with the
possibility it suggests, tells us nothing of the actual process by
which real things that are one can and do change at all. In point
of fact abstract oneness as such _doesn't_ change, neither has it
parts--any more than abstract independence as such interacts. But then
neither abstract oneness nor abstract independence _exists_; only
concrete real things exist, which add to these properties the other
properties which they possess, to make up what we call their total
nature. To construe any one of their abstract names as _making their
total nature impossible_ is a misuse of the function of naming. The
real way of rescue from the abstract consequences of one name is not
to fly to an opposite name, equally abstract, but rather to correct
the first name by qualifying adjectives that restore some concreteness
to the case. Don't take your 'independence' _simpliciter_, as Lotze
does, take it _secundum quid_. Only when we know what the process of
interaction literally and concretely _consists_ in can we tell whether
beings independent _in definite respects_, distinct, for example, in
origin, separate in place, different in kind, etc., can or cannot
interact.

_The treating of a name as excluding from the fact named what the
name's definition fails positively to include, is what I call
'vicious intellectualism_.' Later I shall have more to say about this
intellectualism, but that Lotze's argument is tainted by it I hardly
think we can deny. As well might you contend (to use an instance from
Sigwart) that a person whom you have once called an 'equestrian' is
thereby forever made unable to walk on his own feet.

I almost feel as if I should apologize for criticising such subtle
arguments in rapid lectures of this kind. The criticisms have to be as
abstract as the arguments, and in exposing their unreality, take
on such an unreal sound themselves that a hearer not nursed in the
intellectualist atmosphere knows not which of them to accuse. But
_le vin est verse, il faut le boire_, and I must cite a couple more
instances before I stop.

If we are empiricists and go from parts to wholes, we believe that
beings may first exist and feed so to speak on their own existence,
and then secondarily become known to one another. But philosophers of
the absolute tell us that such independence of being from being known
would, if once admitted, disintegrate the universe beyond all hope of
mending. The argument is one of Professor Royc