of the moral ideal enforced by Green. And it is as suitable as any
single word could be. But it is clear that, in every action whatever
of a conscious being, self-realisation may be said to be the end: some
capacity is being developed, satisfaction is being sought for some
desire. A man may develop his capacities, seek and to some extent
attain satisfaction--in a manner, realise himself--not only in
devotion to a scientific or artistic ideal or in labours for the
common good, but also in selfish pursuit of power or even in sensual
enjoyment. So far as the word 'self-realisation' can be made to cover
such different activities, it is void of moral content and cannot
express the nature of the moral ideal. Green is perfectly alive to the
need of a distinction--and to the difficulty of drawing it. According
to his own statement it is true not only of moral activity but of
every act of willing that in it "a self-conscious individual directs
himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object in which for
the time he seeks self-satisfaction."[1] And he proceeds to ask the
question, "How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the
objects willed as justifies the distinction which 'moral sense' seems
to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice? And if
there is such a difference, in what does it consist?"[2] Now we may
define a good action as the sort of action which proceeds from a good
man; or we may define a good man as a man who performs good actions.
And for each method of definition something may be said. But if we
adopt both methods together and say in one breath that good is what
the good man does and that the good man is he who does good, is our
logic any better than that of the ordination-candidate who defined the
functions of an archdeacon as archdiaconal functions? And yet Green
comes very near to describing this logical circle. "The moral good,"
he says, is "that which satisfies the desire of amoral agent"; but
"the question, ... What do we mean by calling ourselves moral agents?
is one to which a final answer cannot be given without an answer to
the question, What is moral good?"[3]
[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, § 154, p. 160.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., § 156, p. 163.]
[Footnote 3: Prolegomena to Ethics, §§ 171, 172, p. 179.]
When Green really grapples with the difficulty of distinguishing the
moral from the immoral in character or in conduct, it is possible
to distinguish different ways in which he attempts to draw the
distinction--these different ways being, however, not independent but
complementary to one another in his thought. The first suggestion is
that good is distinguished from evil, or the true good from a good
which is merely apparent, by its permanence. It gives a lasting
satisfaction instead of a merely transient satisfaction: "the true
good ... is an end in which the effort of a moral agent can really
find rest."[1] In this statement two points seem to be involved which
the use of the rather metaphorical term 'finding rest' tends to
confuse. If we are looking for the distinction simply of a good action
or motive from a bad one we may point to the approval of conscience in
the former case: this has a permanence--or rather an independence of
time--which distinguishes it from the satisfaction of some temporary
desire. But I do not think that this is what Green means. He wished
to avoid falling back upon mere disconnected judgments of conscience
after the manner of the intuitional moralists. The 'true good' for him
seems to mean the attainment, the complete realisation, of the moral
ideal. Were this reached we should indeed 'find rest,' for moral
activity as we know it would be at an end. But the moral ideal
is never thus attained; its realisation, as Green holds, is only
progressive and never completed. Consequently 'rest' is never 'found.'
It is of the nature of the moral life to press onward constantly
towards a goal which it cannot attain; each achievement leads to a
further effort and a higher reach.
[Footnote 1: Ibid., § 171, p. 179.]
By itself, therefore, the assertion that the moral agent 'finds rest'
in the 'true good' does not enable us to distinguish the moral agent
or the moral action from the immoral. For we are unable to define the
'true good.' It is not a part of experience; it is an ideal: and Green
allows that we can give no complete account of it; he even says
that we can give no positive account of it. At the same time this
consideration leads to another and connected method for distinguishing
good from evil.
"Of a life of completed development," Green holds, "of activity with
the end attained, we can only speak or think in negatives, and thus
only can we speak or think of that state of being in which, according
to our theory, the ultimate moral good must consist."[1] But the
development is a real process which manifests itself in habits and
social institutions; and from these its actual achievements we can to
a certain extent see what the moral capability of man "has in it to
become," and thus "know enough of ultimate moral good to guide our
conduct." One of the most valuable portions of Green's own work is his
description of the gradual widening and purifying of human conceptions
regarding goodness in character and conduct. But all this implies some
standard of discrimination and selection between what is good and
what is evil in human achievement. Which developments are truly
realisations of "the moral capability of man," and so tend to the
attainment of ultimate good, and which developments are expressions
of those capacities which seek an apparent good only and are to be
classed as evil, as impediments to the realisation of the good,--these
have to be discriminated; and is it so clear that from the mere record
of human deeds we are able to draw the distinction? Do we not need
some criterion of goodness to guide our judgment? and does not Green
himself use such a criterion when he appeals to the tendency of
certain institutions and habits to "make the welfare of all the
welfare of each," and of certain arts to make nature "the friend of
man"?[2] Common welfare and the utilisation of nature in the service
of man seem to be taken as tests of the true development of moral
capabilities. The criteria themselves may be excellent; but they
are not got out of the mere record: they are brought by us to its
contemplation. To this special question I can find no answer in Green.
