Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/567

No. 5.] perfection the human spirit can aim at, so far as it is merely conceived as the reproduction of such an agency, except the increase of knowledge, extensively or intensively—the presence of the combining intelligence of a more extensive manifold of combined objects, or the presence of them as more effectively combined. As we shall find, nothing can be more unlike this conception than Green's moral ideal; in which, indeed, as I shall hereafter argue, knowledge rather occupies a too subordinate place; but assuming his metaphysical arguments valid, and his ethical view sound, there seems to me a great logical gap to be filled up in passing from the one to the other. ... I, at least, can find no grounds in the argument of Book I for attributing to Green's spiritual principle any such characteristic as the term 'holiness' expresses: I cannot even find adequate reasons for attributing to it anything analogous to will. It is merely, so far as I understand, an eternal intellect out of time, to which all time and its contents are eternally and (we may say) indifferently present; being equally implied in the conception of any succession, it is not shown to carry with it the conception of progress towards an end in the series of motions or changes of which the process of the world in time consists. The series might be altogether purposeless—a meaningless round of change—and still the 'unification' which appears to be the sole function of Green's eternal mind would be none the less comletely performed. And even if we grant that such a progress is implied in the development of the eternal consciousness in us, it is ... still a purely intellectual progress, a growth of that which knows in knowledge alone " (pp. 11-14).

2. Green's failure to differentiate will from intellect might perhaps be regarded as the result of the influence of his metaphysical intellectualism upon his psychology of ethics, if not upon his ethics proper. Sidgwick's argument here seems rather forced. Since in all cases of choice, according to Green, the object is chosen as constituting the 'good' of the agent, it follows that there is no "wilful choice of evil." Green is "so far under the influence of ancient Greek and especially Aristotelian modes of thought as to ignore usually, and expressly exclude sometimes, that wilful choice of wrong known to be wrong which is so essential an element in the modern Christian moral consciousness of 'sin'" (p. 25). "In my view what is personally, or deliberately, chosen, is to be distinguished from what is chosen as 'right,' 'good,' or 'reasonable'—the latter terms being used as equivalent. I hold ... that in 'wilful sin' I have chosen evil known as such; on the other hand, in deliberate self-sacrifice I have