Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/87

 GREEN'S METAPHYSICS OF KNOWLEDGE. <> troversy that an end can be put to a state of things in which it is possible for one school of thought tranquilly to pursue its way, not merely without understanding or an- swering the arguments of another school, but without appar- ently admitting that there is anything to be understood or answered. I do not of course suppose that I have been wholly successful in either understanding or answering : at least, however, I have tried ; and the most unsuccessful attempt must prove of some value should it succeed in elicit- ing explanations or replies. The most casual reader of the metaphysical portion of Green's book cannot fail to note the insistance with which one particular kind of argument is used whatever may be the subject with which at the moment he is specially con- cerned. Throughout the extended and minute criticism to which he subjected the philosophy of Locke, of Berkeley, and of Hume (in his Introduction to the works of the latter author) this argument is used critically ; in the Prolegomena to Ethics it is used constructively. But whether used to destroy the systems of his predecessors or to support his own, the argument is so essentially one, not merely in sub- stance but in form, that the author, wherever his book be opened and whatever be the conclusion he is desirous of establishing, always has the air of saying the same thing. "Whether he be engaged in proving the existence of a univer- sal spirit, or of individual intelligences, or of the relation of these to the material universe, or the reality of freedom, it is always to one particular analysis of the nature of know- ledge that he appeals and on which in the main he rests his case : and he appears to have regarded it as his special mission in philosophy so to press this line of thought on the philosophic world that it could never again be forgotten or ignored. The character of this argument and the general outline of Green's scheme, so far at least as is necessary to make the succeeding criticism intelligible, may perhaps be understood from the following summary. Everything which is, or which can be, an object of thought is constituted by relations, i.e., is made what it is by the relations of its parts to one another, and of its whole to other wholes, to the system of nature, and to the self-conscious Subject which distinguishes it as such an object from itself. Unrelated sensations, so far from being " the real " or representing the real, are a " manifold " which can neither be perceived, thought of, nor in- telligibly spoken about ; are in short "nothing for us as thinking beii. As objects are constituted by relations, so relations are produced by the activitv of a self-conscious intelligence.