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AUTHOR 
 
 CH 
 
 ? 
 
 YUEH LIU 
 
 JL A A JLdMjj • 
 
 THE POLITICAL THEORY 
 
 OF THOMAS HILL GREEN 
 
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 NEW YORK 
 
 DA TE : 
 
 1920 
 
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Ills POLITICAL THEORY OF 
 THOMAS HILL GREEN 
 
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 THE POLITICAL THEORY OF 
 THOMAS HILL GREEN 
 
 vV 
 
 BY 
 
 Y. L. CHIN, B. S., M. A. 
 
 Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Require- 
 ments FOR THE Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
 IN THE Faculty of Political Science, 
 Columbia University 
 
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 ISiiPiM 
 
 
 NiiW i'ORK 
 
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 1926^"'' 
 
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 4 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Shrouded in mysticism, the idealist political philosophy 
 seems to be as far removed from practical politics as the 
 Einstein formula is from everyday engineering; but far 
 removed as it may seem, it v^as and yet remains an influence 
 to be reckoned with. It is on this ground that this mono- 
 graph is justified, and readers, if any, are requested not to 
 regard it as unnecessary exertion in a mental gymnasium. 
 
 Errors and inaccuracies there may be. Writing in a lan- 
 guage that is not his mother tongue, the author is con- 
 fronted with difficulties which only those who have strug- 
 gled hard to express themselves in distant lands can ade- 
 quately appreciate. Fortunately he has enlisted the aid of a 
 number of his friends. To them he is grateful. He is 
 thankful to the Professors whose lectures he attended. 
 Finally, he is at a loss to express adequately his indebtedness 
 to Professor Dunning, whose suggestions and criticisms have 
 been at all stages helpful ; but then, consistent with "oriental 
 inscrutability," silence probably speaks with better eloquence 
 than words. 
 
 Y. ly. Chin. 
 New York City, September, 1920. 
 
 r 
 
^ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction 9 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 21 
 
 1. Freedom in Intelligence. 
 
 2. Freedom of Will. 
 
 3. Common Good. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Theory of Natural Rights 
 
 1. In General. 
 
 2. Personal Rights or the Rights of Free Life. 
 
 3. Rights of Property. 
 
 4. Rights in Private Relations or Family Rights. 
 
 44 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Green i 
 
 md His Pred 
 Spinoza. 
 
 ecessors 
 
 I. 
 
 
 1. 
 
 Hobbes. 
 
 
 3. 
 
 L6cke. 
 
 
 4. 
 
 Rousseau. 
 
 
 5. 
 
 Austin. 
 
 
 55 
 
8 
 
 Contents 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PAGE 
 69 
 
 85 
 
 95 
 
 The Basis of the State 
 
 1. Sovereign de jure and Sovereign de facto. 
 
 2. The True Basis of the State. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Principle of State Interference 
 
 1. In General. 
 
 2. Resistance to the State. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 Applications of the Principle of State Interference. . 
 
 1. Freedom. 
 
 2. Freedom of Contract. 
 
 3. Capital. 
 
 4. Labor. 
 
 5. Land. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Applications of the Principle of State Interference 
 
 (Continued) 1^7 
 
 L War. 
 
 2. Punishment. 
 
 3. Education. 
 
 4. Temperance. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 Green's Influence ^^^ 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 Conclusion ^'+^ 
 
 t 
 
 .^, 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 *Tor thirty years and more," said Prof. Hobhouse in 
 his Democracy and Reaction, ''English thought has been 
 subject, not for the first time in its modern history, to pow- 
 erful influences from abroad. The Rhine has flowed into 
 the Thames, at any rate into those upper reaches of the 
 Thames, known locally as the Isis, and from the Isis the 
 stream of German Idealism has been diffused over the 
 academical world of Great Britain." ^ 
 
 Briefly stated, the German political philosophy, accord- / 
 ing to Prof. Hobhouse, consists of three fundamental con- 
 ceptions.* The first is that will is free ; that it is self deter- ^ - 
 mined; and that individuality or true freedom lies in con- 
 formity with our real will, which is different from the 
 will we manifest as private individuals. The second is ^/ 
 that our real will is identical with the general will, which 
 is best, if not completely, expressed in the social fabric. 
 The third is that the state is the embodiment of the general s/^ 
 will, giving it "vitality," "expression" and "coherence." 
 The state is the common self in which the individual self »/ 
 is absorbed. It is the fountain of authority. It is the \^ 
 realization of our moral ideal. It is an end in itself. Thus y 
 German ideaUsm becomes political absolutism. 
 
 One of the scholars formerly credited with and now 
 blamed for the introduction of German political thought 
 into England is Thomas Hill Green. He was born April 
 7, 1836, at Birkin in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the son 
 
 ^ Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction. P. 77. 
 
 * Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State. 
 
lO 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 of a local rector. He went to school at Rugby and in 
 October, 1855, he entered Balhol College, Oxford. In 
 1860, he was employed to lecture on history, "and in No- 
 vember of that year he achieved his youthful ambition by 
 being elected a fellow of the College." ^ From 1860 till his 
 death in 1882, he taught at Oxford and was active in local 
 politics, being elected in 1876 to the Oxford town council. 
 He was the first college tutor to enter public service of that 
 sort.* He was interested in education and temperance. In 
 1878 he was appointed to the Whyte's professorship of 
 moral philosophy, a position which many had long consid- 
 ered his Hue. He died March 26, 1882. 
 
 We are indebted to Mr. R. L. Nettleship for the publica- 
 tion of Green's works, which are contained in three vol- 
 umes. The first and second volumes are philosophical and 
 the third miscellaneous- Green's political theory is practi- 
 cally embodied in his Lectures on the Principles of Political 
 Obligation delivered in 1879 and 1880. They are reprinted 
 from the second volume of the Works and now appear 
 in a separate volume for the convenience of the readers. 
 His Prolegomena to Ethics contains the substance of a series 
 of lectures on philosophy, embodying the metaphysical and 
 ethical background of his poHtical thought. It was pub- 
 lished posthumously and not included in The Works. His 
 lectures on Good Will, on The English Commonwealth 
 and on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract con- 
 tribute directly to the understanding of his political theory. 
 
 In order, however, to give a clear view of his theory, it 
 is necessary to present a general review of the intellectual 
 tendencies of his time. A man of Green's type could not 
 be easily satisfied with the traditional and the then existing 
 
 « Works, Vol. III. Memoir XVII. 
 * Works, Vol. III. Memoir CXIX. 
 
 Introduction 
 
 II 
 
 
 English political and social philosophy. To him at least 
 that philosophy lacked an adequate notion of the individual 
 man. It more often considered man as a passive recipient 
 of external stimuli than as an originator of various phases 
 of human activities. To appreciate this let us trace the 
 course of English speculation from Thomas Hobbes to the 
 present time. 
 
 Hobbes (1588-1679), it will be remembered, was frankly 
 materialistic.'^ He explained the acquisition of knowledge 
 by the operation of the senses and attributed human pas- 
 sions and emotions to the antithesis of appetite and aver- 
 bion.' In political theory, his conception of sovereign 
 power was somewhat too absolute and his picture of the 
 Stat* of nature was altogether too gloomy. In this respect, 
 Locke (1632-1704) was happier. His state of nature was 
 by no means lawless. Intensely sympathetic with the revo- 
 lution, he argued for popular sovereignty. Governmental 
 power was to him always in the nature of fiduciary trust, 
 hence he made it ultimately responsible to the people.^ In 
 his theory of knowledge he was essentially a sensationalist. 
 His enthusiasm in combatting the theory of innate ideas 
 carried him far into the precarious position of champion- 
 ing the doctrine of Tabula Rasa.* Baldly stated, mind was 
 to him but a blank and ideas were merely sensations "con- 
 tinued to the brain" That the doctrine was futile to the 
 theologians need not be dwelt on at any length. Berkeley 
 (1685-1753) inspired by theological idealism, struggled hard 
 to overturn the Lockian premise, but his efforts seemed to 
 have only resulted in the more cogent empiricism of David 
 
 » Dunning, A History of Political Theories. Vol. 2, p. 266. 
 
 • Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. 6. 
 
 ^ Locke, Two Treatises of Government. 
 
 • Locke, Essays on Human Understanding. 
 
/ 
 
 12 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Hume (1711-1776). While in political theory the latter 
 inflicted a fatal blow to the conception of social contract,^ 
 in ethics he prepared the way for Jeremy Bentham. His 
 belief that utility was the determining motive in all phases 
 of human conduct was strictly utilitarian and his concep- 
 tion of human nature as essentially knavish ^' was not dif- 
 ferent from that of Thomas Hobbes. 
 
 In the meantime the political doctrines promulgated by 
 Locke were spread broadcast. In America the conception 
 of natural rights and the idea of popular sovereignty found 
 their way into legal documents." While party differences 
 soon appeared there was really no disagreement as to the 
 fundamental principle. In France rightly or wrongly 
 Montesquieu (1689-1755) admired the English pohtical 
 system of his time. Through him the doctrine of checks 
 and balances became a political dogma for it was believed 
 that only through that system could liberty be made se- 
 cure.^2 At the same time Physiocrats were formulating 
 their dogma of laisser-faire, and Jean Jacques Rousseau 
 (1712-1778) paved the way for the principles of 1789. It 
 was the former who started the study of economics, it was 
 the latter who popularized the social contract.^^ His state 
 of nature was one of isolation. His conception of a gen- 
 eral will as the principle of sovereign action was revolu- 
 tionary to the traditional line of thought, but his insistence 
 that government should be based on the strict consent of 
 the governed contained the same difficulty inherent in that 
 
 •Hume, Essays, Moral, Political and Literary. Vol. I, p. 443. 
 
 10 Dunning, Vol. 2, p. 383. 
 
 "Virginia Constitution of 1776 and Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 12 Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws. Book XI, Sec. 5. 
 
 i» Rousseau's influence on French Revolution, claimed by 
 Janet, denied by Jellinek. 
 
 ^f 
 
 n 
 
 ♦ 
 
 ' p 
 
 Introduction 
 
 13 
 
 theory. Though they— Rousseau and the Physiocrats- 
 ran into different lines of thought, it may be safely said 
 that they started from the same principle. In England 
 Adam Smith (1723-1790), with a full load of physiocratic 
 tendencies, came forth with a comprehensive system of 
 political economy. At a time when the Industrial Revolu- 
 tion was making its initial progress, the Scotch moral phil- 
 osopher could not be deprived of a large following. Where, 
 however, the master was cautious, the disciples became 
 positive and certain. Precepts became dogmas. Social re- 
 lationships became economic laws. There soon came into 
 prominence a group of men known as Classical Econo- 
 mists- Whatever their differences, whether the pessimism 
 of Malthus (1766-1834), or the hardheadedness of Ricardo 
 (1772-1823) or the rigidity of Senior (1790-1864) and 
 M'CuUoch (1789-1864), they were all worshippers of what 
 was tlien believed to be nature and natural laws. Human 
 beings were primarily economic and economic laws were 
 generally conceded as immutable. 
 
 In the field of law Blackstone (1723-1780) came out 
 with his Commentaries. With an interest in history as 
 intense as his, he could not regard with favor the concep- 
 tion of social contract. In fact, according to him, people 
 kept together because of their sense of fear and helpless- 
 ness. It was, however, in the rigid conception of sov- 
 ereignty that he exercised the greatest influence. His 
 analysis of law presupposed a political superior and sov- 
 ereignty came to be known as "supreme, irresistible, abso- 
 lute and uncontrolled power." His Commentaries called 
 Bentham's genius into play. With Bentham (1748- 
 1832) and his disciples Utilitarianism came into promi- 
 nence. Human motives and activities were according to 
 them reducible into pleasure. That which produced pleas- 
 ure was considered good and desirable, and that which 
 
 I 
 
14 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 "vl^ 
 
 Introduction 
 
 15 
 
 produced pain, bad and to be avoided. Carried to the 
 political field the slogan became "the greatest happiness 
 for the greatest number." Government existed because 
 people on the whole were happier than without it." JUaw 
 to Bentham was an expression of will in the form of a 
 command. The conception of rights was unmeaning if 
 not accompanied by a conception of duty. Rights and 
 duties were interdependent. Legal rights and duties were 
 not predicable of the sovereign, but moral rights and duties 
 were. The power of the sovereign was finally based on 
 the ability to cause the greatest happiness to the greatest 
 number. The influence of the Utilitarians was readily 
 felt, for even if nobody knew exactly what happiness was, 
 every one could figure out for himself as to who really 
 constituted the greatest number. 
 
 From the above review, it is easy to understand why 
 Green is not in sympathy with the traditional poHtical and 
 social philosophy. Basically it is either materialistic or 
 at best empirical, but Green is an idealist. Both Hobbes 
 and Locke believed in the conception of a social contract, 
 but to Green such a contract is both historically and log- 
 ically impossible. The Utilitarians characterized human 
 effort as pleasure seeking, but to Green pleasure is never 
 the propelling force. The Economists created the fiction 
 of an economic man, but to Green to believe in an eco- 
 nomic man is to subject freedom to necessity. 
 
 John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was somewhat of a puzzle. 
 Indeed, it could be said of him as of the Bible, that saints 
 and devils would make use of him alike. Known as a 
 bourgeois economist, he was claimed by some to have died 
 a socialist." Starting as a Benthamite, he ended merely 
 
 ** Bentham, Fragment on Government. 
 
 « Barker, Political Thought from Spencer to To-day. P. 213. 
 Pease, History of the Fabian Society. P. 259. 
 
 ^4 
 
 '\ 
 
 f 
 
 ^ I ♦ 
 
 I 
 
 a nominal Utilitarian. Arguing for individuaUsm, he was 
 yet free from anarchistic tendencies. His Essay on Lib- 
 erty was a departure from the traditional point of view. 
 In the words of Mr. Barker, it "gave a deeper and a more 
 spiritual interpretation to the conception of liberty. From 
 a conception of liberty as external freedom of action neces- 
 sary for the discovery and pursuit of bis material interests 
 by each individual, Mill rose to the conception of liberty 
 as free play for that spiritual originaUty with all its results 
 in individual vigour and manifold diversity. ... In a simi- 
 lar way, in his Essay on Representative Government he 
 spiritualized the Benthamite defense of democracy." *• 
 
 The period starting from 1848 to the late seventies was 
 as diverse as Mill's intellectual personaUty. Enormous 
 progress was made in all aspects of social science. Let us 
 note the tendencies in PoHtical Economy, Jurisprudence, 
 History, Sociology and even in Biology in so far as they 
 bear on poUtical theory. 
 
 In Political Economy the theories of the Classical Econ- 
 omists still dominated the field. In their interpretation 
 and formulation of economic laws, they in effect became 
 the defenders of the then existing order. While foreign 
 influence, whether the NationaUst Protectionism of Fred- 
 erick List, or the International Socialism of Karl Marx 
 (1818-1883), or the Communistic Utopianism of the early 
 French writers, was not yet much felt in England, a some- 
 what disconcerting doctrine appeared on the horizon. Rob- 
 ert Owen's schemes failed in practise but his ideas suc- 
 ceeded in directing thought to a new direction. In the 
 sphere of theory the Ricardian Socialist" failed to see 
 any particular glory in the existing system of distribution 
 
 i« Barker, Political Thought from Spencer to To-day. 
 IT Lowenthal, Ricardian Socialists. 
 
\ 
 
 i6 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 V Iv 
 
 Introduction 
 
 17 
 
 of wealth- In the sphere of practical politics while there 
 were no national workshops in London as there were in 
 Paris in 1848, different attempts at economic and social 
 reform were not totally lacking. While Ccbden (1804- 
 1865) and Bright (1811-1889), specifically aiming at the 
 com laws, preached for laisser-faire, Maurice (1805-1872) 
 and Kingsley (1819-1875), moved by the prevailing mis- 
 ery, prayed for a more genuine cooperative effort.^® When 
 Henry George (1839-1897) pubhshed his Progress and 
 Poverty in 1879 economic thought had already entered a 
 new era. 
 
 In Jurisprudence the analytical school had its exponent 
 in the person of John Austin (1790-1859). To him state 
 was chiefly based upon force, and obedience was essen- 
 tially a matter of fear. His theory of sovereignty, no mat- 
 ter how concisely stated, would involve a description rather 
 than a definition. It involved firstly a determinate su- 
 perior not in the habit of rendering obedience to a like 
 superior, and secondly it involved a given society with its 
 bulk of people habitually obedient to that determinate 
 superior. "Positive law" was distinguished from '^positive 
 morality." Since "positive law" was primarily considered 
 as a command from a superior, it followed that the sov- 
 ereign was above legal rights and duties. On the other 
 
 hand, Su- Henry Maine (1822-1888), dissatisfied with the 
 analytical school, traveled far into antiquity and on his 
 return trip sought to stem the rising tide of popular gov- 
 ernment.^® The doctrines of Rousseau as well as those of 
 the Benthamites were equally distasteful to him. With 
 his immense intellectual power he sought to destroy both 
 by a single blow, but in doing so he probably became more 
 
 *• Woodworth, Christian Socialism in England. 
 " Maine, Popular Government. 
 
 lit 
 
 '1 if 
 
 aII 
 
 .1 
 
 pessimistic than intended. Mr. Barker thinks that being a 
 ZZ Maine shared the conservatism of h.s profession," 
 S Professor Giddings suggests that - his thorough- 
 going study of early institutions he neglected the psychol- 
 
 ogy of modern men." . 
 
 The historical method in the study of law m Germany 
 as well as in England necessarily affected history proper, 
 especially so when the idea of evolution began to be popu- 
 Lr among the intellectual luminaries. The .dea of evolu- 
 tion was claimed to be historical method applied to the 
 facts of nature, and historical method was regarded as the 
 idea of evolution applied to the development o human 
 institutions. The roots of the present were beUeved to 
 have been planted deep in the past. Hence ant.quanan 
 spirits of all sorts began their mental excursions into the 
 back Torests of Germany in order to explam the then 
 existing political and social facts. Nor in historical mter^ 
 pretation was innovation lacking. The traditional method 
 of a chronological enumeration of events was not entirely 
 satisfactory. Neither was a teleological interpretation quite 
 in keeping with the spirit of the times. Though the doc- 
 trine oTfconomic determinism " of Karl Marx was not 
 yet in vogue. Henry Thomas Buckle had already made an 
 ambitious attempt " in a similar direction in 1857. mile 
 his particular work was not as successful as expected, it 
 did stimulate further attempt by the younger generation. 
 From across the channel came the gospel of positivism 
 and the worship of Humanity. A priori or metaphysical 
 speculation was not believed to be capable of leading us 
 any^^•here. hence knowledge must be generated from the 
 
 to Barker, Political Thought From Spencer To-day. P. 168. 
 21 Giddings, Democracy and Empire. P. 181 Footnote. 
 2« Communist Manifesto, 1848. 
 " Buckle, History of Civilization in England. 
 
 
j 
 
 1 8 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 accumulated data of experience. From the conception of 
 man as an independent atomic unit, there seemed to be 
 an attempt to return to the Aristotelian dictum that man 
 is by nature social. But in general outline, it looked as if 
 traditional empiricism acquired a new garb and with it 
 attracted wide attention. It made immense appeal to 
 J. S. Mill and spurred Frederic Harrison (1831- ) to 
 a consideration of "Order and Progress." Comte was 
 further regarded as the forerunner of the science of so- 
 ciology. While America was and probably is the fertile 
 home for this particular branch of science, England should 
 see no cause for envy. Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) may 
 not be classed as a formal Sociologist, but he cherished 
 genume hope for political regeneration in the sociological 
 process of imitation. His "English Constitution" was for 
 quite a period the last word on that subject, and his 
 "Physics and Politics" broke away at least in method from 
 the more formal and legalistic writers. Herbert Spencer 
 mcorporated Sociology into his Synthetic Philosophy and 
 produced the belated argument for laisser-faire embodied 
 m his "Man versus State." 
 
 There was enormous progress in the study of natural 
 sciences after Darwin (1809-1882) came out with the re- 
 suhs of his observation. It stimulated the study of animal 
 organism and its adaptation. By analogy the study was 
 gradually extended to the so-called social organism. Just 
 as animal organisms have blood vessels and arteries, so 
 also social organisms were believed to have the same. Just 
 as animal organisms struggle for existence, so also social 
 organisms were believed to be engaged in a similar strug- 
 glc. The fit was believed to survive, but, as Prof. Huxley 
 has pointed out,^* the fit was not necessarily the better, 
 
 ^^ H"xley "The Struggle for Existence" in Nineteenth Cen^ 
 tury, for Feb., 1888. P. 165. 
 
 Introduction 
 
 
 19 
 
 much less the best. This theory of social organism was 
 not new but it was very much enriched in content, and 
 received a different interpretation. In the hands of Plato 
 it had served one purpose. In the hands of the Germans 
 it served another. But under the leadership of Herbert 
 Spencer it has become somewhat fatalistic, for while on 
 the one hand it has led to a declaration of independence 
 for matter in philosophy,^^ on the other it has turned to 
 be an argument for individualistic anarchism in politics. 
 
 In spite of previous statements, it may still be asked 
 what is the exact connection between these sciences and 
 political theory. We need bear in mind that political the- 
 ory is not confined to articles and sections of this or that 
 law. Nor is it limited to constitutions and governments, 
 nor yet to conventions and customs. If it deals with men 
 in society, it also has to deal with men as individuals. If 
 it deals with the aims of political societies it also has to 
 ascertain the vocation of the individual man. What, then, 
 is the conception of man back of these sciences just enu- 
 merated? According to the classical economists man is an 
 economic being. According to the Utilitarians he is a 
 pleasure seeker. From the point of view of the naturalist 
 he is primarily an animal organism, and from the point 
 of view of economic interpretation of history he is essen- 
 tially a passive recipient of external forces. Historians 
 tell him how he has come to be and the lawyers describe 
 his legal status. In fact every writer as well as every 
 school of political thought, as Mr. Wallas has pointed 
 out,2® has his or its own conception of human nature, and 
 that conception is generally based on an abstract being 
 who does not exist. Probably there is truth in every one 
 
 25 Works of T. H. Green. Vol. T. 
 
 26 Wallas, Human Nature in Politics. P. 12. 
 
 , i'l 
 
20 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 of them. More likely there is exaggeration in all. Any- 
 way, they seemed to Gi;een to be one-sided and therefore 
 inadequate conceptions upon which to build a compre- 
 hensive political philosophy. Political philosophy can not 
 be satisfactory when it is built on inadequate conceptions- 
 If it is unsatisfactory, it needs revision, but it can not be 
 thoroughly revised unless for that purpose you also build 
 a solid foundation. This, then, Is the problem which 
 Green took for himself to solve in his Ethics. His political 
 theory built upon his ethics was embodied in his Principles 
 of Political Obligation. With him ethics and politics can 
 not be studied apart. Being a thorough-going idealist he 
 revolted against empiricism. Believing in the moral voca- 
 tion of man as differentiating him from mere animal or- 
 ganisms, he assumed the responsibility to emancipate Eng- 
 lish political theories from the domination of their nat- 
 uralistic tendencies. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL AND ETHICAL 
 
 BACKGROUND 
 
 Green argues from the existence of nature to the pos- 
 sibility of knowledge and finally to the existence of an 
 Eternal Consciousness. For our present purpose, since 
 we are primarily concerned with the results of his specu- 
 lation, we might as well start with his Eternal Conscious- 
 ness without repeating the elaborate process of deduction. 
 
 According to him, there is for us and this world a su- 
 preme being or existence or Gk)d or whatever name you 
 may give it, which is an Eternal, Unifying and Uncondi- 
 tioned Consciousness. It is not in time because it is the 
 condition of there being time.^ Neither is it in space 
 because it is the condition of there being space. It never 
 began nor will it ever end, because it is that by virtue of 
 which there can be either a beginning or an end. There 
 is no doubt that, according to Green, it is Gk)d ; but whether 
 or not it assumes the form of human personality he does 
 not expressly affirm. We are told, however, that being 
 divine it has the attributes of divinity. It is complete and 
 perfect. That which pertains to others gradually becomes, 
 but it eternally is. It reveals itself in two different ways.* 
 On the one hand, it reproduces itself in the subjective 
 units which we call men, and on the other it is responsible 
 for the single unalterable system of relations which we 
 
 * Prolegomena to Ethics. P. 59. 
 
 * Prolegomena to Ethics. P. 37. 
 
 m 
 
22 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 understand to be nature. In the one direction, because 
 man is a subjective unit of consciousness, a reproduction 
 of the Eternal Consciousness, he is also divine; and in the 
 other because nature is thus constituted as a single unalter- 
 able system of relations which implies spirituality, it is on 
 that account not merely natural. The Eternal Conscious- 
 ness, while branching into these two directions, is none 
 the less the source of both and therefore transcends them- 
 It is at once responsible for what is called the spiritual 
 principle in nature as well as the spiritual principle in 
 knowledge — spiritual not in the sense of being mysterious 
 but as opposed to phenomenal, that is, opposed to natural. 
 It has been shown in the introduction that the predomi- 
 nant influence in the intellectual world of Green's time was 
 naturalism. Naturalism implies a study and knowledge of 
 nature and its application to man. Green has no quarrel 
 with the content or the usefulness of that knowledge, but 
 he denies that that knowledge explains its own possibility. 
 To state it baldly, a knowledge of nature does not explain 
 the nature of knowledge. Probably the phrase "nature of 
 knowledge" is one which Green would not employ himself, 
 but for our present purpose it serves our convenience with- 
 out getting us into trouble. To Green, then, the funda- 
 mental question is : How is knowledge possible ? The an- 
 swer to this question is supplied by what he calls the spirit- 
 ual principle in knowledge. 
 
 Let us first find out what nature means. To Green it 
 means objects of possible experience, related events, the 
 connected order of knowable facts or phenomena.' Knowl- 
 edge implies that which knows and that which is known. 
 
 * Prolegomena. P. 58. Hereafter the word "nature" or "nat- 
 ural" will be used only in this sense, and the word "phenomena" 
 not hmited to the Kantian sense. 
 
 vL 
 
 'iU 
 
 •4 If 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 23 
 
 The fact that nature in its manifoldness is or can be 
 known implies a synthetic unifying principle that knows 
 or is capable of knowing In Green's words : "Nature im- 
 plies something other than itself as the condition of its 
 being what it is." * Since that something is other than 
 nature, it does not exist as a part of nature. It is neither 
 in time nor in space. It is a self -distinguishing Conscious- 
 
 "^TQiis consciousness is the agency through which there 
 is for us a possible objective world. But it may be argued 
 that mental actions are materially conditioned. That, 
 however, may very well be so without making conscious- 
 ness the result of material conditions, since those very con- 
 ditions imply a consciousness which renders them in any- 
 way comprehensible. It is also necessary to avoid a dual- 
 istic conception from which even Kant was not free. 
 
 "Macht zwar der Verstand die Natur, aber er schafft 
 sie nicht." By this Kant means that understanding makes 
 nature, but out of material which it does not make- It 
 implies a duaUstic existence of a single reaUty. With 
 Locke there is in existence an objective world side by side 
 with what is called the work of our mind. The former 
 is real, the latter is denied reality. Reality is attained 
 only when what is concaved in the mind corresponds to 
 the objective world. To Green this is entirely unmeaning, 
 since it is only through our consciousness that it is pos- 
 sible for us to have an objective world at all. Reality is 
 therefore not apart from consciousness. Since nature is 
 an order of related objects or facts or events, reaUty is 
 but the unalterableness » of a certain relationship pre- 
 sented to consciousness. Since relating is a matter of 
 
 * Prolegomena. P. S8. 
 » Same. P. 17. 
 
24 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 consciousness and therefore not merely natural, reality in 
 the sense already defined can not be merely objective. 
 
 There is always the tendency, Green asserts, to treat the 
 knowledge of nature as itself the result of natural proc- 
 esses. It is said that knowledge can not but proceed from 
 experience and experience can only be deduced from ob- 
 jective reality. That in a sense there is truth in this state- 
 ment Green does not deny; but he holds that we must ac- 
 cept it with reserve, for much, of course, depends upon 
 the meaning of the word experience. If it means chemical 
 or physical effects upon our physical organism, it may 
 continue for any length of time without our knowledge 
 of it ; but the kind of experience we are supposed to derive 
 knowledge from is -n altogether different thing. The lat- 
 ter is the experience of matters of fact "recognised as 
 such." « Therefore there must be something that does the 
 recognising. In other words, there must be consciousness, 
 and a consciousness of matters of fact thus experienced 
 can not be itself the result of those facts. Neither can a 
 consciousness of experience be the result of that experi- 
 ence; for that experience can not be such if not recognized 
 as such by consciousness. Then there is again the argu- 
 ment that consciousness is derived from previous events. 
 This contention involves the supposition that "the primary 
 consciousness of events results from a series of events of 
 which there is no consciousness." ' This saemg to be 
 merely an attempt to postpone the difficulty, and as such 
 is quite unmeaning; for events of which there is no con- 
 sciousness can not be events within our experience and 
 therefore can not be the source of our knowledge. From 
 the argument above presented it appears to Green that 
 knowledge is not a result of nature. Neither is it merely 
 
 • Same. P. 20. 
 ^ Same. P. 22. 
 
 'I 
 
 tU 
 
 .^B-» 
 
 aI« 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 25 
 
 a result of experience. It implies a ^yn^^^tk jnrfying 
 
 principle which is the spiritual pnnaple ^-^^^^^ ^^^ 
 
 But if it is by virtue of a consciousness t^at there is tor 
 
 us an ibjective'world. does it not follow that the ^3ectiv 
 
 world is dependent upon our ^«"^-«\! .°°„" ^^ ^3. 
 further lead to the untenable conception that conscious 
 further leaa ^o ^ . . • human beings 
 
 ness can create objects at will? And since n 
 differ and thinking becomes divergent, what is die has s 
 o reality which, though it is an unalterableness of a sys 
 tem of relations, may be so to one without being so to 
 another? In order that we may ^e able to answ daese 
 questions, let us first examine roughly with Green the na 
 
 " Natrras has been pointed out. the -ne.^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 of knowable facts, or related events, or 0^1-^°^?°^. 
 sible experience or phenomena. Objects ^'1^^^^'^^^^ 
 lated They are related in identity and probably in half 
 laieo. ii .y otherwise related, 
 
 a dozen other ways. If they are noi uu 
 they are related in difference. An unrelated object does 
 noTexist. Reality from our definition solves a sy^em 
 of relations. But when we speak of a ^y^^^fj"^''^ 
 we ought to be aware of its implication. It is to us such 
 rfSiar fact that we are apt to forget that it mvoWe 
 all the mystery, if it be a mystery, of many ,n one. Whether 
 we say Lt a related thing is one m itself, -^-f^^ m 
 Respect of its relations, or that there is one relation be- 
 X manifold things, we are equally affirming the umty 
 of the manifold. Abstract the many relations from the 
 one thing and there is nothing. They being the ma.y d ^ 
 termine or constitute its definite unity. It .s not the case 
 hat it first exists in its unity and then is brought under 
 various relations. Without the relations it would not 
 exist at all. In like manner the one relation is a unity of 
 the many things. They, in their manifold being, make the 
 
 / 
 
26 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 one relation. If these relations really exist, there is a real 
 unity of the manifold, a real multiplicity of that which is 
 one. But a plurality of things cannot of themselves unite 
 in one relation, nor can a single thing of itself bring itself 
 into a multitude of relations." « There must, therefore, be 
 something, other than the manifold objects, which does 
 the relating and combining without effacing their indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 This unifying and combining principle on behalf of our 
 intelligence we have already identified in our considera- 
 tion of knowledge. In that case it is the spiritual principle 
 in knowledge. According to Green, "the same or an analo- 
 gous action is necessary to account for any relation what- 
 ever. . . . Either, then, we must deny the reality of rela- 
 tions altogether and treat them as fictions of our combin- 
 ing intelligence, or we must hold that, being the product 
 of our combining intelligence, they are yet 'empirically 
 real' on the ground that our intelligence is a factor in the 
 reality of experience; or if we suppose them to be real 
 otherwise than merely for us, otherwise than in the 'cos- 
 mos of our experience,' we must recognise as the condi- 
 tion of this reality the action of some unifying principle 
 analogous to that of our understanding." » 
 
 It is evident that there must be not only a synthetic 
 unifymg principle in our knowledge of uniform relations 
 between phenomena, but also a similar principle that ac- 
 counts for there being such uniform relations at all. There 
 are two principles, and the question that naturally arises 
 is: How are they to be harmonized in order that there 
 may be a single reality? From our conception of Eternal 
 Consciousness, it can be easily seen that the source of the 
 system of relations in nature and the source of our knowl- 
 
 « Same. P. 33, 
 •Same. P. 34. 
 
