GREEN'S ETHICS. 187 recognises that it is the function of philosophy to supply men with a " rationale of the various duties " prescribed to them, I cannot perceive that the enthusiasm for human wellbeing which the whole treatise breathes has actually impelled him to furnish such a rationale, or even to provide his readers with an outline of a coherent method by which a system of duties could be philosophically worked out. There is much instructive description and discussion, in the concluding Book of the treatise, of the general attitude which a moral man should adopt in dealing with practical pro- blems, much subtle analysis and distinction of different elements presented for his consideration ; but if the reader expects to be guided to a cogently reasoned solution of any such problems proceeding from unambiguous ethical pre- misses to definite practical conclusions the expectation wilf hardly be fulfilled. This, at least, is the conclusion at which I have arrived, after a careful perusal of the treatise : but I expect that it will be widely disputed. Considering the growing prevalence of the manner of thought of which Green was a leading re- presentative, the great influence exercised by himself per- sonally, the amount of close and powerful reasoning which , his book contains, and the singularly elevated and inspiring'- ethical mood which pervades it from first to last it is hardly possible that such a work should not meet with many readers to whom it will give, as a whole, more intellectual satisfac- tion than I have been able to find in it. Indeed, had I thought otherwise, it would have seemed to me more suit- able as it would certainly have been more consonant with my own feelings to treat this posthumous book in a less polemical manner ; to dwell more upon its literary merits, and upon those aspects or elements of its doctrine with which I am in cordial sympathy. But, regarding the treatise as one about which our ethical discussion is likely for some- time to turn, I have thought it best to urge the fundamental difficulties that I find in its teachings as frankly and fully as I should have done if the author had been living to reply. There are many, I doubt not, ready if they should think it needful to come (as Plato says) " to the aid of the orphaned doctrine, the father of which had he lived would have struck many a good stroke in its behalf" : or let me rather say since he never wrote for victory that he would have set himself to remove such difficulties as he thought worthy of consideration in the candid, earnest, careful, exhaustive style of controversy which was peculiarly his own. That this source of further instruction is now for ever closed to us, no one can regret more sincerely than the writer of this article.
