Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/198

 186 HENEY SIDGWICK: expressly (p. 334) that evil consequences of actions may have been due to a " want of the requisite knowledge and ability to foresee" (pp. 333, 4); without expressly maintaining or even implying that such ignorance and want of foresight are always traceable to want of good will. The perplexity reaches its height when we consider wherein the goodness of these good effects consists and how it is to be known. It must ultimately lie, as Green repeatedly tells us, in the tendency of the immediate consequences of actions to pro- mote good character, that " perfection of mankind of which the essence is a good will on the part of all persons ". It is true that this promotion can be only indirect, since, " every one must make his character for himself. All that one man can do to make another better is to remove obstacles and supply conditions favourable to the formation of a good character". Still it remains true that the promotion of a good character in others and ourselves must, according to Green, be the sole ultimate end and standard of the goodness of the effects of our actions. On the other hand, Green explains in another passage (pp. 318, 19) that " we are on very uncertain ground" when we try, in judging the actions of contemporaries, to " ascertain the state of character on the part of the agents which the actions represent " : and hence concludes that it is wiser " to confine ourselves to measuring the value of actions by their effects without reference to the character of the agents ". But, as we have seen, these effects can only be effects on the character of other persons ; and since, I presume, our judgments as to effects on character must ultimately be inferred from obser- vations of conduct, there would seem to be precisely the same kind of difficulty in measuring the value of actions by their effects as there is in trying to ascertain the character of the agent ; only that in the former case the unknown quantity comes in at a later stage of the calculation. I cannot but think that these and other fundamental diffi- culties of method would have pressed themselves more strongly on Green's attention, and would therefore have obtained from him at least a consistent solution, if he had ever felt strongly the practical importance of improving men's Tmowledge or reasoned conviction as to what they ought to do. But in face of the vehement jar and conflict of prin- ciples and methods continually exhibited by contemporary schools and sects of social reformers, whose sincerity and earnestness cannot be doubted he remains firmly persuaded that practically the tendency of actions to produce a perfec- tion of human society will be " within the ken of any dis- passionate and considerate man " ; and hence, though he