wholly incomparable (as red, hard, sweet) and mutually indifferent, nor yet absolutely independent; if the independence of individual beings were complete the process of action would be entirely inconceivable.  The difficulty in the concept of causality—­how does being a come to produce in itself a different state a because another being b enters into the state [Greek:  b]?—­is removed only when we look on the things as modes, states, parts of a single comprehensive being, of an infinite, unconditioned substance, in so far as there is then only an action of the absolute on itself.  Nevertheless the assumption that, in virtue of the unity and consistency of the absolute or of its impulse to self-preservation, state [Greek:  b] in being b follows state [Greek:  a] in being a as an accommodation or compensation follows a disturbance, is not a full explanation of the process of action, does not remove the difficulty as to how one state can give rise to another.  Metaphysics is, in general, unable to show how reality is made, but only to remove certain contradictions which stand in the way of the conceivability of these notions.  The so far empty concept of an absolute looks to the philosophy of religion for its content; the conception of the Godhead as infinite personality (it is a person in a far higher sense than we) is first produced when we add to the ontological postulate of a comprehensive substance the ethical postulate of a supreme good or a universal world-Idea.

By “thing” we understand the permanent unit-subject of changing states.  But the fact of consciousness furnishes the only guaranty that the different states a, [Greek:  b], y, are in reality states of one being, and not so many different things alternating with one another.  Only a conscious being, which itself effects the distinction between itself and the states occurring in it, and in memory and recollection feels and knows itself as their identical subject, is actually a subject which has states.  Hence, if things are to be real, we must attribute to them a nature in essence related to that of our soul.  Reality is existence for self.  All beings are spiritual, and only spiritual beings possess true reality.  Thus Lotze combines the monadology of Leibnitz with the pantheism of Spinoza, just as he understands how to reconcile the mechanical view of natural science (which is valid also for the explanation of organic life) with the teleology and the ethical idealism of Fichte.  The sole mission of the world of forms is to aid in the realization of the ideal purposes of the absolute, of the world of values.