Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/183

GREEN'S ETHICS. 171 the action of some unifying principle analogous to that of our understanding ". Indeed, Green passes I do not pre- cisely understand how from the affirmation of analogous n to the affirmation of identical quality, and says thaf nature in its reality implies not only an all-uniting agency which is not natural, but a thinking self-distinguishing con- sciousness like our own. We further find that this principle of synthesis or unity is " eternal," in the sense that it is not in time, and " complete," in the sense that its com- bining agency extends to all conceivable objects : and that our own empirical knowledge can only be explained as an imperfect reproduction in us of this eternally complete con- sciousness. I am obliged to summarise very briefly the results of an elaborate and complicated argument ; but I am not now concerned with the argument itself, merely with the ethical bearing and value of its results ; and I ven- ture to think that the above meagre statement gives sub- .tially all the characteristics which Green explicitly attributes to the " spiritual principle " disclosed to us in Book i. and all, I submit, that can possibly be known about it by the lines of reasoning there developed. And I am confirmed in this view by the passage in Book iii., ch. 2 (p. 189), in which the " conclusions so far arrived at are summarised"; since there also the "one divine mind" which " gradually reproduces itself in the human soul " is not represented with any other " constant characteristics " beyond those of being a unifying, self-distinguishing, self- objectifying consciousness. " If," says the author expressly, " we mean by personality anything else than the quality in a subject of being consciously an object to itself, we are not justified in saying that it necessarily belongs to God." But how, I would ask with all reverence for the deep religious emotion of our author, can we possibly get an " ideal of holiness," of an " infinitely and perfectly good will," out of this conception of a combining, self-distinguishing and self- objectifying agency ? What perfection can the human spirit aim at, so far as it is merely conceived as the reproduction of such an agency, except the increase of knowledge, exten- sively or intensively '? the presence to the combining intelli- gence of a more extensive manifold of combined objects, or the presence of them as more effectively combined ? I need not say that nothing can be more unlike this conception than Green's moral ideal ; in which, indeed, as I shall presently argue, knowledge rather occupies a too subordinate place. It may be said perhaps that though the Divine Mind cannot