We find in Lotze an unusually explicit inventory of these various
preliminary distinctions, and an unusually serious effort to deal with
the problems which arise from introducing them into the structure of
logical theory. (1) He expressly separates the matter of logical worth
from that of psychological genesis. He consequently abstracts the
subject-matter of logic as such wholly from the question of historic
_locus_ and _situs_. (2) He agrees with common-sense in holding that
logical thought is reflective and thus presupposes a given material.
He occupies himself with the nature of the antecedent conditions. (3)
He wrestles with the problem of how a material formed prior to thought
and irrespective of it can yet afford stuff upon which thought may
exercise itself. (4) He expressly raises the question of how thought
working independently and from without upon a foreign material can
shape the latter into results which are valid--that is, objective.
If this discussion is successful; if Lotze can provide the
intermediaries which span the gulf between the exercise of logical
functions by thought upon a material wholly external to it; if he can
show that the question of the origin of subject-matter of thought and
of thought-activity is irrelevant to the question of its meaning and
validity, we shall have to surrender the position already taken. But
if we find that Lotze's elaborations only elaborate the fundamental
difficulty, presenting it now in this light and now in that, but
always presenting the problem as if it were its own solution, we shall
be confirmed in our idea of the need of considering logical questions
from a different point of view. If we find that, whatever his formal
treatment, he always, as a matter of fact, falls back upon some
organized situation or function as the source of both the material and
the process of inquiry, we shall have in so far an elucidation and
even a corroboration of our theory.
We begin with the question of the material antecedents of
thought--antecedents which condition reflection, and which call it out
as reaction or response, by giving its cue. Lotze differs from many
logicians of the same type in furnishing an explicit account of these
antecedents.
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