This world of ideals or values (3) is that for the sake of which the worlds of phenomena and law (1 and 2) exist. These (1 and 2) constitute respectively the material _in_ which, and the forms _through_ which, the world of "values" is to be realised.[51] Thus phenomena and law are the raw material out of which "values" are created; and these "values" themselves constitute (in the eyes of Lotze) a higher reality. Thus the central doctrine of his system is that the truly Real is what has supreme worth: it is _worth_ that creates reality. The paradoxicality of this may make it difficult to accept; but Lotze is only expressing in his own way the fundamental thesis of all forms of idealism, that "the ideal is the real"; that the world of phenomena is secondary to and dependent upon a "world of spirit," or an "ideal world." Lotze himself in the introduction to the _Microcosmos_, expresses what is at once the foundation and the kernel of his system: he says it is his purpose to show "_how absolutely universal is the extent_, and at the same time how _completely subordinate the significance, of the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world_." (E.T., p. xvi.) Mechanism is universal, _because_ it is the raw material, so to speak, out of which reality is to be made. That reality can be expressed in terms of mechanism is true, just as a poem can be described as a scrap of paper scratched upon with a pen; but this reduction of reality to its lowest terms, ends by emptying reality of content. Mechanism is a _universal_ feature, but it is a _subordinate_ feature, of reality. Nature requires, if we are to arrive at the truth about it, not only to be described and analysed, but also interpreted in the light of the idea of _value_ or _worth_. LOTZE AND THEOLOGY.--Lotze's theories exercised an important influence upon the development in Germany and elsewhere of a type of theology known as Ritschlianism. Albrecht Ritschl, a disciple of Lotze, attempted to dissociate religion from metaphysics, and to base it upon "judgments of value." Christian dogma, for instance, is an attempt to express, in philosophical terms, _the unique value to humanity of the moral and religious consciousness of Christ_. So far as a dogma is faithful to that central idea, and makes a genuine attempt to express it, so far--and so far only--is it true. This type of theology, uniting itself with certain philosophical tendencies which will engage our attention later, became the basis of what was known as the Modernist movement in the Roman Catholic Church. CONCLUSIONS.--Thus in the nineteenth century, in England (and indeed on the continent also) the idealistic attitude, though it sometimes might seem compromised, was never submerged; in spite of the materialistic outlook of an age only too preoccupied with scientific discovery and commercial expansion. CHAPTER XI SOME RECENT TENDENCIES IN PHILOSOPHY