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 Rh the ideas of natural science are taken into account alone, the character of idealism whenever the psychological ideas are taken alone. It is possible however to attain a higher view by combining the two groups of ideas, in which case being is construed as a totality of striving and willing entities whose objective phenomenal form constitutes material nature. Wundt agrees with Lotze that we are obliged to choose between a material and a spiritual unity; we must either make mind the basis of matter or vice versa; there is no third alternative! But he fails to see as clearly as Lotze that our only recourse at this point is to the argument from analogy.

In his ethics (Ethik, eine Untersuchung der Tatsachen und Gesetze des sittlichen Lebens, 1886) Wundt shows marked sympathy with German speculation, especially with Hegel. He construes the individual will as an element of the total will whence both its motives and its ideals arise. The isolated individual does not exist. And the highest ends are only found in the total will. Even where individuals seem to be laboring for their own individual ends, they may still produce something which will extend beyond their horizon and in turn give rise to new motives. This shifting process, which Wundt calls the heterogeny of ends, is the most important evolutional process of the moral consciousness. But this likewise implies that we cannot be conscious of the ultimate ends of the whole course of historical evolution. We are co-laborers in a sublime undertaking whose absolute content we can never know. At this point ethics becomes religion. Whilst the positive religions express themselves in concrete symbols, philosophy can only express the general principle that all spiritual products possess an absolute or imperishable value.