If coexistence as such is to be set against coherence as such, as the
non-logical against the logical, then, since our whole spatial
universe is one of collocation, and since thought in this universe can
never get farther than substituting one collocation for another, the
whole realm of space-experience is condemned offhand and in perpetuity
to anti-rationality. But, in truth, coincidence as over against
coherence, conjunction as over against connection, is just _suspected_
coherence, one which is under the fire of active inquiry. The
distinction is one which arises only within the logical or reflective
function.
3. This brings us explicitly to the fact that there is neither
coincidence nor coherence in terms of the elements or meanings
contained in any couple or pair of ideas taken by itself. It is only
when they are co-factors in a situation or function which includes
more than either the "coincident" or the "coherent" and more than the
arithmetical sum of the two, that thought's activity can be evoked.
Lotze is continually in this dilemma: Thought either shapes its own
material or else just accepts it. In the first case (since Lotze
cannot rid himself of the presumption that thought must have a fixed
ready-made antecedent) its activity can only alter this stuff and thus
lead the mind farther away from reality. But if thought just accepts
its material, how can there be any distinctive aim or activity of
thought at all? As we have seen, Lotze endeavors to escape this
dilemma by supposing that, while thought receives its material yet
checks it up, it eliminates certain portions of it and reinstates
others, plus the stamp and seal of its own validity.
Lotze objects most strenuously to the Kantian notion that thought
awaits its subject-matter with certain ready-made modes of
apprehension. This notion would raise the insoluble question of how
thought contrives to bring the matter of each impression under that
particular form which is appropriate to it (I, 24). But he has not
avoided the difficulty. How does thought know which of the
combinations are merely coincident and which are merely coherent? How
does it know which to eliminate as irrelevant and which to confirm as
grounded? Either this evaluation is an imposition of its own, or else
gets its cue and clue from the subject-matter. Now, if the coincident
and the coherent taken in and of themselves are competent to give this
direction, they are already labeled. The further work of thought is
one of supererogation. It has at most barely to note and seal the
material combinations that are already there. Such a view clearly
renders thought's work as unnecessary in form as it is futile in
force.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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