An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times

by Thomas Hill Green

INTRODUCTION

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.'