son, Butler, Hume, and Adam Smith" there is "abundant recognition of the interaction between the individual and his neighbor, and yet no sense of the problem which such interaction raises"; that "to these old thinkers, as also to more recent moralists, our neighbors are of no more importance than to present incidental claims to our Conscience, or to be the mere objects of our Compassion." Such a statement ignores the significance of the emphatic assertion of the social nature of man which is the common thesis of these moralists against the individualism of Hobbes. The representation is not least misleading in the case of Hume; and Mr. Hirst makes it appear plausible only by taking the Treatise rather than the Enquiry as the basis of his exposition.
Still, the main contention of the author cannot be controverted, that in none of these writers is there "any inkling of that vital ethical unity of 'ego' with 'alter' which seems to be the essence of goodness," any suggestion of the identity of the good of self with that of neighbor, or of the instinctive basis of that identity. Even Green reached, according to Mr. Hirst, rather a similar, than a common, or identical, good. "So long as good is identified with the perfection of the faculties of a man, it does not appear that it could be anything more than similar: it could hardly be common in the strict sense of the term. All men may seek the realisation of their powers, but in this way they would, if successful, attain a like good rather than a common good. The realisation of A's faculties does not necessarily and essentially implicate B. B may, of course, feel in indirect ways the benefit of A's culture, but in no proper sense is he a partner of it " (p. 100). But there is another side of Green's ethics—what we may call the Kantian side of his doctrine, according to which goodness or the good will is the supreme good for the individual; and such a good of A does certainly "implicate B," since goodness is social service. And in what he says of the identification of his good by the individual with that of his family, Green may be said, as Mr. Hirst admits, to have anticipated the doctrine of the identity of the good of ego and that of alter, as presented in this essay.
"The essence of ethical love, or of what we have called 'community,' is that it is inter-personal, not merely in its relation, for even hate is that, but inter-personal also in its interest. That is to say, it is an interest of the 'ego' in both itself and the 'alter,' and in neither more than in the other" (p. 121). "The object of the 'ego's' desire is the joint good of self and neighbor in such wise that there is no subordination of one to the other, but an identification of interests" (p. 122). The love which is the fulfilling of the law is to love our neighbor literally as our self. The chief novelty in the present work, as already indicated, is the basing of this ultimate ethical principle in the instinctive love of parent for child, and the exhibition in this way of the naturalness of the identity, and the artificiality of the dualism, of the egoistic and the altruistic interest." In the Parental Instinct, and in the Sentiment of Love developed from it, the chasm between the life of self and that of other is bridged: 'ego' and 'alter' are not treated as opposed, but are merged" (p. 61). "And if it be asked what is the nature of community as an ethical principle, we can only reply that, indefinable as it is in itself, it is such a life as a man would