 '-vJ 
 
 %'w4 
 
 1^ If 
 
 ^l# 
 
 ^ li 
 
 l< 
 
 fi 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 27 
 
 edge of it are one and the same. The question, how does 
 the order of nature harmonize with our conception of it, 
 is answered by our recognition of the fact that our under- 
 standing of an order of nature and the relations that con- 
 stitute that order have a common spiritual source, namely. 
 Eternal Consciousness. 
 
 Fully convinced of the futility of a dualistic conception 
 of nature and knowledge. Green concludes that the true 
 account to be given is that "the concrete whole, which 
 may be described indifferently as eternal inteUigence real- 
 ised in the related facts of the world, or as a system of 
 related facts rendered possible by such an inteUigence, par- 
 tially and gradually reproduces itself in us, communicating 
 piece-meal, but in inseparable correlation, understanding 
 and the facts understood, experience and the experienced 
 world." ^° There is, in other words, a unity of nature and 
 knowledge in Eternal Consciousness. In such a conception, 
 there can not be any antagonism between appearance and 
 reaUty, or between the work of ixdnd and the facts of na- 
 ture. The difficult problem of reality is for Green thus 
 
 solved. 
 
 We have considered nature and knowledge as each hav- 
 ing a spiritual principle and both having unity in Eternal 
 Consciousness. We have yet to examine the bridge be- 
 tween the two in the actual process of acquiring knowl- 
 edge. We need not go into the details of the philosophical 
 commonplaces, such as sensation, conception and percep- 
 tion. Being an idealist. Green necessarily discards the 
 sensationalist point of view. Though he believes in the 
 possibility of a priori conceptions, he concedes that knowl- 
 edge may and generally does involve sensation. But it 
 must be understood that mere sensation does not consti- 
 
 10 Same. P. 41. 
 
28 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 tute knowledge. Knowledge, if it involves sensation, in- 
 volves it as comprehended by consciousness. Only when 
 consciousness is called into play can there be perception or 
 knowledge. 
 
 It may be objected that under this doctrine we can 
 make objects at will. But Green says that we can not make 
 objects at will just as we can not make consciousness 
 at will." Again it may be said that our perceiving con- 
 sciousness varies from time to time. It seems to be so 
 in the process of our knowing, and our learning to know, 
 this world. That is explained by Green as a process 
 through which our animal organism, which has a history 
 in time, is gradually being made a vehicle of the Eternal 
 Consciousness, which has no history and is not in time. 
 Our consciousness may be viewed in two ways. It may 
 "be either a function of the animal organism, which is 
 being gradually and with interruptions made a vehicle of 
 Eternal Consciousness; or that Eternal Consciousness it- 
 self, as making the animal organism its vehicle and subject 
 to certain limitations in doing so, but retaining its essen- 
 tial characteristics as independent of time, as determinent 
 of becoming, which has not and does not itself become.*' " 
 The consciousness that varies from time to time is the 
 consciousness in the fonner sense. The consciousness in 
 virtue of which there can be either nature or knowledge 
 is the consciousness in the latter sense. The above con- 
 ception does not mean that there is double consciousness 
 in men, but it does mean that the one individual reality of 
 our consciousness can not be comprehended in a single 
 conception.^^ 
 
 11 Same. P. 74. 
 » Same. P. 78. 
 " Same. P. 78. 
 
 '^'f 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 29 
 
 We may profitably illustrate the whole process of our 
 knowledge by the example Green furnishes out of our 
 reading. "In reading the sentence we see the words suc- 
 cessively, we attend them -successively, we recall their 
 meaning successively. But throughout their ^succession 
 there must be present continuously the consciousness that 
 the sentence has a meaning as a whole : otherwise the suc- 
 cessive vision, attention and recollection would not end 
 in a comprehension of what the meaning is. This con- 
 sciousness operates in them, rendering them what they are 
 as organic to the intelligent reading of the sentence. And 
 when the reading is over, the consciousness that the sen- 
 tence has a meaning has become a consciousness of what in 
 particular the meaning is,— a consciousness in which the 
 successive results of the mental operations involved in the 
 reading are held together, without succession, as a con- 
 nected whole. The reader has, then, so far as that sen- 
 tence is concerned, made the mind of the writer his own. 
 The thought which was the writer's when he composed 
 the sentence, has so determined, has so used as organs, 
 the successive operations of the sense and soul of the 
 reader, as to reproduce in him through them : and the first 
 stage in this reproduction, the condition under which alone 
 the processes mentioned contribute to it, is the conviction 
 on the reader's part that the sentence is a connected whole, 
 that it has a meaning which may be understood." ^* The 
 world has its author, nature is his book, man is the reader 
 and reading is knowing. The above may be a crude illus- 
 tration in philosophy, but it is one that renders clear the 
 acquisition of human knowledge. 
 
 That knowledge is empirically conditioned is not open 
 to doubt in Green's mind. He says in one place that the 
 fact that there is a real external world of which through 
 
 1* Same. P. 81. 
 
30 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 feeling we have a determinate experience, and that in this 
 experience all our knowledge of nature is implicit, is one 
 which no philosophy disputes." That is to say, conscious- 
 ness would not be what at any time it is but for a series 
 of events sensible or related to sensibility. On the other 
 hand, man would not be the same subject of intelligent 
 experience if not for the self-realization or reproduction 
 in himself of an Eternal Consciousness which is the con- 
 dition of there being experience. In virtue of his know- 
 ing character in the latter sense, man may be said to enjoy 
 freedom in intelligence. In Green's words he is a "free 
 cause." The word "cause" is not used in the ordinary sense 
 of a necessary antecedent to a given effect; for then it 
 also implies conditions precedent to that antecedent. Cause 
 and effect in the world of phenomena represent a kind of 
 relationship, with onei determining the other and itself 
 determined by still other causes. Freedom is not involved 
 in the determination of one natural event by another or 
 of one phenomenon by another phenomenon." Such de- 
 termination is in two senses unrelated to freedom: first, 
 it does not imply in either the cause or the caused a con-' 
 sciousness of self both as a subject and as an object ; and 
 second, it is a determination in which things external to 
 each other form that particular relationship which we call 
 cause and effect. 
 
 If we transfer the term "cause" from the above sense 
 to apply to the relation between the world and the agent 
 implied in its existence, we shall find that "free cause" 
 means the determination of man to action by himself. Man 
 IS really only free when he acts under the idea that he 
 himself determines himself or his action. The man whom 
 we contemplate from the point of view in which he ap- 
 
 " Works of T. H. Green. Vol. I, p. Z76 
 " Works of T H. Green. Vol. II, p. 109. 
 
 1^ 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 3^ 
 
 pears as subject to the laws of nature, as part and parcel 
 of nature, is not a real man." Real or not, it may be 
 objected that man's attainment of knowledge is condi- 
 tioned on processes in time and on the performance of 
 strictly natural functions. If these processes and func- 
 tions are so essential to him, how can it be said that a man 
 thus conditioned is not a part of nature but is himself free ? 
 The fact that consciousness realizes and reproduces itself 
 in an animal organism does not render a man a mere 
 animal, any more than the fact that animals employ me- 
 chanical structures for their movements make the animals 
 mere machines.'^ Man is conscious of himself. He con- 
 sciously distinguishes himself from his relations. He is 
 conscious of his being a unit, a subject and an object at 
 the same time. Now this self distinction of himself as a 
 manifestation of consciousness is not a process in time, 
 for it is that by virtue of which there can be time. By 
 virtue of his self distinction, he exerts himself freely in 
 activities which are not in time and are not linked in the 
 chain of natural events. His activities are self originated. 
 There is no incompatibility between this principle and 
 the physical processes of brain and nerve which are neces- 
 sary to human activity. These processes do not make up 
 the knowing and self distinguishing man, and it is, after 
 all, the knowing and self distinguishing man who is a "free 
 cause" in intelligence. 
 
 The above paragraphs aim to show that according to 
 Green there is an Eternal Consciousness and that Con- 
 sciousness reveals itself in two ways: first, in what is 
 called the spiritual principle in nature; and second, in 
 what is similarly styled the spiritual principle in knowledge- 
 
 17 Works of T. H. Green. Vol. II, p. 108. 
 
 18 Prolegomena. P. 89. 
 
32 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 ^^(] 
 
 The former becomes the knowable nature. The latter be- 
 comes the knowing man. His freedom, as we have seen, 
 is established and his spirituality proven. But we have not 
 yet dealt with man other than as a knowing being. Wc 
 do not yet know his moral capacities. Morality consists 
 in the disinterested performance of self-imposed duties.** 
 Moral actions involve willing and the objects willed. It is 
 therefore necessary in the following paragraphs to dwell 
 on the nature of will and the considerations it involves. 
 It is also necessary to examine into the character of the 
 objects willed and its bearing to the persons other than 
 those who do the willing. In the previous paragraphs we 
 were speculating in the world of knowledge, but in the 
 following paragraphs we shall be speculating in the sphere 
 of morality. In the former the purpose is to explain the 
 human effort to know that which is knowable and in the 
 latter the purpose will be to account for the attempt to 
 achieve that which is desired. In other words, to make 
 the contrast more striking even at the risk of being mis- 
 understood, the former is to reduce that which is real to 
 ideal and the latter will be to render that which is ideal 
 also real. 
 
 Leaving the world of knowledge we now proceed to the 
 vsrorld of practise, bearing in mind that by practise is meant 
 giving reality to conceived object.^^ We have shown that 
 the process of knowledge is not natural, we shall now try 
 to demonstrate that moral action is not natural either. 
 Since all actions involve willing it is only logical for us 
 first to define its character and then to find out what it 
 invariably involves. "Will is the capacity in a man of 
 being determined to action by the idea of a possible sat- 
 isfaction of himself. An act of will is an action so deter- 
 
 i» Principles of Political Obligation. F. 40. 
 20 Works of T. H. Green. Vol. II, p. 117. 
 
 t^^ 
 
 w 
 
 t 
 
 % 
 
 ^ 
 
 y 
 
 / 
 
 y 
 
 • 
 
 ^ 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 33 
 
 mined."" Will always involves motive, for there is no 
 unmotivated will." And motive involves wants and desires 
 which may be, and often are, of animal origin. But on 
 the other hand, it involves not only those wants and de- 
 sires but also a presentation of them to a self-distinguish- 
 ing consciousness. A desire is not a motive unless it is 
 presented to consciousness and recognised as such and also 
 as a possible source of satisfaction of one's self. Further- 
 more, it always involves an idea of good— whatever that 
 may be— in that satisfaction. This idea of good is what 
 gives rise to moral action. It involves a self-reflection and >^ 
 it also involves a judgment. Such reflection and judg- 
 ment may require constant reference to "customary ex- ^ 
 pressions of moral consciousness" and to "institutions em- 
 bodying ideals of permanent good." But in the interpre- 
 tation of these expressions and institutions, reflection and / 
 judgment are after all the ultimate determining factors. 
 Motive thus considered involves animal objects, desires or 
 sensible phenomena, but is not itself animal or phenomenal. . 
 Just as understanding involves nature that is in time but 
 is itself not in time, so also motive involves objects that 
 are animal and therefore in time but is itself neither ani- 
 mal nor in time. Just as there is freedom in intelligence 
 so also there is freedom in will. In both cases the self- 
 determining and self-distinguishing consciousness is at 
 work. 
 
 Will is necessarily influenced by our desire and intellect. 
 In order therefore to understand the character of our will, 
 we have to examine it in relation to both desire and in- 
 tellect and their inter-relation. Ordinarily when we speak 
 of desire we do not differentiate mere animal desire from 
 
 21 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 31. 
 ^ Principles of Political Obligation. F. 13. 
 
34 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 the desire that is identified by a self-detemiining conscious- 
 ness. The former has no moral character because, itself 
 apart from and unidentified by consciousness, it is merely 
 physically determined. Mere animal desires are, however, 
 of a very limited range. Most desires are not dependent 
 upon animal susceptibility," and even if so dependent are 
 themselves transformed by a new element derived from 
 the action of a self-determining consciousness. There is 
 sometimes a state of mind in which many desires conflict 
 and It is said that the strongest desire emerges victorious 
 and hence becomes our will. This, however, does not 
 ^meet Green's approval. To him will is not desire, whether 
 strong or not. If the word desire is to be persistently 
 used to cover the meaning of both will and animal wants 
 we need bear in mind that it does not mean the same 
 thmg. The desires that are yet conflicting are desires that 
 / are not identified by self-consciousness as possible sources 
 of satisfaction out of which good may be derived, while 
 the desire that is so identified by a self-consciousness is 
 already different from, those that are conflicting, that is. 
 •t is already a motive. In the one case man is acting him- 
 ^ self in acting upon a desire that is identified by himself, 
 but m the odier the desires exert an influence on him 
 y when he IS yet undecided. There is no moral significance 
 in the latter but there is in the former. 
 
 Let us next turn to the relation between desire and in- 
 tellect Is there any unity between the two or are they 
 diametncally opposed to each other? Unity is easily seen 
 at the source, for "the real agent called Desire is the man 
 or subject or self as desiring: the real agent called Intellect 
 L TIL ^' ""'^^'•^tanding, as perceiving and conceiv- 
 ng and the man that desires is identical with the man 
 that understands." " The problem is, however, that to 
 " Prolegomena. P. 141. 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 35 
 
 desire Is plainly not the same as to understand, and the 
 two things can not be satisfactorily explained merely by 
 their relation to the identical source. Green's explana- 
 tion " is that both desire and intellect involve the con- 
 sciousness of s^lf and of a world as opposed to it and the 
 effort to overcome this opposition. Desire strives to over- 
 come this opposition by giving or trying to give reality to 
 an object which when first desired is only ideal. Intellect 
 strives to overcome the opposition by rendering or trying 
 to render ideality or intelligibility to an object which when 
 first presented is only sensible. Furthermore, "the exer- 
 cise of the one is always a necessary accompaniment of the 
 other. In all exercise of understanding desire is at v^ 
 work." 26 And vice versa. "No man learns to know any- 
 thing without desiring to know it/' " Conversely no one y" 
 really desires anything without intelligently calculating the 
 possibilities of its reahsation. Thus it will be seen that 
 desire and intellect are interwoven, and after all they are ^^ 
 different manifestations of the same self -consciousness. 
 They are not separate powers of which one can be exer- >/ 
 cised without the other. The act of thinking involves the 
 act of desiring and the act of desiring involves the act of 
 thinking. Therefore there is a unity inherent in the actions 
 of both besides the identity of source from which these 
 actions necessarily spring. 
 
 It remains necessary for us to examine the relationship 
 between will and intellect. It has sometimes been urged 
 that willing and thinking are opposite to each other. It 
 has also been said that mere thinking is not willing or that 
 
 2* Prolegomena. P. 146. 
 
 25 Prolegomena. P. 147. 
 
 "Prolegomena. P. 151. 
 
 «T Prolegomena. P. 151. 
 
36 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 willing is more than thinking. The latter implies that a 
 complementary element needs be added in order to make 
 thinking equal to willing- That is, "if we say, for example, 
 that the act of willing to pay a debt is more than mere 
 thinking" of paying it: what we mean is that "the mere 
 thinking about paying the debt falls short of willing to 
 pay it." This depends upon the meaning of the term 
 thinking. Evidently it is not the kind of thinking that 
 involves a consciousness of "self and the world as mu- 
 tually determined, of an object present to the self in a 
 desire feh by it, but awaiting realisation in the world." *• 
 Such thinking is always present in willing. A thoughtless 
 will in the above sense is not a will at all. Furthermore, 
 the object willed is the realisation of an idea. It may be 
 an idea of good, or of self-satisfaction or of a dozen other 
 things, but it is none the less an idea. The object of will 
 is also an object of thought.^® In this sense, therefore, 
 thinking is willing. It is not merely a part of us. It is 
 not merely an element in willing. Nor is there any ele- 
 ment or factor in willing that is separate and separable 
 from thought. That is, will does not consist of different 
 elements of which thinking is one and has a compartment 
 of its own altogether separate from that of the others. 
 Such a conclusion is inevitable, as will be seen from our 
 discussion of desire and intellect, knowledge and nature 
 and the synthetic unifying principle of human conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 However, this separate discussion of desire, intellect and 
 will may leave the impression that they are independent 
 elements that make up a given action by man. This is, of 
 
 28 Prolegomena. P. 170. 
 2» Prolegomena. P. 171. 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 
 
 37 
 
 course, far from being the opinion of the author himself. 
 He does not, for a moment, think of will as consisting of / 
 desire in addition to, and therefore apart from, intellect; ^ 
 for "desire of the kind that enters into willing involves 
 thought: and thought of the kind that enters into willing 
 involves desire." ^^ Each is not without the other. In 
 fact, there is unity in all. According to Green, "will is 
 equally and indistinguishably desire and thought. ... If 
 so, it must be a mistake to regard will as a faculty which 
 a man possesses along with other faculties and which has 
 the singular privilege of acting independently of other 
 faculties, so that, given a man's character as it at any time 
 results from the direction taken by those other faculties, 
 the will remains something apart which may issue in action 
 different from that prompted by the character- The will *^ 
 is the man. Any act of the will is the expression of the >/ 
 man as he at the time is." ** All the time that he so wills, 
 he may feel, think and desire one hundred and one things, 
 but after all, "it is only the feeling, thought and desire 
 represented by the act of the will that the man recognises 
 as for the time himself." . 
 
 When Green speaks of self, he means by it the unit in > 
 which the Eternal Consciousness reproduces itself. It is 
 "the only thing or a form of the only thing that is real in 
 its own right: the only thing of which the reality is not 
 relative or derived." '^ That thus conceived the so-called 
 self becomes somewhat mysterious, Green concedes, if by 
 saying mysterious is meant the inability to explain the 
 question why. But then it is no more so than the very 
 existence of the world. Nor is it in any way abstract ; for 
 
 ^^ Prolegomena. P. 171. 
 
 31 Prolegomena. P. 173. 
 
 32 Prolegomena. P. 113. 
 
\ 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 
 
 38 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 just as desires, feelings and thoughts would not be what 
 they are if not related to a subject which distinguishes 
 itself from each and all of them, so this subject would 
 not be what it is, if it were not related to the particular 
 desires, feelings and thoughts which it thus distinguishes 
 from and presents to itself." In other words, this con- 
 ception of self as uniting these desires, feelings and 
 thoughts can not be regarded as too abstract. It expresses 
 itself through them when at any particular time it identifies 
 itself with any of them. 
 
 Human will may be either good or bad. Since good 
 and bad are relative terms, a discussion of the one will 
 reveal the nature of the other. What, we may ask, does 
 good will consist of? According to Green, who agrees in 
 the main with Kant, good will consists chiefly of deter- 
 mination by "practical reason" to an action involving an 
 object which is capable of an unity in one's self and others. 
 What is "practical reason"? Practical means that which 
 pertains to giving reality to conceived objects. And "prac- 
 tical reason" Green defines as "a consciousness of a pos- 
 sibility of a perfection to be reaUsed in and by the subject 
 of consciousness."'* Willing involves a subject, as has 
 been explained at length, but in this case, in the case of 
 good will, it involves also an object that originates in rea- 
 son." This object does not originate in desire, for it is 
 "desirable before it is desired and it is coming to be de- 
 sired because it has been previously recognised as desir- 
 \ able." ^« There is, then, a quality of unconditionalness of 
 this object. Green is careful to point out that the object 
 ^ of will is not ordinarily, and to use his own w 
 
 "Prolegomena. P. 113. 
 8* Principles of Political Obligation. P. 20. 
 55 Works of T. H. Green. Vol. U, p. 110. 
 "Works of T. H. Green. Vol. H, p. 111. 
 
 words, does 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 
 
 39 
 
 u^ 
 
 not generally coincide with, the object of reason. But like y/ 
 a good philosopher he is far from being hopeless, for the 
 object of will is "intrinsically or potentially and tends to 
 be actually the same as that of reason." ^^ 
 
 Good will, in order to be directed to a common object, / 
 also involves an idea of an unity of one's self and others- "^ 
 This point can be made clear by Green's discussion of com- 
 mon good and pleasure seeking. His writings are so full 
 of attacks on Hedonism and Utilitarianism that it is hard 
 to single out any particular one for quotation. In the 
 following passage his expressions are quite emphatic and 
 almost vehement. To seek pleasure is to direct one's 
 "dominant interest to an object private to himself, a good 
 in which others can not share. The character of a pleas- 
 ure seeker is necessarily selfish in this sense. . . . That 
 the pleasure seeker lives for an object private to himself 
 may seem inconsistent with the fact that we share each 
 other's pleasure, but it is not so. When a man is said 
 to share another's pleasure, what is meant is that having 
 desired the same object with the other, he is equally pleased 
 with its attainment : or that, the pleasure of the other hav- 
 ing been his object, he is satisfied when that object is 
 obtained when the other is pleased. In each case the 
 pleasure is private to the person enjoying it, and so it 
 must be even when it is incidental to the attainment of 
 an object which is really common. It is only because we 
 confuse fhe pursuit of a common object, that is, of a good 
 by which others than the pursuer will be the better, with 
 the pursuit of pleasure which will ensue when the object 
 is attained, and thus regard those as pleasure seekers who 
 are not really so, that we come to imagine there can be 
 pleasure seekers who are not selfish, not living for an 
 
 «^ Principles of Political Obligation. P. 21. 
 
40 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 
 
 41 
 
 object purely private to themselves." '' Pleasure, then, is 
 not necessarily good. It may be incidental to the realisa- 
 tion of an object considered good, but it is not itself the 
 The above account serves to point out that pleasure seek- 
 ing is not willing a common good, but it does not exactly 
 tell what that common good is. In order to know what 
 common good is, we have to know what good is. Good, 
 
 /if it is to be true at all, is that which satisfies the desire 
 of the moral agent ; and a moral agent is defined as one 
 
 ^ who is disinterestedly performing self-imposed duties. But 
 
 "" according to Green, just what is the nature of good can 
 not be exactly ascertained. We may, however, form a 
 
 / general idea about it. As has been pointed out earlier, The 
 ^ Eternal Consciousness reproduces itself in human beings. 
 "In virtue of this principle in him, man has definite capa- 
 bilities, the realisation of which, since in it alone he can 
 satisfy himself, forms his true good. They are not real- 
 ised, however, in any life that can be observed, in any life 
 that has been or is or that can be lived by man as we know 
 him ; and for this reason we cannot say with any adequacy 
 what the capabilities are. Yet because man's spiritual 
 endowment is the consciousness of having it, the idea of 
 his having such capabilities and of a possible better state 
 of himself consisting of their further realisation is the 
 moving influenceiahini^^ . . As his true good is or would 
 be their~compTete realisation, so his goodness is propor- 
 
 / tionate to his habitual responsiveness to the idea of there 
 being such a true good in the various forms of recognized 
 duty and beneficent work in which that idea has so far 
 taken shape among men In other words, it consists in 
 
 y the direction of the will to the objects determined for it 
 by this idea, as operative in the person willing, which 
 
 «« Works of T. H. Green. Vol. II, p. 144. 
 
 v/' 
 
 ^ 
 
 v^ 
 
 direction of the will we may, upon the ground stated, fitly 
 call its determination by reason." ^® And reason is defined 
 as the capacity on the part of the self-conscious subject to 
 conceive a possibility of perfection of himself as an end 
 to be attained by action. 
 
 The above, then, is the conception of a true good. That 
 it is somewhat dogmatic, Green expressly admits.*^ That 
 it fails to offer a sure guide seems to be unavoidable; for 
 if we know definitely what those capacities are we shall 
 be more than human beings, we shall be God. But it is 
 this idea of a true good that makes possible the idea of 
 a common good. In fact the latter is inherent in the 
 former. The idea of the absolutely desirable arises out y 
 of man's consciousness of himself as an end to himself. ^ 
 Now this self is neither abstract nor empty. He is bound 
 up with interests in common with others. One can not 
 contemplate himself in a better state without contemplating 
 others, not merely as a means to that better state but as 
 sharing it with him. In other words there is a conscious- 
 ness of kind. Satisfaction of one's self should include 
 satis^faction of others. Well being, in order to be perma- 
 nent, must be one in which self and others are included. 
 In fact individuals and society are mutually interdepend- 
 ent. While "the life of the nation has no real existence 
 except as the Hfe of the individuals composing the na- 
 tion," *^ individuals could not be what they are independent 
 of their existence in a nation. 
 
 Green's discussion of the development of personality 
 reveals further the interdependence of individuals and so- 
 ciety. Human society to him presupposes persons in ca-v^ 
 
 89 Prolegomena. Pp. 206-207. 
 *o Prolegomena. P. 206. 
 *i Prolegomena. P. 211. 
 
 ^ 
 
 r-.. 
 
H 
 
 y 
 
 J 
 
 J 
 
 42 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 pacity— the capacity to conceive himself and the bettering 
 of his life as in end in himself— and it is only in the inter- 
 course of men each recognized by each as an end, not 
 merely as a means, that the capacity is actualized and that 
 we really live as persons. Later on Green says : "Without 
 society, no person." ^^ "This is as true as that without 
 persons, without self -objectifying agents, there could be 
 no such society as we know. Such society is founded on 
 the recognition by persons of each other, and their inter- 
 ests in each other, as persons, that is as beings who are 
 ends to themselves, who are consciously determined to 
 action by the conception of themselves as that for the sake 
 of which they act They are interested in each other in 
 so far as each, being aware that another presents his own 
 satisfaction to himself as an object, finds satisfaction for 
 himself in procuring the self-satisfaction of the; other. 
 Society is founded on such mutual interest in the sense 
 that unless it is operative, . . . there would be nothing to 
 lead to that treatment of one human being by another, as 
 an end not merely as a means, on which society even in 
 its narrowest and most primitive forms must rest"** 
 While on the one hand there can not be society except as 
 between persons each recognising the other as an end in 
 himself and having the will to treat him as such, on the 
 other, it is only through society that individuality can seek 
 actualisation. It will be seen, then, that Green is neither 
 y a Blind worshipper of society, nor an advocate of anar- 
 chistic individualism. 
 
 This sketch of Green's metaphysical and ethical doc- 
 trines, however short, serves a definite purpose. It points 
 out that according to Green, man is not natural. In in- 
 telligence he is a "free cause." In willing he is a free man. 
 
 *2 Prolegomena. P. 218. 
 " Frolcgomena. P. 218. 
 
 Metaphysical and Ethical Background 
 
 43 
 
 He is free in the sense that he is not subject to the deter- 
 mination by external forces. He is self-determined; and in 
 that determination in which he is himself both the subject 
 and the object, there is no "necessity," but freedom. With 
 a free will he is capable of moral action, and with his 
 freedom in intelligence he is capable of creative effort. 
 With his faculty of reason he conceives the idea of good, v^ 
 With his consciousness of an unity of himself with the 
 others, what Prof. Giddings broadly calls the conscious- \/ 
 ness of kind, he is capable of good will and the idea of 
 common good. Such, then, is the metaphysical and ethical 
 conception of men. 
 
 In order to understand Green's political theory, we need 
 Bear this conception in mind. In other words, it is neces- 
 sary to understand! the broad metaphysical and ethical 
 foundation upon which his political theory is built, before 
 we can proceed to discuss that theory proper. It may be 
 objected that nowhere is attention paid to what is em- 
 bodied in conventional morality, such things as virtue, 
 courage, truthfulness, etc. The answer is that they form 
 the content of morality. While they are related to Green's 
 ideas of laws. Institutions and customs — which will be 
 dealt with later on — they are not strictly within the sphere 
 of political action. Moral duties are not capable of legal 
 enforcement. In Green's own words, "There is moral 
 duty in regard to obligations, but there can be no obliga- 
 tions as to moral duty." ** Since political action is chiefly 
 directed towards maintaining conditions under which mor- 
 ality becomes possible, it is not within the sphere of this 
 treatise to elaborate on that which properly belongs to 
 moral content. 
 
 ** Principles of Political Obligation. P. 34. 
 
The Theory of Natural Rights 
 
 45 
 
 V 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE THEORY OF NATURAL RIGHTS 
 
 Green's political theory may be divided into two parts, , 
 namely, the principle of political obligation and the prin- 
 ciple of state interference. The first includes the theory 
 of ngitural rights and the theory of the true basis of the 
 state. We will begin with the theory of natural rights. 
 
 It is easily seen that Green agrees with Aristotle that 
 man is by nature a social being. There is, therefore, no 
 such separate and isolated man as that described by Rous- 
 seau. Even if there is such an animal, it can not be the 
 possessor of rights ;Qfor every right involves always two 
 elements,* a claim on the part of the individual and a 
 recognition of that claim by other individuals.) There- 
 y fore, if there are any such rights worth speaking of, there 
 is already a society. The idea of men's possessing rights 
 y in the sense of rights prior to the formation of society is 
 entirely unfounded. 
 
 The theory that society came into existence by contract 
 implies that prior to the institution of the contract, the 
 contracting parties were separate and isolated individuals. 
 According to Green, there were no such individuals. The 
 same theory implies that these isolated individuals had 
 fundamental natural rights. According to Green, there 
 were no such rights. Furthermore, social contract assumes 
 that in forming such a contract men were free and equa!. 
 "But if freedom is understood in the sense in which most 
 
 1 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 45. 
 
 of these writers seemed to understand it as a power of 
 executing, of giving effect to one's will, the amount of 
 freedom possessed m a state ot nature, if that state was 
 one of detachment and collisioi^ between individuals, must 
 have been very small. Men must have been constantly 
 thwarting each other and thwarted by the powers of na- 
 ture In such a state, those only could be free, in the 
 senses supposed, who were not equal to the rest, who in 
 virtue of superior power could use the rest. But whether 
 we suppose an even balance of weakness in subjection to 
 the crushing force of nature, or a domination of a few 
 over many by means of a superior strength, in such a state 
 of nature no general pact is possible." ^ It is clear, then, 
 that social contract is not only historically nou-existent 
 but also logically impossible. 
 
 That does not mean, however, that there are no such 
 things as natural rights if rightly understood Let us first 
 of all state the traditional conception of natural rights 
 more fully. Human beings are supposed to be born into 
 this worid with such rights as of Ufe, liberty and prop- 
 erty « These rights are natural because they existed for 
 man prior to his forming and joining the social contract 
 and are retained by him after he entered into it. Social 
 contract made political action possible and pohtical action 
 gave rise to legal and civil systems of duties and rights. 
 It Is only easy to conclude that these legal or civil rights, 
 being dependent upon natural rights, should base their 
 justification upon their compatibility with those natural 
 rights. Hence the question whether a given civil duty is 
 justifiable or not is determined according as it is or is not 
 
 2 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 70. 
 •The French and American Declarations differ in specific 
 rights. 
 
y 
 
 46 Political Theory or Thomas Hill Green 
 
 compatible with natural rights. But Green asks : If civil 
 or legal rights are justihed in accordance with their com- 
 patibility with natural rights, how are these natural rights 
 to be justified? There is ^the same necessity of reducmg 
 natural rights to something more fundamental, for the 
 question why should these rights be maintained at all has 
 not been answered. They certainly can not exist by them- 
 selves. They can not exist without a society, that is, they 
 exist in virtue of there being a society. If their existence 
 is relative to society, their existence is dependent upon 
 something other than themselves. As to what that some- 
 thing is, the traditional conception of natural rights is un- 
 able to give us a satisfactory answer. ( The Utilitarians 
 indeed have made an improvement in that they regard 
 rights and duties as relative to pleasure and pain. To 
 them rights and duties should be enforced according to 
 their consequences ; that is, if their enforcement results in 
 more pleasure enjoyed and less pain sustained, then that 
 enforcement is commendable. This theory avoids the 
 necessity of reducing secondary rights to primary rights 
 which are logically non-existent. To Green, of course, 
 this theory is not acceptable since he does not accept the 
 Utilitarian premise. Pleasure and pain are not that to 
 which rights and duties should be considered relative. 
 
