As usual, Lotze mediates the contradiction between material constituted _by_ thought and the same material just presented _to_ thought, by a further position so disparate to each that, taken in connection with each by turns, it seems to bridge the gulf. After describing the prior constitutive work of thought as above, he goes on to discuss a _second_ phase of thought which is intermediary between this and the third phase, viz., reflective thought proper. This second activity is that of arranging experienced quales in series and groups, thus ascribing a sort of universal or common somewhat to various instances (as already described; see p. 144). On one hand, it is clearly stated that this second phase of thought's activity is in reality the _same_ as the first phase: since all objectification involves positing, since positing involves distinction of one matter from others, and since this involves placing it in a series or group in which each is measurably marked off, as to the degree and nature of its diversity, from every other. We are told that we are only considering "a really inseparable operation" of thought from two different sides: first, as to the effect which objectifying thought has upon the matter as set over against the feeling _subject_; secondly, the effect which this objectification has upon the matter in relation to _other matters_.[38] Afterward, however, these two operations are declared to be radically different in type and nature. The first is determinant and formative; it gives ideas "the shape without which the logical spirit could not accept them." In a way it dictates "its own laws to its object-matter."[39] The second activity of thought is rather passive and receptive. It simply recognizes what is already there. "Thought can make no difference where it finds none already in the matter of impressions."[40] "The first universal, as we saw, can only be experienced in immediate sensation. It is no product of thought, but something that thought finds already in existence."[41]