OF THE GOOD. 



217 



57. 

 Green and 



the ethical interest prominent in all the best English 

 thought. 



Students of Lotze's philosophy, when taking up the 

 writings of Green, will be struck by a certain resem- Lotze 

 blance, especially in the metaphysical section of the 

 ' Prolegomena.' This resemblance exists also as regards 

 certain forms of expression used by both writers such, 

 for instance, as the definition of Eeality as a system of 

 relations. 1 To what extent if at all Green was in- 



1 Three thinkers, though prob- 

 ably none of them of the very first 

 order, have nevertheless the merit 

 of having thrown into the mass 

 of philosophical thought, which in 

 their time had become somewhat 

 stagnant, a ferment which produced 

 new life. All three belong to what 

 we may term the transition period 

 of nineteenth-century thought, or, 

 borrowing a term of Niebuhr's, to 

 the vorbereitende Zeit. They are 

 Hermann Lotze (1817-1881) in 

 Germany, Jules Lachelier (1832- 

 1875) in France, and Thomas Hill 

 Green (1836-1882) at Oxford. Of 

 these, only Lotze has attained to 

 what may be termed a European 

 reputation, having produced, as we 

 have seen, some standard works ; 

 but in personal influence on a large 

 number of gifted disciples Lachelier 

 and Green far surpassed Lotze, whose 

 attitude was extremely reserved 

 and whose influence has only slow- 

 ly and gradually grown. All three 

 have certain traits of resemblance ; 

 to begin with, they take up the 

 same position to the Kantian phil- 

 osophy, they discard the doctrine 

 of the ' Thing in itself ' or the 

 Noumenon as put forward by Kant 

 and in a cruder form by the earlier 

 Kantian school. With Lotze and 

 Lachelier this means an approxima- 

 tion to the position of Leibniz ; with 

 Green an approximation to that of 



Berkeley. All three are conspicu- 

 ous in reviving or perpetuating the 

 study of metaphysics in an age and 

 in surroundings which discouraged 

 and denounced it ; but in Lotze and 

 Green this metaphysical tendency 

 has a distinct connection with the 

 ethical interest, with this differ- 

 ence, however, that apparently for 

 Lotze an ethical conviction should 

 precede metaphysics ; whereas for 

 Green the ethical problem cannot 

 be solved without a preliminary 

 metaphysical discussion. The eth- 

 ical bearing of the metaphysical 

 position taken up by all three 

 alike is not to be found in Lach- 

 elier's own scanty writings (see 

 supra, vol. iii. p. 620) ; but those 

 who followed or were influenced 

 by him have, in more recent 

 times, devoted increasing atten- 

 tion to the ethical problem. With 

 Green and Lotze alike there is in 

 addition a distinctly religious in- 

 terest, taking this term in a broad 

 and liberal sense. They both re- 

 lied on convictions gained early 

 in life and maintained in all their 

 later utterances. This in Lotze's 

 case is very evident from the per- 

 sonal explanations contained in his 

 1 Streitschriften ' (1857); and, as 

 to Green, it is clearly brought out 

 by R. L. Nettleship's valuable 

 " Memoir " prefixed to the third 

 volume of Green's 'Collected 