 In order to understand Green's own theory, we have to 
 refer back to his Ethics. We learn from the previous 
 chapter that there are such things as good will, common 
 good and moral ideal. Moral ideal is the one factor to 
 which others are relative, to which rights and duties are 
 relative. The word "natural" may be used to qualify certain 
 rights, but in the sense in which alone it can be used, it 
 does not mean "primary," or "previous to the formation 
 of society" or "pertaining to a state of nature." " NaturaP 
 as employed h^ Green means necessary and necessary for 
 
 The Theory of Natural Rights 
 
 47 
 
 utes to the realisation of a certain end. That, end is tne y 
 
 „« Scussed> ior if .he «d i, no. held m v,.«. *e 
 
 mpnn^ has no excuse for existence. 
 
 Tim be seen from the above that there are two nece. 
 sary conditions^ under which alone we can Pos-Wy speak 
 of rights. No one could begin to think of "ghtyf. fir^t 
 he is not a member of a society, and, .^-«>f ^^/J^' 
 in which some common good is -^^"f ^^^^ */ "^^^^^^^ 
 nf the society as their own ideal good. The capacity 01 
 ^b^^i gVe^Led by the idea of good so recognised . wha 
 constitutes a moral being.^Since rights exist for^the real 
 ization of a moral ideal, only men of -J^l ^^^^^^^ 
 entitled to right^ Not only are they -"fl^l^\^.^?.^^^^^^^ 
 „.ust also actually possess them Moral capaaty imph^ 
 
 a consciousness on the part of the ^^^'..''If^^.'^S. 
 that its realisation is an end desirable in itself^ Rights 
 are the conditions of realising that end. On y througn 
 P^ssssing rights could a man realise that which is recog- 
 S as good for himself and society. That does not mean 
 
 4 Principles of Political Obligation. P. ^. 
 
 5 Principles of Political Obligation. P. ^■ 
 » Principles of Political Obligation. P. 45. 
 
 v/ 
 
 ^ 
 
 i^ 
 
 y 
 
 y 
 
 • 
 
48 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 The Theory of Natural Rights 
 
 49 
 
 y/ 
 
 that rights make any positive contribution to one's real- 
 isation in the sense that they actively and actually help 
 him to realize. But it does mean that they are the condi- 
 tions under which the positive realization of moral capacity 
 is made possible. 
 
 The question as to why it is necessary that a person in 
 order to have rights must be a member of a society, is ans- 
 wered by the inherent qualities of both the persons and 
 rights. The chapter on the Metaphysical and Ethical Back- 
 ground reveals the necessary relationships between persons 
 and society. Though society can not exist apart from per- 
 sons, a person in the sense in which Green designates him 
 to be can not exist apart from society. Persons and the 
 society are mutually dependent. Rights just as much as 
 persons must also be copsidered from the individual as well 
 as the social sideViliey involve a claim on the part of the 
 individual and the recognition of that claim on the part 
 of the rest constituting the society, y The individual claims 
 the capacity to conceive a common good as his own and di- 
 rect his energies in the light of that common good. The 
 society recognizes his claim as necessary for each and 
 every one of the society for the purpose of furthering that 
 common good. Without either this claim or this recogni- 
 tion there can be no right. With these two considerations 
 as necessary ingredients, rights can not belong to any iso- 
 lated being, any being existing apart from society. Natural 
 rights are therefore necessary conditions for the realization 
 of the moral ideal, the fulfilment of the moral capacity. In 
 this sense and in this sense alone therefore there are such 
 things as natural rights, always bearing in mind that by 
 natural is not meant "primary" or "previous to the forma- 
 tion of society" or "pertaining to the state of nature." 
 
 What are, then, some of the conditions for moral Hfe, 
 or rather conditions under which moral life may be possi- 
 
 ble? What are some of these rights? There are two great • 
 divisions, the private and the public. Private rights are 
 those that exist for a man as one in society and public 
 rights are those that come to be attached to a man as a 
 citizen of a state.^ Of the private rights there are three 
 classes, namely, the personal rights, the rights of property 
 and the rights of private relations. The first term may be 
 somewhat misleading, since all rights are personal, since it 
 is only by virtue of a person that they are rights at all. By 
 personal rights are meant the rights of life and liberty, that 
 is, "of preserving one's body from the violence of other 
 men and of using it as an instrument of only one's own 
 will." ® In other words, the right to free life, including 
 both the right to liberty and life, is essential to the fulfil- 
 ment of the moral capacity of man and it is only duly 
 claimed and recognized that it becomes a right in the sense 
 in which we have already defined it. 
 
 Let us next consider the rights of property. Since prop- 
 erty is the center of our modem controversy, we are prob- 
 ably entitled to go more into detail than is warranted in our 
 consideration of personal rights. The fundamental action 
 involved in the acquisition of property is appropriation, and 
 appropriation according to Green is an expression of will, 
 of the individual's effort to give reality to a conception of 
 his own good. Whether it is an instinctive act or not as 
 applied to ants or bees, we do not know, but as it is applied 
 to men it certainly is not an instinctive act. The act of 
 appropriation, like every other act of that sort, reflects a 
 self consciousness capable of distinguishing itself from its 
 wants- This self consciousness says in effect, according to 
 Green, "this [or that] shall be mine to do as I like with, to 
 
 ^ For definition of State see pp. 82-83. 
 
 » Principles of Political Obligation. P. 155. 
 
 . ^ 
 
 / 
 
 s^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 /. 
 
.50 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 The Theory of Natural Rights 
 
 51 
 
 >/ 
 
 v/ 
 
 satisfy my wants and express my emotions as they arise."-* 
 Property thus appropriated, instead of remaining a mere 
 external material necessary for bodily sustenance, has be- 
 come interwoven with the personality of the man who ap- 
 propriates it. Appropriation can not therefore be merelj 
 instinctive. 
 
 . But appropriation as described above is only a claim and 
 a claim alone does not constitute a right. It has to be rec- 
 ognized before it acquires validity. Of the various expla- 
 nations urged for the validity of property rights, none is 
 entirely satisfactory. Grotius attributed the right of prop- 
 erty to a contract, but according to Green ^^ contract pre- 
 supposes property. Hobbes regards the right of property as 
 dependent upon the existence of a sovereign power of com- 
 pulsion who grants such a right." But the sovereign power, 
 if merely a strong force of compulsion, can not be the source 
 of rights, and, if a representative maintainer of rights, im- 
 plies or presupposes rights. Locke returns to the law of 
 nature and law of reason in his consideration of the right 
 of property.^2 j^^g^ ^^ ^ ^^^ j^ entitled to his body, so he 
 is entitled to the results of the work of his body and the 
 labor of his hand. Property is the result of labor and 
 necessary for the maintenance and expression of life. 
 Locke has the merit of pointing out the intricate relation- 
 ship between personal rights and the rights of property, 
 but he does not explain the exact grounds upon which the 
 rights can be rights in any sense. According to Green, the 
 basis of the recognition of the claim to property is' the 
 same as that of the other claims to rights. Just as society 
 recognizes the claims of a free life as themselves necessary 
 
 » Principles of Political Obligation. P. 213. 
 
 »« Principles of Political Obligation. P. 214. 
 
 " Principles of Political Obligation. P. 214. 
 
 " Principles of Political Obligaion. P. 216. 
 
 conditions for moral realization and for the common good 
 of the whole, so also it recognizes the claim to property as 
 necessary for that common good. Just as the foundation y 
 of the rights of free Hfe lies in the human will, so also the 
 foundation of the right of property.^^ 
 
 Green is fully alive to the results of the historical de- 
 velopment of the institution of property. He recognizes 
 the divergence between the rational justification and the 
 actual consequences of the right to property- Theoretically, 
 indeed, all may have property, but as a matter of fact he 
 sees that great numbers do not get it. At least they do not 
 get it in the measure in which alone it is of any value ; that 
 is, they fail to get a sufficient amount of it to enable them to 
 give expression to their moral life and to facilitate the rea- 
 lization of their moral ideal. He recognizes that a man 
 who has nothing^* but his labor to sell for a bare subsist- 
 ence is factually denied the right of property in the ethical 
 sense, the only sense in which property is at all desirable. 
 According to Green, however, this miserable condition is 
 only incidental to and not inherent in the right of property. 
 That right itself is necessary for a moral purpose. The 
 fact that many who have property do not use it for that 
 purpose is no ground for believing that it can not be used 
 for that purpose and therefore should be abolished. Only 
 is it condemnable when the possession of it by one inter- 
 feres with like possession by another. Only when property 
 of one is used to prevent the acquisition by another does 
 Green subscribe to the Proudhonian declaration that prop- 
 erty is theft." (jThe right of property should accordingly 
 carry with it two conditions," first, labor, and, second, the 
 
 ^ 
 
 y 
 
 " Principles of Political Obligation. P. 217. 
 
 " Principles of Political Obligation. P. 219. 
 
 i« Principles of Political Obligation. P. 220. 
 
 " Principles of Political Obligation. P. 220. 
 
 
 \^ 
 
52 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 The Theory of Natural Rights 
 
 53 
 
 respect for the same right of the others, in order that it 
 may not defeat its own purposeJ 
 
 How shall the right of property thus considered be recon- 
 ciled with the freedom of trade and the freedom of bequest 
 with all their consequences ? Freedom of trade involves the 
 ^. game of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest 
 market and in so buying and selling, the merchant often 
 absorbs the legitimate share of labor. Freedom of bequest 
 permits wealth to be transmitted from its creator to his off- 
 spring who may not have labored at all towards creating 
 and possessing that wealth. On the whole, however, Green 
 
 / is not antagonistic towards these policies merely because 
 they give rise to inequality of wealth; for he argues that 
 wealth, given the purpose for which it alone can be claimed 
 and recognized as a right, will be just as unequal as men 
 are unequal. Green, to be sure, is not the kind of hero 
 worshipper as, for instance, Carlyle, though he is quite 
 given to admiration for great men. Neither does he be- 
 lieve in the doctrine that "all men are created equal." Fur- 
 thermore, inequality of wealth is not necessarily the cause 
 
 x/ of misery ; for wealth is not a fixed stock " of which more 
 for one means necessarily less for the other. On the con- 
 
 ^ trary, production can be increased and distribution im- 
 proved. Though he deplores the condition of a large num- 
 ber of men in England at his time, he has pointed out that 
 
 •^ many, while working at factories, are the owners of shares 
 of stock. It is evident that what he hopes to see is an 
 eventual diffiusion of income, a result which many econo- 
 mists confidently expect. Green has very decided opinions 
 on property in land, but that can better be discussed in 
 connection with the principle of state interference. 
 
 Lastly let us consider briefly the rights of private rela- 
 tions. These rights are logically based on the same ground 
 
 " Principles of Political Obligation. P. 224. 
 
 as are the other rights- But there is an important differ- 
 ence. The rights of life and liberty ^re primarily related to 
 the person himself. The right of property is a right over 
 things. But the rights of private relations are rights over ^ 
 persons other than the claimer and possessor of these rights. 
 Husbands and wives have mutual rights over each other. "^ 
 Without going into all the details we may profitably ex- 
 amine two or three points. What, for instance, is it in 
 men that makes them capable of family life? How has 
 there come to be recognition of mutual rights and duties? 
 Is monogamy justifiable? The answer to the first question 
 can be guessed from Green's ideas in other connections. 
 The formation of family supposes a like effort on the part 
 of the parties concerned to give reality to a conception of 
 their own good. It also supposes that this conception of a 
 good is shared by others in the society whose well being is 
 interwoven with their own. The claim of husband over 
 wife and of wife over husband is recognized as conducive 
 to the realization of a common good. Wh atever th e his- 
 torical development may be, the rational justification oT^e 
 ri^its of private"relations is the same as that urged for 
 other rights. 
 
 According to Green, all men and all women are entitled 
 to marry and form households and within the households 
 the claims of husband and wife are throughout reciprocal. 
 Polygamy is therefore incapable of justification for several 
 reasons. "It is a violation of the rights first of those who 
 through it are indirectly excluded from regular marriage 
 and therefore from the moral education which results from 
 it, second, of the wife who is morally lowered by exclu- 
 sion from her proper position in the household and by being 
 used, more or less, as a mere instrument for the husband's 
 pleasure, third, of the children who lose the chance of that 
 full moral training which depends on the concerted action 
 
 •^ 
 
 v^ 
 
I 
 
 54 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 of mother and father." ^« The first stipulation is evidently 
 based on the supposition that the number of women and 
 men is about equal. Just as polygamy is properly con- 
 demnable, so also are all the subterfuges that unhappily 
 exist in some countries where monogamy is legally re- 
 quired. Green goes into a somewhat detailed consideration 
 of the historical process through which family has come 
 to be what it actually at present is, and of the problems of 
 divorce, but since the former is purely historical and the 
 latter a matter of poUcy, either of the two will be out of 
 place for the specihc topic with which we are deaUng. 
 
 The above is both the theory and substance of natural 
 rights. It may be asked as to just what is the connection 
 between this theory and the principle of political obligation. 
 It will be observed that the theory of natural rights centers 
 around our moral ideal. It is indeed because of our moral 
 ideal that they exist- And when we speak of the principle 
 of political obligation, what we are getting at is really a 
 principle by whi'di we justify our obedience to political au- 
 thorities. If we obey, we obey by virtue of our moral ideal. 
 . Now ; political authority as represented by the state exists 
 
 ^ for the purpose of maintaining our rights and giving fuller 
 reality to them.^^ In other words, it exists for the purpose 
 of maintaining the conditions under which moral life may 
 
 ^ be possible, bearing always in mind our definition of natural 
 rights. The existence of the state is therefore relative to 
 our moral ideal, and it is in connection with that ideal 
 
 " that the relation between the theory of natural rights and 
 the principle of political obligation becomes evident. 
 
 V 
 
 ^i» 
 
 \Vk 
 
 " Principles of Political Obligation. P. 237. 
 « Principles of Political Obligation. P. 138. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 GREEN AND HIS PREDECESSORS 
 
 According to Green, the principle of political obligation 
 has never been satisfactorily formulated, although many 
 have tried it. The contract theory is ingenious but it is 
 fallacious. Green saw clearly, however, that that theory 
 can not be overturned on merely historical ground; for it 
 is intended to explain the logical and philosophical presup* 
 position of political authority. In order to demolish it to 
 the satisfaction of its advocates, objections must be based 
 not only on historical but also on logical and philosophical 
 grounds. Furthermore, the contract theory and the tradi- 
 tional theory of natural rights are inseparable. Green has 
 to attack both in order that his own theory of natural rights 
 may prevail. It is with these two reasons in view that he 
 elects for criticism Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. 
 Austin is chosen because Green's conception of sovereignty 
 is a combination of Austin's with that of Rousseau. 
 
 1. Spinoza. According to Spinoza, natural rights are 
 merely natural powers. "Whatever the individual does by 
 the laws of his nature, that he does by the highest right 
 and his right toward nature goes just as far as his power 
 holds out." ^ Human beings are subjects of passions and as 
 such are natural enemies, each struggling for his self inter- 
 est and preservation. This condition is of course far from 
 being satisfactory; hence society is formed as an arrange- 
 
 1 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 49. 
 
56 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 ment whereby peace and order are made secure. Since the 
 power of the rest put together is greater than that of the in- 
 dividual the right of the individual is lessened in the state. 
 On the other hand, the right of the state depends upon the 
 power to effect the hopes and fears of the individual. 
 Whatever can not be achieved by threats or rewards is be- 
 yond the power and therefore the right of the state-* 
 
 Green consfders erroneous Spinoza's conception of nat- 
 ural rights as being enjoyed by an individual apart from 
 the society. It is evident from what has been presented 
 before that, according to Green, natural rights can only 
 exist for man as a member of a society. If one is isolated 
 and apart from society he is incapable of having any right 
 whatsoever. He may indeed have power, as Spinoza says, 
 but power can not be considered as right in any sense. This 
 error is made worse by Spinoza's rejection of final causes. 
 He regards man as determined by material and efficient 
 causes and as himself a material and an efficient cause 
 Thus considered, according to Green, man is only capable 
 of power. He is not capable of right; for rights are not 
 material attributes of a man. They are ideal attributes 
 which the individual possesses as means for the realization 
 of an end. "It is not in so far as I can do this or that, that 
 J I have a right to do this or that, but in so far as I recognize 
 myself and am recognized by others as able to do this or 
 that for the sake of a common good." * If there is no such 
 an end in view, natural rights, as has been pointed out, are 
 quite meaningless. 
 
 2. Hobbes. Since Hobbes is a materialist and Green is 
 an idealist, they can be expected to disagree. Let us state 
 Hobbes' idea in the fewest words possible. Human actions 
 
 « Principles of Political Obligation. P. 53. 
 » Principles of Political Obligation. P. 56. 
 
 Green and His Predecessors 
 
 57 
 
 can be reduced to the antithesis of appetite and aversion. 
 Before there is society men are isolated and solitary; they 
 live in a state of nature. There is constant, actual or po- 
 tential warfare, since every one is seeking for his own 
 interest ; there is competition, distrust and love for personal 
 glory. Under such circumstances, there is neither right nor 
 wrong, neither justice nor injustice. Man has natural 
 rights, that is, the liberty or power to do anything he deems 
 necessary for his preservation. This constant warfare is 
 evidently not the kind that affords much comfort, neither 
 is it conducive to the success of preservation. Therefore 
 men come together to form a social contract by which the 
 right to govern is vested in a man or a group of men- So- 
 ciety is thus formed and with it men surrender their natural 
 rights. It will be noticed that the ruler, the sovereign, is 
 not a party to the contract but that his designation by the 
 voice of majority is a stipulation of the contract. Since 
 contract is binding and since it calls for obedience, the mi- 
 nority has no right to resist the power of the sovereign. 
 Thus Hobbes has reached his goal, that is, the absolutism of 
 the sovereign power. It can not justly be resisted, for 
 to resist it amounts to a violation of the contract. It can 
 not be accused of a similar violation because it is not a party 
 to the contract. 
 
 Green's criticism can be fore-told. He can not accept 
 the Hobbesian theory of human conduct. His criticism 
 of the theory of natural rights is about the same as that 
 on Spinoza. There is no right in the proper sense prior 
 to the act by which sovereign power is established. There 
 is only power. If there is no right before, there can be no 
 right after, the establishment of the sovereign power; for 
 a power can not create a right. Nor is the power of the 
 sovereign a natural right ; for **if natural right means 
 natural power, then upon successful rebellion it disap 
 
58 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 pears." * But if there are rights other than mere power, 
 there must be the possibility of a conflict between the power 
 of the sovereign and the natural rights that may justify 
 resistance. 
 
 Green, of course, does not believe in a social contract, 
 but his objection is not so much based on historical grounds 
 as on the others. In fact, even if the contract were his- 
 torically non-existent, it would be defendable, if only it 
 served to formulate a true conception of the moral rela- 
 tions of men. Not only it fails in this, but it positively con- 
 fuses the theory of natural rights in permitting these rights 
 to be considered as capable of existing apart from the so- 
 ciety. Those who contract must have rights. If there is a 
 social contract, it implies that a system of rights has already 
 existed, and rights that are not merely power. 
 
 There is one point in Green's criticism to which his fol- 
 lowers will probably welcome a modification- Hobbes 
 draws a distinction between jus naturale and lex naturalis 
 with one as the propelling and the other as the restraining 
 force.^ If Green had sufficiently distinguished these two, 
 he probably would have been appreciated to a greater 
 extent. T 
 
 3. Locke. While Hobbes wrote to condemn the rebel- 
 lion, Locke wrote to justify the revolution. It is no wonder 
 that they diflfer so radically, though both believed in a social 
 contract. Locke's state of nature has none of the horrors 
 of that of Hobbes. In it people live to try to live accord- 
 ing to the laws of nature. That does not mean that there 
 is no dispute whatsoever ; for if so the contract would not 
 be formed at all. The purpose of forming a political so- 
 
 * Principles of Political Obligation. P. 66. 
 
 ^ Hobbes. Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government 
 and Society. Chap. 14. Sec. III. Dunning, History of Political 
 Theories, Vol. II. P. 272. 
 
 Green and His Predecessors 
 
 59 
 
 ciety is threefold. First, it is to formulate a settled law 
 instituted by common consent; second, to recognize a 
 known and disinterested judge; third, to grant powers to 
 some persons to enforce the decisions of such a judge. 
 The powers thus granted can be withdrawn and thus the 
 government established can be overturned. Social contract 
 establishes a civil society but does not have to have the 
 same government. In fact the powers delegated to the 
 government are in the nature of a fiduciary trust. They 
 can be revoked by the grantor whenever the trust is vio- 
 lated. After all, then the people themselves are the final 
 source of authority. In other words, they are the sov- 
 ereign. If there is a collision between the people and the 
 government, it is the will of the former that ought to pre- 
 vail. The right of revolution is justified. 
 
 To Green, as has been pointed out, state of nature and 
 social contract are a logical contradiction in terms. These 
 terms imply a transition from a non-poUtical society to a 
 political society. The state of nature must be purely nega- 
 tive; it must be non-political or else it need not be differ- 
 entiated as such. But if it is a state of war, as Hobbes ^ 
 has supposed it to be, then there can be very little freedom, ^> 
 for if freedom means the power to do as one wills, it^* 
 must be necessarily diminished through constant warfare. 
 Human beings are not equal, and if they are not, there is w^ 
 very httle equality in freedom.® The strongest will subdue ^/^ 
 the rest. Such being the case, a social contract is impos- ^/ 
 sible; for it implies both equality and freedom. 
 
 On the other hand, it may also be said, though Green 
 does not say it, that if human beings are exactly equal there 
 will not be war, for there is nothing to gain but everything 
 to lose; hence there is no necessity for social contract. In 
 
 « Principles of Political Obligation. P. 70. 
 
 ,^ 
 
6o 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Green and His Predecessors 
 
 6i 
 
 ^ 
 
 \y 
 
 the former case, contract is impossible and in the latter 
 case, it is unnecessary. If, however, the state of nature is 
 one of peace and human beings are unequal, according to 
 Green it presupposes a guiding influence which prevents 
 them from constant warfare. That guiding influence, ac- 
 cording to Locke, is the law of nature. Now the law of 
 nature involves no imponent. If it exists at all, it exists 
 in the consciousness of men, not by command of a su- 
 perior. If it exists in human consciousness ^ and to the 
 extent of exerting a constraining force, it must exist along 
 side a conception of natural rights, or rather mutual rights 
 and obligations. If so, they are already members of a 
 political society. There is then already a political society. 
 Social contract can not create a pohtical society out of a 
 state of nature, for contract presupposes a political society. 
 Therefore the whole doctrine of the state of nature and 
 social contract is logically unsound. 
 
 Green is a democrat, hence Locke's doctrine of popular 
 government is more acceptable to him than Hobbes' de- 
 fense of absolute monarchy. But he does not permit his 
 feelings to get the better of his intellect; for he sees that 
 Locke's theory carried to its logical conclusion involves 
 difficulties. In the matter of revolution, if it is to be justi- 
 fied at all, it must be justified in Green's opinion on the 
 groimd that the will of the people demands resistance to 
 the government. But the question is, how can any one 
 Know exactly or even roughly whether or not a particular 
 revolution really represents the will of the people. On this 
 point Locke offers no guide. The easiest way to find out 
 IS, according to Green, some sort of a national referendum, 
 but revolutions are never carried on with that as a basis- 
 Furthermore, they do not succeed merely because they rep- 
 
 "^ Principles of Political Obligation. P. 71. 
 
 resent the people's will, nor do they necessarily fail if they 
 do not represent that will. If referendum is legally pos- 
 sible, then an overturn of the existing government is no 
 longer revolutionary. Even referendum does not tell much. 
 Government based strictly on the consent of the governed 
 has some inherent defects.® 
 
 These criticisms do not seem to be exactly to the point. 
 What we are getting at is evidently the principle of politi- 
 cal obligation and these criticisms do not seem to touch 
 that principle. To formulate the principle of political obli- 
 gation is really to rationalize political obedience. It is to 
 seek for a moral duty for political submission. As far as 
 that goes, the writers criticized above are equally eager for 
 a solution. All this talk of natural rights, of the state of 
 nature and of social contract, however different the con- 
 clusions may be at the hands of the different philosophers, 
 reveals a definite aim to offer a rational justification for 
 political obedience, or, if necessary, for political disobedi- 
 ence. And it is also with this purpose in view that Green 
 offers his criticisms, however disconnected they may seem 
 to be from the main theme. Since those writers just now 
 dealt with are on the whole materialistic or at best empiri- 
 cal, their doctrines can not be particularly congenial to that 
 of a man as idealistic as Green. Their theories of political 
 obligation seem to Green to be hopelessly inadequate. 
 
 In Rousseau, however, a different element is found. Gen- 
 erally when one thinks of social contract, the three men 
 most often thought of are Hobbes, Locke and RousseaU. 
 To be sure, all propound the theory of social contract, but 
 each does it in a different way, and what is more important 
 for us in this connection, also for a different purpose. With 
 Hobbes, the contract creates an absolute sovereign; with 
 
 • Principles of Political Obligation. Pp. 78, 90. 
 
 
% 
 
 \ 
 
 62 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Green and His Predecessors 
 
 63 
 
 Locke, it renders possible the establishment of a govern- 
 ment revocable by the sovereign people, but otherwise de- 
 tached from them; and with Rousseau, it becomes an in- 
 strument through which people become sovereign not as a 
 final source of authority ordinarily held in reserve, but as 
 an active spring of political power, necessitating the con- 
 ception of a general will as perpetually functioning. 
 
 4. Rousseau. According to Rousseau, some pact takes 
 place when men realize that the hindrance to their preser- 
 vation is too strong for the isolated individuals to combat 
 with. Hence "each of us throws into the common stock 
 his personal and family relations under the supreme direc- 
 tion of the general will, and we accept each member as 
 individual part of the whole. . . . There results from 
 this association, in place of the several persons and several 
 contracting parties, a collective moral body composed of as 
 many members as there are voices in the assembly, which 
 body receives from this act of association its unity, its com- 
 mon self, its life and its will ... It is called by its 
 members a state when it is passive, a sovereign when active 
 and a power when compared with other bodies. The asso- 
 ciates are called collectively people, severally citizens as 
 sharing in the sovereign authority and subjects as submit- 
 ting to the laws of the state." ® Such a man becomes also 
 a moral agent. He attains moral freedom which consists 
 of obedience to a self imposed law. Since law of the state 
 is but the expression of the general will to which he con- 
 tributes, he is merely obeying himself when he obeys law. 
 Sovengnty thus considered is totally different from a su- 
 preme coercive force. It has the attributes of pure disin- 
 terestedness, of reason, of a common ego which wills noth- 
 
 » Principles of Political Obligation. P. 81, as quoted by Green 
 from Rousseau. 
 
 ing but what is for the common good. But Rousseau does 
 not consistently speak in this manner, thus lapsing, accord- 
 ing to Green, into dangerous grounds. 
 
 Let us examine further Rousseau's conception of sov- 
 ereignty and government. Sovereignty is not power but 
 will. Power can be delegated, but will can not be dele- 
 gated. Being the exercise of general will, sovereignty can not 
 be alienated since it can not be delegated. Will by definition 
 is indivisible, so must also be sovereign will and sover- 
 eignty. The only exercise of sovereign power, properly 
 so-called, is in legislation, and there is no proper act of 
 legislation except when the whole people comes to a de- 
 cision with reference to the whole people. The question 
 decided is as general as the will which decides it, and 
 that is how there has come to be law. Law, being the ex- 
 pression to which every one ccTntributes, can not be unjust; 
 for no one can be unjust to himself, and therefore the 
 whole people can not be unjust to the whole people. Since 
 laws are the expressions of their own will, people can sub- 
 mit to them and yet be free. A mere decree from the gov- 
 ernment is not law ; for government is not sovereign at 
 all. The function of the sovereign is legislative, that of 
 the government is executive; the effect of the former is 
 general, that of the latter is particular. 
 
 We need not present Rousseau's views in regard to the 
 different forms of government. The important point to 
 remember is that whatever its form, it is not instituted by 
 contract, and therefore it is revocable by the sovereign 
 without incurring the charge of a violation of the contract- 
 In fact, according to Rousseau, in order that authority 
 may not fall in abeyance, it rtiust be constantly exercised 
 even though it can not be exercised except in assemblies 
 of the whole people. Such assemblies must periodically 
 meet to decide whether or not the present form of govern- 
 
64 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 It 
 
 ment shall be maintained, whether or not authority shall be 
 left in the hands of those now charged with it. At such 
 meetings laws can be revised and repealed. General will 
 can make itself felt only in such a way. 
 
 There, according to Green, comes the trouble. What is 
 the general will and how are we to ascertain it? Greneral 
 will is not the will of all, Rousseau says, but the will 
 common to all. The will of all is the totality of wills, the 
 will common to all is the general will. This general will, 
 according to Green's interpretation of Rousseau, may be 
 tainted by special interests, it may lack enlightenment, but 
 it is none the less right and pure. How can it be ascer- 
 tained? Does unanimity of the votes in the assembly of 
 the whole people alone represent the general will? The 
 social contract in order to be valid requires unanimous con- 
 sent and the ones who refuse to join it are not citizens. If 
 they are not citizens, how can the state exact their obedi- 
 ence? And after the passing of those who are parties to 
 the contract, how is it to be ascertained whether anyone 
 coming later on is a party to it or not ? Rousseau says resi- 
 dence proves him willing to submit to sovereignty. That, 
 Green points out, hardly answers the question, for residence 
 is no indication of consent, and if by residence in a given 
 area one is morally bound to obey the sovereign, then his 
 obedience is not necessarily based on consent. Rousseau 
 does not require unanimity in the assembly of the whole 
 people for expressing the general will after the contract is 
 formed. But if he does not, how can the minority be bound 
 to obey the rulings of the majority? Rousseau says that 
 if anyone finds himself in the minority, he is bound to sup- 
 pose that he is mistaken in his views of the general will, 
 therefore" he is bound to obey. There is no explanation of 
 the rule of the majority if the minority sincerely doubts 
 the wisdom and integrity of the majority. Rousseau is prob- 
 
 Green and His Predecessors 
 
 65 
 
 ably more consistent than others in basing political obliga- 
 tion on consent, but it seems to Green, his efforts are none 
 the less futile. The contribution that is really valuable is 
 the conception of sovereignty as representing a general 
 will. 
 
 5. Austin. But the general idea of sovereignty, accord- 
 ing to Green, has come to be more or less Austinian. It 
 is conceived as a supreme law-giving and enforcing power, 
 and if necessary, it also implies coercive force. Accord- 
 ing to Austin, "the notions of sovereignty and independent 
 poUtical society may be expressed concisely thus: If a de- 
 terminate human superior, not in the habit of obedience to 
 a like superior, receive the Tiabitual obedience of the bulk 
 of a given society, that determinate superior is sovereign in 
 that society and the society including the superior is a so- 
 ciety political and independent." ^® "In order that a given 
 society may form a society political and independent, the 
 two distinguishing marks which I have mentioned above 
 must unite. The generality of the given society must be 
 in the habit of obedience to a determinate and common 
 superior ; whilst that determinate person or body of persons 
 must not be habitually obedient to a determinate person or 
 body. It is this union of that positive with this negative 
 mark which renders that certain superior sovereign or su- 
 preme and which renders that given society political and 
 independent." " Green notes that, according to Austin, law 
 is a rule laid down by one intelligent being having power 
 over other intelligent beings for the purpose of guiding 
 them. Laws are divfded into two kinds, those set by God 
 to men or the law of nature, those set by men to men or 
 human laws. Of the latter there are again two kinds, 
 
 ^^ Austin. Lectures on Jurisprudence. 
 i^Austin. Lectures on Jurisprudence. 
 
