Thomas Hill Green was born in Birkin, Yorkshire, April 7, 1836. His
early education was acquired first at home under his father, the rector
of Birkin, then at Rugby, where he was sent at the age of fourteen. In
1855 he entered Balliol College, Oxford, and came under the influence of
Jowett, afterwards famous as Master of Balliol and translator of Plato.
Though he matured early, Green was not a brilliant student. On the
contrary, he appeared to be indolent and sluggish. "No man," wrote one
of his fellow-students in 1862, "is driven with greater difficulty to
work not to his taste.... He wrote some of the best college essays: he
never sent them in on the right day, and might generally be seen on the
Monday pondering over essays which every one else had sent in on the
Friday night." These traits, however, as it proved later, were the index
not of a vagrant mind, but of independence of thought and of
preoccupation with weightier matters. To quote again from the tribute of
a fellow-student: "On everything he said or wrote there was stamped the
impress of a forcible individuality, a mind that thought for itself,
and whose thoughts had the rugged strength of an original character
wherein grimness was mingled with humor, and practical shrewdness with a
love for abstract speculation." In the end, his solid qualities of mind
and character made so strong an impression upon the University
authorities that in 1860 he was elected fellow of Balliol. At the same
time he became lecturer on ancient and modern history. Though from the
beginning of his student life he had been drawn to an academic career
and especially to the study of philosophy, he was now for a period
undecided what to make his life-work. At one time he thought of going
into journalism in India. In 1864, having accepted a place with the
Royal Commission on Middle Class Schools, he prepared a valuable report
upon the organization of high schools and their relation to the
university. Finally, however, in 1866, his indecision was brought to an
end. Obtaining an appointment in that year to a position on the teaching
staff of Balliol College, he settled down to the work of a tutor in
philosophy. When Jowett was made Master of Balliol, Green became, under
him, the responsible manager of the college, performing the manifold
small duties of the position with patience, thoroughness, and tact.
In 1871 he was married to Miss Charlotte Symonds, sister of John
Addington Symonds.
Twice Green was candidate for a professorship; once in 1864 when he
applied for the chair of moral philosophy at St. Andrews, and again in
1867 when the Waynflate professorship of moral and metaphysical
philosophy fell vacant at Oxford. In both cases he was unsuccessful. It
was not until 1878, by his election to the Whyte's professorship of
moral philosophy, that he obtained the position and the independence he
had long deserved. His enjoyment of the honor was brief. He died of
blood-poisoning, after an illness of only ten days, March 26, 1882.
Green's character was compounded of a variety of elements. The shyness
and reserve characteristic of many cultivated Englishmen, was
accentuated in his case by a natural austerity and an absorption in
serious thought. But though his temper was puritanic and inclined to
moroseness, there was no sourness or cynicism in it. "If," he wrote to
Miss Symonds, "I am rather a melancholy bird, given to physical fatigue
and depression, yet I have never known for a moment what it was to be
weary of life, as the youth of this age are fond of saying that they
are. The world has always seemed very good to me." Grim though he might
be outwardly, he had a keen sense of humor and a warmth of interest in
his fellows that made him, for those who broke through his reserve, a
charming companion. His most characteristic quality was elevation of
mind. In the essay that is here reprinted he speaks of "that aspiring
pride which arises from the sense of walking in intellect on the necks
of a subject crowd." Something of this elevation, this aloofness from
the vulgar, characterized all of his utterances and gave to them at
times a solemn fervency akin to that of the Hebrew prophets. This trait
is finely portrayed in the following description of the tutor Grey (a
thin disguise for Green) in Mrs. Ward's 'Robert Elsmere:'
"In after years memory could always recall to him at will the face
and figure of the speaker, the massive head, the deep eyes sunk
under the brows, the midland accent, the make of limb and features
which seemed to have some suggestion in them of the rude strength
and simplicity of a peasant ancestry; and then the nobility, the
fire, the spiritual beauty flashing through it all! Here, indeed,
was a man on whom his fellows might lean, a man in whom the
generation of spiritual force was so strong and continuous that it
overflowed of necessity into the poorer, barrener lives around him,
kindling and enriching."
Green's contributions to philosophy were partly constructive, partly
(and perhaps mainly) critical and destructive. On the critical side, his
greatest effort was his attack upon the philosophy of Hume in two
masterly Introductions to an edition of Hume's 'Works,' published in
1874-5. English philosophical thinking, so Green held, had stuck fast
in the scepticism of Hume. Such forward movement in thought as there had
been since the 18th Century, had come mainly through the writings of men
like Wordsworth and Shelley--men who having seen deeply into life, had
expressed themselves in imaginative, not in philosophical ways. To set
the stagnant tide of speculative thinking in motion, involved a two-fold
task: on one side the breaking down of the barriers erected by the
sensationalist and materialist schools of the 17th and 18th centuries,
and on the other side the letting in of a current of fresh ideas from
some source outside of England. The first, or destructive, task Green
performed with remarkable success in the two Introductions. For the new
and truer ideas which were to displace the old, he naturally looked to
Germany, whose methods of research were just coming into vogue at Oxford
through the influence of Pattison and Jowett. And since to speculative
thinkers of that time German philosophy meant the philosophy of Hegel,
Green's fundamental conceptions were derived by Hegelian modes of
thinking. In other words, he was a neo-Hegelian. But, as his biographer
notes, he never committed himself unreservedly to the Hegelian credo.