He is indeed aware that there is a difficulty; or rather he admits
that something has been "taken for granted." He has assumed that
there is "some best state of being for man"; that this best state is
eternally present to a divine consciousness; and further, that this
"eternal mind" is reproducing itself as the self of man.[3] On this
supposition only, he says, can our moral activity be explained; and
he holds that the supposition can be justified metaphysically and has
been so justified by himself in the earlier part of his treatise.
[Footnote 1: Prolegomena to Ethics, § 172, p. 180.]
[Footnote 2: Prolegomena, § 172, p. 180.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., §§ 173, 174, p. 181.]
Now I am willing to admit that Green showed a correct instinct in
examining the nature of man before entering upon his properly ethical
enquiry. One must know what man is before one can say what his
'good' or his duty is; and it is only because man's nature cannot be
accounted for as a merely natural or animal product that the way is
open for an idealist ethics such as Green's. But perhaps Green laid
too much stress on the problem of historical causation. What matters
it how we came by our knowledge, provided it is the case that we can
know ourselves and the world? If we can now distinguish right and
wrong, can ally ourselves with the good, and follow a moral ideal, of
what great importance are the steps by which the moral consciousness
was attained? And the question here is whether the special results
reached by Green in his metaphysical enquiry into human nature have
brought us any nearer to a solution of the present ethical difficulty.
As we have seen, the metaphysical view which Green arrives at is that
the consciousness which is in man and which raises him above nature
is the manifestation of--the "reproduction" of itself by--an eternal
self-consciousness. Man's own self-consciousness in knowledge and
volition is simply God's self--consciousness "reproduced" (to use
Green's term) in man's animal nature: so that the animal body and
its temporal activities become in some unexplained (and no doubt
inexplicable) way "organic" (to use Green's terminology once more,
where no terminology seems adequate) to a spiritual reality which is
eternal and infinite.
I am far from denying the greatness of this conception or its
practical value. There is no stronger support to moral endeavour than
the conviction that the moral life is a realisation of the divine
purpose, that in all goodness the spirit of God is manifest, that the
good man is the servant of God or even His fellow-worker. By whatever
metaphor this may be expressed--and Green's statement that the divine
self--consciousness 'reproduces' itself in human morality is also
a metaphor--it betrays the assurance that moral achievement is
permanent, and that (in spite of all apparent failures) goodness will
prevail. He who fights for the good may be confident of victory.
This is the practical value of the conception; but in order that it
may have this practical value, the distinction of good from evil
must be first of all made clear. Green's appeal to an eternal
self-consciousness does nothing of itself to elucidate this
distinction. Tendencies to exalt selfish interest over common welfare,
and to prefer sensual to what are called higher gratifications, enter
into the nature of man, and have fashioned his history. Green does
not even ask the question whether these also are not to be considered
manifestations or 'reproductions' of the eternal self-consciousness.
But his metaphysical view does not exclude them; and if they are
included, morality disappears for lack of any criterion between good
and evil. If good is to be discriminated from evil, it must be by some
other means than by describing the whole conscious activity of man as
a reproduction of the divine. Instead of doing anything to solve the
problem of the meaning of goodness, Green simply brings forward a new
difficulty--that of understanding how the temporal process in which
human morality is developed can be related to a reality which is
defined as out of time or eternal. This difficulty cannot be avoided
in a metaphysical theory of morality. And it does not stand alone.
Green's own dialectics were directed against the Sensationalist and
Hedonist theories which used to be regarded as typical of English
thought; and on them they acted as a powerful solvent. His own views
of the spiritual nature of man and its relation to the eternal
self-consciousness were worked out with the confidence and enthusiasm
of a reformer rather than with the caution of a critic. But criticism
has followed, and not only from the representatives of opposed
schools. Writers whose intellectual affinities are on the whole the
same as his have let their dialectic play around his fundamental
conceptions with a result very different from that which he
contemplated. Mr Bradley, like Green, has faith in an eternal Reality,
which might be called spiritual, inasmuch as it is not material; like
Green, he looks upon man's moral activity as an appearance--what Green
calls a reproduction--of this eternal reality. But under this general
agreement there lies a world of difference. He refuses, by the use of
the term self-consciousness, to liken his Absolute to the personality
of man, and he brings out the consequence, which in Green is more or
less concealed, that the evil equally with the good in man and in the
world are appearances of the Absolute.