66 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Green and His Predecessors 
 
 67 
 
 firstly, laws established by the sovereign over his subjects, 
 the positive laws, secondly, laws not established by sov- 
 ereign but enforced through custom and morals, viz., posi- 
 tive moraUty. Laws are often spoken of as commands 
 and as such they fit in with the conception of sovereignty, 
 since they necessarily proceed from determinate persons. 
 
 The Austinian theory of sovereignty is, in Green's opin- 
 ion, different from that of Rousseau in two important 
 respects. In fact, in those respects the two conceptions 
 are diametrically opposite. First, Austin regards sover- 
 eignty as residing with determinate person or persons, 
 while Rousseau regards it as inalienable and solely retained 
 by the whole people. Second, Austin considers the es- 
 sence of sovereignty as power of such determinate person 
 or persons over subjects, while Rousseau regards it as rep- 
 resenting general will of the citizens. In fact, it will 
 be recalled, Rousseau expressly declared that sovereignty is 
 not power but will. Power can be delegated but not will. 
 While, however, the two views are mutually exclusive, each 
 really has its own merit. 
 
 According to Green, Austin is right when he regards 
 sovereignty as essentially resident with determinate person 
 or persons; for political facts, historical as well as con- 
 temporary, bear out his contention. No matter how 
 complicated the political systems of the different countries 
 may be, there is always some person or a body of persons 
 in whom the supreme power is vested. That is, there are 
 some persons whose authority knows no legal limitation.^' 
 
 The king in Parliament is the sovereign of Great Britain. 
 There is no legal limit to the action of the king to- 
 gether with House of Lords and Commons. It may, of 
 course, be argued that in Great Britain common law, which 
 is not any command of any determinate person or persons, 
 
 12 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 98. 
 
 has been and is an influential body of rules to which people 
 may be said to render habitual obedience- True, but com- 
 mon law may be overruled by statutory laws, and if it is 
 not so overruled, it stands by legislative acquiescence. This 
 state of affairs is by no means limited to Great Britain. 
 Supreme legal authority is also found in the United States 
 where political structure is a complicated system of fed- 
 eral, state and local governments. The federal govern- 
 ment is indeed not supreme, that is, it has legal limitations. 
 The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and legis- 
 lation contrary to its provisions can be and often is declared 
 unconstitutional. But the Constitution can be amended and 
 the amending power is viewed by many, including Austin 
 himself," as the sovereign power as far as the United 
 States is concerned. Therefore, as a matter of fact, sov- 
 ereignty involves in most cases its residence with determi- 
 nate person or body or bodies of persons who are thus 
 vested with legally unlimited power to make and enforce 
 laws. Since the term sovereignty has acquired this legalis- 
 tic implication in general, Rousseau, according to Green, 
 is somewhat misleading" in attributing general will to 
 it as its essence. 
 
 It seems to Green that this legalistic conception is not 
 entirely satisfactory. It is liable to mistake effect for 
 cause. The reason that sovereign power is supreme and 
 habitually obeyed is not that it is capable of coercive force. 
 Force alone does not explain the supremacy of sovereignty. 
 If we examine more closely and emancipate ourselves from 
 this purely legalistic conception, Green argues, we must look 
 for the source of power, which is not and can not be the 
 power itself. It is here that Rousseau's ideas apply to bet- 
 ter advantage. The real cause of habitual obedience 
 is not found in any determinate person or persons, but in 
 
 *' Austin. Lectures on Jurisprudence. 
 
 " Principles of Political Obligation. P. 98. 
 
68 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 "that impalpable congeries of hopes and fears of a people 
 bound together by common interests and sympathy which 
 we call the general will." ^» These influences, which for 
 the sake of brevity we call the general will, have been 
 operative historically. Sir Henry Maine says in his Early 
 History of Institutions : "The vast mass of influences which 
 we may call for shortness moral, habitually shapes, limits, 
 or forbids the actual direction of the forces of society 
 by its sovereign." ^« In other words, there is a source from 
 which power is derived Nominally the power of the sov- 
 ereign may be characterized as supreme, but factually it is 
 only effective when .sanctioned by the good will of the peo- 
 ple. The determinate person or body of persons is only 
 able to exercise their power in virtue of an assent if not 
 consent of the people. This assent is not based upon any 
 definite expression of the people ; rather is it based upon the 
 desire, the common desire of a common good for a com- 
 mon end to which observance of law and obedience to the 
 sovereign may contribute. There may be person or per- 
 sons who wield greater powers than the rest, who exact 
 habitual obedience and who probably possess coercive force. 
 Call him or them sovereign if you will, but don't explain 
 their supremacy by their force. That force will come to 
 nothing when opposed to the people's desire. Let this 
 desire, which may be properiy called the general will, cease 
 to operate, or let it come into general conflict with sov- 
 ereign commands, and the habitual obedience will cease 
 also.^^ In other words: 
 
 "There's on earth a yet auguster thing, 
 
 Veiled though it be, than Parliament and King." ^® 
 
 i« Principles of Political Obligation. P. 98. 
 
 i« Maine. Early History of Institutions. P. 359. 
 
 17 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 97. 
 
 18 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 82. 
 
 '\-f 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE BASIS OF THE STATE 
 
 Being a democrat and an idealist, Green leans to Rous- 
 seau more than he does to Austin, believing that political 
 obedience is a matter of will rather than power or force. 
 It may of course be urged that this view of general will 
 as the real determinent of the habitual obedience to sov- 
 ereign power is applicable only to democratic communi- 
 ties, where governors are elected by the people and govern- 
 ment is based on the consent of the governed, and is quite 
 inapplicable to despotic countries where despots both reign 
 and rule supreme. This sounds plausible, but according 
 to Green, it is not true. 
 
 That the doctrine under consideration applies more di- 
 rectly to the democratic communities is not denied. But 
 in a despotic country in which there is a sovereign, under- 
 stood in the Austinian sense, general will. Green holds, is 
 equally if not so directly a potent factor in the habitual 
 obedience- There is always a body of customs, conventions 
 and mores which the sovereign, in order to exact obedience, 
 will find it profitable not to ignore. The Russian Tzars, 
 for instance, found it advisable to worship at Moscow often 
 contrary to their will, and the Chinese Emperors thought it 
 worth while, even against their own inclinations, to pay 
 their respects to the memory of Confucius- There may be 
 
 r 
 
70 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 communities where coercive force has been successfully 
 employed against the will of the people. In such cases 
 there are generally two conditions worthy of our notice: 
 either there is no sovereign power in the sense of a law- 
 giving and law-enforcing power and therefore also no habit- 
 ual obedience; or the coercive power of oppression, though 
 constant and recurring, touches the people only at a few 
 points and the obedience thus rendered, though habitual in 
 a sense, is never continuous and is therefore different from 
 the rational and moral obedience to political authority. 
 
 The conditions of a so-called tax-collecting despotism 
 offer a fairly satisfactory contrast to the democratic com- 
 munities. The despots exercise coercive force over their 
 subjects, but exercise it only for a certain specific purpose 
 and only at certain times. They do not legislate in the mod- 
 em sense, nor do they invade the field of the judiciary, nor 
 do they concern themselves much about customary laws. 
 The subjects render obedience only in regard to those spe- 
 cific things. They are practically left free so far as the 
 laws, institutions, customs and manners are concerned. Life 
 in general is not much affected. They still pay their re- 
 spects to their patriarch, their priest and their warrior. 
 There is in such a case hardly any sovereign. 
 
 The same results can be found in the case of foreign dom- 
 ination over a country which has a highly organized com- 
 munity life. The foreign power is not a sovereign in the 
 sense of a law giver or law maintainer. The subject coun- 
 try has inherited a body of laws and customs which enable 
 it not only to govern itself but also to emancipate itself 
 from foreign domination. North Italy under Austria was 
 in such a condition and the Chinese Empire under the Mon- 
 gols and Manchus was even more to the point. In both 
 cases, the sovereign, if sovereign at all, is not so in the 
 Austinian sense. 
 
 The Basis of The State 
 
 71 
 
 Again there may be aristocratic rulers who are real sov- 
 ereigns in the sense defined, but in such cases, the power 
 of the rulers is due to a large extent to the good will of the 
 people. Green cites the example of the early Roman Em- 
 pire^ in which, he says, the people lived under a system of 
 rights and obligations better than their own. Although they 
 did not vote or expressly give their consent in any form, 
 they by implication assented to the Roman rule. Even the 
 Russian autocrat did not depend upon absolute coercive 
 power for the habitual obedience he exacted from the peo- 
 ple; for, it is contended, he conformed to a complicated 
 system of relations, of written and unwritten laws, from 
 which he was by no means independent. 
 
 Austin, according to Green, is in a sense right in his 
 theory of sovereignty ; so also is Rousseau. How can these 
 views be harmonized? The trouble with both of them is, 
 he says, that when they emphasize one aspect they forget 
 the other. If sovereignty is the power to maintain rights, it 
 has the elements of both force and will. If it sometimes 
 exercises coercive or even tyrannical power, it is not 
 because it is tyrannical or coercive that it receives habitual 
 obedience. On the other hand, sovereignty defined as power 
 and as vested in determinate person or persons may profit- 
 ably be allowed, according to Green, to retain its legalistic 
 meaning. In that case, it may be misleading to speak of 
 general will as the sovereign. It is however, equally mis- 
 leading to attribute to sovereignty omnipotence; for if not 
 sustained by general will, it ceases to exist. It is better, ac- 
 cording to Green, "to say that law, as the system of rules by 
 which rights are maintained, is the expression of the gen- 
 eral will than that the general will is the sovereign. The 
 sovereign being a person or persons by whom in the last 
 
 1 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 101. 
 
72 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 resort laws are imposed and enforced, in the long run and 
 on the whole is the agent of the general will, contributes 
 to realize that will." » In so far as the sovereign does so 
 contribute to realize that will and is an agent of it, he is in 
 possession of supreme power. On the other hand, if he 
 does not so contribute to realize that will, mere power does 
 not command habitual obedience. 
 
 It is only fair to record that Rousseau recognizes the dif- 
 ficulty of his theory of sovereignty and general will as 
 applied to actual poUtical affairs. While in principle he 
 sticks to his conception of sovereignty as consisting in rep- 
 resenting general will, he does not, in Greenes opinion, alto- 
 gether avoid the notion that there is supreme law-making 
 and law-enforcing power distinct from the will. Though 
 Rousseau does not expressly diflFerentiate a sovereign de 
 jure from a sovereign de facto, such a differentiation can 
 be justifiably inferred from Contrat Social and is so 
 inferred by Green.« But such a differentiation, accord- 
 ing to Green, can not in any way be justified; for strictly 
 speaking, sovereign de facto can not be other than sovereign 
 de jure. Confusion between the two generally comes as a 
 result of a confusion of meaning in the conception either 
 of the term sovereign or of the term jus.* A sovereign 
 is often described as such without being actually such in 
 the real sense. Thus an English King who is called sov- 
 ereign, but who is not the determinate person or persons 
 entrusted with the supreme law-making and law-enforcing 
 power, may be said to exercise sovereign power de facto 
 when he raises money without the consent of the Parlia- 
 ment. He may be said to be sovereign de facto and not 
 
 « Same. P. 104. 
 8 Same. F. 91. 
 * Same. P. 1€5. 
 
 The Basis of The State 
 
 73 
 
 de jure, since his conduct is contrary to the will of the peo- 
 ple as embodied in the laws, customs and conventions. But 
 that is only true as far as the King is only a nominal sov- 
 ereign, one entirely different from sovereign in the real 
 sense. A real sovereign de facto' is always a sovereign 
 de jure. Given the definitions, the conclusion is inevitable; 
 you can not change it without changing the definitions. 
 
 If the sovereign is a real one in the strict sense. Green 
 argues, the terms de jure and not de jure are not applicable.^ 
 When one speaks of de jure or not de jure, one necessarily 
 has a definite idea of jus in mind. Now what is meant by 
 jus? If by jus is meant ordinary statutory law, then sov- 
 ereign de jure is a meaningless expression, for such law 
 proceeds only from the sovereign. If by jus is meant nat- 
 ural law or natural rights or claims inherent in human be- 
 ings as members of a society, then indeed a sovereign may 
 not be de jure, but then he is not, in Green's opinion, at the 
 same time a sovereign in the real sense, i. e., the supreme 
 law-making and law-enforcing authority. In other words, 
 sovereign de jure is a contradiction in terms. A supreme 
 imponent of law is not limited by the law he imposes. He 
 may formulate rules to limit himself but then he is always 
 at liberty to change them- 
 
 This process of reasoning facilitates the understanding 
 of the different points of view. When Hobbes says that 
 laws can not be unjust we have to go back to the definition 
 of injustice. If by injustice is meant the violation of con- 
 tract, and the sovereign is not a party to the contract and 
 therefore can not break it, it necessarily follows that a 
 sovereign can not be unjust. If the sovereign can not be 
 unjust, laws which are laws by reason of their being en- 
 
 » Same. P. 105. 
 • Same. P. 106. 
 
74 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 The Basis of The State 
 
 75 
 
 acted by him can not be unjust. But, according to Hobbcs, 
 laws can be inequitable and pernicious; for by "inequi- 
 table" he means that which conflicts with the law of nature, 
 and by "pernicious" that which tends to weaken the indi- 
 viduals and the community.'' 
 
 Rousseau's argument, Green shows, is similar but on dif- 
 ferent grounds. His sovereignty is general will, his general 
 will, the will common to the whole people. Since, then, the 
 whole people can not be unjust to the whole people, the 
 sovereign can not be unjust to its subjects. 
 
 Green sees that Hobbes thinks of sovereignty as 
 essentially power, and Rousseau thinks of it as essentially 
 will But whether power or will, sovereignty can not be 
 said to be either de jure or not de jure. If it is power, 
 as we have seen, these terms de jure and not de jure are 
 not applicable to it. If it is will, they are equally inappli- 
 cable. "A certain desire either is or is not the general 
 will. A certain interest either is or is not an interest 
 in the common good. There is no sense in saying that 
 such desire or interest is general will de jure but not de 
 facto or^ice versa." * 
 
 Confusion comes, according to Green, when sovereignty is 
 made to combine the notions of general will and the supreme 
 law-making and law-enforcing power. It is through this con- 
 fusion that there is the necessity of making the law-making 
 and law-enforcing power dependent upon the vote of a ma- 
 jority of the citizens and identifying that vote with the 
 general will. It must be understood that general will, 
 though called general, is yet will; and will, being itself 
 unnatural, that is, pertaining to consciousness rather than 
 to the physical world, can not be so mechanically ascer- 
 
 » Same. P. 107. 
 » Same. P. 108. 
 
 v^ 
 
 tained by the "natural" process of a majority vote.® While 
 Rousseau's conception of a general will is a valuable con- 
 tribution, his identification of that will with the vote of a 
 certain number of persons can not be accepted. 
 
 The defect of Rousseau's theory, as Green sees it, is ba- 
 sically one of his theory of natural rights. If natural 
 rights meant fundamental rights, rights that existed prior 
 to the formation of the society and were retained by in- 
 dividuals after it, then they are above all political inter- 
 ference whatsoever, and the only way to justify political 
 obligation is by the theory of consent. As long as consent 
 is the sole source of authority, the difficulty of the justi- 
 fication of the submission of the minority can not be 
 escaped. /'According to Green, there is in truth no natural 
 right apart from the society, much less the right to do as 
 one likes irrespective of the society.// A right, it may be 
 repeated, is a condition claimed and recognized as neces- 
 sary for the reaUzation of the moral ideal and common 
 good of men as members of a society. It can not exist 
 in one individual without relation to society, just as force 
 of gravity of one body can not exist in that body without 
 relation to other bodies. Therefore, no one has the right 
 to resist law or government merely because it requires him 
 to do that which he does not himself approve, or not to 
 do that which he desires. The only question, according 
 to Green, is as Rousseau has put it : Is a given measure in "^ 
 accordance with the general will? In other words, whether 
 that given measure is in accordance with the general will 
 or not, is the real problem. That is a very big problem, 
 and it seems that Green has offered no practical solution. 
 After all, he says, an interest in the common good is the ^ 
 ground for political society, for without that interest "no 
 
 » Same. P. 109. 
 
 ^ 
 
76 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 The Basis of The State 
 
 77 
 
 y 
 
 <v 
 
 
 body of people will recognize any authority as having any 
 claim on their common obedience. It is so far as a gov- 
 ernment represents to them a common good that the sub- 
 jects are conscious that they ought to obey it, that is, that 
 obedience to it is a means to an end desirable in itself or 
 absolutely." ^^ 
 
 It will be remembered that in his Metaphysics and Ethics 
 Green believes in the interdependence of men and society 
 V so that each in fact does not exist without the other. 
 .^ f5^/TRights and duties must be considered with this view in 
 mind.y "It is only as members of a society, as recognizing 
 common interests and objects, that individuals come to 
 have these attributes and rights, and the power which in 
 the political society they have to obey is derived from 
 the development and systematization of those institutions 
 for the regulation of a common life without which they 
 would have no rights at all." "a, Or again, the demand for 
 a justification of any submission to authority presupposes 
 / some standard of rights recognized as equally valid for 
 and by the person making the demand, and others who 
 form a society with him. Such a standard of rights would 
 be quite meaningless, if it does not possess institutions 
 through which dealings with each other are regulated. 
 These insti tutio ns are to the consciousness of right just 
 as language is to thought. They are the expressions with 
 ^il^5^_*^^* consciousness becomes real.** Theyembody 
 the system of rights and obligations through which men 
 restrain themselves. Primitive or conventional morality, 
 which is essentially the observance of rules and obligations, 
 can not exist without these institutions. In a certain sense, 
 
 10 Same. P. 109. 
 " Same. P. 122. 
 
 " Same. F. 123. 
 
 then, the body of laws, institutions and customs embody 
 what Rousseau calls the general will. 
 
 Rousseau speaks of social contract as the foundation 
 not only of society and sovereignty but also of morality. 
 Through it men become moral beings. By it, submission 
 to power and to the forces of nature, to greed and appe- 
 tite is transformed into the moral freedom of subjection 
 to the self-imposed law. If such is the case, he should 
 have seen that natural rights can have no pre-social exist- 
 ence, since they can only exist for the purpose of reahzmg 
 our moral ideal. Had he seen that, he would have avoided 
 a grave error. 
 
 According to Green, moraUty in the conventional sense 
 and political subjection in the sense of having nghts thus 
 secured proceed from the same source. /"That common ^ 
 source is the rational recognition by certain human bemgs 
 of a common well being which is their well bemg, and 
 which they conceive as their well being, whether at any 
 moment any one of them is incUned to it or no and the 
 embodiment of that recognition in rules by which the m- 
 clinations of the individuals are restrained and a corre- 
 sponding freedom of action for the attainment of well 
 being on the whole is secured." "/ There proceeds from 
 this source, according to Green, an antagomsm to some 
 inclinations and a consciousness that such antagomsm is 
 founded on reason and on the conception of some adequate 
 good This antagonism to or constraint of an mcUnation, 
 whether in relation to an exteral law or to a self-imposed 
 law, is generally expressed in the term "must." " I must 
 register for the army. Or I must volunteer for the army. 
 
 "Same. P. 124. 
 " Same. P. 125. 
 i» Same. P. 12S. 
 
"I 
 
 78 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 y 
 
 v/ 
 
 The former may have the element of compulsion in view, 
 if the law is not comphed with, but the latter certainly 
 represents nothing of the kind if there is no law for con- 
 scription whatsoever. But in both cases there is a certain 
 element of consciousness of a common good which is at 
 the bottom the driving force. Simple fear does not con- 
 stitute pohtical obhgation, neither does force compel it. 
 
 It may be objected that such an idea, however pleasing 
 it may sound, is far from representing the fact. In place 
 of good will, some thinkers will say, there is often hatred, 
 and in place of a common good there is class interest; 
 where cooperation alone will ever produce desirable re- 
 sults, competition holds sway. Instead of happiness being 
 the rule, it becomes the exception, and instead of misery 
 the exception, it becomes the rule. People vote, but they 
 do not necessarily elect their governors or decide issues. 
 Representative government governs but it does not neces- 
 sarily represent. Law is instituted for the good of all, 
 but it is often twisted for the benefit of the few. Judges 
 are appointed for the purpose of maintaining justice, but 
 often they become mere guardians of legality. Under such 
 circumstances, is it not a waste of words to indulge in the 
 high-sounding phrases of common good and moral ideal? 
 If the idea of common good prevails to the extent to which 
 it is claimed as prevailing, there should not and there can 
 not be such misery, such poverty, such conflict of interests 
 and such violence. These undesirable conditions can not 
 be conducive to the realization of die so-called moral ideal, 
 neither do they lead to the observance of rights and duties 
 upon which political obligations are based. If people obey 
 political authorities in spite of this conspicuous absence of 
 the idea of a common good, they must obey on other 
 grounds. It may be more correct to say that they obey by 
 force of habit, or necessity, or for fear of consequences 
 
 The Basis of The State 
 
 79 
 
 rather than by reason of a mutual recogmtion of rights 
 
 and obligations. 
 
 That the actual is far from being the ideal is readily 
 admitted by Green.^« But it is easy, on the other hand, he 
 points out, to exaggerate the difference, and those who 
 exaggerate it are probably unnecessarily loaded with pes- 
 simism. We should bear in mind that every action on the 
 part of the citizen involves more or less the idea of a com- 
 mon good. Some have more of that idea in view, others 
 have less, but none is entirely without it and none. Green 
 admits, has it in all its fullness and completeness. For an 
 ordinary citizen, that idea has probably very little abstract 
 significance, but it is invariably present in his concrete in- 
 terests- ''He has," according to Green, "a clear under- 
 standing of certain interests and rights common to himself 
 and his neighbors, if only such as consist in getting his 
 wages paid at the end of the week, in getting his money s 
 worth at the shop, in the inviolability of his own person 
 and that of his wife. Habitually and instinctively, that is, 
 without asking the reason why, he regards the claim which 
 in these respects he makes for himself as conditioned upon 
 his recognizing a like claim in others, and thus as in a 
 proper sense a right-a claim of which the essence lies in 
 its being common to himself with others." '' The reason 
 that this manifestation of the idea of a common good is 
 not so easily discerned is, not that it is not discernible, but 
 that the supreme coercive power has been and is the out- 
 ward visible sign. Just as a man is often taken to be what 
 he seems, so a state is only too generally identified with 
 its outward visible sign. But if we go deeper than mere 
 appearances we shall find that the unifying principle of 
 
 i« Same. P. 128. 
 "Same. P. 129. 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 y 
 
 y 
 
8o 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 The Basis of The State 
 
 8i 
 
 the state is really the promotion of a common good. In 
 /other words, will and not force is the true basis of tht 
 state. 
 
 But institutions grow and are not made, many will say. 
 Whatever our conceptions of them may be at this present 
 moment, their origin and development involve natural con- 
 ditions and tendencies and therefore also inevitable re- 
 sults. Rationalize and idealize as much as you please, you 
 can not escape the fact that our political and social insti- 
 tutions are materially conditioned. Given certain condi- 
 tions, and there wifi be certain results. In order to under- 
 stand these results you have to consider all the material 
 conditions — the climate, geographical position, sea coasts, 
 bays, rivers, mountains and the like. 
 
 That these influences are instrumental in the develop- 
 ment of particular institutions is not denied by Green. 
 But what would these influences be, were it not for the 
 synthetic unifying consciousness? Material conditions 
 may and do condition human efforts, but they do not point 
 V to the particular direction in which human development 
 has come to be what it is at present. In other words, the 
 J creative capacity of human beings should not be mini- 
 mized, since after all it is the driving force in the advanc- 
 ing march of civilization. It is because men are moral 
 beings that they have this creative capacity, that is, they 
 have it only because they are capable of being determined 
 to action by the conception of an end absolutely desir- 
 able, because they are capable of free will and are them- 
 selves free. Right here it may be argued that to be human 
 is not necessarily to be moral. While human efforts may 
 have been indispensible for the formation, for instance, of 
 modern states, these efforts are by no means moral. In 
 fact, many will assert, egotism has been the more effective 
 incentive than altruism. There are the Alexanders, the 
 
 C^sars and the Napoleons. To attribute, for instance, the 
 idea of common good to the "blood-thirsty Corsican is 
 to ignore an indisputable historical fact. 
 
 When we speak of such a historical figure as Napoleon, 
 according to Green, we must not judge ^in. purely by his 
 selfishness, but also by the movement he led and the re- 
 sults attained.^« This is not to minimize his personal con- 
 duct. He was selfish ; but it was not his selfishness alone 
 that led him to overrun all Europe. His egotism was sub- 
 ject to all sorts of social influences, among which may be 
 counted national aspiration. The French in those days 
 were utilizing him for certain definite purposes for in- 
 stance, the aggrandizement of France. The establishment 
 of a centralized pohtical order on the basis of social equal- 
 ity, the promulgation of the civil code and the like were 
 quite definite purposes. If these results are desirable, then 
 the conduct of Napoleon, though bad, may be overruled 
 for good '' ^^ The same can be said of Alexander and 
 Caesar. Citing merely the selfishness of these leaders is 
 no ground for denying the idea of some common good, 
 since the directions in which these leaders moved were in- 
 fluenced by that very idea. They may have been wrong 
 in their judgment, but the idea of a common good was, 
 after all, the driving force. 
 
 According to Green, there seems to be a prevalent con- 
 fusion between the state and sovereignty. Since the out- 
 ward and outstanding characteristic of sovereignty is 
 power, it is generally inferred that the essence of the state 
 is force. But, as has been made clear, the sovereign power y 
 in order that it may remain as such, must be exercised 
 
 in accordance with what may be conveniently called gen- 
 
 18 Same. P. 133. 
 i» Same. F. 134. 
 
 ■11 
 
 '11 
 
82 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Veral will.| In other words, it must be exercised for the 
 maintenance of rights.) It would be altogether meaning- 
 s/ less if considered in the abstract, that is, apart from the 
 state. |lt is the supreme law-making and law-enforcirg 
 power, to be sure, but it is such a power only when exer- 
 cised in and over a state. And it is, after all, the state 
 that makes sovereign and not sovereign that makes the 
 statej A slave owner may have all the supreme power 
 over all his slaves, but he can not be styled a sovereign. 
 A sovereign may indeed alter his laws, but he can only 
 alter them according to law, that is, according to higher 
 law. If he fails to do that, he can not remain sovereign. 
 It seems, then, necessary to ascertain what a state is. 
 
 According to Green, ^"it is a mistake, then, to think of 
 the state as an aggregation of individuals under a sov- 
 ereign ; equally so when we suppose the individuals as 
 such, or apart from what they derive from society, to pos- 
 sess natural rights, or suppose them to depend on the sov- 
 ereign for tlie possession of rights- A state presupposes 
 ^ other forms of community, with the rights that arise out 
 J of them, and only exists as sustaining, securing and com- 
 pleting them. In order to make a state, there must have 
 been families of which the members recognized rights in 
 each other; there must further have been intercourse be- 
 tween families, or tribes that have grown out of families, 
 of which each in the same sense recognized rights in the 
 other. The recognition of a right being very short of its 
 I definition, the admission of a right in each other by two 
 V parties, whether individuals, families, or tribes, being very 
 different from agreement as to what the right consists in, 
 what it is a right to do or acquire, the rights recognized 
 need definition and reconciliation in a general law. When 
 such a general law has been arrived at, regulating the posi- 
 tions of members of a family towards each other bd the 
 
 » 
 
 The Basis of The State 
 
 83 
 
 dealings of families or tribes with each other; when it is 
 voluntarily recognized by a community of families or 
 tribes, and maintained by a power strong enough at once 
 to enforce it within the community and to defend the in- 
 tegrity of the community against attacks from without, 
 then the elementary state has been formed." ^ 
 
 Force may have been a necessary factor in the mainte- y 
 nance of rights, but it is only a factor and as such it is 
 subordinate to right. "There is no right but thinking 
 makes it so";" none that is not derived from some idea 
 that men have about each other. Nothing is more real 
 than a right; yet its existence is purely ideal, if by ideal 
 is meant that which is not dependent on anything material, 
 as existing solely in consciousness. It is to these ideal 
 realities that force is subordinate in the creation and de- 
 velopment of states. 
 
 It will be seen that Green is fighting against two theories 
 at the same time. In the first place, he shows that sov- 
 ereignty can not create rights, for it implies them. Sec- 
 ondly, he painstakingly points out the futility of basing 
 political obligation on the theory of consent. In this con- 
 nection he denies the existence of natural rights prior to 
 the formation ol society, and declares that the individual 
 has no right against the state merely because it does some- 
 thing against his own inclinations. 
 
 Such a position as Green takes renders him a good deal 
 of an absolutist. And he may be, to a certain extent, but 
 his theory is certainly not so sweeping as it may sound; 
 WHien one speaks of an individual's right against the state^ 
 one has to ascertain first what he means by right. As has 
 been a number of times repeated, a right is, in Green's 
 thought, a necessary condition for an individual to realize 
 
 «o Same. P. 139. 
 21 Same. P. 140. 
 
84 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 a moral ideal. It involves on the part of the individual a 
 claim of a capacity to advance the common good, to iden- 
 tify it as his own, and it involves on the part of the society 
 a recognition of such a claim. A right is therefore essen- 
 ^ tially social, since its important element is the recognition 
 ^ by the society. It exists only relatively to a common good. 
 If the state passes a law for the common good, there is 
 no right on the part of the citizen to resist it merely be- 
 cause it is against his own inclinations. That does not 
 mean that the individual has no right to resist for any 
 reason whatsoever. The ground for the resistance to the 
 state must be the same as the ground for the existence of 
 the rights of the individual, that is, resistance must be 
 on social grounds and on the ideal of common good. 
 
 6 
 
 / 
 
 y 
 
 y 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF STATE INTERFERENCE 
 
 In the preceding chapters it has been shown that Green 
 disapproved both the absolutist theory that rights are 
 granted by the sovereign power and the prevalent theory 
 that government is based on the consent of the governed. 
 Further, we have noted his conclusion that, while coercive 
 force may be an occasional manifestation of sovereign 
 power, it is, after all, the will that forms the basis of the 
 state. In the present chapter, it is the aim to set forth 
 the principles upon which political actions are based. In 
 other words, the earlier chapters deal with the principle 
 according to which the individual obeys, and the present 
 chapter deals with the principle according to which the 
 state acts. It may be said that they are different directions 
 proceeding from the same principle, for both are related 
 to the moral ideal and the conception of a common good- 
 It is on moral grounds that individuals obey and it is to 
 maintain conditions under which moral Ufe becomes pos- 
 sible that the state acts. But while there is an identity of 
 source, there is really no identity in the intrinsic nature of 
 the two. Political obligation on the part of the individuals 
 may be and is a moral duty, but interference on the part 
 of the state is not in itself a moral act. "There is," in 
 Green's words, "a moral duty in regard to obligations, but 
 there can be no obligation in regard to moral duties."^ 
 For the sake of clarity, a separate treatment seems to be 
 
 1 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 34. 
 
86 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 The Principle of State Interference 
 
 87 
 
 warranted. This is especially necessary, since in dealing 
 with the different topics, Green does not himself distin- 
 guish the two principles involved. 
 
