The investigations will then naturally divide themselves into three parts, the first of which deals with those to our mind inevitable forms in which we are obliged to think about things, if we think at all (metaphysics), the second being devoted to the great region of facts, trying to apply the results of metaphysics to these, specially the two great regions of external and mental phenomena (cosmology and psychology), the third dealing with those standards of value from which we pronounce our aesthetical or ethical approval or disapproval. In each department we shall have to aim first of all at views clear and consistent within themselves, but, secondly, we shall in the end wish to form some general idea or to risk an opinion how laws, facts and standards of value may be combined in one comprehensive view. Considerations of this latter kind will naturally present themselves in the two great departments of cosmology and psychology, or they may be delegated to an independent research under the name of religious philosophy. We have already mentioned the final conception in which Lotze's speculation culminates, that of a personal Deity, Himself the essence of all that merits existence for its own sake, who in the creation and government of a world has voluntarily chosen certain laws and forms through which His ends are to be realized. We may add that according to this view nothing is real but the living spirit of God and the world of living spirits which He has created; the things of this world have only reality in so far as they are the appearance of spiritual substance, which underlies everything. It is natural that Lotze, having this great and final conception always before him, works under its influence from the very beginning of his speculations, permitting us, as we progress, to gain every now and then a glimpse of that interpretation of things which to him contains the solution of our difficulties.