What matters
it how we came by our knowledge, provided it is the case that we can
know ourselves and the world? If we can now distinguish right and
wrong, can ally ourselves with the good, and follow a moral ideal, of
what great importance are the steps by which the moral consciousness
was attained? And the question here is whether the special results
reached by Green in his metaphysical enquiry into human nature have
brought us any nearer to a solution of the present ethical difficulty.
As we have seen, the metaphysical view which Green arrives at is that
the consciousness which is in man and which raises him above nature
is the manifestation of--the "reproduction" of itself by--an eternal
self-consciousness. Man's own self-consciousness in knowledge and
volition is simply God's self--consciousness "reproduced" (to use
Green's term) in man's animal nature: so that the animal body and
its temporal activities become in some unexplained (and no doubt
inexplicable) way "organic" (to use Green's terminology once more,
where no terminology seems adequate) to a spiritual reality which is
eternal and infinite.
I am far from denying the greatness of this conception or its
practical value. There is no stronger support to moral endeavour than
the conviction that the moral life is a realisation of the divine
purpose, that in all goodness the spirit of God is manifest, that the
good man is the servant of God or even His fellow-worker.
Pages:
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85