condition for that act of relating which becomes possible later, but it is not the sufficient condition for the origination of that act.

I hail this with satisfaction. It is a recognition of what is fundamental in the development of the soul: namely, that a merely mechanical or vital identity of the subject, a union of its different experiences in one whole, necessarily precedes any mode of the more reflective unity to which alone the name self-consciousness is appropriate. On what this first vital identity of the subject depends Lotze does not further consider. Probably it is intimately connected with the bodily activities of the subject: that is to say, so far as its inner aspect is concerned, with the experiences of sense and feeling which are dependent on the exercise of such activities. It presupposes obviously a certain grade of mere mechanical reproduction or revival of past experiences. There seems nothing to contradict the assumption that such rudimentary unity of self is present in the experience of the lower animals.

A second form of the same unity of the subject Lotze recognises as connected not specially with the impressions of sense but with association and reproduction. Many facts. would lead us to conjecture that the conditions for such a unity in the case of animal experience are very varied. It is possible that the degree of ability to retain together in consciousness a number of distinct ideas is the expression of this difference in the conditions referred to.

In the third form of this unity, Lotze, in a way peculiar to himself, recognises a fundamentally distinct process as concerned in the translation of sense-impressions into intuitions of space and time. He holds that, in order to account for the characteristic of extendedness which attaches to our sense - impressions, we must go beyond the impressions themselves. They are merely non-spatial, and almost

in a sense non-temporal, re-actions of the soul. The special form induced on them is therefore alien to their own character, and must be accounted for by some special function of the soul. The exercise of this function constitutes at the same time a new form of the unity of self. It is now the unity of a subject perceiving the extended and the temporal.

I do not think that Lotze anywhere manages to distinguish, with sufficient accuracy, the characteristics of this all-important space-and-time element in our apprehension. There are many features of the said element which we must regard as relatively reflective in character, as indicating, therefore, a development in the conscious subject that goes beyond the mere formation in perceptive experience of intuitions as contrasted with impressions. There is no reason for doubting, for example, that the characteristic differences of position and time are involved in the perceptions of animals. There is no reason to suppose that, in the same animal experience, there is anything corresponding to the reflective or logical predicates which we attach to space and time. Nay, it is doubtful whether, in the animal consciousness, there can be supposed to be anything corresponding to the comprehensive picture which we form of an indefinitely extended space, an indefinitely enduring time. These variously graded characteristics of space and time ought not to be ignored they cannot be explained satisfactorily by a simple reference to a fundamental independent activity of the soul.

Only with the help of this graduated unity of consciousness which Lotze describes in his own way, but which we might fairly call the gradual development of self-consciousness, does he allow that thinking, in the full sense of the term, becomes possible; and even there, he proceeds to point out, the characteristic critical activity of thought again manifests itself only as the final step in a series of which the first members are very much simpler in nature.

Thought in general has been characterised by Lotze by reference to the specifically logical feature of ground or reason. Even the concept or notion, which less obviously than the other products of thought involves reference to ground or reason, is regarded by him as containing such a reference in the peculiar significance of the universal, which forms its distinctive feature. The concept, if we express it in somewhat lax psychological terms, is, according to Lotze, the representation of the universal law of interconnexion of the marks which determines the appearance of the manifold particulars likewise represented in the concept.

Evidently, then, the total act of thought which consists in having a concept or notion is psychologically a complex; and it would seem impossible to represent so complex a fact otherwise than as a gradually attained result. The peculiar significance of a universal law, the relation of the uniformly combined marks to the concrete individuals in which, so to speak, the law is manifested-these, psychologically, indicate a stage of human reflexion which cannot possibly be regarded as primitive. Concepts or notions so described must be held to become possible for the human mind only on the basis of some preliminary processes, only at a stage in which the unity of consciousness has acquired definiteness and specific character.

Possibly it was through recognition of this evidently complex character of the concept-which, in opposition to many logicians, he continued to regard as the first, the simplest, of the logical forms-that Lotze was led to attempt a descriptive or genetic account of certain pre-logical processes, essential for the formation of the concept, and explicitly stated to be manifestations of the activity of thinking. As manifestations of thinking, their nature cannot be explained through the conditions of the mechanism of sense-presentation and association. Lotze is certainly far

from clear as to the place these pre-logical processes of thinking occupy relatively to those other intermediate stages of development which, as we said, he inclines to introduce between the mere receptivity of perception and the first utterances of thought. We shall probably be doing no injustice to the theory if we regard them as subsequent to the last of these, the peculiar indefinable. activity of the soul whereby sense-impressions are formed into intuitions with space-and-time characteristics.

The pre-logical processes of thinking, according to Lotze, fall into two grades, of which the second is itself a manifold: though the distinct processes named as belonging to it are so intimately conjoined that, for logical purposes, it is hardly necessary to separate them. It is difficult to make quite clear all that Lotze means in his description.

The general function of these pre-logical processes may be said to be to prepare the contents of given experienceimpressions and associated ideas-for the later manipulation of the logical activity of thinking. Their first grade is said to consist in the formation of impressions into ideas, or, otherwise, the objectification of the subject. Objectification' is certainly a term requiring further explanation, for 'object' has a variety of meanings in the analysis of knowledge. Some part of Lotze's meaning evidently depends on the contrast implied to the subjective. A given impression, or its relic in consciousness, is primarily a subjective change in the individual consciousness. In so far as it retains this character it is, Lotze seems to say, wholly inappropriate as material for thinking. One might illustrate by contrasting the possibilities for thinking of two types of such subjective change on the one hand what is called a sense-presentation, and on the other hand a sensuous feeling. But, evidently, such an illustration might be rejected by Lotze on the ground

1 [Logic, B. I. c. i. §§ 1-8.]

that in respect to their given character and in respect to the necessity of some transformation before either can be made material for thought, they stand on the same level.

Apparently, then, Lotze desires to say that some alteration must take place whereby the purely subjective character of such presentations is removed, before there can come into operation any of the higher activities of thinking. The change consists in conferring upon the content of what, in itself, is a mere subjective individual change of consciousness, a fixity, a universality, which renders it, so to speak, an object.

The precise significance of this is a little cleared up by the statement that in fact such alteration of the subjective coincides with, perhaps consists in, the naming of the content. experienced. The parts of speech indicate, he thinks, the very operation which consists in conferring on the merely subjective the all-important character of being an object. On this account, therefore, it will be seen that Lotze thinks himself justified in assigning to the term 'object' the very general significance which would hold good whether the object be a so-called real thing or quality or relation of things, or a state of mind, or (as becomes possible in developed intelligences) a complex of circumstances, conditions, or events. When the contents of our experience, which at first come into consciousness as merely subjective changes, are named, there is at once conferred on them an aspect of generality which renders possible in their regard the further operations of the logical activity of thinking.

Objectivity is thus in a way made, if not identical with, at all events akin to universality-a position for which there. is much to be said. But universality is never a characteristic which is self-explaining. Moreover, the universal has such a variety of meanings, that whoever employs the term as characterising an aspect of experience is bound to specify in