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The name of Thomas Green, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Oxford, was not, during his lifetime, widely known outside the University itself. But he is still remembered by students of metaphysics and ethics as one of the most vigorous thinkers of his time; and his personality was a striking one, which made a deep and lasting impression on those with whom he came in contact.

He was born in Yorkshire in 1836, the son of a country clergyman; was educated at Rugby School and at Balliol College, Oxford, of which he became a fellow in 1860, and a tutor in 1869. In 1867 he was an unsuccessful candidate for a chair of philosophy at St. Andrews, and in 1878 was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in his own University, which he never thereafter quitted. He was married in 1869 and died in 1882. It was a life externally uneventful, but full of thought and work, and latterly crowned by great influence over the younger and great respect from the senior members of the University.

I can best describe Green as he was in his 86 undergraduate days, for it was then that I saw most of him. His appearance was striking, and made him a familiar figure even to those who did not know him personally. Thick black hair, a sallow complexion, dark eyebrows, deep-set eyes of rich brown with a peculiarly steadfast look, were the features which first struck one; and with these there was a remarkable seriousness of expression, an air of solidity and quiet strength. He knew comparatively few people, and of these only a very few intimately, having no taste or turn for those sports in which university acquaintances are most frequently made, and seldom appearing at breakfast or wine parties. This caused him to pass for harsh or unsocial; and I remember having felt a slight sense of alarm the first time I found myself seated beside him. Though we belonged to different colleges I had heard a great deal about him, for Oxford undergraduates are warmly interested in one another, and at the time I am recalling they had an inordinate fondness for measuring the intellectual gifts and conjecturing the future of those among their contemporaries who seemed likely to attain eminence.

Those who came to know Green intimately, soon perceived that under his reserve there lay not only a capacity for affection—no man was more tenacious in his friendships—but qualities that made him an attractive companion. 87 His tendency to solitude sprang less from pride or coldness, than from the occupation of his mind by subjects which seldom weigh on men of his age. He had, even when a boy at school (where he lived much by himself, but exercised considerable moral influence), been grappling with the problems of metaphysics and theology, and they had given a tinge of gravity to his manner. The relief to that gravity lay in his humour, which was not only abundant but genial and sympathetic. It used to remind us of Carlyle—he had both the sense of humour and an underlying Puritanism in common with Carlyle, one of the authors who (with Milton and Wordsworth) had most influenced him—but in Green the Puritan tinge was more kindly, and, above all, more lenient to ordinary people. While averse, perhaps too severely averse, to whatever was luxurious or frivolous in undergraduate life, he had the warmest interest in, and the strongest sympathy for, the humbler classes. Loving social equality, and filled with a sense of the dignity of simple human nature, he liked to meet farmers and tradespeople on their own level, and knew how to do so without seeming to condescend; indeed nothing pleased him better, than when they addressed him as one of themselves, the manner of his talk to them, as well as the extreme plainness of his dress, conducing to such mistakes. The belief in the duty of approaching 88 the people directly and getting them to think and to form and express their own views in their own way was at the root of all his political doctrines.

Though apt to be silent in general company, no one could be more agreeable when you were alone with him. We used to say of him—and his seniors said the same—that one never talked to him without carrying away something to ponder over. On everything he said or wrote there was stamped the impress of a strong individuality, a mind that thought for itself, a character ruggedly original, wherein grimness was mingled with humour, and practical shrewdness with a love for abstract speculation. His independence appeared even in the way he pursued his studies. With abilities of the highest order, he cared comparatively little for the distinctions which the University offers; choosing rather to follow out his own line of reading in the way he judged permanently useful than to devote himself to the pursuit of honours and prizes.

He was constitutionally lethargic, found it hard to rouse himself to exertion, and was apt to let himself be driven to the last moment in finishing a piece of work. There was a rule in his College that an essay should be given in every Friday evening. His was, to the great annoyance of the dons, never ready till Saturday. But when it did go in, it was the weightiest and most 89 thoughtful, as well as the most eloquent, that the College produced. This indolence had one good result. It disposed him to brood over subjects, while others were running quickly through many books and getting up subjects for examination. It contributed to that depth and systematic quality which struck us in his thinking, and made him seem mature beside even the ablest of his contemporaries. When others were being, so to speak, blown hither and thither, picking up and fascinated by new ideas, which they did not know how to fit in with their old ones, he seemed to have already formed for himself, at least in outline, a scheme of philosophy and life coherent and complete. There was nothing random or scattered in his ideas; his mind, like his style of writing, which ran into long and complicated sentences, had a singular connectedness. You felt that all its principles were in relation with one another. This maturity in his mental attitude gave him an air of superiority, just as the strength of his convictions gave a dogmatic quality to his deliverances. Yet in spite of positiveness and tenacity he had the saving grace of a humility which distrusted human nature in himself at least as much as he distrusted it in others. Leading an introspective life, he had many “wrestlings,” and often seemed conscious of the struggle between the natural man and the spiritual man, as described in the Epistle to the Romans.