"While he regarded Hegel's system as the 'last word of philosophy,' he
did not occupy himself with the exposition of it, but with the
reconsideration of the elements in Kant of which it was the
development." That is, he was a neo-Kantian as well as a neo-Hegelian.
Of his constructive thinking in these channels the most complete
embodiment is his 'Prolegomena to Ethics.'
Though naturally his contributions to philosophy are first in bulk and
importance, Green's writings cover a considerable range of subjects.
Listed in the order of publication, they are as follows: 'The Force of
Circumstances,' published in _Undergraduate Papers_, 1858; 'An Estimate
of the Value and Influence of Prose Fiction,' published as a prize
essay, 1862; 'The Philosophy of Aristotle' and 'Popular Philosophy in
its relation to Life,' _North British Review_, Sept., 1866, and March,
1868; Introductions to 'Hume's Treatise of Human Nature' 1874-5; 'The
Grading of Secondary Schools,' _Journal of Education_, May, 1877; Review
of E. Caird's 'Philosophy of Kant,' _Academy_, Sept. 22, 1877; 'Mr.
Spencer on the Relations of Subject and Object,' _Contemporary Review_,
Dec., 1877; 'Mr. Spencer on the Independence of Matter,' _ibid._, March,
1878; 'Mr. Lewes' Account of Experience,' _ibid._, July, 1878; review of
J. Caird's 'Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion,' _Academy_, July
10, 1880; 'Answer to Mr. Hodgson,' _Contemporary Review_, January, 1881;
review of J. Watson's 'Kant and his English Critics,' _Academy_,
September 17, 24, 1881; 'Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Control,'
1881; 'The Work to be done by the New Oxford High School,' 1882;
'Prolegomena to Ethics,' 1883; 'The Witness of God' and 'Faith'
(delivered in 1870 and 1877, and at the time printed for private
circulation), 1884.
All of the foregoing, with the exception of the 'Prolegomena to Ethics,'
are included in the 'Works' edited by R. L. Nettleship (3 Vols., 1885,
2d Ed. 1889, Longmans). The 'Works' contain, in addition, the following
writings not previously published: An essay on 'The Influence of
Civilization on Genius'; an essay on 'Christian Dogma'; an article on
'Mr. Lewes' Account of the Social Medium,' written for the _Contemporary
Review_, but not used; four lectures or addresses on the New Testament;
four lectures on 'The English Commonwealth'; a series of lectures on
'The Philosophy of Kant,' on 'Logic' and on 'The principles of Political
Obligations'; a lecture on 'The Different Senses of Freedom as Applied
to Will and to the Moral Progress of Man'; and a fragment on
'Immortality.'
Aside from occasional references to poetry and art in his philosophical
writings, as, for example, in the opening paragraphs of the
'Prolegomena,' the essay on fiction here reprinted is Green's only
venture in the field of aesthetic criticism. When we remember that it
was one of his earliest productions, having been submitted for the
Chancellor's prize in 1862, when Green was but 26 years of age, the
maturity of both style and contents seems remarkable. It is in fact a
monumental piece of literary criticism, sufficient to establish the
reputation of many a lesser writer. At the same time, however, there is
about it an air of constraint which shows that the author was not at
ease in this kind of speculation. He was fencing, so to speak, with his
left hand. His mind was so absorbed in the metaphysical, ethical, and
religious aspects of experience that upon the aesthetic as such he had
little attention to bestow. When he approached aesthetic problems at all
it was for the purpose of obtaining data which he could employ in other
fields of thought. He was obviously not in sympathy with the aims of
English novelists. He had no expert knowledge of the history of fiction
in England, and no knowledge at all, so far as appears, of its history
in other countries. Probably he misunderstood the relation, in certain
particulars, of the novel to the epic. Nevertheless, his appreciation of
concrete works of art was so genuine and profound, his insight so clear,
his expressed judgments so candid, that any contact of his mind with
art, literary or other, could not fail to be illuminating. Whatever its
limitations, the essay has at least one distinguishing merit: in it a
fundamental principle of criticism is applied with merciless rigor to
the solution of a literary problem. The products of such a method are
certain to be interesting and valuable. Whether we agree with the
author's conclusions or not, we can at least see whence he derives them
and feel the stimulus which always comes from the spectacle of a
powerful mind grappling in deadly earnest with momentous questions of
art and life.
AN ESTIMATE
of the
Value and Influence of
Works of Fiction in
Modern Times