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GREEN, THOMAS HILL (1836-1882) , English philosopher, the most typical English representative of the school of thought called Neo-Kantian, or Neo-Hegelian, was born on the 7th of April 1836 at Birkin, a village
rector . On the paternal side he was descended from Oliver Cromwell, whose honest, sturdy independence of character he seemed to have inherited. His education was conducted entirely at home until, at the age of fourteen, he entered Rugby, where he remained five years. In 1855 he became an undergraduate member of Balliol College, Oxford, of which society he was, in 186o, elected fellow. His life, hence-forth, was devoted to teaching (mainly philosophical) in the universityfirst as college tutor, afterwards, from 1878 until his death (at Oxford on the 26th of March 1882) as Whyte's Professor of Moral Philosophy. The lectures he delivered as professor form the substance of his two most important works, viz. the Prolegomena to Ethics and the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, which contain the whole of his positive constructive teaching. These works were not published until after his death, but Green's views were previously known indirectly through the Introduction to the standard edition of Hume's works by Green and T. H. Grose (d. 1906), fellow of Queen's College, in which the doctrine of the " English " or " empirical " philosophy was exhaustively examined.Hume's empiricism, combined with a belief in biological evolution (derived from Herbert Spencer
chief
To ask " What is man?" is to ask "What is experience ?" for experience means that of which I am conscious. The facts of consciousness are the only facts which, to begin with, we are justified in asserting to exist. On the other hand, they are valid evidence for whatever is necessary to their own explanation, i.e. for whatever is logically involved in them. Now the most striking characteristic of man, that in fact which marks him specially, as contrasted with other animals, is self-consciousness. The simplest mental act into which we can analyse the operations of the human mindthe act of sense-perceptionis never merely a change, physical or psychical, but is the consciousness of a change. Human experience consists, not of processes in an animal organism, but of these processes recognized as such. That which we perceive is from the outset an apprehended factthat is to say, it cannot be analysed into isolated elements (so-called sensations) which, as such, are not constituents of consciousness at all, but exists from the first as a synthesis of relations in a consciousness which keeps distinct the " self " and the various elements of the " object," though holding all together in the unity of the act of perception. In other words, the whole mental structure we call knowledge consists, in its simplest equally withits most complex constituents, of the "work of the mind." Locke and Hume held that the work of the mind was eo ipso unreal because it was " made by " man and not " given to " man. It thus represented a subjective creation, not an objective fact. But this consequence follows only upon the assumption that the work of the mind is arbitrary, an assumption shown to be unjustified by the results of exact science, with the distinction. universally recognized, which such science draws between truth and falsehood, between the real and " mere ideas." This (obviously valid) distinction logically involves the consequence that the object, or content, of knowledge, viz. reality, is an intelligible ideal reality, a system of thought relations, a spiritual cosmos. How is the existence of this ideal whole to be accounted for? Only by the existence of some " principle which renders all relations possible and is itself determined by none of them "; an eternal self-consciousness which knows in whole what we know in part. To God the world is, to man the world becomes. Human experience is God gradually made manifest. - Carrying on the same analytical method into the special department of moral philosophy, Green held that ethics applies to the peculiar conditions of social life that investigation into man's nature which metaphysics began. The faculty employed in this further investigation is no " separate moral faculty," but that same reason which is the source of all our knowledgeethical and other. Self-reflection gradually reveals to us human capacity, human function, with, consequently, human responsibility. It brings out into clear consciousness certain potentialities in the realization of which man's true good must consist. As the result of this analysis, combined with an investigation into the surroundings man lives in, a " content "a moral codebecomes gradually evolved. Personal good is perceived to be realizable only by making actual the conceptions thus arrived at. So long as these remain potential or ideal, they form the motive of action; motive consisting always in the idea of some " end " or " good " which man presents to himself as an end in the attainment of which he would be satisfied, that is, in the realization of which he would find his true self. The determination to realize the self in some definite way constitutes an "act of will," which, as thus constituted, is neither arbitrary nor externally determined. For the motive which may be said to be its cause lies in the man himself, and the identification of the self with such a motive is a self-determination, which is at once both rational and free. The " freedom of man " is constituted, not by a supposed ability to do anything he may choose, but in the power to identify him-self with that true good which reason reveals to him as his true good. This good consists in the realization of personal character; hence the final good, i.e. the moral ideal, as a whole, can be realized only in some society of persons who, while remaining ends to themselves in the sense that their individuality is not lost but rendered more perfect, find this prefection attainable only when the separate individualities are integrated as part of a social whole. Society is as necessary to form persons as persons are to constitute society. Social union is the indispensable condition of the development of the special capacities of the individual members. Human self-perfection cannot be gained in isolation; it is attainable only in inter-relation with fellow-citizens in the social community. The law of our being, so revealed, involves in its turn civic or political duties. Moral goodness cannot be limited to, still less constituted by, the cultivation of self-regarding virtues, but consists in the attempt to realize in practice that moral ideal which self-analysis has revealed to us as our ideal. From this fact arises the ground of political obligation, for the institutions of political or civic life are the concrete embodiment of moral ideas in terms of our day and generation. But, as society exists only for the proper development of persons, we have a criterion by which to test these institutions, viz. do they, or do they not, contribute to the development of moral character in the individual citizens? It is obvious that the final moral ideal is not realized in any body of civic institutions actually existing, but the same analysis which demonstrates this deficiency points out the direction which a true development will take. Hence arises the conception of rights and duties which skould be maintained by law, as opposed to those actually maintained; with the further consequence that it may become occasionally a moral duty to rebel against the state in the interest
Green's teaching was, directly and indirectly, the most potent philosophical influence in England during the last quarter of the 19th century, while his enthusiasm for a common citizenship, and his personal example in practical municipal life, inspired much of the effort made, in the years succeeding his death, to bring, the universities more into touch with the people, and to break down the rigour of class distinctions.Of his philosophical doctrine proper, the most striking characteristic is Integration, as opposed to Disintegration, both in thought and in reality. " That which is " is a whole, not an aggregate an organic complex of parts, not a mechanical mass; a " whole ' too not material but spiritual, a " world of thought-relations." On the critical side this teaching is now admittedly valid against the older empiricism, and the cogency of the reasoning by which his constructive theory is supported is generally recognized. Nevertheless, Green's statement of his conclusions presents important difficulties. Even apart from the impossibility of conceiving a whole of relations which are relations and nothing else (this objection is perhaps largely verbal), no explanation is given of the fact (obvious in experience) that the spiritual entities of which the Universe is composed appear material. Certain elements present themselves in feeling which seem stubbornly to resist any attempt to explain them in. terms of thought. While, again, legitimately insisting upon personality as a fundamental constituent in any true theory of reality, the relation between human individualities and the divine Person is left vague and obscure; nor is it easy to see how the existence of several individualitieshuman or divinein one cosmos is theoretically possible. It is at the solution of these two questions that philosophy in the immediate future may be expected to work. Green's most important treatisethe Prolegomena to Ethicspractically complete in manuscript at his deathwas published in the year following, under the editorship of A. C. Bradley (4th ed., 1899). Shortly afterwards R. L. Nettleship's standard edition of his Works (exclusive of the Prolegomena) appeared in three volumes: vol. i. containing reprints of Green's criticism of Hume, Spencer
York
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