Abstract

Although Santayana insisted that his book on Hermann Lotze was merely a journeyman's task imposed upon him by his master Josiah Royce, the evidence of the text is otherwise. Santayana is warmly engaged not only in refuting Royce's absolutism, he is also giving the first expression to his own aesthetic naturalism. Santayana uses Lotze's pluralistic system to rebuke his teacher's monism, particularly when the unity of the world is interpreted as the adventures of a single mind and everything that happens is said to be for its satisfaction. Santayana might have wished to write on Schopenhauer, but in Lotze also he found an ally in the cause against the idolatry of power and human purpose which so oppressed him in the doctrines of divine providence and the secularized version of inevitable progress.