacrifice to a one-sided principle any truth or conviction which experience has proven to be useful and necessary.