Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/184



HE Philosophy of Green, like every other great system of thought, must die to live. "Human thought," as Professor Watson says, develops by antagonism. "An edifice of thought which is imposing by its large and bold outlines, and which for a time is admired as a flawless product, begins to be regarded as incomplete or defective. The critical movement begins and cannot stop until a higher plane of speculation has been reached." Green's philosophy was accepted, in Oxford at least, without much criticism, during the life-time of its author. But now we find its critics more numerous than its defenders. The time, it seems, has come for the unsparing, and let me say successful, critic of Locke and Hume, Spencer and Lewes, to be himself subjected to close criticism. Even those who once fought on the same side with him have now gone over to the camp of the enemy. That brilliant and lucid exponent, in bygone days, of what it is the fashion to call Neo-Kantianism or Neo-Hegelianism, Professor Andrew Seth, scarcely writes anything nowadays without dealing hard blows to his quondam allies. The adherents of Absolute Idealism are, perhaps, increasing in number, but Green's way of expounding it commands the assent of very few of them. My object in this paper is not to defend Green, though I should not hesitate to declare that, in principle, I am one of his humble followers. I rather intend to point out some real defects of his system, which, I think, stand to some extent in the way of its being accepted.

Green and the Neo-Hegelians have done a real service to Philosophy by clearly pointing out the difference between Psychology and Theory of Knowledge. Psychology traces the growth of knowledge in the individual mind, but does not investigate the conditions of knowledge. Its aim is to explain how knowledge is acquired. When, however, it is shown how