CHAPTER II

GREEN'S DOCTRINE OF COMMON GOOD

The late Prof. T. H. Green's Prolegomena to Ethics is of
course one of the standard treatises in English on the subject
of Moral Philosophy.* Taking as his basis the meta-
physics of Absolute Ideahsm he attempts to build thereon
an ethical superstructure. We are not primarily concerned
with Absolute Ideahsm as a metaphysical theory, but it is
necessary to draw attention, if only briefly, to the principles
which Green uses as the foundation of his doctrine. These
principles, stated in their simplest terms, may be thus
summarised. Reason in man is constitutive, not only of
the world which he knows, but also of his knowledge of that
world. It is the source ahke of relations between pheno-
mena and of our apprehension of them. Our consciousness
of a world of experience is not the product of that world
of which it is the consciousness,~but is rather the reproduc-
tion in us of that eternal consciousness for which the world
eternally exists. Reason, which is the source ahke of
' nature ' and our knowledge of nature, is the source also
of our nioral nature. Whereas it is usual to say that the
motive makes the man. Green holds rather that man makes
his own motive. Motive is ' the presentation of a want
by a self-conscious subject to himself, and with it the idea
of a self-satisfaction to be attained in the filhng of the want '
(bk. ii. ch. i. p. 94, edit. 1883). A motive is thus always
the desire for personal good in some form or other, and in

1 In his Principles of Political Obligation also Green regards Good as
Common, and relates it to those civil rights and institutions in which it is
safeguarded and expressed.
