OF THE GOOD. 



221 



Green's writings, though not voluminous, gave a great 

 stimulus to philosophical thought in this country, 

 especially to Ethical studies, 1 in fact they formed for a 

 time quite as important a feature as Herbert Spencer's 

 philosophy of Evolution. Both were to the English 

 mind thoroughly original and modern : they were 

 modern in this respect, that they both assimilated and 

 gave a distinctive expression to the idea of development. 

 Both systems had also this in common, that they 5&. 



J Green and 



attacked the burning problems of the age and that they spencer. 

 stimulated their disciples to take a prominent part in 

 the furtherance of practical aims and ends ; both thinkers 

 had abandoned the purely contemplative position occu- 

 pied by some of the leading thinkers on the Continent, 

 neither of them had any appreciation for the quietism, 

 still less for the pessimism, which was then becoming a 

 prominent feature of philosophical thought in Germany. 

 The difference between the two English schools, repre- 

 sented by Green on the one side and Spencer on the 

 other, was this, that the Ethical problem was identified 

 by the former with the progress of the individual, the 

 idea of consciousness or personality being the central 

 and leading idea of its metaphysics as well as of its 



The approval of the good, the dis- 

 approval of the evil, and the pre- 

 ference of the better ; these would 

 seem to be basal facts for an 

 adequate philosophical theory." 

 (Sorley, loc. cit., p. 131.) 



1 One of the earliest fruits of 

 the new spirit was F. H. Bradley 's 

 'Ethical Studies' (1876), in which 

 the definition of morality, as equiv- 

 alent to self-realisation, also used 

 by Green, is prominently put for- 



ward in comparison with other 

 definitions. These brilliant Essays, 

 though the teaching contained 

 therein differs materially from the 

 author's later doctrine, are never- 

 theless a landmark in modern 

 British ethical philosophy second 

 only in importance and in the in- 

 terest they created to Sidgwick's 

 ' Methods of Ethics,' the first edition 

 of which appeared in 1874. 



