In the foregoing discussion, particularly in the last chapter, we were led repeatedly to recognize that thought has its own content. At times Lotze gives way to the tendency to define thought entirely in terms of modes and forms of activity which are exercised by it upon a strictly foreign material. But two motives continually push him in the other direction. (1) Thought has a distinctive work to do, one which involves a qualitative transformation of (at least) the _relationships_ of the presented matter; as fast as it accomplishes this work, the subject-matter becomes somehow thought's own. As we have just seen, the data are progressively organized to meet thought's ideal of a complete whole, with its members interconnected according to a determining principle. Such progressive organization throws backward doubt upon the assumption of the original total irrelevancy of the data and thought-form to each other. (2) A like motive operates from the side of the subject-matter. As merely foreign and external, it is too heterogeneous to lend itself to thought's exercise and influence. The idea, as we saw in the first chapter, is the convenient medium through which Lotze passes from the purely heterogeneous psychical impression or event, which is totally irrelevant to thought's purpose and working, over to a state of affairs which can reward thought. Idea as meaning forms the bridge from the brute factuality of the psychical impression over to the coherent value of thought's own content. We have, in this chapter, to consider the question of the idea or content of thought from two points of view: first, the _possibility_ of such a content--its consistency with Lotze's fundamental premises; secondly, its _objective_ character--its validity and test. I. The question of the possibility of a specific content of thought is the question of the nature of the idea as meaning. Meaning is the characteristic content of thought as such. We have thus far left unquestioned Lotze's continual assumption of meaning as a sort of thought-unit; the building-stone of thought's construction. In his treatment of meaning, Lotze's contradictions regarding the antecedents, data, and content of thought reach their full conclusion. He expressly makes meaning to be the product of thought's activity and also the unreflective material out of which thought's operations grow.