Page:Essays in Philosophical Criticism (1883).djvu/18

 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,