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In these early days, before, and to a less extent after, taking his degree, he used to speak a good deal, mostly on political topics, at the University Debating Society, where so many generations of young men have sharpened their wits upon one another. His speaking was vigorous, shrewd, and full of matter, yet it could not be called popular. It was, in a certain sense, too good for a debating society, too serious, and without the dash and sparkle which tell upon audiences of that kind. Sometimes, however, and notably in a debate on the American War of Secession in 1863, he produced, by the concentrated energy of his language and the fierce conviction with which he spoke, a powerful effect.[18] In a business assembly, discussing practical questions, he would soon have become prominent, and would have been capable on occasions of an oratorical success.

Retired as was Green’s life, he became by degrees more and more widely known beyond the 91 circle of his own intimates; and became also, I think, more willing to make new friends. His truthfulness appeared in this that, though powerful in argument, he did not argue for victory. When he felt the force of what was urged against him, his admissions were candid. Thus people came to respect his character, with its high sense of duty, its simplicity, its uprightness, its earnest devotion to an ideal, even more than they admired his intellectual powers. I remember one friend of my own, himself eminent in undergraduate Oxford, and belonging to another college, between which and Green’s there existed much rivalry, who, having been defeated by Green in competition for a University prize, said, “If it had been any one else, I should have been vexed, but I don’t mind being beaten by a man I respect so much.” My friend knew Green very slightly, and had been at one time strongly prejudiced against him by rumours of his heterodox opinions.

So much for those undergraduate days on which recollection loves to dwell, but which were not days of unmixed happiness to Green, for his means were narrow and the future rose cloudy before him. When anxiety was removed by the income which a fellowship secured, he still hesitated as to his course in life. At one time he thought of journalism, or of seeking a post in the Education Office. More frequently his thoughts turned to the clerical profession. His theological 92 opinions would not have permitted him to enter the service of the Church of England, but he did seriously consider whether he should become a Unitarian minister. It was not till he found that his college needed him as a teacher that these difficulties came to an end. Similarly he had doubted whether to devote himself to history, to theology, or to metaphysics. For history he had unquestionable gifts. With no exceptional capacity for mastering or retaining facts, he had a remarkable power of penetrating at once to the dominant facts, of grasping their connection, and working out their consequences. He had also a keen sense of the dramatic aspect of events, and a turn, not unlike Carlyle’s, partly perhaps formed on Carlyle, of fastening on the details in which character shows itself, and illumining narrative by personal touches. On the problems of theology he had meditated even at school, and after taking his degree he set himself to a systematic study of the German critics, and I remember that when we were living together at Heidelberg he had begun to prepare a translation of C. F. Baur’s principal treatise. As he worked slowly, the translation was never finished. Though not professing to be an adherent of the Tübingen school, he had been fascinated by Baur’s ingenuity and constructive power.

Ultimately he settled down to metaphysical and ethical inquiries, and devoted to these the 93 last thirteen years of his life. During his undergraduate years the two intellectual forces most powerful at Oxford had been the writings of J. H. Newman in the religious sphere, though their influence was already past its meridian, and the writings of John Stuart Mill in the sphere of logic and philosophy. By neither of these, save in the way of antagonism, had Green been influenced. He heartily hated all the Utilitarian school, and had an especial scorn for Buckle, who, now almost forgotten, enjoyed in those days, as being supposed to be a philosophic historian, a brief term of popularity. Green had been led by Carlyle to the Germans, and his philosophic thinking was determined chiefly by Kant and Hegel, more perhaps by the former than by the latter, for it was always upon ethical rather than upon purely metaphysical problems that his mind was bent. His religious vein and his hold upon practical life made him more interested in morals than in abstract speculation. Thus he became the leader in Oxford of a new philosophic school which looked to Kant as its master, and which for a time, partly perhaps because it effectively attacked the school of Mill, received the adhesion of some among the most thoughtful of the younger High Churchmen. Like Kant, he set himself to answer David Hume, and the essay prefixed to his edition of Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature. along with his Prolegomena to Ethics, are the only 94 books in which his doctrines have been given to the world, for he did not live to write the more systematic exposition he had planned. These two essays are hard reading, for his philosophical style was usually technical, and sometimes verged on obscurity. But when he wrote on less abstruse matters he was intelligible as well as weighty, full of thought, and with an occasional underglow of restrained eloquence. The force of character and convictions makes itself felt through the language.

