Essays in Philosophical Criticism/Preface
ESSAYS
IN
PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM.
PREFACE.
The various contributors to a volume of Essays such as the
present may naturally be supposed to be animated by some
common purpose or tendency; and I have been requested to
say a few words to indicate how far such a common purpose
or tendency exists.
In the first place, then, I have to state that the Essays have been written quite independently by their several authors, and that any agreement which exists among them is due, not to an intention to advocate any special philosophical theory, but rather to a certain community of opinion in relation to the general principle and method of philosophy. In other words, it may be described as an agreement as to the direction in which inquiry may most fruitfully be prosecuted, rather than a concurrence in any definite results that have as yet been attained by it. Such an agreement is consistent with great and even vital differences. For any idea that has a principle of growth in it, any idea that takes hold of man’s spiritual life on many sides, is certain, as it developes, to produce wide divergencies, and even to call forth much antagonism and conflict between its supporters. A doctrine that passes unchanged from hand to hand, is by that very fact shown to have exhausted its inherent force; and those ideas have been the most fruitful both in religion and philosophy, which, accepted as a common starting-point, have given rise to the most far-reaching controversy. Nevertheless, so long as in such controversy it remains possible to appeal to one principle, so long as the differences are due to the various development of one way of thinking in different minds, the division and opposition is a sign of life, and may be expected ultimately to be overcome by the same spiritual energy which has produced it.
The writers of this volume agree in believing that the line of investigation which philosophy must follow, or in which it may be expected to make most important contributions to the intellectual life of man, is that which was opened up by Kant, and for the successful prosecution of which no one has done so much as Hegel. Such a statement of their philosophical creed, however, would be misleading, if it were not further explained and limited. For a reference to definite names is in philosophy often taken to imply a kind of discipleship which cannot be acknowledged by those who believe that the history of philosophy is a living development, and who, therefore, are adherents of a school only in the sense that they trace the last steps of that development in a particular way. The work of Kant and Hegel, like the work of earlier philosophers, can have no speculative value except for those who are able critically to reproduce it, and so to assist in the sifting process by which its permanent meaning is separated from the accidents of its first expression. And such reproduction, again, is not possible except for those who are impelled by the very teaching they have received to give it a fresh expression and a new application. Valuable as may be the history of thought, the literal importation of Kant and Hegel into another country and time would not be possible if it were desirable, or desirable if it were possible. The mere change of time and place, if there were nothing more, implies new questions and a new attitude of mind in those whom the writer addresses, which would make a bare reproduction unmeaning. Moreover, this change of the mental atmosphere and environment is itself part of a development which must affect the doctrine also, if it is no mere dead tradition, but a seed of new intellectual life. Anyone who writes about philosophy must have his work judged, not by its relation to the intellectual wants of a past generation, but by its power to meet the wants of the present time — wants which arise out of the advance of science, and the new currents of influence which are transforming man’s social and religious life. What he owes to previous writers is, so to speak, a concern of his own, with which his readers have directly nothing to do, and for which they need not care. For them the only question of interest is, whether in the writer they have immediately to deal with, there is a living source of light which is original in the sense that, whatever may be its history, it carries its evidence in itself. And this evidence must lie in its power to meet the questions of the day, and in the form in which they arise in that day. A volume of Essays such as the present, touching on so many important topics, can be only a small contribution to that critical reconstruction of knowledge which every time has to accomplish for itself. But it will, I believe, serve the purpose of its writers, if it shows in some degree how the principles of an idealistic philosophy may be brought to bear on the various problems of science, of ethics, and of religion, which are now pressing upon us.
A better indication of the spirit and aims with which the writers of this volume have written, than can be given in any such general statement as the above, may be found in their wish to dedicate it to the memory of Professor Green; an author who, more perhaps than any recent writer on philosophy, has shown that it is possible to combine a thorough appropriation of the results of past speculation with the freshness and spontaneity of an original mind. To Professor Green philosophy was not a study of the words of men that are gone, but a life transmitted from them to him — a life expressing itself with that power and authority which belongs to one who speaks from his own experience, and never to ‘the scribes’ who speak from tradition. It may be permitted to one who had the privilege of a long and unbroken friendship with him to take this opportunity of saying a few words on his general character, as well as on the special loss which philosophy has sustained in his death.
Those friends who can look back on Professor Green’s life with the intimate knowledge of contemporaries cannot fail to be struck with the evidence of consistency and unswerving truth to himself, which it presents. His fellow-students at the University were specially impressed by two features of bis character, which then stood out with the greater clearness from their contrast with the usual tendencies of youth. The first was the distinctness with which he lived by conviction and not by impulse. No man could be less pedantic; he had, indeed, a kind of humorous grasp of character and situation which made pedantry always impossible to him. But it seemed to be for him a moral impossibility to act at all, unless he had thought out his course and come to clearness of decision regarding it. Hence at times his manner might quench or repel the ready fire of immediate youthful sympathy in those around him, and might seem to keep even those who were most intimate with him at a distance from his life. Really, however, no one was more capable of friendship, and he was one with whom every tie which he bad once formed only grew stronger with time, and was unaffected even by absence and want of intercourse.
