218 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



fluenced by Lotze has not been cleared up by his critics 

 and biographers. It is, however, more likely that both 

 thinkers were influenced by the same study, that of the 

 writings of Kant and Hegel, that in fact Green arrived 

 independently at certain conclusions through which the 

 apparent resemblance with Lotze was brought about. 1 

 The resemblance moreover which is, prima vista, so 

 striking turns out to be somewhat external as soon 

 as we become more intimately acquainted with the 

 whole tenor of Green's thought, with the genesis as 

 well as with the purport of his speculations. His 

 whole position in distinction from that of Lotze 

 may, it seems to me, be expressed as follows : Green 

 was one of the first thinkers in this country who felt 

 the necessity of arriving at a reasoned creed at a time 



Works ' (1891). Instead of dwell- 

 ing further upon the resemblance 

 of Lotze and Green in this re- 

 spect, I confine myself to trans- 

 lating a passage from Lotze (loc. 

 cit., p. 57) which, it seems to me, 

 might be applicable likewise to 

 Green's frame of thought : "I 

 know only one content of the 

 Highest, and this, expressed in the 

 form of human thought, is the 

 complex of our moral ideas joined 

 to an enjoyment of their worth : 

 the combined conception of holi- 

 ness and blessedness. I know only 

 one form of existence which is 

 adequate to this content ; that of 

 a personal Deity from the clear 

 image of which I should like care- 

 fully to remove every mystery, the 

 interest of which would attach 

 merely to its obscurity. Out of 

 the content of this conception 

 alone I should desire to deduce 

 also that formal necessity of a 

 general and absolutely valid com- 



plex of laws which governs the 

 world, not as a limit imposed upon 

 the activity of God . . . but as 

 His self -chosen and eternal founda- 

 tion for the manifestation of His 

 essence in finite form ; . . . giving 

 to His activity an unalterable law 

 of inner consistency." 



1 Both thinkers were also con- 

 fronted with the philosophy of 

 naturalism : Lotze in the earlier 

 form which it presented in the 

 writings of German materialists, 

 Green in the later and more 

 modern form which it assumed 

 notably in the writings of Herbert 

 Spencer. The formula with which 

 the materialism combated by Lotze 

 worked was purely mechanical and 

 chemical : matter and force and 

 the transformation of energy. The 

 naturalism which Green combated 

 was that which he conceived to 

 have been more logically stated 

 long before in the writings of 

 Hume. 