 Before proceeding to the principle of state interference, 
 let us first recall to our minds the idea of our moral life. 
 In Green's words, "the condition of a moral life is the 
 possession of will and reason. Will is the capacity in a 
 man of being determined to action by the idea of a pos- 
 sible satisfaction of himself. An act of will is an act so 
 determined. A state of will is the capacity as determined 
 by the particular objects in which the man seeks self- 
 satisfaction; and it becomes a character in so far as the 
 self-satisfaction is habitually sought in objects of a par- 
 ticular kind. Practical reason is the capacity in a man 
 of conceiving the perfection of his nature as an object to 
 be attained by action. All moral ideas have their origin 
 in reason, i. e., in the idea of a possible self perfection to 
 be attained by the moral agent." ^ 
 
 But ideas are not ordinarily shaped in the abstract ex- 
 pression embodied in the above statement. That expres- 
 sion can only be arrived at upon analysis of concrete ex- 
 perience. There is a sort of primitive or, later on, a sort 
 of conventional morality which is instrumental in the 
 historical development of mankind. That morahty is, in 
 the Hegelian sense, embodied in the laws, customs and in- 
 stitutions ^ which help human beings in their struggle for 
 improvement. Only when they have gone through a pro- 
 / cess of actual self-improvement can the ^ idea of self-per- 
 fection find its abstract expression- This does not mean 
 that the moral ideal is derived from experience, since the 
 J possibility of experience involves an idea from which all 
 J other ideas of morality proceed. It does mean that the 
 
 
 i^ 
 
 2 Same. P. 31. 
 « Same. F. 32. 
 
 / 
 
 original ideal can not find its expression without having 
 the other ideas embodied in the social institutions. That 
 is, higher morality is only capable of expression after 
 conventional morality attains concrete reality. When Green 
 speaks of will and reason and perfection, it must be under- 
 stood that it is morality in the higher sense that he means. 
 Morality in the higher sense, however, is incapable of 
 enforcement.* Moral duties can not be enforced by law. 
 Moral duties are indeed duties to act, and actions, to be 
 sure, are capable of legal enforcement; but moral duties 
 are duties to act from a certain disposition and for a cer- 
 tain motive, both of which are incapable of enforcement. 
 In fact, if moral duties are actually enforced, they lose 
 their moral quality, since they lack the necessary disinter- 
 estedness of disposition and motive. The province of po- ^' 
 litical action is therefore not morality. It only covers out- ^ 
 ward or external acts. Rights and obligations, whether as 
 ideal or actual, are distinct from morality in the proper or 
 higher sense. However, political action, moral ideal and 
 rights are really related to each other. In fact, without 
 moral ideal, rights are superfluities, as we have already 
 seen from Green's theory of natural rights- "Nothing but 
 external acts can be matter of 'obligation' (in the restricted 
 sense) ; and in regard to that which can be made matter 
 of obligation, the question what should be made matter 
 of obligation— the question how far rights and obligations, 
 as actually established by law, correspond to the true jus 
 naturae— must be considered with reference to the moral 
 end, as serving which alone law and obligations imposed 
 by law have their value." ' 
 
 Should laws be strictly limited to external act? And 
 after all, what is meant by an external act? It must be 
 
 « Same. P. 34. 
 5 Same. Pp. 34-35. 
 
88 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 The Principle of State Interference 
 
 89 
 
 remembered that when we are punished we are not merely 
 pimished for our external behavior. Much else is involved. 
 When a man kills somebody unintentionally, he is charged 
 with manslaughter, but if he kills intentionally, he is 
 charged with murder and is punished more severely. In 
 other words, intention from within is just as much a sub- 
 ject of punishment as the external action. It may indeed 
 be argued that intention and action are inseparable, that 
 without the former the latter can not be. When we say 
 that something is done against our will, according to 
 Green, we generally mean any of the following situations. 
 First, an act may be done by someone using my body as 
 a means through force. There is an act, but it is certainly 
 not mine. Second, an act may be caused by a natural event 
 through the instrimientality of my body doing damage to 
 some one else. Third, an act may be done by the influence 
 of a strong inducement, though it is done against a very 
 strong wish. In the last case, however, it is indeed an 
 act but it is no longer an act against my will. It is there- 
 fore evident that in punishing outward acts, intention is 
 likewise punished, for without intention on the part of 
 some one there can hardly be an act that deserves severe 
 punishment. 
 
 But if action necessarily includes intention, what is the 
 sense in calling it external as if it were divorced from all 
 intention? According to Green, "an external action is 
 a determination of will as exhibited in certain motions of 
 the bodily members which produce certain effects in the 
 material world; not a determination of the will as arising 
 from certain motives and a certain disposition." • What 
 the law does is to prohibit certain determinations of will 
 as exhibiting certain physical motions affecting the mate- 
 
 • Same. P. 36. 
 
 / 
 
 rial world. It may present a motive for its bemg obeyed, 
 for it is capable of exciting fear in the individual. But 
 motive in this connection is really unimportant; for law 
 requires primarily conformity and conformity can be at- 
 tained irrespective of motives. If an act is performed as 
 is required by law without inducement of any sort, the 
 purpose of the law is satisfied. If an act forbidden by 
 law is refrained from without the fear of consequences 
 of disobedience, the law is as well satisfied as if there were 
 such an element of fear. In a word, motives are not con- 
 cerned; the business of law is "to maintain certain condi-^ 
 tions of life-to see that certain actions are done which 
 are necessary to the maintenance of those conditions, oth- 
 ers omitted which would interfere with them. It has ^ 
 nothing to do with the motive of the actions or omissions 
 on which, however, the moral value of them depends- 
 Legal obligations can only be obligations to do or not to 
 do a certain thing, but not duties of doing or not doing 
 from a certain motive or with a certain disposition. The 
 question is not whether or not law should be limited to 
 outward acts. It can not be otherwise; for with all the 
 weapons it has at fts command, it is incapable of enforc- 
 ing moral duties. 
 
 The problem needs further consideration, for outward 
 or external acts can not stand by themselves. What kind 
 of external acts should be made subjects of state inter- 
 ference' Green's answer is that "those acts only should 
 be made subjects of legal injunction or prohibition of V 
 which the performance or omission, irrespective of the 
 motive from which it proceeds, is so necessary to the 
 existence of a society in which the moral end can be rcal- 
 
 » Same. P. 37. 
 
90 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 ized, that it is better for them to be done or omitted from 
 that unworthy motive which consists in fear or hope of 
 legal consequences than not to be done at all." * There 
 are actions and omissions which should be made legal 
 obligations, and when once made legal obligations they 
 serve a certain moral end. "Since the end consists in 
 action proceeding from a certain disposition, and since 
 J action done from apprehension of legal consequences does 
 not proceed from that disposition, no action should be 
 enjoined or prohibited by law of which the injunction or 
 prohibition interferes with actions proceeding from that 
 disposition, and every action should be so enjoined of 
 which the performance is found to produce conditions 
 favourable to action proceeding from that disposition, and 
 of which the legal injunction does not interfere with such 
 action." » 
 
 No effort is made to paraphrase Green's language here 
 for fear of losing the actual and the exact idea. This, then, 
 is the principle oT state interference. Because political 
 action is a complex phenomenon, such a principle can only 
 be stated in general terms. Specific difficulties there are. 
 Situations vary and circumstances differ, but the principle 
 is capable of giving real guidance. Whatever may have 
 been the development of law in the past, this should be 
 the rule for the future. 
 
 We have stated the principle according to which indi- 
 viduals obey and the principle according to which the state 
 acts. It may be asked whether, after the state has acted, 
 it is always the duty of the individuals to obey. 
 
 This question has been touched before, but it must be 
 admitted that it could only be answered in general terms. 
 
 « Same. P. 38. 
 » Same. P. 38. 
 
 / 
 
 The Principle of State Interference 91 
 
 According to Green, "so far as laws anywhere or at any 
 time in force fulfill the idea of a state, there can be no ^ 
 right to disobey them; or there can be no right to disobey 
 the law of the state except in the interest of the state, that 
 is, for the purpose of making the state in respect of its 
 actual laws more completely to correspond to what it is 
 in tendency or idea, that is, a reconciler and a sustainer 
 of rights that arise out of the social relations of men." ^^ 
 Accordingly no one can resist the state merely because his 
 freedom of action has been obstructed, or because the 
 management of his own affairs has been interfered with, 
 or because he is not allowed to do as he likes with his own. 
 A prevalent fallacy is that whatever is permitted is taken 
 to be a right. But there can be no right in that sense. 
 Spitting in public was once permitted and probably taken 
 as a right, but when it became generally recognized as 
 detrimental to the health of the community, the state was 
 perfectly justified in prohibiting it, and there can not be 
 any justification whatsoever for resisting the state on that 
 account. Drinking alcoholic liquors will probably come 
 imder the same category. Individuals can only spit and 
 drink when the social judgment permits, but when the ^ 
 social judgment concludes that spitting and drinking are 
 positively detrimental to the common good, individuals 
 have no right to disobey. > 
 
 But the social judgment may, from the individual's ^ 
 point of view, be mistaken. He may claim that a law en- 
 acted is based on a mistaken or an imperfect view of the 
 common good, and therefore he may claim justification for 
 resistance. Green admits that one may differ with the . 
 wisdom of social judgment, but he denies anyone the right v/ 
 to resist the state without having his views shared by his 
 
 10 Same. P. 147. 
 
92 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 The Principle of State Interference 
 
 93 
 
 fellow citizens and implicitly acknowledged by them as 
 conducive to the common good. One has a right to re- 
 sistance only when either some action or some forbearance 
 y is implicitly acknowledged by society as conducive to the 
 common good, but explicitly denied or ignored by the 
 state." 
 
 Take, for instance, the case of slavery. Suppose that in 
 a state where slavery is legally permitted, a law is passed 
 prohibiting the education of slaves, has the citizen no right 
 against such a law? As a general rule even bad laws 
 ought to be obeyed, for disobedience is often more detri- 
 mental to the common good than bad laws. "But there 
 may be cases in which the public interest ... is better 
 served by the violation of some actual law. It is so in 
 regard to slavery when the public conscience has come to 
 recognize a capacity for right . . . in a body of men to 
 whom legal rights have been hitherto refused, but when 
 some powerful class in its own interest resists the altera- 
 tion of the law. In such a case the violation of the law 
 on behalf of the slave is not only not a violation of the 
 interest of the violator; the general sense of right on which 
 the general observance of law depends being represented 
 by it, there is no danger of its making a breach in the law- 
 abiding habits of the people." ^^ 
 
 It is argued by some that a certain condition is here as- 
 sumed which helps to evade the real difficulty. The really 
 difficult question is what is to be done when no recogni- 
 tion of the implicit rights of the slaves can be elicited from 
 the public conscience? Is there, then, any justification 
 for resistance? 
 
 This question, it will be noticed, can be answered from 
 two different points of view. The slaves themselves have 
 
 "Same. Pp. 148, 150. 
 "Same. F. 151. 
 
 f 
 
 riehts and obligations arising from social relationships 
 rmong hemselve's and with other men. Hie state may no^ 
 admit them into citizenship, but it can not deprive them 
 of their social rights. Other men may have claim on them 
 but the state refusing to recognize their claims has itself 
 no claim on them for obedience. The obligation to obey 
 law does not exist for the slaves." But the men who are 
 befriending them are in a different position. Unhke t^^ 
 slaves they are generally under the obhgation to obey 
 the aw and if they want to resist it they need social recog- 
 nlL. According to Green, if they fail to get r...^^ 
 from their fellow citizens, they may get it from the slaves 
 and thus are enabled to proceed with their activity^ 
 
 However, any such attempt at resistance tnust be han- 
 dled with care, for the consequences on the political and 
 social fabric may be more detrimental to the puWic wel- 
 fare and common good than the wrong which i is the pur- 
 pose of such resistance to correct Practically speaking 
 certain cautions need be considered and certain difficulties 
 
 overcome. . . , • 
 
 In a case where the legal authority of a command is 
 doul,tful it is advisable, according to Green to regard ^ 
 right in the political issue as not yet formed and sov- 
 ereignty as in abeyance. The individual, then, should jom ^ 
 the ^de whose success seems most likely to work towards 
 a common good. Where a vicious law is passed without ^ 
 means of legal amendment or repeal, resistance to author- 
 ity is not only of right but also of duty. . .^ „, •^ 
 
 Resistance to authority is not a matter of majority of 
 minority. Majority has no right to resistance merely be- 
 cause it is a majority not in power, neither ,s minonty 
 prevented from resisting merely because it happens to be 
 
 " Same. P. 15i 
 »* Same. P. IS3. 
 
94 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 a minority represented or unrepresented in the govern- 
 ment. There are distinct cases in which minorities are 
 justified in their revolt even if their chances of success 
 are rather slim. The claim to disobey any particular law 
 needs the general recognition of others in order to render 
 it a rTght, but it does not necessarily become a right by 
 mere decision of a majority. 
 
 It must be said, however, that there are no precise rules 
 
 to be laid down as a guiding principle for the resistance 
 
 to despotic governments. Green suggests three questions 
 
 V which may be serviceable in that connection. "A, What 
 
 prospect is there of resistance to the sovereign power lead- 
 
 ^/ ing to the modification of its character or the improvement 
 m its exercise without its subversion? B, If it is over- 
 thrown, is the temper of the people such, are the influences 
 
 ^ on which the general maintenance of social order and the 
 fabric of recognized rights depend so far separable from 
 it, that its overthrow will not mean anarchy? C, If its 
 overthrow does lead to anarchy, is the whole system of 
 law and government so perverted by private interests hos- 
 
 / tile to the public, that there has ceased to be any common 
 interest in maintaining it ?" " ' 
 
 "Same. P. 118. 
 
 \ 
 
 ^y 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 APPLICATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLE OF STATE 
 
 INTERFERENCE 
 
 After having stated the principle of state interference 
 in theory, it remains necessary to inquire into its appU- 
 cation in practise. One of the hardest problems in political 
 philosophy is the reconciliation between the individual and 
 the state, between liberty on the one hand and law on the 
 other. This problem is the result of the traditional con- 
 ception of both liberty and state interference. If liberty 
 is considered as the absence of restraint and state mter- 
 ference is considered as a restraint, then they are neces- 
 sarily opposed to each other. Green's idea is totally dif- 
 ferent. Having discussed at length his principle of state 
 interference, we shall present his conception of freedom 
 so as to ascertain the way in which the two are reconciled. 
 Green prefers the term freedom to liberty; probably the 
 word freedom is more adequate in ethics and his concep- 
 tion of freedom is essentially ethical. 
 
 It has been shown in the chapter on Metaphysical^ and 
 Ethical Background that in intelligence man is a "free 
 cause." In willing he is a free man. jUe is free in the 
 sense that he is not subject to the determination by the 
 external forces. He is self-determined; and in that de- 
 termination in which he is himself both the subject and 
 object, there is no "necessity" but freedom. \ With a free 
 
*■ 
 
 96 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 will he is capable of moral action; and with his freedom 
 in intelligence he is capable of creative effort. With his 
 faculty of reason he conceives the idea of good. With his 
 consciousness of a unity of himself and others he is ca- 
 pable of good will and the idea of common good. 
 The above, then, is the basis of freedom. It contains 
 
 all the elements contrary to the traditional conception of 
 liberty. That conception is merely a negative one; that 
 is, liberty means absence of restraint, of compulsion and 
 ^ obstruction. Green's conception of freedom is positive. 
 ^ It is not the absence of restraint. It is not to do as one 
 >/ likes, irrespective of what others like. It is not an instru- 
 >/ ment used by one man or one class of men at the expense 
 of the others. It is "a positive power or capacity of doing 
 or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying, and that, 
 y/ too, something that we do or enjoy in common with 
 others." * The whole passage following is worth quoting. 
 "When we measure the progress of society by its growth in 
 freedom, we measure it by the increasing development and 
 exercise of those powers of contributing to social good with 
 which we believe the members of the society to be en- 
 dowed ; in short, by the greater power on the part of the 
 citizens as a body to make the most and the best of them- 
 . selves. Thus, though of course there can be no freedom 
 ^ among men who act not willingly but under compulsion, 
 yet on the other hand, the mere removal of compulsion, the 
 mere enabling a man to do as he likes, is in itself no true 
 contribution to true freedom."* 
 
 , If the above is a true account of freedom, then freedom 
 
 V in all forms of doing as one wills is only as a means to an 
 
 end, and that end is freedom in the positive sense, the 
 
 Pi 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 97 
 
 y 
 
 1 Works, Vol. Ill, p. 371. 
 ^ Works, Vol III. P. 37L 
 
 ^ 
 
 liberation of all powers of all men for the social good. 
 No one has any right to do as he likes, if what he likes ^ 
 and does is detrimental to this end. With such a concep- 
 tion of freedom, Green can not be expected to remain an ^ 
 individualist as far as pohtical action, that is, as far as 
 state interference, is concerned. 
 
 Let us take freedom of contract and discuss in turn the 
 different topics involved. It should be remembered that 
 Green was writing in a period the legislation of which was 
 characterized by Professor Dicey as collectivist The 
 spirit of the age must not be ignored. There has been 
 much legislation interfering with the freedom of contract 
 and yet meeting the approval of the liberals who in days 
 gone by stood for freedom of contract against restraints. 
 There is therefore an inconsistency somewhere between 
 the earlier attitude and the later one. 
 
 According to Green, the attempt to interfere with free- 
 dom of contract in tiie late seventies is essentially the 
 same as the earlier attempt to remove the restraints from 
 freedom of contract. In the early days tiie liberals fought 
 the fight of reform in tiie name of individual liberty against 
 class privilege. They are at tiie time of Green's writing 
 fighting tiie same battie of reform for social good in a 
 different name and under a different banner, but the object 
 of tiie reformers is the same. As far as contract is con- 
 cerned, the early efforts to remove its restraints and the 
 later efforts to interfere witii its conditions of operation 
 have tiie same effect of enhancing the freedom of the con- 
 tracting parties, if we bear in mind the meaning of free- 
 dom just defined. We will examine into the concrete cir- 
 cumstances of the contracting parties so as to ascertain 
 whether state interference is justifiable. 
 
 As regards public healtii and sanitation, the state has 
 
98 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 passed laws and ordinances compelling people to conform 
 to certain healthful conditions of living. Education in 
 England at the same timei has been made compulsory, 
 though the plan was to be carried out only gradually. Fac- 
 tory legislation was started somewhat earlier, but the 
 earlier attempt was far from being satisfactory, neither 
 was It effectual. The early regulations applied to the cot- 
 ton mdustry alone and even there the enforcement was 
 quite loose. They aimed for one thing at hmiting the 
 hours of labour for children as well as for young persons. 
 Gradually, however, these regulations became enforced 
 and even extended to other industries, and the hmitations 
 of hours formerly applicable to children only were made 
 to cover also women laborers. By the seventies those 
 regulations were extended to most industries and were 
 rigidly enforced. The regulation of the hours of labour, 
 important though it is, is not, according to Green, the 
 whole industrial problem. The conditions of labour the 
 installation of safety appliances and other measures of 
 securing safety and health should be subject to legisla- 
 tion. They are the legitimate objects of state interference. 
 State interference in such cases can not be objected to 
 on the ground that it interferes with freedom of contract 
 for freedom in the correct sense does not mean absence 
 of regulation. 
 
 J. State interference with freedom of contract is indeed 
 not to serve moral purposes directly. That is beyond the 
 J function of the state ;lbut it has the^dubUo maintain con- 
 ditions under which ilone human capacities can be liber- 
 ated and morality may become possible.] There are some 
 who always have an enormous amounf of confidence in 
 human nature. They think people ought to be left to 
 themselves. Industrial conditions may not be desirable 
 but the people, they argue, are not dummies. Left to them- 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 99 
 
 selves, to their own resources, they would of themselves 
 awaken to the realization that reform is necessary, and, in 
 that case, reform is a voluntary act. The instinct of self- 
 preservation is capable of taking care of itself without the 
 help of legislation. But Green says we must take people 
 as we find them.^ Many, to be sure, are capable of taking 
 care of themselves, but others are not. State interference 
 is not a burden to the conscientious and self-relying man, ^ 
 but it is a decided help to those who happen to be in less 
 favourable circumstances. 
 
 The objections raised against state interference seem to 
 Green to have missed the point. Some of them, indeed, 
 were based on a sort of individualistic philosophy, but 
 others were directed against something quite different from 
 state interference as such. Some people ridiculed the so- 
 called "grand-motherly government," but what they ob- 
 jected to was centralization more than anything else. There 
 was, as a matter of fact, a tendency to centralize, to turn 
 over municipal and local government business to the cen- 
 tral government. This tendency has its defects as well as 
 its merits. One can, however, approve or disapprove cen- 
 tralization without giving any satisfactory reason against 
 state interference. It is one question whether the cen- 
 tral government is unnecessarily invading the legitimate 
 area of local governments and quite another whether the 
 state is unnecessarily interfering. 
 
 The term freedom of contract has its chief significance 
 in connection with industrial and commercial enterprise. 
 Because It is a part of the property rights, it is closely 
 interwoven with the present economic order. What more 
 important problems in that economic order are there than 
 the relations of land, labour and capital? Green is hostile 
 to land, friendly to labour and capital. 
 
 "Works, Vol. Ill, p. 375. 
 
 
lOO Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Propei^}^ as has been pointed out, in the chapters on the 
 principle of political obligation, has a (rational justification. 
 
 / According to Green, it is necessary to the free life and to 
 the fulfilment of our moral ideal. He realizes that accu- 
 
 / mulation of property by a few men, when it becomes ex- 
 cessive, may lead to disastrous consequences. However, 
 the blame is not properly chargeable to the institution of 
 private property as such, but rather to its incidents or 
 accidents. The existence of a proletarian class is not neces- 
 sarily connected with the institution of private property; 
 / for we must bear in mind that the increased wealth of 
 one man does not automatically mean the decreased wealth 
 of another. Wealth is not a given stock of which a large 
 part can not belong to one without taking away a share 
 that should go to another. On the other hand, it is every 
 , day increasing in proportion to the surplus of production 
 n/ of new wealth over the amount necessary for consump- 
 tion in the process of production. 
 
 It is true, according to Green, that wherever industries 
 congregate, there also one will find large numbers of cheap 
 labourers, untaught, underfed and quite incapable to freely 
 contract. They have no intention to save, or if they have the 
 intention, they have nothing to save from, since they live 
 from hand to mouth. They seem to breed and actually do 
 breed in many cases according to the Malthusian formula, 
 without consideration as to the possibility of bringing these 
 young visitors into proper environment and education. But 
 their condition, deplorable as it is, is not necessarily the 
 result of private property as an institution. They are 
 traceable, at least in England, to two causes.* In the first 
 place, when capital was applied to mining of manufacture 
 ^ or any other industry, it attracted and absorbed men who 
 
 * Principles of Political Obligation. P. 226. 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 lOI 
 
 ^ 
 
 were either themselves serfs or descendents of those who 
 were trained in serfdom. Their life was one of forced*^ 
 labour, relieved by church charity or poor law. They 
 were always dependent, with no sense of responsibility, 
 and incapable of taking care of themselves. The landless ^ 
 people of the past were the fathers of the proletarians of 
 the nineteenth century. Secondly, this deplorable condi- y 
 tion of the working class is due to the fact that privi- 
 leges have been granted to the land-owning class which 
 are incompatible with the principle on which property 
 rights rest. However, this will be referred to later. 
 
 As far as we can see, Green does not condemn capital. 
 In fact he has very little positive idea about wealth as 
 capital. But judging from his broad principles, we may 
 safely conclude, that if concrete evidence of the crushing y 
 nature of capitalism should be offered, he would be quite 
 open to conviction. When convinced, he would probably 
 denounce it as severely as he attacked the particular kind 
 of land ownership. 
 
 He was friendly to labour. The following passage will 
 make his position clearer than I can state it in my own 
 words: 'Xabor, the economists tell us, is a commodity 
 exchangeable like other commodities. This is in a certain 
 sense true, but it is a commodity which attaches in a pe- 
 culiar manner to the person of man. Hence restriction 
 may need to be placed on the sale of this commodity which v 
 would be unnecessary in other cases, in order to prevent 
 labor from being sold under conditions which make it im- 
 possible for the person selling it ever to become a free 
 contributor to social good in any form. . . . Society is, 
 therefore, plainly within its right when it limits freedom 
 of contract for the sale of labor, so far as is done by our 
 laws for the sanitary regulations of factories, workshops, 
 
I02 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 and mines. It is equally within its right in prohibiting the 
 labor of women and young persons beyond certain hours. 
 If they work beyond these hours, the result is demon- 
 strably physical deterioration; which, as demonstrably, 
 carries with it a lowering of the moral forces of society. 
 For the sake of that general freedom of its members to 
 / make the best of themselves, which it is the object of civil 
 
 ^ society to secure, a prohibition should be put by law, which 
 is the deliberate voice of society, on all such contracts of 
 service as in a general way yield such a result." ' 
 
 In a later passage, he urges state intervention in behalf 
 of labour, not trusting to leave it to itself. "Left 
 to itself or to the operation of casual benevolence, a 
 degraded population perpetuates and increases itself. 
 Read any of the authorised accounts, given before royal 
 or parliamentary commissions, of the state of the laborers, 
 especially of the women and children, as they were in our 
 great industries before the law was first brought to bear 
 on them, and before freedom of contract was first inter- 
 fered with in them. Ask yourself what chance there was 
 
 X, of a generation, born and bred under such conditions, ever 
 contracting itself out of them. Given a certain standard 
 of moral and material well being, people may be trusted 
 not to sell their labor, or the. labor of their children, on 
 terms which would not allow that standard to be main- 
 tained. But with large masses of our population, until the 
 laws we have been considering took effect, there was no 
 such standard. There was nothing on their part, in the 
 way either of self-respect or established demand for com- 
 
 >i forts, to prevent them from working and living, or from 
 
 putting their children to work and live, in a way in which 
 
 no one who is to be a healthy and free citizen can work 
 
 and live. No doubt there were many high-minded em- 
 
 « Works. Vol. Ill, p. 373. 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 103 
 
 ployers who did their best for their work people before the 
 days of state interference, but they could not prevent less 
 scrupulous hirers of labor from hiring it on the cheapest 
 terms. It is true that cheap labor is in the long run dear 
 labor, but it is only in the long run, and eager traders do 
 not think of the long run. If labor is to be had under 
 conditions incompatible with the health or decent housing, 
 or education of the laborer, there will always be plenty 
 of people to buy it under those conditions, careless of the 
 burden in the shape of rates and taxes which they may 
 be laying up for posterity. Either the standard of well- 
 being on the part of the sellers of labor must prevent 
 them from selling their labor under those conditions, or 
 the law must prevent it. With a population such as ours 
 was forty years ago, and still largely is, the law must 
 prevent it and continue the prevention for some genera- 
 tions, before the sellers will be in a state to prevent it for 
 themselves." • 
 
 As far as land is concerned. Green speaks without re- 
 serve. In connection with the existence of a proletarian 
 class, he has pointed out that privileges have been granted 
 to landlords that are incompatible with the true principle 
 upon which property rights are based. No one has the 
 right to do what he likes with his own, especially if what 
 he has as his own happens to be land. Land, like labour, y 
 is not a commodity in the ordinary sense- "It is from 
 the land or through the land that the raw material of all 
 weahh is obtained. It is only upon the land that we can y 
 live ; only across the land that we can move from one place 
 to another." ^ "It is just as much an original natural 
 material necessary to productive industry as are air, light ^ 
 and water, but while the latter from the nature of the 
 
 • Works, Vol. Ill, pp. 376-377. 
 T Works, Vol. Ill, p. 377. 
 
 V" 
 
104 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 V 
 
 case can not be appropriated, the earth can be and has 
 been;'« The only justification for this appropriation is 
 that it is used towards contributing to social good. That 
 
 / justification disappears when appropriation of land does 
 not serve this purpose. Landowners have been given too 
 much privilege in the past. They were permitted to do 
 what they liked with their own, even if what they actually 
 did decreased productive capacity, endangered the health 
 of the farmers and increased their misery and poverty. 
 Misery and poverty of the farmers affect the public wel- 
 fare. The state in the interest of public freedom which 
 
 / it is its business to maintain can not allow the individual 
 owner to deal as he likes with his land to the same extent 
 as it permits him to deal with other commodities that he 
 may happen to own. 
 
 One of the practical aspects of the land problem is the 
 bad system of settlements. Under that system, the land 
 invariably goes to the eldest son. It has at least two bad 
 effects. First, it prevents the division of an estate into a 
 number 6f small holdings. Here Green seems to uphold 
 one of the traditions of Jeffersonian democracy; for he 
 unhesitatingly declares that the small proprietors who till 
 their own land are the mainstay of social order. Second, 
 it keeps land in the hands of persons who are too much 
 burdened by personal as well as family debts and there- 
 fore unable to improve the land in any way. As a result, 
 land is not half as productive as it ought to be, given the 
 necessary improvements. Various remedies have been 
 suggested, but they do not solve the problem. The prob- 
 lem will not be solved as long as this system of settlement 
 remains in force. It is against public interest to permit 
 landowners to transfer property in such a way as to pre- 
 
 • Principles of Political Obligation. P. 227. 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 105 
 
 vent improvement. If property is not used according to 
 the principle upon which alone property can be justified, 
 then state has every right to step in. In this case, then, 
 state should withhold legal sanction from the kind of land 
 settlement under discussion. 
 
 The relation between landlords and tenants demands 
 attention. Generally speaking, freedom of contract should ^ 
 be allowed so as to facilitate any voluntary action for good 
 and the initiative of the citizens to fulfil their moral ideal 
 in the positive sense. But Green's warning is that we ^ 
 must not sacrifice the end to the means. There are cer- 
 tain contracts which affect public convenience, but in re- 
 spect to which the contracting parties directly concerned 
 are not capable of taking public interests into considera- 
 tion. Such contracts ought to be invalidated by law. Take, 
 for instance, the agreement between landlords and tenants 
 reserving game grounds for the former. It involves the 
 reservation of large tracts of land for no other purpose 
 than that the landlords may occasionally hunt. Hunting 
 is not of itself objectionable, but in this particular case it 
 takes away agricultural land from legitimate agricultural 
 purposes. Not only do landlords make reservations, but 
 they can and often do prevent land from cultivation so 
 that there might be a forest in its stead for their amuse- 
 ment. The tenants who are used to such treatment by 
 their superiors will generally enter any agreement by mere 
 force of habit. But again, it is not a matter that affects 
 the farmer alone. Public interests are also at stake. The 
 country can not afford to see good land for food produc- 
 tion turned into a game resort or a sort of garden for 
 mere amusement of a few. In this case, again, the state 
 finds it necessary to resort to interference. 
 
 Individualists always claim that, left to itself, every- 
 thing will be all right. The farmers will in time be con- 
 
io6 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 scious of their own interests, and the landlords will be 
 enlightened enough to take public interests into consid- 
 eration. Perhaps this will happen. Green wishes that it 
 might, but derives from the facts the conviction that it will 
 not. The great majority of English farmers can be turned 
 out without compensation at six months or a year's notice. 
 Under such conditions, farming does not attract sufficient 
 capital for improvement, since landlords are spendthrifts 
 and tenants can be kicked out at any time- Best farming 
 is generally done where there is a lease, and the worst 
 farming is generally done where tenancy relies upon the 
 honour of the lords. It is true that a good landlord is 
 as good as, if not better than, a lease, but not all of them 
 are good, and if any one is good, he is not immortal. Ag- 
 riculture can not be made dependent upon the whims of 
 a few. In order to secure proficient use of land, the 
 farmers need protection, so that necessary capital may as 
 a result be directed towards agriculture. When such a 
 problem confronts the state, the state must take people and 
 situation as it finds them to be and must act accordingly, 
 In this case the state can not wait, since the subsistence of 
 the population depends upon its action. 
 
 As to the complete and comprehensive programme in 
 regard to land reform. Green does not say anything defi- 
 nite. Conditions vary in different places, hence any hard 
 and fast plan can not bt^ formulated. However, we are 
 sure that he does not believe in either single tax or the 
 confiscation of unearned increment. To him "the great 
 objection is that the relation between earned and unearned 
 increment is so complicated, that a system of appropriating 
 the latter to the state could scarcely be established without 
 lessening the stimulus to the individual to make most of 
 the land, and thus ultimately lessening its serviceableness 
 
 to society." ^ 
 ^Principles of Political Obligation. P. 229. 
 
