ce. 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.

Besides the contradictions in the concepts of inherence, of change,
and action and passion, it is the concept of being which prevents our
philosopher from ascribing a living character to reality. Being, as Kant
correctly perceived, contains nothing qualitative; it is absolute position.
Whoever affirms that an object _is_, expresses thereby that the matter is
to rest with the simple position; in which is included that it is nothing
dependent, relative, or negative. (Every negation is something relative,
relates to a precedent position, which is to be annulled by it.) Besides
being, the existent contains something more--a quality; it consists of this
absolute position and a _what_. If this _what_ is separated from being we
reach an "image"; united with being it yields an essence or a real. This
_what_ of thi