The universal substance, which we may call the absolute, is at this stage of our investigations not endowed with the attributes of a personal Deity, and it will remain to be seen by further analysis in how far we are able--without contradiction--to identify it with the object of religious veneration, in how far that which to metaphysics is merely a postulate can be gradually brought nearer to us and become a living power. Much in this direction is said by Lotze in various passages of his writings; anything complete, however, on the subject is wanting. Nor would it seem as if it could be the intention of the author to do much more than point out the lines on which the further treatment of the subject should advance. The actual result of his personal inquiries, the great idea which lies at the foundation of his philosophy, we know. It may be safely stated that Lotze would allow much latitude to individual convictions, as indeed it is evident that the empty notion of an absolute can only become living and significant to us in the same degree as experience and thought have taught us to realize the seriousness of life, the significance of creation, the value of the beautiful and the good, and the supreme worth of personal holiness. To endow the universal substance with moral attributes, to maintain that it is more than the metaphysical ground of everything, to say it is the perfect realization of the holy, the beautiful and the good, can only have a meaning for him who feels within himself what real not imaginary values are clothed in those expressions. We have still to mention that aesthetics formed a principal and favourite study of Lotze's, and that he has treated this subject also in the light of the leading ideas of his philosophy. See his essays _Ueber den Begriff der Schönheit_ (Göttingen, 1845) and _Ueber Bedingungen der Kunstschönheit_, ibid. (1847); and especially his _Geschichte der Aesthetik in Deutschland_ (Munich, 1868).