His mind, though constructive, was not, having regard to its general power, either fertile or versatile. Like most of those who prefer solitary musings to the commerce of men, he had little facility, and found it hard to express his thoughts in any other words than those into which his musings had first flowed. Thus even his oral teaching was not easy to follow. An anecdote was current how when one day he had been explaining to a small class his theory of the origin of our ideas, the class listened in rapt attention to his forcible rhetoric, admiring each sentence as it fell, and thinking that all their difficulties were being removed. When he ended they expressed their gratitude for the pleasure he had given them, and were quitting the room, when one, halting at the door, said timidly, “But, Mr. Green, what did you say was really the origin of our ideas?” However, whether 95 they were or were not capable of assimilating his doctrines, his pupils all joined in their respect for him. They felt the loftiness of his character, they recognised the fervour of his belief. He was the most powerful ethical influence, and perhaps also the most stimulative intellectual influence, that in those years played upon the minds of the ablest youth of the University. But it was a singular fact, which those who have never lived in Oxford or Cambridge may find it hard to understand, that when he rose from the post of a college tutor to that of a University professor, his influence declined, not that his powers or his earnestness waned, but because as a professor he had fewer auditors and less personal relation with them than he had commanded as a college teacher. Such is the working of the collegiate system in Oxford, curiously unfortunate when it deprives the ablest men, as they rise naturally to the highest positions, of the opportunities for usefulness they had previously enjoyed.

As his powers developed and came to be recognised, so did those slight asperities which had been observed in undergraduate days soften down and disappear. Though he lived a retired life, his work brought him into contact with a good many people, and he became more genial in general company. I remember his saying with a smile when I had lured him into 96 Wales for a short excursion, “I don’t know whether it is a sign of declining virtue, but I find as I grow older that I am less and less fond of my own company.” From the first he had won the confidence and affection of his pupils. Many of them used long afterwards to say that his conduct and his teaching had been the one great example or one great influence they had found and felt in Oxford. The unclouded happiness of his married life made it easier for him to see the bright side of things, and he could not but enjoy the sense that the seed he sowed was falling on ground fit to receive it. Even when ill-health had fastened on him, and was checking both his studies and his public work, it did not affect the evenness of his temper nor sharpen the edge of his judgments of others. In earlier days these had been sometimes austere, though expressed in temperate and measured terms.

I must not forget to add that although Green’s opinions were by no means orthodox, the influence he exerted while he remained a college tutor was in large measure a religious influence. As the clergyman used to be in the English Universities less of a clergyman than he was anywhere else, so conversely it caused no surprise there that a lay teacher should concern himself with the religious life of his pupils. Green, however, did more, for he on two occasions at least delivered to his pupils, before the celebration of the 97 communion in the college chapel, addresses which were afterwards privately printed, and which present his view of the relations of ethics and religion in a way impressive even to those who may find it hard to follow the philosophical argument.

Metaphysicians are generally as little interested in practical politics as poets are, and not better suited for political life. Green was a remarkable exception. Politics were in a certain sense the strongest of his interests. To him metaphysics were not only the basis of theology, but also the basis of politics. Everything was to converge on the free life of the individual in a free State; rational faith and reason inspired by emotion were to have their perfect work in making the good citizen.

His interest in politics was perhaps less active in later years than it had been in his youth, but his principles stood unchanged. He was a thoroughgoing Liberal, or what used to be called a Radical, full of faith in the people, an advocate of pretty nearly every measure that tended to democratise English institutions, a friend of peace and of non-intervention. In our days he would have been called a Little Englander, for though his ideal of national life was lofty, the wellbeing of the masses was to him a more essential part of that ideal than any extension of territory or power. He once said that he would rather see the flag of England 98 trailed in the dirt than add sixpence to the taxes that weigh upon the poor. In foreign politics Louis Napoleon, as the corrupter of France and the disturber of Europe, was his favourite aversion; in home politics, Lord Palmerston, as the chief obstacle to parliamentary reform. The statesman whom he most admired and trusted was Mr. Bright. A strong sense of civic duty led him to enter the City Council of Oxford, although he could ill spare from his study and his lecture-room the time which the discharge of municipal duties required. He was the first tutor who had ever offered himself to a ward for election. The townsfolk, between whom and the University there had generally been little love, the former thinking themselves looked down upon by the latter, warmly appreciated his action in coming out of his seclusion to help them, and his influence in the Council contributed to secure some useful reforms, among others, the establishment of a “grammar” or secondary school for the city.

One of the last things he wrote was a short pamphlet on freedom of contract, intended to justify the interference with bargains between landlord and tenant which was proposed by Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Land Bill of 1881. It is a vigorous piece of reasoning, which may still be read with interest in respect of its application of philosophical principles to a political controversy. Had he desired it he might have gone 99 to the House of Commons as member for the city of Oxford. But he had found in the Council a field for local public work, and apart from his constitutional indolence and his declining health, he had concluded that his first duty lay in expounding his philosophical system.

Green will be long remembered in the English Universities as the strongest force in the sphere of ethical philosophy that they have seen in the second half of the nineteenth century, and remembered also as a singular instance of a metaphysician with a bent towards politics and practical life, no less than as a thinker far removed from orthodoxy who exerted over orthodox Christians a potent and inspiring religious influence.