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522 HERB ART. by his theory of self-conservation against threatened dis. turbances Lotze's is the most cogent : The unsuccessful attempt to solve the dffiiculties 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 disturb- ances, which do not come to pass, and their self-conserva- tions, 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. Who- ever 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 sep- arated from being we reach an "image"; united with being it yields an essence or a real. This ivhat of things is not their sensuous qualities ; the latter belong rather to the mere phenomenon. No one of them indicates what the object is by itself, when left alone. They depend on contingent circumstances, and apart from these they would not exist — what is color in the dark ? what sound in