The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Lotze - Kleine Schriften
The editor, Professor Peipers, here presents to us in two parts the third and last volume of Lotze's Kleine Schriften, the first two volumes of which were published in 1885 and 1886. This portion contains Lotze's Essays and other minor writings since 1852, arranged mainly in chronological order as in the earlier volumes. Two of the pieces hitherto unpublished, Geographische Phantasien and Pensées d'un Idiote sur Descartes Spinoza et Leibnitz, belong to a much earlier period than the others, and are entitled Jugendarbeiten by the editor. The remarks upon Leibnitz's Monadologie are especially interesting as showing its relationship to Lotze's own system, which must have been already outlined at the time when this essay was written. The other papers found among his literary remains, which the editor has judged were intended by Lotze for publication, include a fragment of an Essay on Goethe, and an Essay on the Principles of Ethics, already published, after Lotze's death, by Professor Rehnisch in Nord und Sud, Bd. XXI, 1882, and, as our editor supposes, originally intended for the Contemporary Review. Two of the pieces were contributions to the works of other authors, viz. a preface to a book which appeared anonymously, entitled Das Evangelium der armen Seele, and a communication to C. Stumpf in reference to the doctrine of local signs, and which was included in Stumpf’s book, Über den psychologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung. There is another paper expounding his theory of local signs, La Théorie des Signes Locaux, reprinted from the Revue Philosophique of October, 1877. Of the other articles, one, Philosophy in the Last Forty Years, appeared in the Contemporary Review for January, 1880, and the rest in the Göttingen gelehrte Anzeigen. The notice of Volkmann's Psychologie and the Selbstanzeigen of his own Medicinische Psychologie and Mikrokosmos are still extremely interesting.
It is of course impossible, without devoting more space to the undertaking than is here at my command, to give any account of the content of these articles. But there can be no doubt that Professor Peipers has rendered an important service to philosophy in bringing together and publishing these minor writings of so eminent a philosopher as Lotze, and one so thoroughly in touch with the spirit of modern thought. If it is true that we cannot thoroughly understand any philosophical or theological system until we see it in process of becoming, these volumes of chronologically arranged papers give us assistance in understanding the intellectual development of one of the greatest thinkers of the century.
The editor seems to have brought to this work the patience and devotion of a disciple, and has spared no effort to present to his readers down to the minutest detail what Lotze wrote. An extremely useful feature of the work, and one which must have involved much labor, is an index of nearly four hundred passages, which contains not only references to the different Schriften, but oftentimes numerous quotations from them. Professor Peipers's extreme thoroughness and care in carrying out this admirable piece of work cannot be too highly commended.
J. E. Creighton.
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