 \ 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 APPLICATIONS OF THE PRINCIPLE OF STATE 
 INTERFERENCE (Continued) 
 
 The greatest and the obvious interference with free life 
 in history as well as at the present time is certainly war. 
 However German his ideas may be in other respects, 
 Green's idea of war is far from being Teutonic. War, he 
 says, is a violation of the right of Hfe, even if it should 
 not be considered as "multitudmous murder." It is not 
 murder in either the legal or the moral sense. It is not 
 legal murder because murder is unlawful killing and war 
 is lawful killing, if by lawful is meant conforming to 
 man-made laws. Neither is war a "multitudinous mur- 
 der" in the strict moral sense; for, taken in that strict 
 sense, murder necessarily involves ill will between those 
 killed and those who do the killing. In war there is no 
 particular personal ill feeling. Again, a murder, as gen- 
 erally understood, involves the violation of determinate 
 person or persons. It generally implies that a scheme has 
 been planned by a murderer who is responsible for the mur- 
 der. But there can hardly be any definite person or per- 
 sons who may be said to be entirely responsible for any 
 war. No doubt there are wars in which one or a few 
 determinate persons is or are especially blamable, or at 
 least more so than others, hut they can not have willed a 
 war as a murderer is capable of willing someone's death- 
 
 's 
 
To8 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 They are not murderers in the strict sense, however selfish 
 they may be. However wrong or disastrous war may be, 
 it is not murder. 
 
 But the above statement should not be taken to mean 
 that war is not a violation of the right to hfe. It is.^ And 
 it can not be argued that because there is a lack of intention 
 on the part of one soldier to kill any particular enemy, 
 there is, therefore, no ground for characterizing war as 
 a violation of the right to life; for killing in war is caused 
 by human agency and is on the whole intentional in the 
 sense that it is preventable but not prevented. It matters 
 not whether any particular soldier has a definite intention 
 to kill any one in particular he is violating the right to 
 life just the same. Nor does it avail to argue that in 
 killing another, one soldier is just as irresponsible as the 
 lightning that occasionally takes its tolls from among 
 mankind ; for in the latter case no right is involved. There 
 is no human relationship between man and lightning, 
 neither is there any mutual claim and recognition. If there 
 is no right involved there certainly can not be any violation 
 of right. 
 
 Modem warfare admits both the method of conscrip- 
 tion and voluntary service. If a man volunteers to the 
 colours, he takes the chance of being killed on his own 
 initiative, and therefore has given up his right to life of 
 which there can not be any violation. It is argued that 
 he is in the same position as a man who works in a dan- 
 gerous mine for a certain wage. The answer is, that if 
 both — the volunteer and the miner — are killed, the right 
 to life is violated in both cases. The right to life can not 
 be voluntarily given up in either case; for it always in- 
 vol^^'es both th** individual claim and the social recnqjiition. 
 
 1 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 162. 
 
 \ 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 109 
 
 Society has an interest in the right to life which the indi- 
 vidual representing one party can not disregard.^ The 
 same is true of industrial work. If a man works in a 
 dangerous pit and is killed, there is a violation of tht 
 right to life, no matter whether the man works voluntarily 
 or not. War is therefore no less wrong when a soldier 
 volunteers to fijght. Besides, whatever 3ystem may be 
 adopted by the state, whether conscription or voluntary 
 service, there is always an element of compulsion.^ Con- 
 scription is of course compulsory. Though under a sys- 
 tem of voluntary service there is not compulsion exerted 
 on particular persons, yet there is an element of com- 
 pulsion in the fact that the state decides on war and com- 
 pels a certain number of lives to be deprived. After all, 
 then, war is a violation of the right to hfe. 
 
 It may yet be argued that war is justifiable in case of 
 self-defense. The right of life, it may be said, is im- 
 portant, but there are yet more precious things at stake 
 when one is subject to unprovoked attack. The existence 
 of society and of state guaranteeing the whole system of 
 rights and obligations is more important, it is often urged, 
 than the maintenance of the particular right to life. Hence 
 war in the defense of society and of the state has justifica- 
 tion in the greater purpose it serves, even if in serving that 
 purpose, it results in killing. 
 
 Green answers that this argument is really not to justify 
 war per se, but rather to remove blame from those who 
 resort to it for the purpose of defense. * As a matter of 
 fact, we are only told that the state in sending soldiers to 
 the field may be compelled to do so against its will, hence 
 responsibility for destruction of life and property is not 
 
 2 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 163. 
 « Principles of Political Obligation. P. 163. 
 * Principles of Political Obligation. P. 164. 
 
no Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 chargeable to those who have no other ahernative than to 
 resort to force. But war is not a natural recurring phe- 
 nomenon that can not be avoided. It has come about 
 through human effort and human energy. If one party is 
 exempt from blame, some other party is not. War as a 
 violation of the right to life is none the less wrong even if 
 the blame is transferred from one party to another. Thus 
 j a war for the defense of freedom, or for liberation, or for 
 4 the existence of a nation is just as wrong as anything that 
 violates the right to life, but it is a wrong chargeable not 
 to defenders but to the aggressors. Historically the rec- 
 ords are most disappointing. Few wars in Green's opinion 
 can be said to be waged for the purpose of political liber- 
 ation. Most of the wars are waged for the purpose of 
 aggrandisement, brought out by personal jealousies and 
 dynastic ambitions. With the growth of nationalism, pa- 
 triotism has taken place of dynastic loyalty. Somehow or 
 other, the fallacious notion that advantage to one nation is 
 always a disadvantage to some other nation has been gen- 
 erally accepted by people at large, and as a result all na- 
 tions are at potential if not actual warfare with one an- 
 other. 
 
 War is wrong no matter who is blamable for it. It is 
 wrong whatever may be the result. That there are good 
 results arising out of war Green does not deny, but the 
 claim that they transform the character of the wkr Green 
 can not concede. "Wrong doing is a voluntary action 
 either proceeding from a will uninfluenced by the desire 
 to be good on the part of the agent, or it is an action that 
 interferes with the conditions necessary to the free play 
 and development of a good will on the part of the 
 others." » "If an action, so far as any results go which the 
 agent can have in view or over which he has control, in- 
 6 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 167. 
 
 \ 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 III 
 
 lerferes with conditions necessary to the free play and the 
 development of a good will on the part of others, it is not 
 the less wrong doing because, through some agency which 
 is not his, the effects which he intended, and which ren- 
 dered it wrong doing, come to contribute to an ulterior 
 good. Nor, if it issues from bad will (in the sense ex- 
 plained), is it less wrong (in the moral sense) because 
 this will is itself, in the view of some higher being, con- 
 tributary to a moral good which is not, in whole or in part, 
 within the view of the agent. If then war is wrong doing 
 in both the above senses . . . , it does not cease to be so 
 on account of any good resulting from it in a scheme of 
 providence." « There are probably desirable results from 
 Caesar's wars with the Gauls, from English occupation of 
 distant territories, from German and Italian unification, 
 but incident to these results are also innumerable acts 
 which do not cease to be wrong merely because something 
 good and desirable has been achieved. 
 
 War then is a wrong, but is it a wrong that is neces- 
 sarily inherent in the organization of the nation states? 
 According to Green, there can be no war if the states are in 
 any way organized according to the idea back of them. 
 State according to its idea is an institution "in which all y 
 rights are harmoniously maintained, in which all the ca- 
 pacities that give rise to rights have free play given to 
 them." ^ No state thus organized will ever have any in- v 
 evitable conflict with any state similarly organized. There / 
 is no truth in the notion that the gain of one is the loss of 
 another. In fact the better the states are organized the 
 freer is the scope for the individuals to fulfil their capaci- 
 ties. Consequently much less will be the danger of con- 
 flict. War is therefore not inherent in states. Its appear- 
 
 « Principles of Political Obligation. Pp. 167-168. 
 T Principles of Political Obligation. P. 170. 
 
112 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 ance is more due to the defective organization of states. 
 
 Green gives full consideration to the division of society 
 into different classes of people and the different interests 
 they represent. The familiar division into two dominant 
 classes, the privileged on the one side and the oppressed 
 
 ^ on the other, he shows to be not a matter of internal poli- 
 tics alone, but one that often gives rise to international con- 
 flict. "The privileged class involuntarily believes and 
 
 y/ spreads the belief that the interest of the state lies in some 
 extension without, not in an improvement of organization 
 from within." ^ It looks as if right here Green is some- 
 what prophetic without comprehending the full significance 
 of his prophecy- We now know that the priviledged class 
 benefits by national expansion. The militarists want con- 
 quest, the merchants want market and the capitalists want 
 industrially undeveloped areas. Their gain is not the gain 
 of the state. The state according to its idea does not and 
 should not involve either a privileged class or a suffering 
 class. The sooner they are removed, the better it is for the 
 state and also for international peace. 
 
 It is suggested by some that state is not an abstract for- 
 mula; it is not a complex of institutions consciously estab- 
 lished for the purpose of maintaining and harmonizing 
 rights. It is now generally a nation and all that a nation 
 implies. A nation implies a homogeneous people, possess- 
 ing peculiar institutions, certain dominant passions and a 
 nationalistic psychology. Nations are now existing in the 
 kind of state of nature in which individuals were once 
 claimed to be living by Hobbes. They are independent 
 and sovereign, and they have only themselves to serve. Since 
 their situations are diverse and their interests conflicting, war 
 is inevitable. It can only be avoided by the establishment 
 
 • Principles of Political Obligation. P. 171. 
 
 X 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 113 
 
 of a world empire transcending all the nation states, but 
 that is neither practical nor desirable. It is true Green 
 concedes that states at present are nations and nations at 
 cresent are not free from egoistic passions. But, he says, 
 there is little occasion for pessimism.^ Nations may yet 
 become true states. The more truly the nation becomes the 
 state the greater the scope for national spirit. National 
 spiri; has nothing objectionable if it is directed to worthy 
 objects, and it will be, when states become true m the ideal 
 sense Other things are also facilitated when states become 
 organized more in accordance with the ideal. Frequent 
 trade and communication and better understanding may 
 eventually produce a consciousness of a social bond be- 
 tween nations so that the demand for justice and peace may 
 eventually speak louder than the bugle of war ^Vhenjhat 
 time comes, this sort of wholesale violation of the right to 
 life may be eliminated. 
 
 Another phase of state interference with free life is the 
 right of the state to impose punishment on citizens. Free 
 life on the part of the citizens involves the assumption that 
 every man can freely act to contribute to the social good- 
 The right on the part of the state to punish involves the 
 assumption that it, the state, functions in certain ways to 
 prevent such actions as interfere with the possibihty of 
 free activity contributory to the social good. In other 
 words, in exercising the right to punish, the state is trying ^ 
 to maintain conditions under which it may be possible for 
 the citizens to realize their moral capacities. Thus consid- 
 ered the right to punish as well as the nature of the pun- 
 ishments in detail can not be satisfactorily presented with- 
 out an examination into the whole system of rights and ob- 
 ligations. For us, it is unnecessary to go into the details 
 
 •Principles of Political Obligation. P. 179. 
 
114 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 of these rights and obligations, since we need only dwell on 
 the broad principles of punishment. There has been fre- 
 quent discussion as to whether punishments are retributiye 
 in nature, or preventive or reformatory. The true concep- 
 tion, according to Green,, is that they are all three.^° The 
 following discussion will therefore consist of three divisions 
 starting with the retributive element in punishment. 
 
 At the outset, we have to point out that punishment is 
 incapable of having private vengeance as an element." In 
 fact private vengeance, which in popular expression im- 
 plies taking law into one's hands, is incompatible with the 
 right of punishment vested in a political authority, much 
 less is there a "right of private vengeance." There is a 
 contradiction in terms in that expression. Private ven- 
 geance implies an interest purely individual while a right 
 is always social and in that sense also public. Abstract 
 the social recognition and a claim is not a right. Hence the 
 right of punishment on the part of the state does not admit 
 of purely individual interest. 
 
 But, it has been asked, is a state capable of the feeling of 
 vengeance at all? U it is so capable, according to Green, 
 It IS not so in the same way as the individuals are. France 
 may have felt revengeful toward Germany, but in that case 
 it was against a foreign nation that France felt the feeling 
 of vengeance. Vengeance in the sense of the feeling of 
 one individual towards another, the nation is incapable of. 
 As far as punishment is concerned, if there is the element 
 of vengeance at all, it is in the nature of popular indigna- 
 tion. When a child is murdered the public will likely de- 
 mand that the criminal should have his due, should be dealt 
 with according to his deserts and be punished "justly." 
 
 ^0 Principles of Political Obligatioas. P. 181. 
 "Principles of Political Obligations. P. 181. 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 115 
 
 This leads to the idea of the just and justice. Accord- 
 ing to Green, the just means "that complex of social con- 
 ditions which for each individual is necessary to enable him 
 to realize his capacity of contributing to social good.'*" 
 "Justice is the habit of mind which leads us to respect those 
 conditions in dealing with others — not to interfere with 
 them so far as they already exist, and to bring them into 
 existence so far as they are not found in existence" " A 
 punishment would be unjust "if either the act punished is 
 not a violation of known rights, or an omission to fulfil 
 known obligations of a kind which the agent might have 
 prevented, or the punishment is not required for the main- 
 tenance of rights." ^* The criminal when justly punished y^ 
 sees the punishment in his own action returning on himself 
 and may as a result become more susceptible of the idea of 
 common and public good. Thus it will be seen that even in y/ 
 this theory of punishment, rights and obligations are the 
 real nucleus from which its justification is derived. And 
 when Green speaks of rights and obligations, it is necessary 
 to bear in mind the moral idea and the idea of common 
 good. It must be understood that the general principle here 
 laid down does not offer a practical guidance in specific 
 cases. In fact, justice in specific cases can not be deter- 
 mined without having a more complete and a more har- 
 monized system of rights and obligations than at the pres- 
 ent time. An intentional violation of right must be pun- 
 ished whether that be a true right or not, since such viola- y 
 tion endangers the social well-being more than any wrong 
 punishment. 
 
 Let us next turn to the preventive nature of punishment. 
 The argument in this case is that whatever has been done 
 
 12 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 188. Footnote. 
 
 13 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 188. Footnote. 
 1* Principles of Political Obligation. P. 186. 
 
 \ 
 
I 
 
 ii6 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 is done, and that no amount of punishment will undo the 
 injury caused by the criminal act. What punishment can 
 do is to prevent further occurrences of like sort. Punish- 
 ment on the criminal produces a terror in society and that 
 terror, it is claimed, has a restraining effect on those who 
 contemplate similar crimes. In order to have the proper 
 quality of preventiveness, it is believed that the greater the 
 crime, the heavier should be the punishment. This Green 
 agrees with, if by heavier punishment is meant that which 
 produces greater terror in popular imagination, and by 
 greater crime is not meant a greater degree of 
 moral guilt.^' It is a fallacy, he holds, to identify 
 heavy punishment with great pain to the criminal; 
 for that makes the effectiveness of punishment depend upon 
 the amount of pain, and this varies so from individual 
 to individual as to be incapable of calculation. A given 
 punishment may be extremely painful to one without being 
 so to another, since sensitiveness to pain differs with dif- 
 ferent temperaments, experiences and circumstances, none 
 of which the state or its agent can exactly ascertain. And 
 even if they could be ascertained, since their difference is 
 undeniable, the punishment will be different for different 
 individuals and a general rule for punishment will neces- 
 sarily be impossible.** 
 
 The fallacy of identifying greater crime with the greater 
 degree of moral guilt is probably a confusion of both the 
 aim and the function of the state. The state has nothing *^ 
 to do with the moral depravity of the criminal and in pun- 
 ishing him it is not counting the effect on him so much as 
 the effect on others who might be tempted to do as he has 
 done. In fact there may be moral depravity of an equal 
 
 15 Principles of Political Obligaion. P. 190. 
 i« Principles of Political Obligation. P. 191. 
 IT Principles of Political Obligation. P. 191. 
 
 \ 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 117 
 
 amount in two criminals, as for instance, the wealthy 
 banker who embezzles and the poverty-stricken tramp who 
 steals, and yet the punishments may profitably be different ; 
 for the same preventive effect may be secured by different 
 punishments. 
 
 There are other difficulties confronting the attempt to 
 base punishment on moral depravity. In the first place, the 
 degree of moral depravity can not be ascertained. No one 
 can ascertain it for himself, for an action often involves a 
 complexity of good motives mixed with bad ones, and you 
 can not measure the goodness of the good motives just as 
 you can not measure the badness of bad motives. The 
 man himself can not do it, his friends can not do it, much 
 less can a judge or an agent of the state. Secondly, the 
 state has no business to punish wickedness as such. The 
 moment it starts to punish wickedness, immorality or vice, \/ 
 it vitiates the disinterestedness of effort to escape wicked- 
 ness, immorality or vice and checks the growth of true 
 goodness. To refuse to be wicked for fear of consequences 
 is not the same as to obey disinterestedly the self-imposed 
 laws, which latter alone makes up morality. 
 
 It may be argued that crimes committed under the so- 
 called "extenuating circumstances" should be and are gen- 
 erally punished with leniency. The reason claimed to be 
 the determining factor is that such crimes involve less 
 moral guilt, and punishment, being proportionate to the 
 moral depravity of the criminal, is ipso facto Hght. Hence 
 a man who steals a bottle of milk because he has not had 
 food for two days is punished differently from a man who 
 does the same thing because he is in the habit of doing it, 
 or because he is mahciously trying to deprive some people 
 of something. Cases of such circumstances are abimdant 
 and practice seems to agree with the theory ; but according 
 to Green, while the fact may be true, the explanation is not 
 
ii8 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 correct. If crimes under extenuating circumstances are 
 punished with more leniency than those not under such cir- 
 cumstances, it is not because they involve less moral de- 
 pravity, but because it needs less unpleasantness and less 
 terror to prevent a like occurrence.^® In this as well as in 
 other cases, morality or rather moral depravity is not the 
 measure, neither the ground for punishment. It does not 
 mean that punishment has no moral purpose. It is one of 
 the instruments to maintain conditions under which mor- 
 ality may be possible. It also serves the moral purpose of 
 protecting rights the maintenance of which advances the 
 moral well being. 
 
 Generally, according to Green, popular indignation or 
 disapproval is founded on the outward aspects of a crimi- 
 nal's conduct, that is, it comes essentially from a response 
 in men to the stimulation which the outward aspects of the 
 criminal act generally afford.^* It may even be said that 
 if crimes can not and should not be punished according to 
 the degree of moral depravity of the criminal, they should 
 be, if they are not, punished according to the outward con- 
 sequences of the criminal act. The degree of criminality 
 of the individual depends or should depend upon the con- 
 sequences of his act, that is, upon the relative importance of 
 the rights he violates; and the more disastrous the conse- 
 quences, the severer should be the punishment.^^ The 
 engine driver who overlooks the signal through careless- 
 ness is and should be accused of manslaughter and punished 
 accordingly, though his moral qualities may not be in a 
 worse condition than those of many whose carelessness 
 does not result in such an accident. The difference in pun- 
 ishment can not be accounted for by the difference in kind 
 
 18 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 193. 
 " Principles of Poliical Obligation. P. 196. 
 20 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 197. 
 
 X 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 119 
 
 or degree of the carelessness in the two cases, for it is after 
 all the consequences that uhimately determine the differ- 
 ence. Another example is drunkenness- The man who 
 drinks may not have such moral depravity as intentionally 
 to violate others' rights ; but if he does commit a crime the 
 consequences do not become less disastrous merely because 
 he is under the influence of liquor. An intoxicated mother 
 may smother her child by sleeping on it without the least 
 bit of intention to do any harm. None the less she should 
 be punished ; for though she has no intention of committing 
 the crime, the condition that causes it is capable of preven- 
 tion. Punishment in such cases will produce a terror which 
 will make people more careful about drinking and will pre- 
 vent some accidental violation of the right to free Ufe. It 
 is in connection with the preventive nature of punishment 
 that there is the necessity and actual practice of distinguish- 
 ing civil injuries from crimes. According to Green, the be- 
 lief that civil injuries are "violations of rights when con- 
 sidered in reference to the injury sustained by the individ- 
 ual," while crimes are ^'violations of rights when considered 
 in reference to their evil tendencies as regards the com- 
 munity at large," is quite nri^sleading. Nothing is punish- 
 able which does not violate some kind of rights ; and since 
 rights are social, any violation of them can not be regarded 
 as merely an injury sustained by the individual. If the j 
 injury to the individual is not an injury to the community, ^ 
 it is not a violation of rights and therefore should not be 
 pimishable. 
 
 The real distinction between crimes and civil injuries 
 comes from the preventive nature of punishments. Civil 
 injuries can not generally be prevented by arousing terror 
 in the public mind.*^ Let us take for instance the breach 
 
 21 Principles of Political Obligation. F. 199. 
 
I20 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 of contract. The party who breaks the contract may not 
 know tliat he is violating its provisions, and therefore may 
 not be responsible for not knowing that he has violated a 
 right. No amount of terror associated with such a viola- 
 tion of rights will prevent similar violations of rights under 
 given circumstances. It may be argued that even in civil 
 cases, the delinquent party may know his obligations but 
 have no means at his disposal to fulfil them, and therefore 
 punishment in such cases may make him providential; but 
 even here it must be conceded that his inability to fulfil his 
 obligations may not be due to forces of his own making, 
 and, if not, terror as a result of punishment will not im- 
 prove the ability of people under like circumstances. It 
 is, therefore, from the preventive nature of punishment 
 that there has come to be a distinction between civil and 
 criminal offenses. The actual distinction in English law is 
 more or less an accident.^^ 
 
 Let us turn to the reformatory character of punishment. 
 Crime involves the violation of rights, but it also involves a 
 violator of rights, namely the criminal. In punishing him, 
 the state may likely forget that he, too, had or will have 
 rights which, though they may be temporarily suspended, are 
 yet his due after serving his term. He must be given a 
 certain freedom of action conducive to an intelligent exer- 
 cise of rights so that in being punished once, he may not 
 have to be punished twice, and in having served his term, he 
 may not have to meet social ostracism- Capital punishment 
 and hfe imprisonment can not be justified except on two 
 grounds : ^^ first, when public order will be easily endan- 
 gered, if the crime committed is not associated with the 
 punishment that produces the greatest terror ; second, when 
 
 22 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 201. 
 2» Principles of Political Obligation. P. 203. 
 
 \ 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 121 
 
 the crime is such as to warrant the assumption of a per- 
 manent incapacity of the criminal for enjoying and respect- 
 ing rights But these conditions are themselves unsatis- 
 factory Given the condition of the criminal, whether the 
 state has the right to presume his permanent incapacity for 
 rights or not may still be open to doubt. It may very well 
 be that the state is not entitled to such presumption. And 
 certainly it does not call for greater terror to keep public 
 order when public education has attained its present stand- 
 ard and police force its present efficiency. Considering the 
 rights of the criminal as well as those of the rest of the / 
 citizens, punishment should also be reformatory, and if so, 
 capital punishment and life imprisonment can not be justi- 
 fied except in extreme cases. 
 
 According to Green, "there is no direct reference in pun- 
 ishment by state . . . to moral good or evil. The 
 state in its judicial action does not look to the moral guilt 
 of the criminal whom it punishes, or to the promotion of 
 moral good by means of punishment in him or in others. 
 It looks not to virtue and vice but to rights and wrongs. 
 If looks back to the wrong done in crime which it pumshes ; 
 not however, in order to avenge it but in order to the 
 consideration of the sort of terror which needs to be as- 
 sociated with such wrong doing in order to the future main- 
 tenance of rights ... Thus punishment of crime 
 is preventive in its object . . . justly preventive of 
 injustice. But in order to effectually attain its preventive 
 object and to attain it justly, it should be reformatory. 
 
 Human beings are capable of rights, because they are 
 capable of a conception of a common good which each 
 shares with the other. They act not only with an end m 
 view but also with a conception of that end. They are, 
 
 2* Principles of Political Obligation. P. 202. 
 
J 
 
 122 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 according to Green, performing or seeking to perform self 
 imposed duties; they are moral, and in order to facilitate 
 the realization of their moral ideal, they must be allowed 
 a certain spontaneity of action. The state, instead of ac- 
 tually and actively promoting morality, should devote itself 
 to the task of removing obstacles. Compulsory education 
 j and prohibition or temperance are state interferences gov- 
 erned by this principle. 
 
 However mystic Green may have seemed to many a 
 student at times, he was not merely a closet philosopher. 
 He was elected to the Oxford Town Council, and ex- 
 pressed his idea of a true liberal program as "the removal 
 of all obstructions which the law can remove to the free 
 development of English citizens.*' " Qn the two subjects 
 that interested him more than anything else, namely, edu- 
 cation and temperance, he often got into heated controversy. 
 As to education, he stood for compulsory attendance, the 
 maintenance of schools out of public funds and unsectarian 
 instruction.^® State interference in education may seem to 
 be an enforcement of moral duties, for education of chil- 
 dren is a moral duty. But Green argued, "on the other 
 hand, the neglect of it does tend to prevent the growth of 
 the capacity for beneficially exercising rights on the part 
 of those whose education is neglected, and it is on this ac- 
 count, not as a purely moral duty on the part of the parent, 
 but as a prevention of a hindrance to the capacity for rights 
 on the part of children, that education should be enforced 
 by the state.*' ^^ Nor can compulsory education be objected 
 to. on the ground that it interferes with the spontaneous 
 action of the individuals; for so far as those parents are 
 concerned who have the rights of their children in view, the 
 
 25 Works Vol. HI. Memoir CXX. 
 
 26 Works Vol. III. Memoir CXXIII. 
 
 27 Principles of Political Obligation. 
 
 P. 209. 
 
 \ 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 123 
 
 law that compels education does not interfere with spon- 
 taneity of action. The man who prevents his wife from 
 overwork and sends his children to school instead of factory 
 and does all this of his own will, suffers no moral degrada- 
 tion from a law which would compel him to do so. He 
 does not feel the constraint. And for the parents who are 
 unwilling to educate their children, it may be said that the 
 state seeks to remove the hindrances to the exercise of 
 rights on the part of the children and does not aim at im- 
 posing inconveniences on the part of the parents. 
 
 The question of the liquor traffic was the one in which 
 Green was drawn into political controversy in 1872 with 
 Sir William Harcourt. In a letter to the Oxford Chron- 
 icle he declared that he would not support "a representa- 
 tive who bids for the votes of the politicians by trying to 
 pooh pooh the drinking evil altogether and to run down all 
 the legislative attempts to check it." ^^ But Green was not 
 originally a total abstainer. His ideas were probably in- 
 fluenced by personal as well as social relations. The dis- 
 astrous career of his elder brother constantly weighed upon 
 his mind and the conviction that the political morale was 
 being sapped by drink came later to be added to his personal 
 experience. In fact, he spoke quite vehemently of "the 
 untaught and underfed denizen of a London yard with 
 gin-shops on the right hand and on the left." ^^ At any rate 
 he became an ardent supporter of temperance. In 1872, 
 he joined the United Kingdom Alliance, and later, 1875, he 
 joined also the Church of England Temperance Society. 
 
 Green's practical policy in this matter was regulation and r 
 limitation but not prohibition. The aim was to devise a pro- 
 cess of licensing, to limit liquor traffic to certain hours, v/ 
 and if possible to enable neighbors to exclude liquor 
 
 28 Works III. Memoir CXVII. 
 
 29 Principles of Political Obligation. 
 
 P. 8. 
 
124 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 establishments from their area through legislation. On 
 what ground, then, can legislation be justified in interfering 
 with this particular traffic? "We justify it on the ground 
 of the recognized right on the part of the society to prevent 
 men from doing what they Uke, if, in exercising their pe- 
 culiar tastes, in doing as they like, they create a social 
 nuisance. There is no right to freedom in the purchase or 
 sale of a particular commodity, if the general result of al- 
 lowing such a freedom is to detract from freedom in the 
 higher sense, from the general power of men to make the 
 best of themselves. . . . Excessive drinking of one 
 
 ^ man means an injury to others in health, purse and capa- 
 bility to which no limit can be placed. Dnmkenness in the 
 
 y/ head of a family means, as a rule, the impoverishment and 
 degradation of all the members of the family; and the 
 pressure of a drinking shop at the comer of the street 
 means, as a rule, the dnmkenness of a certain nimiber of 
 heads of families in that street." ^^ Such an obstruction to 
 free life must be removed by the authority of the state. 
 
 y Tolerance of any particular liberty of action implies that 
 liberty is not and must not be an impediment to social good. 
 
 Even in connection with liquor, there is the laissez faire 
 argimient that state interference will not do any good. 
 Leave the people to themselves, and as soon as they know 
 the danger of drinking and as soon as they acquire more 
 self respect, they will give up liquor of their own free will. 
 Giving it up voluntarily is much better than giving it up by 
 compulsion ; for in the former you facilitate the spontaneity 
 of action and in the latter you compel obedience merely 
 through fear of consequences. But the trouble is, Green 
 replies, we can not wait. The longer you let liquor go, the 
 greater harm it does and the more difficult it becomes for 
 
 J 
 
 80 Works, Vol. III. Pp. 383-384. 
 
 \ 
 
 Applications of The Principle 
 
 125 
 
 the state to interfere. On the one hand, the interests that 
 are fattening themselves through intoxication of drunkards 
 would be more influential, more deep rooted in their foot- 
 hold and much harder to deal with ; on the other, intoxica- 
 tion is more or less contagious. Aside from the fact that 
 the friends of a liquor fiend may become themselves vic- 
 tims the scientists claim that offspring from drunkards 
 inherit the tendency to drink, hence, given the liquor, they 
 will readily victimize themselves. Green seems to have 
 such an idea in view and that is why he urges not only 
 legislation, but also speedy legislation to limit liquor traffic. 
 
Green's Influence 
 
 127 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 GREEN'S INFLUENCE 
 
 Turning from Green's theories to the views of his fol- 
 lowers and his critics, we need bear in mind that modem 
 tendencies, especially after the war, are away from political 
 idealism. The advancement of science makes possible new 
 approaches to the study of politics. Sociology brings out 
 facts hitherto unknown and therefore not within the com- 
 pass of political speculation in Green's time. The division 
 of society into different groups with conflicting interests 
 was only vaguely guessed at in the late seventies, but it is 
 now a familiar fact. Modem industrialism has produced 
 several tendencies, none of which subscribes to political 
 idealism. Socialism, or more correctly Marxism, involves 
 economic determinism as its philosophic background. Guild 
 Socialism in England and Syndicalism in France represent 
 a revolt against central authority in politics, but in philos- 
 ophy they are more affiliated with realism than idealism. 
 The war and its consequences have encouraged radicalism, 
 and radicalism, while speaking in the same old name of 
 freedom and justice, never fails to keep its eye on the cold 
 facts of every day life. 
 
 Among scholars who are disinterestedly searching for 
 knowledge, political idealism is also fading. Those who are 
 realistic in temperament are apt to look at facts as they are 
 rather than as they should be. Investigation often shows 
 that what they should be is generally far from being what 
 
 ^ 
 
 they actually are. Therefore, instead of building castles in 
 the air it is considered more profitable to state the actual 
 facts and to suggest possible remedies. Others feel that 
 political idealism deals merely with the conscious and con- 
 scientious part of human nature in politics. The subtle 
 psychology of the group as well as of the individual, the 
 subconscious action of human beings, the influence of hered- 
 ity and environment, the biological and social inheritance 
 of the people are important factors for consideration, 
 but political idealism ignores them all by mere refer- 
 ence to an all embracing and all pervading consciousness. 
 The above spells doom for Green and his idealism. Such 
 is the case, but it does not necessarily have to be. Two 
 factors need be considered. First, the political philosophy y 
 of Green has little, if any, of the absolutism of the German 
 idealist. The foregoing analysis, it is hoped, has made that 
 clear. Therefore it is not exactly correct to identify Green 
 with the idealists of the German type, though he was a 
 thorough-going idealist. A revolt against political idealism 
 is not necessarily a revolt against Green. Second, some of 
 the new tendencies do not necessarily contradict the broad 
 principles laid down by Green. They may qualify, and they 
 may supplement, but they do not necessarily deny the funda- 
 mentals in his philosophy. A radical, for instance, may be- 
 come his follower to a marked extent without ceasing to be 
 radical. The thing to bear in mind, as Mr. Barker has ad- 
 vised us, is the broad principle and not the detailed applica- 
 tion. You can no more blame Green for his leniency to- y 
 wards capital than you can despise Aristotle for his justifi- 
 cation of slavery. These two considerations explain the 
 fact that although broadsides have been fired against politi- 
 cal idealism, Green has not been the target, and although 
 new tendencies have gained ground, Green's influence has 
 not entirely faded away. In fact, of the writers who have 
 
 \ 
 
J 
 
 128 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 , expressed opinions on him, few, if any, reveal any hostility 
 towards him.^ Disciples and critics alike may qualify and 
 destroy his doctrines in view of the better understanding of 
 social facts, but none the less they admire him for the able 
 formulation of political principles, at least in English, into 
 idealistic philosophical terminology. 
 
