re is a controlled purposive occurrence, the
"purpose" nowhere appears as a factor co-operating with the series of
causes, for these follow according to strict law, and the "purpose"
reveals itself at the close of the series, as the result of a closed
causal nexus, complete in itself, always provided that the initial links
in the chain have been accurately estimated. The same is true of the
processes of life. They are the ultimate result, strictly necessary and
sufficiently accounted for in terms of mechanical sequence, of a long
chain of causes whose initial links imply a definite constitution which
could not be further reduced. Whether this ultimate result is merely a
result or whether it is also a "purpose" is a question which, as we have
seen twice already, it is wholly beyond the power of the causal mode of
interpretation to answer. Given that an infinite intelligence in the world
wished to realise purposes without instituting them as directly
accomplished, but by letting them express themselves through a gradual
"becoming," the method would be exactly what is shown in the mechanical
theory of life, that is, the primitive data and starting-points would have
inherent in them a peculiar constitution and a rigidly inexorable
orderliness of causal sequence. And Lotze emphasises that it would also be
worthier of God to achieve the greatest by means of the simplest, and to
work out the realisation of His eternal purposes according to the strict
inevitableness of mechanism, than to attain His ends through the
complicated means, the adventitious aids, and all the irregularities
implied in the incommensurable activities of a "vital force." ("God needs
no minor gods.")

To Lotze himself these original data and starting points are the primitive
forms of life, which, according to his view, are directly "given," and
cannot be referred back to anything else (except to "creation"). But it is
obvious that his view can be enlarged and extended so as to refer the
derivation of the whole animate world to the original raw materials of the
cosmos (energy, matter, or whatsoever they may be), and to the orderly
process by which these materials were combined in various configurations
to form the chemical elements, the chemical compounds, living proteids,
the first cell, and the whole series of higher forms. If this nexus has
taken place, it is nothing else than the transformation of the "potential"
into the "actual" through strict causalit