[22] It is interesting to see how explicitly Lotze is compelled finally
to differentiate two aspects in the antecedents of thoughts, one of
which is necessary in order that there may be anything to call out
thought (a lack, or problem); the other in order that when thought is
evoked it may find data at hand--that is, material in shape to receive
and respond to its exercise. "The manifold matter of ideas is brought
before us, not only in the _systematic order of its qualitative
relationships_, but in the rich _variety of local and temporal
combinations_.... The _combinations of heterogeneous ideas_ ... forms
the _problems_, in connection with which the efforts of thought to
reduce coexistence to coherence will _subsequently_ be made. The
_homogeneous or similar_ ideas, on the other hand, give occasion to
separate, to connect, and to count their repetitions." (Vol. I, pp. 33,
34; italics mine.) Without the heterogeneous variety of the local and
temporal juxtapositions there would be nothing to excite thought.
Without the systematic arrangement of quality there would be nothing to
meet thought and reward it for its efforts. The homogeneity of
qualitative relationships, _in the pre-thought material_, gives the
tools or instruments by which thought is enabled successfully to tackle
the heterogeneity of collocations and conjunctions also found in the
same material! One would suppose that when Lotze reached this point he
might have been led to suspect that in this remarkable adjustment of
thought-stimuli, thought-material, and thought-tools to one another, he
must after all be dealing, not with something prior to the
thought-function, but with the necessary elements in and of the
thought-situation.
[23] _Supra_, p. 30.
[24] For the identity of sensory experience with the point of greatest
strain and stress in conflicting or tensional experience, see "The
Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," _Psychological Review_, Vol. III, p.
57.
[25] For the "accessory" character of thought, see LOTZE, Vol. I, pp. 7,
25-7, 61, etc.
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