 The champions of the idealistic school of thought of the 
 present day England are Messrs. Bosanquet and Bradley. 
 
 •^ Both are more Hegelian than Green ever was. ]JAr. Brad- 
 
 y ley believes that the community and the individual are 
 ^ so interwoven that the latter's existence implies a compre- 
 hensive system of relationship with the former. ( An in- 
 / dividual becomes what he is, by including in his being his 
 relationship with society and state.; If morality by defini- 
 
 / tion consists of the realization of the self, it also consists in 
 the realization of these relations with the society. Mr. 
 Bradley believes in a sort of regimentation in society ac- 
 cording to which each has his station and therefore also 
 duties, the fulfilment of which constitutes the realization of 
 the self and social relations, that is, constitutes morality. 
 Dr. Bosanquet admits in his "Philosophical Theory of the 
 State'* that he follows the footsteps of Green, but that if he 
 has to part company, it is because Green seems to him to 
 have erred on the score of excessive caution rather than 
 carelessness.^ And he does part company with Green at 
 many points. He maintains, for instance, that society is 
 within the state. If by state is meant not a mere political 
 mechanism, but a general organization over and above other 
 organizations, it is essentially a community of communities. 
 It is above society. This is already different from Green's 
 
 1 Except H. Spencer, Essays Scientific, Political and Specula- 
 tive. Vol. II. P. 332. 
 
 2 Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of The State, Intro- 
 duction. 
 
 v/ 
 
 \ 
 
 Green's Influence 
 
 129 
 
 point of view, but it leads to a greater and a still more sig- 
 nificant difference. Green condemns war as a violation ^ 
 of the rights of life and liberty; to that extent, he argues 
 the action of the state declaring war is itself wrong and 
 therefore not conducive to the end for which state exists. 
 But Dr. Bosanquet has a different point of view. Accord- 
 ing to him acts of the state and acts of its agents arc to be - 
 distinguished, and the terms moral and immoral, properly 
 applicable to the latter, are inappropriate for the former. 
 The state as a state can not act within the relations of pri- 
 vate life in which organized morality exists. It "is the y 
 guardian of our world and not a factor of our organized 
 moral world" ^ It can not be bound by the system of / 
 rights and obligations it enforces, nor can it be Umited by 
 the social ethics it maintains. 
 
 There are two other points of difference which should 
 be mentioned. Dr. Bosanquet writes with the advantage of 
 the new and fashionable theories of the present age. "Na- 
 tional spirit," "social mind," and "group consciousness" are 
 more talked about now than in the late seventies and early 
 eighties. Armed with these new weapons, Dr. Bosanquet 
 presents with greater freedom than Green did the concep- 
 tion of general will and the idea of a common good as 
 working instruments. Here he makes use of the progress 
 made by psychology and sociology and in so doing, accord- 
 ing to Prof. Barker, he approaches quite near to Hegel. 
 Institutions are regarded as the embodiment of living spirits 
 without which they can not be what they are. Green has 
 the same idea but it is not strained to the same extent. 
 State interference can only apply to the externals; what 
 Green calls the removal of obstructions Bosanquet calls the 
 hindrance of hindrances. State action is, therefore, pri- 
 
 » Bosanquet. The Philosophical Theory of The State. P. 325. 
 
I30 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 marily negative with both, but throughout their works 
 there is discernible a difference of degree of negativity. I 
 mention these differences between Green and Bosanquet 
 not for the purpose of indicating a revolt against the 
 former from among the ideaUsts themselves, but with the 
 view of demonstrating that Green, has little in common 
 with the absolutists of the idealistic school of thought. A3 
 will be shown later, an idealist is not necessarily an abso- 
 lutist. 
 
 Prof. Fairbrother is an outspoken disciple. In his Phil- 
 osophy of T. H. Green,* he declares in a prefatory note 
 that Green's philosophy is "perhaps the only complete and 
 consistent philosophy which derives and justifies both moral 
 responsibility in the present and hope for the future from 
 a rigorously scientific metaphysic." Widi this view in 
 mind, he defended Green from the onslaught of Prof, 
 ^eth, Mr. Balfour and Prof. Sedgwick. However, the at- 
 tack as well as the defence deals so exclusively with philo- 
 sophy and metaphysics that it is entirely beyond our sphere 
 to examine it. 
 
 Prof. Ritchie in his ^'Principles of State Interference" 
 points out that we can not find out one's attitude in politics 
 from one's philosophical speculation. Green is an idealist in 
 philosophy and a liberal in politics. Hobbes is a materiaHst 
 in philosophy and an absolutist in politics. Locke is an em- 
 piricist in philosophy and a whig in politics. There is no 
 mystery involved in any of the cases. In regard to Green's 
 philosophy. Prof. Ritchie sees a mistake in characterizing 
 it as Hegelian.' As far as he can see. Green's is a correc- 
 tion of Kant by Aristotle and of Aristotle by Kant. In re- 
 gard to freedom, Mr. Ritchie points out Green's departure 
 
 * Fairbrother. The Philosophy of T. H. Green. 
 5 Ritchie, Principles of State Interference. P. 139. 
 
 Green's Influence 
 
 131 
 
 \ 
 
 from the traditional conception. Freedom as is generally 
 understood means a removal or absence of obstruction and 
 as such it is merely negative. But with Green, it is positive, 
 it is the capacity or power to do or enjoy something worth 
 doing or enjoying. Out of this conception of freedom, Mr. 
 Ritchie argues, the principle of state interference can be 
 predicted. The state necessarily has to maintain condi- 
 tions under which it is possible for the people to do or enjoy 
 that which is worth doing or enjoying. That is, in inter- 
 fering, the state in its very act of interference is maintain- 
 ing conditions of freedom. It is evident that Mr. Ritchie 
 is very sympathetic in his comments and towards the end 
 of the book he praises the democratic attitude that Green 
 maintains both in active work and in writings. 
 
 Of the six writers whom Mr. MacCunn considers radi- 
 cal, Green is one. The account is on the whole laudatory, 
 though little of it is devoted to political theory. His com- 
 parison between Green and Bentham will voice his senti- 
 ment more adequately than any effort on my part. "Ben- 
 tham's philosophy was a fighting philosophy. When it was 
 given to the world, democracy was still an aspiration and 
 a struggle. What democracy needed was a rallying cry 
 rather than a reasoned justification. It found that in Ben- 
 tham . . . But time had passed. Democracy had 
 won ... It was when democratic citizenship had be- 
 come actually and potentially a recognized fact of the first 
 magnitude, when it had passed from struggle to success, 
 from aspiration to fruition that Green . . . began to 
 propound his civic idealism, thereby bringing to citizenship 
 a new dignity and elevation, and it may be added, fresh 
 grounds of confidence and hope. The poHtical philosophy 
 of Bentham at the beinning of the 19th century was still 
 a prophecy. The civic idealism of Green towards the end 
 of the century was the justification of the prophecy ful- 
 
 w/ 
 
 ^ 
 
132 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 filled." ^ Many in the present age will refuse to share the 
 optimism of Prof. MacCunn; they will probably deny that 
 democracy as an ideal has already become an accomplished 
 fact. 
 
 Prof. Muirhead has a profoimd respect for Green. In 
 some instances he attributes to Green what the latter would 
 probably hesitate to claim for himself. Clearly Green 
 wrote in a period in which the chief characteristic was said 
 by Prof. Dicey to be collectivism, and the reason why there 
 was not a strong opposition to state regulation at the time 
 when The Service of The State (1908) ^ was pubHshed 
 was not entirely due to Green's effort. In regard to social- 
 ism, Prof. Muirhead points out that if by it is meant the 
 reaUty of a social will as a practical working principle then 
 Green is emphatically socialistic. But if by socialism revo- 
 lution is implied, then Green is opposed to it. He is, as we 
 have already seen, opposed to revolution ; for he maintains 
 ^ that the object sought through revolution may not be worth 
 the disorder and probable destruction it entails. To the 
 socialism that seeks to overthrow capitalism Green will un- 
 doubtedly also object, since he sees no defect inherent in 
 capitalistic control of private property. Any possible connec- 
 tion between Green and socialism can only be urged with 
 extreme caution. Socialism can not be divested of its eco- 
 nomic origin and its economic significance and as such it 
 can not merely mean "the reality of a social will as a work- 
 ing principle." 
 
 Mr. Barker has probably given thei best account of 
 Green's theory.® He advises us to pay more attention to 
 the general principles than to the analysis of particular doc- 
 trines, as, for instance, Green's treatment of capital and 
 
 Green's Influence 
 
 133 
 
 / 
 
 ^/ - 
 
 • MacCunn. Six Radical Thinkers. Pp. 215-216. 
 T Muirhead. The Service of The State. 1908. 
 
 * Barker. Political Thought From Spencer to Today. 
 
 
 '\ 
 
 \/ 
 
 of unearned increment. He points out that Green com- ^ 
 bines Greek and German philosophy with English caution. ^ 
 The individual is nowhere overwhebned. Not only that, 
 but in Green there is also a recognition of the idea of uni- 
 versal brotherhood. The state is Hmited internally as well ^ 
 as externally. It must have a guiding principle in order to 
 function property, and that principle, according to Mr. 
 Barker, is better than the one Mill adopted. The distinction 
 of self-regarding and others-regarding acts is false, for 
 they can not be distinguished, while outward acts and in- 
 ward will can be distinguished and that distinction is a good^ 
 criterion for state action. While state action is not itself 
 moral, it yet serves a moral purpose. It is to maintain the 
 conditions under which morality may be possible. 'If it 
 does not interfere with morality, it is for the sake of mor- 
 aUty that it refrains; if it does interfere with external acts, 
 it is also for the sake of morality that it intervenes." * 
 
 Mr. H. J. Laski permits disagreement of opinions to a 
 remarkable extent; for though he abhors the doctrines of 
 the idealists, he admires their ability, and though he attacks 
 them with all the power he has at his command, he does 
 not hesitate to admit that Green's "Principles of PoUtical 
 ObUgation" and Bosanquet's "Philosophical Theory of The 
 State" are the two greatest works in English political the- 
 ory since Mill's time.^« While recognizing the differences 
 between Green and the other idealists, Mr. Laski criticises 
 him in the same way as he criticises them; for as far as 
 Green is concerned, it is not what he was, but what he has 
 been understood or misunderstood to be that invites criti- 
 cism. In other words, it is not Green's doctrines but their 
 consequences that need be corrected. Green, more than 
 anyone else, in Mr. Laski's opinion, is responsible for what 
 
 » Barker. Political Thought From Spencer to Today. J. 60. 
 10 Laski. Authority in The Modem State. P. (i^. Footnote 
 
 y^ 
 
^v 
 
 134 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Prof. Hobhouse has called the flowing of the Rhine into 
 the Thames, and is on that account blamable. 
 
 But after all Mr. Laski's criticism is more or less centered 
 around the conception of "general will" ^^ and is by no 
 means a total rejection of Green's theories. The latter's 
 influence is easily traceable in the "Authority in the 
 Modem State." Mr. Laski is one of those who are 
 now "reviving" the doctrines of natural rights. The word 
 "reviving" is misleading; for what is at present termed 
 natural rights is quite different from the "rights" of The 
 Virginia Constitution of 1776, or of the American Decla- 
 v^ ration of Independence, or of the French Declaration of 
 ^ ^ Rights, and since they are different they need no "reviving." 
 According to Mr. Laski, a right is natural "in the sense that 
 ^ V^ / the given conditions of society at the particular time require 
 its recognition. It is not justified on grounds of history. 
 It is not justified on grounds of any abstract or absolute 
 ethic. It is simply insisted that if, in a given condition of 
 society, power is so exerted as to refuse the recognition of 
 that right, resistance is bound to be encountered. By right, 
 that is to say, we mean a demand that has behind the bur- 
 den of the general experience of the society. It is, as Green 
 has said, "a power of which the exercise by the individual 
 or by some body of men is recognized by a society either as 
 itself directly essential to the common good, or as conferred 
 by an authority of which the maintenance is recognized as 
 so essential." " It is, therefore, Green's idea garbed in 
 realistic terms. 
 
 Again, take for instance the conception of liberty. Mr. 
 Laski quotes Green's definition with approvaV^ and de- 
 clares that it is more valuable than the negative conception, 
 
 " Laski. Authority in The Modern State. P. 67. 
 ^* Laski. Authority in The Modern State. P. 43. 
 " Laski. Authority in The Modern State. P. 55. 
 
 Green's Influence 
 
 135 
 
 because it insists on what, in this age, we feel to be funda- 
 mental in liberty — the power of adding something to the 
 quality of the common Ufe.^* In this connection, it may be 
 observed that Mr. Laski is even over-enthusiastic about 
 
 f^ Green. He claims that Green in the "Prolegomena to 
 Ethics" has answered the question as to what is worth 
 while to do and to enjoy, that is, as to what good is. It is 
 true that Green defines true good as that which satisfies the 
 moral agent,^^ and a moral agent is endowed with moral ca- 
 pabiUties, the realization of which forms the moral good.^' 
 
 ^ But according to Green, we do not know our moral capa- 
 bilities till their realization and they are not and can not 
 be completely realized. He therefore admits his inability 
 to define exactly what true good consists of.^^ He is only 
 able to form general ideas about it. The conclusion is that 
 as true good is or would be complete realization of moral 
 
 ^ capabilities, so goodness is proportional to one's habitual 
 responsiveness to the idea of there being such a true good 
 in the various forms of recognized duty and beneficent 
 work in which that idea has so far taken shape among 
 men." If a definition is to render a defined subject definite, 
 then, the conclusion arrived at by Green falls short of a de- 
 
 X finition. 
 
 Mr. Lilly believes in the doctrine of natural rights and 
 adopts Green's definition.^^ His adoption of Green's idea is 
 not so apparent but the substance of it is there. The foun- 
 dation of the state is, for instance, declared to be justice.^** 
 
 t^ 
 
 1* Laski. Authority in The Modern State. P. 55. 
 15 Green, Prolegomena to Ethics. P. 195. 
 i« Green, Prolegomena to Ethics. P. 196. 
 
 17 Green, Prolegomena to Ethics. P. 18. 
 
 18 Green, Prolegomena to Ethics. P. 207. 
 
 19 Lilly, First Principles in Politics. P, vil 
 20Lilly, First Principles in Politics. P. 10. 
 
y 
 
 136 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Justice is based on the conception of an absolute order of 
 right which demands a system of rights and obUgations 
 that should be maintained by law whether they are so or 
 not. These rights, to employ Green's expression, "may 
 properly be called natural." " The definition of the word 
 "natural" is, therefore, admittedly the same as that of 
 Green. The conception of a right as necessarily involving 
 a claim on the part of an individual to a free exercise of 
 some faculty, and a recognition of that claim by society, 
 is also essentially Green's idea. The ultimate foundation 
 of the state is "the law of man's rational nature, in virtue 
 of which he is a person invested with rights and encom- 
 passed by duties." " That is to say, will and not force is 
 the true basis of the state. Thus in broad outline, Mr. Lilly 
 may be considered a follower of Green. 
 
 Sir Roland Wilson is trained in law, and lawyers are not 
 generally given to metaphysical speculation. He is, there- 
 fore, expected to disagree with the idealists, but he is care- 
 ful in dealing with the doctrines with which he finds him- 
 self in disagreement. He agrees with the idealists that man 
 is by nature a social being, and that he can not realize his 
 full self except in a community,^^ but he doubts and, I 
 think, rightly, that that community is necessarily the state. 
 If, he argues, the principle of state interference is to main- 
 tain conditions under which morality may be possible, then 
 it leaves room for all sorts of restrictive measures which 
 are not properly within the province of the state.** Sir 
 Roland Wilson clearly distinguishes moral from legal 
 rights,*' but, it seems to me, he contradicts himself in criti- 
 
 " Lilly, First Principles in Politics. P. 9. 
 
 22 Lilly, First Principles in Politics. P. 9. 
 
 23 Sir Roland Wilson, The Province of The State. P. 212. 
 2* Sir Roland Wilson, The Province of The State. P. 215. 
 25 Sir Roland Wilson, The Province of The State. P. 216. 
 
 Green's Influence 
 
 137 
 
 ? 
 
 i 
 
 s 
 
 \x 
 
 cising Green's theory of natural rights ; for in his criticism 
 he confuses that which should be in principle with that 
 which is as a matter of fact enforced.^® Being a lawyer, 
 he prefers the legal conception of rights in which neither 
 reciprocity nor consciousness of a common good are neces- 
 sary elements." However, when he argues that "to stretch 
 the state so as to cover all these non-official agencies is to 
 bebase our linguistic coinage without any compensating 
 gain,2* it must be said, his argument is not applicable to 
 Green. He is decidedly in error when he says that "state" 
 and "sovereign" are by both of these writers [Green and Bo- 
 sanquet] treated as interchangeable ; for as far as Green is 
 concerned, state and sovereign are expressly distinguished.^' 
 Even in America Green's influence is noticeable. Prof. 
 Willoughby has few references to Green in his "Nature of 
 The State," but these few are sufficient to indicate Green's 
 influence. Prof. Willoughby agrees with Green that mor- 
 ality is incapable of legal enforcement ^° and, in so agreeing, 
 he necessarily accepts also Green's definition of morality. 
 Like Green, he is dissatisfied with the theory of Social Con- 
 tract, and his arguments against it are in some ways similar 
 to those of Green. He agrees, for instance, that natural 
 right as "a right in a state of nature which is not a state 
 of society is a contradiction," " and in thus agreeing with 
 Green he also accepts the latter's idea of rights as involving 
 both a claim on the part of the individual and also a recog-^ 
 nition of that claim by society. Rights thus conceived can 
 only exist in a society, and if they exist in a state of nature 
 
 2«Sir Roland Wilson. The Province of The State. P. 217. 
 2TSir Roland Wilson, The Province of The State. P. 219. 
 
 28 Sir Roland Wilson, The Province of The State. P. 223. 
 
 29 Green, Principles of Political Obligation, Pp. 136-137. 
 80 Willoughby, The Nature of the State. P. S3. 
 
 " Willoughby, The Nature of the State. P. 107. 
 
 x^ 
 
138 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 at all, that state of nature, as Green has pointed out, is al- 
 ready a political society. Hence Prof. Willoughby comes 
 to the conclusion that the true origin of the state "must be 
 conceived as an act of a people rather than of individuals. 
 The existence of a common or 'general will' must be 
 predicated, and the creation of the state held to be due to 
 
 its volition." 32 
 
 For the rest of the chapter, I shall content myself with 
 four books recently published. The first is 'The Principles 
 of Citizenship," by Sir Henry Jones. The author declares 
 that the point of view that he has adopted is neither psycho- 
 logical nor economic, but ethical. In fact, according to his 
 estimation, "the modem economist will now admit that his 
 science is abstract just as the modern psychologist will ad- 
 mit that faculties of the human mind are not separable 
 powers with an empty ego in the back-ground." ^^ This 
 should be quite encouraging, if in adopting the ethical point 
 of view in treating political theory, Sir Henry Jones has 
 either a new programme to offer or a decided improvement 
 of the old political idealism. He does not seem to have 
 offered either. While following Green in many respects, 
 his philosophy is essentially along the lines of Bradley and 
 Bosanquet. State, to him, is a moral agent and in function- 
 ing it should not limit itself merely to the externals as 
 Green has so cautiously preached. According to Sir Henry 
 Jones, externals and internals can not be separated. If the 
 state has to intervene at all, it has to intervene not only with 
 the external action, but also with the supposedly internal 
 motive. In fact, state interference should be positive in 
 nature so as to secure the desired end, that is, "to make 
 human nature in citizens all that it has in it to become." ^* 
 
 32 Willoughby, The Nature of the State. P. 123. 
 
 33 Sir Henry Jones, The Principles of Citizenship. P. 161. 
 3* Sir Henry Jones, The Principles of Citizenship. P. 132. 
 
 Green's Influence 
 
 139 
 
 it 
 
 > 
 
 It may and ought to exercise authority over the external 
 conditions of life of its members with the view of chang- 
 ing not only their outward actions and intentions, but their 
 motives and character." ^^ 
 
 Sir Henry Jones accepts Green's theory of natural rights, 
 and in so considering rights and duties, he also accords the 
 state the right to act positively. If state action is not merely 
 negative but also positive, what, it may be asked, is the cri- 
 terion of state action? The criterion is declared to be the 
 positive promotion of the good life.^^ This criterion is ap- 
 plicable to war. The state has the right to summon citi- 
 zens to a just war and to no other; and the citizen, on his 
 part, has a right and duty to fight for a just war, and no 
 other. But, who is to judge as to whether a war is just or 
 unjust? The answer is both state and citizen. The state, 
 being a moral agent, can not delegate its power for judging. 
 The citizen has the right and duty to judge for himself and 
 to act accordingly. It may even be his duty to fight his 
 own country. This sounds quite radical, but — "what can 
 not be his duty is that of taking no sides when the question 
 of right or wrong is being decided by means of war. The 
 pacifist's protest against the war when his country is fight- 
 ing is the affirmation of the moral principle when it can not 
 be applied. . . . The good man deals with the present 
 circumstances and finds his duty at his hand." ®^ 
 
 I wonder if it may not be inferred from this that if a 
 citizen opposes war, he must leave the country, lest the 
 subsequent circumstances may compel him to discharge 
 fresh duties at his hand. But, then, that leaves the state 
 practically alone to decide whether a war is just or unjust. 
 
 "Sir Henry Jones, The Principles of Citizenship. P. 132. 
 3« Sir Henry Jones, The Principles of Citizenship. P. 153. 
 37 Sir Henry Jones, The Principles of Citizenship. F. 158. 
 
I40 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 In regard to property, the rights of the state and the citi- 
 zen are, according to Sir Henry Jones, in similar way lim- 
 ited. The four principles ^^ to be observed are: 1. Rights 
 of free life mean nothing without sustenance ; 2. the right 
 of property is sacred on the same ground as the right to life 
 and liberty ; 3. state must faciUtate the means that helps to 
 exercise this right ; 4. right of property is made contingent 
 upon the use made of it. 
 
 Sir Henry Jones follows Green, but he follows Bradley 
 and Bosanquet to a much greater extent. 
 
 Prof. Watson is confessedly an ideaUst and as far as po- 
 litical theory is concerned admits his debt to both Green 
 and Bosanquet. He believes of course that the true basis 
 of the state is will. He believes in general will but argues 
 that Rousseau confuses the general will with the will of 
 all ; ®^ but if there is any confusion at all, it is not Rousseau 
 but Prof. Watson who is really confused. At any rate he 
 believes in general will as a will common to the citizens of 
 a state, a rational will— "that will which the individual in 
 his best mind recognizes." ^'^ Ultimately it is the general 
 will which is sovereign and it is the duty of the legal sov- 
 ereign to discover what this general will is. 
 
 The general will creates rights and the system of rules 
 for the maintenance of these rights which are necessary for 
 the realization of the good will. These rights may be 
 termed "natural" but they neither belong to men in isolation 
 as the advocates of Social Contract believed, nor are they 
 created by law as Bentham held. They are justified on the 
 ground that if they are not secured, man is not able to live 
 his own life freely and to contribute his share to the com- 
 
 "Sir Henry Jones, The Principles of Citizenship. Pp.165-166. 
 8» Watson, The State in War and Peace. P. 192. 
 *o Watson, The State in War and Peace. P. 223. 
 
 Green's Influence 
 
 141 
 
 '1 
 
 i 
 
 mon good. They involve a claim on the part of the indi- 
 vidual and a recognition of that claim by either society 
 or the state. Prof. Watson here uses the terms society and 
 the state interchangeably.*^ The specific rights are life, 
 liberty, equality and property. The last also includes the 
 right to the freedom of contract. 
 
 The state is an organized society of men, and is sov- 
 ereign. Sovereignty is supreme power, but the supremacy 
 of the state is relative and not absolute.*^ That is, the 
 state has supreme power within a certain sphere to dictate 
 or to prevent the action of others. It has no power to 
 interfere with all sorts of activities. The state is above all 
 other organizations not in the sense that it can make and 
 unmake them at will, but in the sense that it is the high 
 court of appeal through which their conflicting claims are 
 harmonized.*^ The principle of state interference is to make 
 moral acts possible by regulation, but not to enforce them.** 
 The morality of the state is different from the morality of 
 individuals. That does not exempt the state from moral 
 responsibility. Like Green, Prof. Watson is against war, 
 but he does not go to the same extent as Green does in 
 denouncing war. His idea of the cause of war is very 
 much Green's; so also is his idea of its prevention. Like- 
 wise he believes in having better political organization in- 
 ternally so as to diminish friction externally. He agrees 
 with Bosanquet that a healthy state is not a militant state. 
 
 From the above account, it is only evident that Prof. 
 Watson follows Green closely and if there is any diver- 
 gence of view at all between the two, it is hardly noticeable. 
 
 " Watson, The State in War and Peace. P. 222. 
 
 *2 Watson, The State in War and Peace. P. 198. 
 
 *« Watson, The State in War and Peace. P. 208. 
 
 ** Watson, The State in War and Peace. P. 217. 
 
V 
 
 142 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 On the whole, no improvement is made, and very Ukely none 
 
 is intended. 
 
 However, the modem tendency is unmistakably agamst 
 political idealism. Mr. Joad, in his "Essays in Common 
 Sense Philosophy," launches a well-considered attack on 
 ideaUstic political philosophy. He points out that political 
 idealism regards the state as self-sufficing and as above 
 morality, and that it believes that the state and individuals 
 are so intimately interwoven with each other that the act 
 of the state is never unrepresentative of the individuals, and 
 the act of the individuals has inseparable reference to the 
 state. One of the shortcomings of idealistic absolutism is 
 that it identifies state with society. But state and society 
 are two different entities. Human society is greater and 
 more comprehensive than a state. In fact, judging from 
 the past, just as families unite into tribes and tribes into 
 nations, it will not be at all surprising to have nations unite 
 into one great society in the future. To confound human 
 society and the nation state is a mistake of the first magni- 
 tude. 
 
 Mr. Joad feels that the idealist philosophers seem to be 
 in the habit of philosophizing in utter disregard of facts. 
 In the first place, the state, that is, the political organiza- 
 tion, is not the only organization in which human beings 
 are interested. The church, to many, is a much more inti- 
 mate organization; for while the state touches every-day 
 life hardly at all, the church reminds some people of its 
 existence at least once a week- Industrial unions touch 
 economic life at such vital spots and with such intimacy that 
 they arouse much more interest among their members than 
 the state does among its citizens. Furthermore, with 
 churches and trade unions or other voluntary organizations 
 a man identifies himself by choice. The claims of these 
 voluntary organizations may be said to be moral, but the 
 
 ^11 
 
 Green's Influence 
 
 143 
 
 * 
 
 Wi 
 
 claims of the state seem to be often founded on "topo- 
 graphical accident." One belongs to it "because he hap- 
 pened to be bom in a certain bedroom, a phenomenon over 
 which he has no control." *® This sounds wildly radical, 
 but Mr. Joad is neither an anarchist nor a syndicalist. He 
 believes in the necessity of a state. Because society is 
 more and more industrialized, because human beings are 
 more and more interdependent, and economic efforts are 
 generally blind, a political association like the state is all the 
 more necessary. But the kind of state he believes in is far 
 different from the Utopia of the political idealists. 
 
 I have no quarrel with Mr. Joad's arguments which, when 
 directed towards political absolutists, are on the whole 
 sound. But it does not seem to be exactly correct to bring 
 Green almost indiscriminately into the company of Hegel, 
 Bradley and Bosanquet as Mr. Joad does in the first part 
 of his chapter. I think there are differences which it will 
 be profitable for us not to disregard. Mr. Joad seems to 
 realize that fact later on in his book when Green's name 
 disappears, but it is not certain whether that disappearance 
 is due to careless omission or intentional exclusion. 
 
 Mr. Hobhouse in this respect makes his position unmis- 
 takable. He enters into the controversy with a grave pur- 
 pose.*^ Like his son, he is engaged in a battle to make the 
 world safe for democracy, but unlike his son his efforts 
 run in a different channel- In order that the end may be 
 obtained, not only must the swords be sharpened, but the 
 pen must also contribute its share. While militarism is 
 being destroyed in the world of practice, idealistic abso- 
 lutism should be repudiated in the world of thought. Thus 
 Prof. Hobhouse takes Hegelianism to task. It is not neces- 
 
 *^ Joad, Essays in Common Sense Philosophy. P. 189. 
 *^ Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of The State. 
 
144 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 Green's Influence 
 
 145 
 
 J 
 
 «ary to examine the specific charges which are brought 
 against Dr. Bosanquet with the strength of reasoning and 
 lucidity of expression generally expected from such a vet- 
 eran writer as Hobhouse. My purpose in introducing him 
 is to indicate, as he has indicated, that Green is far differ- 
 ent from the thoroughly idealistic absolutists. 
 
 Prof. Hobhouse thinks that Green has retained his fun- 
 J damental humanity *« and that at his hands Hegelianism 
 has been transformed into social idealism.'*® He points out 
 that Green is always cautious where the rights of the indi- 
 viduals are concerned and that individuals are not absorbed 
 in the state. He accepts Green's theory of natural rights 
 with the exception of its idealistic ingredients. According 
 to Green, a claim on the part of the individual becomes a 
 right only when it is met with social and presumably con- 
 scious recognition, for idealistically speaking, nothing is 
 but thinking makes it so. According to Professor Hob- 
 house, a right is a right, whether recognized or not, when- 
 ever proof is given of its necessity. The general will with 
 Green is really conceived, according to Mr. Hobhouse, in 
 the psychological sense. "It is the impalpable congeries of 
 hopes and fears of a people bound together by common 
 interest and sympathy." ^^ "It is the common will and rea- 
 son of men as determined by social relations, as interested 
 in each other, as acting together for common ends" " With 
 Green, general will is not to overwhelm the individual, 
 neither to override the moral law. When he declares that 
 will and not force is the basis of the state, it is the state 
 that is dependent upon will. If the state is not so depend- 
 ent, it is a state only by courtesy, as Green said of Russia. 
 
 J 
 
 J 
 
 *8 Hobhouse, Metaphysical Theory of The State. 
 *» Hobhouse, Metaphysical Theory of The State, 
 w Principles of Political Obligation. P. 98. 
 51 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 103. 
 
 P. 83. 
 P. 120. 
 
 Professor Hobhouse may not have pointed out all the dif- 
 ferences between Green and the other idealists, but he 
 does distinguish him from them- Hence in fighting to make 
 the world safe for democracy, he is not fighting against 
 Green so much as against Messrs. Bradley and Bosanquet. 
 
 ? 
 
 I 
 
 (I 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 The above survey of criticisms and comments indicates 
 that Green has not been properly dealt with. His followers 
 praise him too highly and attribute virtues to him that do 
 not belong to his share, while his critics sometimes reveal 
 a hostility that should not be his due. It is my purpose in 
 this chapter to bring out the distinct merits as well as the 
 defects embodied in Green's philosophy, but before starting 
 on that, one erroneous impression should be cleared off. 
 The belief that political idealism is necessarily political ab- 
 solutism is entirely unwarranted. The factors leading to 
 such a belief are probably accidental. Locke was one of 
 the most influential advocates of democracy and it happened 
 that he was an empiricist. Hegel was the intellectual leader 
 of German absolutism and it happened that Hegel was an 
 idealist. It might be urged that Locke wrote as a practical 
 politician, and was influential because Englishmen admired 
 the practical ; while Hegel wrote as a philosopher, and was 
 followed because the Germans worshipped the profound. 
 But as a matter of fact, empiricism is no more wedded to 
 democracy than idealism to absolutism. We need only 
 bear in mind that the absolutism of Thomas Hobbes pro- 
 ceeded from his materialism and the democratic tendencies 
 of the 18th century attributable to the eloquence of Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau could be traced to the idealism back of 
 his doctrines. Whether or not the "determinism distilled 
 out of evolutionary science" * has surrendered to the tactics 
 
 ^Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism. P. 187. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 147 
 
 of conservatism, as Mr. Hobson claims, it is easy to point 
 out that empiricism has sometimes played into the clutching 
 hands of either autocracy or plutocracy. Neither is it hard 
 to single out instances where idealism has generated cen- 
 trifugal forces in modem politics. Philosophical labels do 
 not matter much, but a great deal depends upon their appli- 
 cation. 
 