The other characteristic was the intensity of his political and intellectual interests. In this respect his character seemed to invert the usual order of development. What is called the ‘enthusiasm of humanity,’ or at least a sympathy with great intellectual and political movements, was with him a primary, and one might almost say an instinctive, passion; and it was rather out of this and, as it were, under its shadow, that for the most part his personal feelings and affections grew up. Hence he was, in some sense, intellectually old in his youth, and he seemed to become younger at heart— less restrained and self-centred, and more open to individual interests— as he grew older.
He was, in the best sense, a democrat of the democrats. I use this word for want of a better, but what I mean is, that from a somewhat exclusive interest in the essentials of humanity — in the spiritual experiences in which all men are alike — and from a natural disregard for the outward differences of rank and position and even of culture, by which these essentials are invested and concealed, his sympathies were always with the many rather than with the few. He was strongly inclined to the idea that there is an ‘instinct of reason’ in the movement of popular sentiment, which is often wiser than the opinion of the so-called educated classes. The belief in the essential equality of men might, indeed, be said to be one of the things most deeply rooted in bis character, though it showed itself not in any readiness to echo the commonplaces of Radicalism, but rather in an habitual direction of thought and interest to practical schemes for ‘levelling up’ the inequalities of human lot, and giving to the many the opportunities of the few. This characteristic ‘note’ of his mind is expressed by his last published writing — an Address to the Wesleyan Literary Society of Oxford, ‘On the work to be done by the new Oxford High School,’ which ends with the following words: — ‘Our High School then may fairly claim to be helping forward the time when every Oxford citizen will have open to him at least the precious companionship of the best books in his own language, and the knowledge necessary to make him really independent; when all who have a special taste for learning will have open to them what has hitherto been unpleasantly called “the education of gentlemen.” I confess to hoping for a time w^hen that phrase will have lost its meaning, because the sort of education which alone makes the gentleman in any true sense will be within reach of all. As it was the aspiration of Moses that all the Lord’s people should be prophets, so with all seriousness and reverence we may hope and pray for a condition of English society in which all honest citizens will recognise themselves, and be recognised by each other, as gentlemen. If for Oxford our High School contributes in its measure, as I believe it will, to win this blessed result, some sacrifice of labour and money — even that most difficult sacrifice, the sacrifice of party spirit — may fairly be asked for its support.’
In philosophy Professor Green’s whole work was devoted to the development of the results of the Kantian criticism of knowledge and morals. To Hegel he latterly stood in a somewhat doubtful relation; for while, in the main, he accepted Hegel’s criticism of Kant, and held also that something like Hegel’s idealism must be the result of the development of Kantian principles rightly understood, he yet regarded the actual Hegelian system with a certain suspicion as something too ambitious, or, at least, premature. ‘It must all be done over again,’ he once said, meaning that the first development of idealistic thought in Germany had in some degree anticipated what can be the secure result only of wider knowledge and more complete reflexion. This attitude of mind was, indeed, characteristic of one who scarcely felt that he had a scientific right to any principle which he had not submitted to a testing process of years, and who never satisfied himself — as men of idealistic tendencies are too apt to satisfy themselves — with an intuitive grasp of any comprehensive idea, until he had vindicated every element of it by the hard toil of an exhaustive reflexion. Hence he was almost painful in the constancy of his recurrence to certain fundamental thoughts, which he never seemed to have sufficiently verified and explained, and which he was ever ready to reconsider in the light of new objections, even those that might seem to be comparatively unimportant to others. In this he showed how a deep faith in certain principles may be united with the questioning temper of science, and even with a scrupulous scepticism which is ever ready to go back to the beginning, that it may exhaust everything that can be said against them. For such a mind there must always be a wide division between faith and reason, or (what in philosophy comes to the same thing) between a principle and its development into a system. Its appropriate activity must be rather to lay and to try the foundations than to build the superstructure. But it is the result of such work, and of such work alone, to secure that the foundations are immovably fixed on the rock.
Professor Green’s great influence on the life of the University and the City of Oxford, to which so many testimonies have been given since his death, was not due to any of the usual sources of popularity. Wanting in superficial readiness of sympathy, wanting also in the sanguine flow of animal spirits, and by constitutional reserve often prevented from expressing what he felt and wished to express, he yet gradually created in those around him a sense of security in trusting him which was due to the transparent purity of his aims and to the entire absence of personal assumption and petty ambition. It was due, it may be added, to the secret fire of ethical enthusiasm, which gradually made itself felt through the unpretending simplicity and business-like directness of his manner. His very reticence and unwillingness to speak, except upon knowledge and from necessity, gave an additional, and sometimes an almost overpowering, weight to his words when he did speak. And in later years the consciousness of the success of his work, both speculative and practical, (however he might underestimate it), and also the consciousness of the sympathy, which he found in his home and in a widening circle of friends who understood him, seemed to soften the strength of his character and give him greater freedom in the use of his powers. There are not a few among the Oxford men of the last fifteen years to whom, as was once said of another teacher, ‘his existence was one of the things that gave reality to the distinction between good and evil.’ The loss of such an educative influence cannot be easily replaced; but, so far as his literary work is concerned, there is reason to believe that his forthcoming volume upon Ethics, though not quite completed, will prove a better representation of his thought and aims to those who were not immediately brought in contact with him than anything from his pen that has as yet been given to the world.