Mr Bradley's whole work is ruled by the distinction between
"Appearance" and "Reality," which gives his book a title. On the
one hand there is the Absolute Reality, spoken of as perfect, and
described as all--comprehensive and harmonious throughout. Neither
change nor time nor any relation can belong to it. But intelligence
works by discrimination and comparison; knowledge implies relations;
it is, therefore, excluded from reality. Truth is mere appearance. The
same judgment must be passed on our moral activity. We strive after
and perhaps reach an ideal, or, as Mr Bradley says, we aim at
satisfying a desire; and this, too, is a process far removed from
reality.[1] Goodness, like truth, is mere appearance.
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, pp. 402, 410.]
This needs no elaboration. If all predication involves relation, and
relation is excluded from reality,[1] then no predicate--not even
truth or goodness--can be asserted of the real. Nay more, to be
consistent, we ought not even to say that reality or the Absolute
(for the two terms are here interchangeable) is perfect, or one, or
all-comprehensive, or harmonious: for all these are predicates. _Ens
realissimum_ is the only _ens reale_; all else is mere appearance.
[Footnote 1: Ibid., pp. 32-34.]
Just here, however, lies an indication of another line of thought. For
what is an appearance, and what is it that appears? It can only be
reality that thus appears; the 'mere' appearance is yet an 'appearance
of reality.' It might seem that this is to catch, not at a straw, but
at the shadow of a straw. For if we say that 'reality appears,' are
we not thereby predicating something of reality, making it enter into
relation? But let that pass. Among these appearances we may be able to
distinguish degrees of significance or of adequacy, nay--strange as
it may seem to the reader who has followed Mr Bradley's first line of
thought--"degrees of reality." Relations are excluded from reality;
and degree is a relation; but reality has degrees. The logic is
unsatisfactory, but the conclusion may perhaps have a value of its
own.
Here, then, is another view of the universe--not an unchanging,
relationless, eternal reality, but varying degrees of reality
manifested in that complex process which we call sometimes the world
and sometimes 'experience,' But the two views are connected. For it is
assumed that the Absolute Reality is harmonious and all-comprehensive;
and it is further asserted that these two characteristics of harmony
and comprehensiveness may be taken as criteria of the "degree of
reality" possessed by any "appearance." The more harmonious anything
is--the fewer its internal discrepancies or contradictions--the higher
is its degree of reality; and the greater its comprehensiveness--the
fewer predicates left outside it--the higher also is its degree of
reality. No attempt is made at a measured scale of degrees of reality,
such, for example, as is offered by the Hegelian dialectic; but a sort
of rough classification of various 'appearances' is offered. In this
classification a place is given to goodness which is comparatively
high, and yet "subordinate" and "self-contradictory." [1]
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 420.]
Mr Bradley's Absolute, we may say, has two faces, one of which is
described as good, while the other is inscrutable. "Obviously," he says,
"the good is not the Whole, and the Whole, as such, is not good. And,
viewed thus in relation to the Absolute, there is nothing either bad or
good, there is not anything better or worse. For the Absolute is _not_
its appearances." This is the inscrutable side. But yet "the Absolute
appears in its phenomena and is real nowhere outside them;... it is all
of them in unity. And so, regarded from this other side, the Absolute
_is_ good, and it manifests itself throughout in various degrees of
goodness and badness."[1] What would be contradiction in another writer
is only two-sidedness in Mr Bradley. And it is this second side which
interests us, for here "the Absolute _is_ good," and yet, good as it is,
manifests itself in badness as well as goodness, and that in various
degrees. If we are to follow another statement of the doctrine, however,
we shall have to allow that the "badness" is also good, and that the
"various degrees" are all equal. For "the Absolute is perfect in all its
detail, it is equally true and good throughout."[2] Whether or not the
good is contradictory, as Mr Bradley maintains,[3] we must allow that he
succeeds in making his account of it contradictory.
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 411.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 401.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 409.]
I will try to put the gist of the matter in my own words. Mr Bradley's
Absolute is eternal, relationless, ineffable. To it goodness cannot be
ascribed; indeed no predicate can be properly applied to it, for any
predication implies relation: in earlier language than Mr Bradley's it
involves determination and therefore negation. Even to say that the
Absolute appears or manifests itself is to predicate something, to
imply relation, and thus is an offence against the absoluteness of the
Absolute. But nevertheless there _is_ a world of phenomena, which the
most mystical of philosophers must recognise, if only as a world
of illusion. The sum-total of these phenomena may be called the
appearances of the Absolute; and the Absolute, according to Mr
Bradley, "is real nowhere outside them." In this sense of reality we
may make predicates about it. Indeed all our predicates, Mr Bradley
teaches in his 'Logic,' have reality--the universe of reality--for
their ultimate subject.
