opposition of the qualities will not make itself evident.  But as soon as they come together, something takes place—­now the opposites (+_z_ and -z) seek to destroy or at least to disturb each other.  The reals defend themselves against the disturbance which would follow if the opposites could destroy each other, by each conserving its simple, unchangeable quality, i.e., by simply remaining self-identical. Self-conservation against threatened disturbances from without (it may be compared to resistance against pressure) is the only real change, and apparent change, the empirical changes of things, to be explained from this.  That which changes is only the relations between the beings, as a thing maintains itself now against this and now against that other thing; the relations, however, and their change are something entirely contingent and indifferent to the existent.  In itself the self-conservation of a real is as uniform as the quality which is conserved, but in virtue of the changing relations (the variety of the disturbing things) it can express itself for the observer in manifold ways as force.  The real itself changes as little as a painting changes, for instance, when, seen near at hand, the figures in it are clearly distinguished, while for the distant observer, on the contrary, they run together into an indistinguishable chaos.  Change has no meaning in the sphere of the existent.

Anyone who speaks thus has denied change, not deduced it.  Among the many objections experienced by Herbart’s endeavor to explain the empirical fact of change by his theory of self-conservation against threatened disturbances Lotze’s is the most cogent:  The unsuccessful attempt to solve the difficulties in the concept of becoming and action is still instructive, for it shows that they cannot be solved in this way—­from the concept of inflexible being.  If the “together,” the threatened disturbance, and the reaction against the latter be taken as realities, then, in the affection by the disturber, the concept of change remains uneliminated and uncorrected; if they be taken as unreal concepts auxiliary to thought, change is relegated from the realm of being to the realm of seeming.  Herbart gives to them a kind of semi-reality, less true than the unmoving ground of things (their unchangeable, permanent qualities), and more true than their contradictory exterior (the empirical appearance of change).  Between being and seeming he thrusts in, as though between day and night, the twilight region of his “contingent aspects,” with their relations, which are nothing to the real, their disturbances, which do not come to pass, and their self-conservations, which are nothing but undisturbed continuance in existence on the part of the real.