In this sense it may be possible to speak of reality as good (though
it is a misapplication of the term "Absolute" to call it good). But
the question remains what we mean by "good" in this connexion, and
what justification we have for using the predicate. And the answer
must be that Mr Bradley means very little, since the goodness is
manifested "in various degrees of goodness and badness," and that the
justification for using the term is not made clear. It seems to
be used of reality in a somewhat vague sense, as it were _jure
dignitatis_ and to have as little ethical significance as "right
honourable" when applied to a politician or "reverend" to a clergyman:
cases in which it might be consistent to say that right honourable
gentlemen manifest various degrees of honour and dishonour, or that
reverend gentlemen are worthy of various degrees of reverence and the
opposite. All the details of the phenomenal world are bound together
by chains of necessity; each is an essential part of the sum-total.[1]
How can the distinction of good and evil apply as between these parts?
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality-Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]
We may speak of parts as higher or lower; and Mr Bradley defines the
"lower" as "that which, to be made complete, would have to undergo a
more total transformation of its nature."[1] The meaning of this is
not clear. The reference may be to the complete state which a thing
may reach in process of growth. Thus an early stage of a rose-bud
may be said to be "lower" than its later stage because it requires a
greater transformation before it produces the bloom. But here 'lower'
does not mean ethically lower, unless immaturity be confused with
evil. Or the complete state may be regarded as the type of some order
or class, from which different individuals differ in greater or less
degree. This meaning is not suggested by the author; and it could have
ethical implication only if the type had been first of all shown to
have an ethical value. Or again, the completeness referred to may be
that which is alone complete in the strict sense of the word, namely,
the universe. And we might say that a rose-leaf would require greater
transformation in order to become complete in this sense than a
rose-bush, or that the act of giving a cup of cold water was less
complete than the far-reaching activity say of the first Napoleon.
But this difference in completeness would not entail a corresponding
difference in moral worth or goodness.
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 401.]
Where all stages are essential, it is not possible to say that one
is good and another evil. Is not the good something that ought to be
striven for, attained, and preserved? and is not evil something that
ought not to be at all? And how can we say that any part ought not to
be when every part is essential?
From the monistic view of reality, as set forth by Mr Bradley, there
is no direct route to the distinction between good and evil. If the
distinction is reached at all, it will be found to be psychological
rather than cosmical, to be relative to the attitude of the human mind
which contemplates the facts, and in this strict sense to be, what Mr
Bradley calls it, appearance.
And this is the view which Mr Bradley takes when he proceeds to describe
what he means by the 'good.' It is, he says, "that which satisfies
desire. It is that which we approve of, and in which we can rest with a
feeling of contentment."[1] "Desire"--"approval"--"feeling"--to these
mental attitudes the good is relative: they are expressed in its
definition. Mr Bradley, it will be seen, re-states Green's doctrine with
a difference which makes it at once more logical and less ethical. Green
had said that "the moral good is that which satisfies the desire of a
moral agent"; and in so saying had simply walked round the difficulty,
for he was unable to say wherein consisted the peculiarity of the moral
agent without reference to the conception of moral good which he had
started out to define. But Mr Bradley dispenses with the qualification,
and says simply that the good "satisfies desire." And in so far his
definition is more logical. The question is whether it distinguishes
good from evil. Both the practical importance and the theoretical
difficulty of the problem arise from the fact that evil is sometimes
desired, and that the evil desire may be satisfied. The desire of a
malevolent man may be satisfied by another's downfall, and his mind may
even "rest with a feeling of contentment" in that result, much in the
same way as the benevolent man is satisfied and content with another's
happiness. Fortunately, the case is not so common: the dominant leanings
of most men are in sympathy with good rather than with evil: but it is
common enough to make the emotional characteristics of the individual an
uncertain basis on which to rest the distinction of good from evil.
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 402.]
There is also another way of putting the matter: "the good is
coextensive with approbation."[1] If by 'approbation' we mean simply
'holding for good,' then the sentence will mean that the good is what
we hold for good--that is to say, that our judgments about good
are always true judgments,--a proposition which either ignores the
divergence between different individual judgments about good, or else
implies a complete relativity such that that is good to each man at
any time which he at that time approves or holds to be good; and this
latter view would make all discussion impossible. But this is not what
Mr Bradley means. "Approbation is to be taken in its widest sense";
in which sense "to approve is to have an idea in which we feel
satisfaction, and to have or imagine the presence of this idea in
existence."[2] And here the criterion is the same as before, and
equally subjective. In desire idea and existence are separated; they
are united in the satisfaction of desire; and approbation is said to
be just the feeling of satisfaction in an idea which is also present
(or imagined as present) in existence. Not only actual satisfaction of
the desire but also imagined satisfaction is covered by "approbation";
but this approval is still simply a feeling of some individual person.
[Footnote 1: Appearance and Reality, p. 407]
[Footnote 2: Appearance and Reality, p. 418.]
We need not concern ourselves at present with the adequacy of this
statement as an account of the way in which we come to 'approve' or
hold something as good. The point is, that it does not advance us at
all towards determining the validity of this approval, or towards an
objective criterion for distinguishing 'good' from evil.