 A few words need be said of the age in which Green 
 wrote. The years 1776 and 1870 inaugurated different 
 eras. The period of the American Revolution was memor- 
 able for many reasons. In the sphere of everyday life, the 
 world had started on its great transformation. Hand in- 
 dustry was about to be replaced by machine industry. The 
 thing we made — to employ the expression of William Mor- 
 ns — had begun to "drive" in the beginning of the 19th cen- 
 tury. Misery and poverty had gotten hold of the working 
 classes. In the field of intellectual speculation, the year 
 1776 was memorable. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations 
 and Bentham's Fragment on Government appeared in the 
 same year. With physiocratic tendencies and the traditions 
 of the 18th century philosophy the world might be said to 
 have chosen an extremely individualistic path. Intellectually 
 and factually, the period between 1776 and 1870 is one of 
 laisses faire. 
 
 The last quarter of the last century marked a decided 
 change. From 1870 to 1914 we have a period of collec- 
 tivism, a period which Professor Hayes has characterized 
 as the Era of Benevolent Bourgeoisie. Politically speaking, 
 it is a period of intense nationalism in regard to foreign 
 relations. Competitive armaments, the exodus of capital, 
 and secret diplomacy are the distinguishing marks of inter- 
 national politics. It is a period of statism internally. The 
 bourgeoisie, emerging from what was formerly called the 
 middle class, gained political ascendancy. The successjEul 
 
148 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 business men who are proudly described as being "self- 
 made men" are often remindful of the bitter cup of expen- 
 ence they had once drunk and, thanks to democracy, they 
 have attained success. Success seems to be the magic goal. 
 A few succeed, some are succeeding, all are trying to suc- 
 ceed and in their frantic efforts to attain success, people of 
 all classes, contrary to Marxian prediction, have worked 
 together for "development" and "progress." National con- 
 sciousness prevails to a much greater extent than class con- 
 sciousness. In order to have peace within and honor 
 abroad, the state must have necessary power to "regulate," 
 to "adjust" and eventually to guide. That is the spirit of 
 the age and it is with that spirit that Green has formulated 
 
 his theories. 
 
 Obviously, merits are not lacking in Green's philosophy, 
 but unfortunately its Hegelian label has prejudiced its con- 
 tent. Those who have studied him, however, generally 
 deny that he is a Hegelian at all. Mr. Alfred William 
 Benn, in his History of English Rationalism in the I9th 
 Century, asserts vigorously that Green is not a Hegelian. 
 Professor Barker describes Green's writings as a product 
 of Oxford, immediately influenced by German philosophy, 
 but ultimately traceable to Greek thought. 
 
 More specifically Green is more of an Aristotelian than 
 >/ a Platonist, and tnore of 'a Kantian than a Hegelian. 
 Professor Barker is not alone in his estimation, for Pro- 
 fessor Ritchie has come to almost the same conclusion in 
 different words. The latter is of the opinion that Green's 
 philosophy is a correction of Kant by Aristotle and of 
 Aristotle by Kant. If so, he may be said to be "both Kantian 
 and Aristotelian. The same may in a certain sense be said 
 of Hegel, but that in no sense identifies him with Green. 
 In fact, referring to Hegel's work, Green has himself said 
 that it must be done over again. These opinions indicate 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 149 
 
 
 i 
 
 that Green has really no occasion for borrowing a Hegelian 
 mantle. Love for Hegel should not be cultivated on ac- 
 count of Green and prejudice against Hegel should not be 
 carried over to Green. 
 
 Of the merits the first to be mentioned is Green's theory y 
 of natural rights. First of all it serves two distinct pur- >/ 
 poses as far as Green himself is concerned. It discredits . 
 the kind of absolutism that attributes rights to the grace of 
 the sovereign, and it proves the falsity of the doctrine of 
 government by the consent of the governed. If consent 
 is a supreme necessity, then vote counting is a necessary 
 part of the government. If vote counting is necessary, then 
 there is always the difficulty of explaining and justifying 
 the obedience of the minority. That justification has not 
 been furnished by anybody and is not furnished by Green ; 
 but Green's theory of natural rights decreases the neces- 
 sity of such a justification to a considerable extent. Green 
 abhors mathematical government. Government based upon / 
 a counting of noses may be a practical expedient, but it 
 can not be our democratic ideal. Government is, after all, y 
 a means to an end; make your means your end, and you 
 defeat your ultimate purpose in life. 
 
 Further, Green's theory of natural rights is in harmony 
 with modern economic facts and sociological theories- Di- 
 vision of labor prevails on a greater scale than ever before 
 and interdependence of individuals is much more in evi- 
 dence. A breakfast in London today may involve coflFee 
 from South America, wheat from North Dakota, tea from 
 Ceylon, sugar from Cuba and probably potatoes from Ire- 
 land. Not only is the fact of economic interdependence 
 indisputable, but also, as is claimed by sociologists, there 
 Is constantly in evidence a social consciousness working 
 for a social good. We hear a great deal of "the conscious- 
 ness of kind." of "social mentality," of "social mind" a^d 
 of "social consciousness," and if we deduce any lesson from 
 
4 
 
 J 
 
 / 
 
 J 
 
 J 
 
 / 
 
 J 
 
 150 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 them at all, it is that of mutual interdependence and the 
 necessity of cooperation. 
 
 Now the old traditional theory of natural rights does 
 not harmonize with these, if not new, at least more clearly 
 defined facts and tendencies. One can not live in a society 
 of mutual interdependence and retain at the same time the 
 kind of natural rights that are supposedly existent in an iso- 
 lated state of nature. One can not live in a society whose 
 predominant characteristic is cooperation and at the same 
 time assert fully the rights that are supposedly carried over 
 from a state of nature, the chief feature of which is in- 
 dividual independence and isolation. Eighteenth century 
 economics has been tried and found wanting. Eighteenth 
 century political philosophy is equally so, and as far as the 
 theory of natural rights is concerned, Green's correction is 
 very likely in the right direction. 
 
 Green's theory of state interference will be found valu- 
 able. Mill, it will be remembered, divides human actions 
 into the self -regarding and others-regarding and considers 
 the latter alone as subject to state interference. The dis- 
 tinction is not sound, for human actions are far more often 
 both self -regarding and others-regarding rather than either 
 alone. A principle that is itself defective offers no guidance 
 to the practice of state interference. Green's distinction 
 between outward acts and inward will is one which, though 
 not ideal, offers guidance to better advantage in view of 
 the complexity of human relations. Outward acts alone 
 are subject to state interference, because inward will not 
 only should not be but also cannot be. 
 
 Many will not concede that Green has scored over Mill 
 in this matter; for they say that it is just as hard to decide 
 which of the outward acts should be a subject for state 
 interference as it is to distinguish between the self-regard- 
 ing and others-regarding. The advantage lies in the fact 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 151 
 
 \ 
 
 that by Green's distinction, at least one part of human 
 effort is excluded from the political area. Furthermore, 
 Green's distinction is, after all, a real distinction, while 
 Mill's is not. As to which of the outward acts should be 
 subject to state interference. Green's answer is that only 
 those should be that obstruct the possibility of a moral life. 
 Basically it is to remove obstructions that the state inter- 
 venes. Dr. Bosanquet seeks to improve the phraseology by 
 urging the expression, ^'Hindrance of hindrances." This, 
 being the one Kant^ used, Green must have been well 
 aware of. 
 
 The difference between Mill and Green, as stated above, 
 is fundamentally a difference in the conception of liberty. 
 Mill's conception of liberty is negative, it is freedom from 
 obstruction. Green's conception is positive. It is a positive 
 power or capacity of doing or enjoying something worth 
 doing or enjoying and something we do or enjoy in common 
 with others. The difference is probably natural. Mill's 
 conception is the traditional conception that has the 18th 
 century philosophy at the background. The natural man 
 is the good man. Left to themselves the people will be all 
 right. It was restraint that forced people to be other than 
 good ; hence the negative conception of liberty. By Green's 
 time, however, the evils of laxssez faire have already be- 
 come evident. The freedom of contract in commerce, in 
 labor, in factory conditions and in industry in general has 
 produced child and woman labor, misery, poverty and slav- 
 ery which can not be tolerated by a man of Green's tem- 
 perament and religious fervor. Something must be done, 
 and who can do it better than the state. The 18th century 
 philosophers were primarily concerned with removing op- 
 pression from above. Oppression is obstruction, hence, lib- 
 
 2 Kant, Mctaphysischc Anfangsgriinde der Rechtslehre, Ein- 
 leitung XXXV, Sec. D. 
 
 1/ 
 
152 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 erty is freedom from obstruction, primarily from above. 
 By Green's time the problem is to remove the conditions 
 voluntarily imposed by the people themselves that deprive 
 them of any exercise of the power or capacity that is within 
 them. The problem is to remove these conditions, these 
 obstructions, not so much from above as from the stronger 
 who are able to impose their will on the weaker. There- 
 fore if the state intervenes, it does so for the purpose of 
 maintaining rather than obstructing freedom- 
 
 Apart from its connection with the principle of state 
 interference, the positive conception of freedom is itself 
 useful. Some disadvantages of the negative conception are 
 the advantages of the positive conception. The negative 
 conception of liberty easily degenerates into license. It is 
 often taken to be the right of doing whatsoever one will 
 with what he is or has as his own. If such is the case, 
 there will be the greatest scramble in society and anarchy 
 may likely result. The positive conception of freedom 
 means creative human effort. By definition it consists of 
 doing or enjoying something worth doing or enjoying. The 
 importance of conscious creative human effort can not be 
 over- emphasi zed ; for there is too much evidence every- 
 where of blind confidence that the future will be bright or 
 fatalistic submission to the conviction that it will be dark. 
 Either of the two is dangerous and detrimental to human 
 progress, and by identifying freedom with creative human 
 effort, this danger may be, if not avoided, at least lessened. 
 This positive conception, again, has the advantage of im- 
 plying the idea of a common good. Freedom is not merely 
 the power to do or to enjoy something worth doing or en- 
 joying, but also to do or enjoy in common with others. It 
 is not doing what one likes with his own, for doing what 
 one likes with his own may not be doing in common with 
 others. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 153 
 
 i 
 
 t 
 
 i 
 
 Closely related to the conception of freedom and the ^ 
 principle of state interference is the reconciUation of in- 
 dividualism and collectivism. It is no more correct to say ^ 
 that Green is a thorough-going collectivist than to say 
 that he is a thorough-going individuaUst. He is neither 
 and both, viz., in him there is a happy reconciliation. 
 Green's conception of reason and of the will to good in- 
 volves the idea of perfection or of a possibility of perfec- 
 tion. Man is determined to action by this idea of a pos- K 
 sible perfection of himself. But along just what lines one 
 will seek his own good and improvement must depend upon 
 his own capacity or power. This brings us back to the con- 
 ception of freedom. 
 
 If by reason in the moral sense is meant a consciousness 
 of a possibility of perfection to be realized in and by the 
 subject of consciousness, and if by freedom in the political 
 sense is meant the power or capacity to do or enjoy certain 
 things worth doing or enjoying; the two taken together will 
 amount to nothing less than "self expression" in the pres- 
 ent day terminology. They mean a consciousness in a 
 man of the possibility of perfection in his power or capacity 
 to do that which is worth doing to satisfy himself. This is 
 individualism and it is individualism of the highest order. 
 It is free from anarchistic tendencies, for they are excluded 
 from its constituent elements. 
 
 As to collectivism, we need not repeat wjiat has already 
 been said with reference to the principle of state interfer- 
 ence. The only point to be singled out is that with Green 
 individualism and collectivism are harmonious with rather 
 than antagonistic to each other. Collectivism under the 
 guidance and application of the principle of state interfer- 
 ence facilitates and strengthens individualism. Indeed, what 
 Professor Barker has said of morality may also be said of 
 individualism. If the state does not intervene, it is for the 
 
 
 iX 
 
154 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 sake of individuality that the state refrains ; and if it does 
 intervene, it is also for the sake of individuality that it 
 intervenes. 
 
 There is one point in Green's philosophy that is espe- 
 cially in keeping with the spirit of the present time. He dis- 
 tinguishes state from what may be called Great Society. To 
 v' Green, the state presupposes other associations. It does 
 not, for instance, create rights but gives fuller reality to 
 rights already existing.^ But what rights are already ex- 
 isting, viz., what rights existed previous to the formation 
 of the state? 
 
 For answer let us refer to Green's theory of natural 
 
 rights. Men by virtue of being in society are in certain 
 
 / relations and conditions that must be secured to them in 
 
 "•' order that they may fulfil their moral ideal, that is, in order 
 that they may develop their power and capacity. This is in 
 
 y essence the foundation of rights. Do they depend upon the 
 
 • state? According to Green, they "arise out of social rela- 
 tions that may exist where a state is not. . . . They 
 
 / depend for their existence indeed on society but not on so- 
 ciety's having assumed the form of a state." * Therefore 
 there are rights that are independent of any state- Not only 
 are they independent of, but in a sense, more fundamental 
 than the state. For in the first place the purpose for which 
 the state exists at all is to give fuller reality to them. Sec- 
 ondly, some of them the state should never violate. Green 
 is positive in his denunciation of war, and the reason given 
 is that it violates the rights to life in the members of both 
 the offending and the defending state. When discussing 
 the question whether or not conflict between states is in- 
 evitable, Green says: "No action in its own interest of a 
 state that fulfilled this idea," viz., the idea of a state as a 
 
 8 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 138. 
 * Principles of Politiical Obligation. P. 150. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 155 
 
 « 
 
 i 
 
 maintainer and harmonizer of rights, "could conflict with 
 any true interest or right of general society." ^ Later on 
 he expresses his hope that an idea of justice, as a relation 
 which should subsist among the whole of mankind, as well 
 as between the members of the same state, may come to 
 act on men's minds as independently of all calculation of 
 their several interests as does the idea which regulates the 
 conduct of a good citizen.® 
 
 This differentiation between the state and human society 
 and Green's discussion of the right of the citizens to resist v- 
 the state reveals his attitude towards the nature of state 
 acts. State acts are not something irresistible and uncon- 
 trolled, but something with reference to which the terms 
 right and wrong may be correctly used. The state is not » 
 above morality internally any more than externally. In- 
 ternally, -the state may do wrong, and externally, in regard " 
 to other states it may also do wrong ; Green's doctrine has 
 nothing to indicate that state and society are synonymous, 
 as Mr. Joad seems to imply. In fact, Green expects that 
 with the better and more perfect organization of the state 
 according to its idea, the two will be harmonized. Neither 
 is there any ground for supposing that, according to Green, 
 state can do no wrong, for he has at least shown that the 
 state does do wrong in many instances. The state as Green 
 conceives it is, after all, not the horrible being that indis- 
 criminate critics of political idealism are afraid of. 
 
 In the foregoing paragraphs, I have endeavored to pre- 
 sent some of the merits of Green's system which seem to 
 be well worthy of acknowledgment. In the following par- 
 agraphs, I shall deal with some defects which admirers of 
 Green would like to see eliminated. 
 
 First of all, the theory that institutions are the embodi- ^ 
 
 » Principles of Political Obligation. P. 170. 
 « Principles of Political Obligation. P. 178. 
 
v." 
 
 ^' 
 
 
 4 
 
 * 156 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 
 / / 
 
 
 / 
 
 ment of reason^ is decidedly dangerous. Eventually it 
 leads to conservatism, to a preservation and justification 
 of the status quo. We are not asserting that institutions 
 do not represent reason or that reason was not instrumental 
 in the origin of institutions- Customs and conventions 
 have reasons working towards their adoption. But we do 
 affirm that the conception that social institutions are the 
 embodiment of objective reason is dangerous, because our 
 tendency to admire reason may be converted into a ten- 
 dency to admire institutions, and institutions that existed 
 or are existing are not always worthy of our admiration. 
 
 The explanation is really two-fold. Firstly, reasons 
 that operated towards adopting a given institution, while 
 / sound at the time of adoption of that institution, may not 
 remain sound at the present time in view of changing and 
 changed circumstances. Geographical representation at a 
 time when there is distinctive and individual local life may 
 be an adequate method for representation, but it may not 
 remain adequate when modem industrialism sweeps away 
 local individuality. 
 
 Secondly, institutions may have been adopted through 
 reasoning but not through sound reasoning, and as a result 
 they may be as defective today as once they were in the 
 past. The proper spirit is the spirit of improvement. But 
 if we glorify the majesty of reason at the back of institu- 
 ^ tions, we are liable to lose our spirit of improvement and 
 progress. The more we try to admire our past, the more 
 convinced we are that the past really deserves our admira- 
 tion. Human beings are a curious lot. If they have an 
 ideal and exert strenuous efforts toward attaining it, they 
 may eventually make their efforts their ideal. If they 
 worship reason and believe that institutions are the em- 
 
 7 See P. 86. 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 157 
 
 bodiment of reason, they may eventually worship institu- 
 tions. The lack of inventiveness in China, for instance, is 
 largely due to this glorification of the past. Progressive 
 people should look forward, and in this connection it should 
 be said in fairness to Green that he looks to the future 
 rather than the past for his inspiration. He himself is 
 constantly looking for a fuller realization and a fuller de- 
 velopment of human capacities. 
 
 But personal virtue should not be employed to minimize v^ 
 J a doctrinal defect. Green in this particular instance evi- 
 ' dently follows Hegel. But Hegel did not formulate his 
 
 theory without a purpose. What he aimed at was the uni- 
 fication of Germany under a benevolent monarch and in 
 order to accomplish that, he had to formulate a system of 
 philosophy that would arrest the progress of the revolution- 
 ary doctrines before and after the French Revolution- 
 He had to contend with the intellectuals of his time who 
 knew their business. They knew that a political revolution 
 could not be effected without revolution of other kinds. 
 An atheist did not cut God off for nothing. The critics 
 of the church had a definite purpose to serve. The wor- 
 J shippers of reason did not worship reason for the fun of it. 
 
 The advocates of science had a definite axe to grind. They 
 knew that a given political system was supported by and 
 interwoven with the whole fabric of social, ethical and 
 religious concepts, and in order to overturn that political 
 system, they had to be iconoclastic towards not only the 
 political but also the social, ethical and religious idols. In 
 order to prepare the people to attain the desired end, they 
 had to start with a general negation of all the existing, 
 they had to demolish all the fondly cherished manners, 
 customs and conventions. Hegel sought to undermine the 
 tactics of the revolutionary generalship by evolving a sys- 
 tem of philosophy which read into institutions ftie func- 
 
 «/ 
 
 y 
 
\ 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 159 
 
 158 
 
 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 tion of reason so that the worshippers of reason would 
 worship institutions. The attempt was certainly ingenious 
 for the purpose it was to serve, but it had not the strength 
 to stem the tide of progressivism and radicahsm. Since 
 the latter is here to stay, there is very little excuse for 
 resuscitating the former. 
 
 Sovereignty is always a thorny problem in political phil- 
 osophy. Green's discussion, while remarkably to the point 
 in regard to the distinction or rather non-distinction of 
 sovereign de jure and sovereign de facto, seems neverthe- 
 less to be a futile attempt to combine Austin with Rousseau. 
 He agrees with Austin to the extent that sovereignty is the 
 supreme law-giving and law-enforcing power vested in 
 determinate person or persons with occasional manifesta- 
 tions of coercive force. But he also agrees with Rousseau 
 that sovereignty is basically will. Accordingly, sovereignty 
 is supreme power, but it is only supreme power when sup- 
 ported by general will. Thus stated, the conception is 
 either a truism that needs no elaborate polemics or an in- 
 tellectual subterfuge that gets us nowhere. Those who are 
 not in the habit of taking refuge in mysticism will ask 
 somewhat realistically not whether sovereignty is will or 
 power, but whose power it is that is supreme and whose 
 will it is that supports that power. The privileged persons 
 who wield supreme power in a country are not so easily as- 
 certainable and may not, therefore, be said to-be exactly de- 
 terminate. But they form a class and we know whose 
 power is supreme. We can not, however, generalize so 
 easily as to whose will it is that supports the power- Ab- 
 sence of opposition by no means signifies wholehearted 
 support. General acquiescence does not amount to general 
 will. Indeed, we are tempted to agree with Professor 
 Hobhouse that "in so far as it is will, it is not general, and 
 
 < 
 
 
 1 
 
 in so far as it is general it is not will." ^ Neither a purely 
 legalistic nor a purely metaphysical conception of sover- 
 eignty is satisfactory; hence, it may be expected, a hodge- 
 podge of the two will not fare better with the present day 
 political theorists. 
 
 The bald statement that will and not force is the true 
 basis of the state will be encouraging to many as an ab- 
 stract principle to be hoped for and attained, but it is 
 hardly an analysis of facts. While we do not believe that 
 might is right, we are too often reminded that power or 
 force is a strong determining factor in public affairs in 
 history as well as at the present time. Green is particu- 
 larly unfortunate in his arguments to support his assertion. 
 It is indeed regrettable enough that force, physical as well 
 as economic, has been as unrestrained in directing human 
 affairs as experience indicates; it is far more regrettable 
 that if an end is attained by some means, in fact, by any 
 means foul or fair, there is always some philosopher, true 
 to the assertion of Frederick the Great, to applaud the end 
 attained and to whitewash the means. We will be sur- 
 rendering to the cynicism of that monarch, if we follow 
 Green in his ex post facto justification of Napoleonic wars. 
 If good when incidental to bad should not be "overruled" 
 for bad, then bad when incidental to good should not be 
 "overruled" for good. Green himself is quite aware of the 
 fallacy of his logic.® It may be tenderness not to be strict 
 in our moral estimation, but in regard to a guiding principle 
 it is dangerous to permit sympathetic feeling to get the bet- 
 ter of our moral judgment. There seems to be a persistent 
 tendency to countenance the vicious doctrine that the end 
 justifies the means. It should be pointed out that instead of 
 the end justifying the means, the means if not consistent 
 with the end destroys the end, however desirable it may be. 
 
 8 Hobhouse, Metaphysical Theory of State. P. 127. 
 
 Principles of Political Obligation. P. 168. 
 
i6o Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 In connection with Green's theory of the true basis of the 
 state, there is another point that should not escape our at- 
 tention. When will is declared to be the true basis of the 
 state, we are easily led to believe that the state is con- 
 sciously formed of our free will, because the word will gen- 
 erally implies positive effort. As a matter of fact the 
 psychologists will be found irrefutable in their contention 
 that subconscious psychological phenomena are just as in- 
 strumental as conscious will in maintaining the state. Con- 
 scious will is not the sole foundation of the state, and that 
 is probably why Green in several places speaks of assent 
 instead of consent. But if he distinguishes consent from 
 assent, he should also distinguish active, positive conscious 
 will from passive or negative or habitual acquiescence. 
 When he speaks of the Roman Empire as based on will, it 
 ^ may be presumed that what is meant by will is really pas- 
 sive acquiescence. It is only easily imaginable that if the 
 people had been given a free choice, they would probably 
 not have elected to pay allegiance to Rome- If will and 
 acquiescence were distinguished and were both regarded as 
 the basis of the state, the argument against force might be 
 better appreciated and more intelligently understood. 
 
 With a large number of people the chief ground for in- 
 dictment against Green is to be found in his views on eco- 
 nomic questions. He is insistent on land reform, but to the 
 single taxers he has rejected the only remedy that would 
 cure the evil systems he so eloquently complains of. His 
 idea of capital is not up-to-date. While he is sensitive to 
 J the abuses of capital, he sees no inherent danger in the con- 
 centration of the control of capital. Above all his approach 
 to this subject is different from that of a modem liberal. 
 A modem liberal will inquire into the justice of the dis- 
 J tribution of wealth, while Green is contented with a pater- 
 nal interest in the gradual improvement of the material 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 i6i 
 
 I 
 
 ( 
 
 <<- 
 
 conditions of the workers. The fundamental question with 
 a modem Socialist, for instance, is whether it is just to al- 
 low some persons to accumulate as much as they can 
 under the present circumstances, leaving a large number of 
 people, in Green's phrase, without sufficient means to rea- 
 lize their moral ideal. A radical today is not bothered about 
 the relative condition of the workman today as compared 
 with the condition of his kind in the early part of the 19th 
 century. Green's idea of legislation and freedom of con- 
 tract may be objected to by the individualist as unnecessary 
 interference on the part of the authority, and by the newer 
 brands of Socialism as usurpation of arbitrary power by 
 the state. His economics certainly leaves much to be de- 
 sired. He does not fit in with any category. If we call him 
 a Christian Socialist, we meet the opposition that he is 
 Christian without being socialistic. If we bring him into 
 the company of Roscher, Wagner and Schmoller and call 
 him a Historical National economist, we are only too well 
 aware that whether or not he is national enough, he is not 
 sufficiently historical. His explanation of the historical 
 origin of the proletariat is plainly influenced by his hos- 
 tility toward land. The safe conclusion is that he is not an 
 economist at all. He does not have the proper grasp of 
 economic facts. If we criticise the economic portions of ^ 
 his political doctrine, we should be careful to consider his 
 lack of information rather than to impute motives. 
 
 The most noticeable defect of Green's political theory 
 is the absence of any discussion of the organization of gov- 
 ernment. The fundamental questions of the state are, of 
 course, important, but having discussed them at length, the 
 next problem is to formulate a programme of political or- 
 ganization through which alone political ideas can be 
 worked in practice. If political theory does not deal with 
 principles alone but also with their practical working, then 
 
i62 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 it should also indicate the kind of political organization that 
 will be likely to facilitate the carrying out of those prin- 
 ciples- If government is to be based upon the consent of 
 the governed, then the problem of getting people to express 
 their approval or disapproval on certain issues is certainly 
 one that deserves attention, and if government of the whole 
 people by the whole people is impracticable, then problems 
 of representation should be considered so as to find out 
 the best possible solution. If government is not to be based 
 on the counting of noses, what is the substitute ? Some ex- 
 pedients will have to be adopted, for in practical affairs, 
 some determining device has to be agreed upon through 
 which alone things can be accomplished. If it is not a ma- 
 jority of votes, it must be something else. So far as this 
 problem is concerned. Green has not offered us any enlight- 
 enment at all. Elsewhere I have said that Green's theory of 
 natural rights has diminished the urgency of a justification 
 of the majority rule over the minority, but it does not by 
 any means eliminate that problem. In the absence of a 
 suggested substitute, it may be presumed that Green recog- 
 nizes the majority rule as an expedient that is inevitable. 
 If so, the justification of the subjection of minority remains 
 a problem. And in the absence of a programme of govern- 
 mental organization, it may be concluded that that problem 
 remains with Green unsolved. 
 
 There are, of course, references to government, but in 
 those cases, it must be confessed, their meaning is rather 
 obscure. The distinction between the state and government 
 is not as clear as might be expected. This obscurity is 
 probably due to English conditions. The King in Parlia- 
 ment is often described as being the legal sovereign in 
 Great Britain. Whatever it may do, it does without legal 
 limitation. If there is not the tendency to confuse gov- 
 ernment with the state, there is at least no particular neces- 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 163 
 
 f 
 
 ■i 
 
 •t 
 
 V 
 
 sity for their rigid distinction. But in a country like the 
 United States, for instance, where there is a written con- 
 stitution limiting the government in some well defined di- 
 rections, where laws duly passed may be declared unconsti- 
 tutional and where constitution can only be amended by a 
 certain rigid process, one gets at a glance the difference be- 
 tween state and government; and when one looks at the 
 adoption of the initiative and referendum in some of the 
 states one wonders at the shrinkage of the power of the 
 government and the expansion of that of the state, which in 
 this case is generally called the "people." It may be ques- 
 tioned whether for Green such a distinction is necessary. 
 Personally, I think it is. With regard to the principle 
 of political obligation, for instance, I feel that we are bet- 
 ter off if we bear in mind that our obligation is due to the 
 state and not to any particular government. Furthermore, 
 instead of being a reactionary doctrine, the distinction be- 
 tween government and state is highly democratic, in that it 
 affords oftentimes the opportunity and justification for re- 
 sistance to government, if necessary, in the name of the 
 state. 
 
 Finally it may be asked whether Green is not, after all, 
 following the footsteps of those whose onesidedness he has 
 been attacking. The economists have created the economic 
 man; we agree with Green that there is no such economic 
 man- The Utilitarians described men as pleasure seekers; 
 we know that only too often we do not fit in with their 
 description. The sensationalists reduced us to a kodak; 
 but the objects reflected on the retina of our eyes do not 
 necessarily print pictures. The naturalists regard us pri- 
 marily as animal organisms; but we are more than mere 
 animal organisms. Green knows that and in his efforts to 
 free us from being merely economic, exclusively utilitarian, 
 mechanically sensational and simply animal, he has ren^ 
 
 v/ 
 
164 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 dered us almost pure consciousness. May it not be ques- 
 tioned whether such a conscious human being exists ? Will 
 he not share the same fate with the economic man, the 
 pleasure seeker and the mere animal organism? 
 
 Logic sometimes drives man mad, but in logic there is 
 beauty. Idealistic as well as materialistic philosophy has 
 its intellectual charms. It has been said of Karl Marx 
 that the Marxian system is a credit to human ingenuity; 
 hence rather than to demolish it piecemeal, it is better to 
 permit its structure to retain its sublimity and brilliance. 
 The same may be said of Green. Besides the intellectual 
 charm out of reading him, one shares his social idealism. 
 He actually confesses to "hoping for a time when the 
 phrase [the education of a gentleman] will have lost its 
 meaning, because the sort of education which alone makes 
 the gentleman in any sense will be within reach of all. As 
 It was the aspiration of Moses that all the Lord's people 
 should be prophets, so with all seriousness and reverence, 
 we may hope and pray for a condition of English society 
 in which all honest citizens will recognize themselves and be 
 recognized by each other as gentlemen." *° Such an ideal 
 is nowadays too often lost sight of. 
 
 ^ 
 
 loWorks, Vol. III. P. 475. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Source Books. 
 
 Works of Thomas Hill Green ; 3 volumes. Edited by R. L. 
 Nettleship. 
 
 T. H. Green, Principles of Political Obligation. 1917 Edi- 
 tion. 
 
 T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics. Edited by A. C. 
 Bradley. 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 Austin. Lectures on Jurisprudence. 
 
 Barker, Ernest. Political Thought from Spencer to 
 To-day. 
 
 Bagehot, Walter. Physics and Politics. 
 
 English Constitution. 
 
 Bentham, Jeremy. Fragment on Government. 
 
 Blackstone. Commentaries. 
 
 Bradley, F. H. Ethical Studies. 
 
 Bosanquet, Bernard. The Philosophical Theory of the 
 State. 
 
 Buckle, H. T History of Civilization. 
 
 Dunning. History of Political Theories. 
 
 Fairbrother. The Philosophy of T. H. Green. 
 
 George, Henry. Progress and Poverty. 
 
 GiDDiNGS. Democracy and Empire. 
 
 HoBBES Leviathan. 
 
 Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government 
 and Society. 
 
 Hob HOUSE, L. T Democracy and Reaction. 
 
 The Metaphysical Theory of the State. 
 
 Hobson, J. A. The Crisis of Liberalism. 
 
 Hume, David. Essays Moral, Political and Literary. 
 
i66 Political Theory of Thomas Hill Green 
 
 JoAD. Essays in Common Sense Philosophy. 
 Jones, Sir Henry. The Principles of Citizenship. 
 Kant, Immanual. Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der 
 
 Rechtslehre. 
 Laski, H. J. Authority in the Modem State. 
 Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government. 
 
 Essays on Human Understanding. 
 LowENTHAL. The Ricardian Socialists. 
 MacCunn. Six Radical Thinkers. 
 Maine, Sir Henry. Popular Government. 
 
 Early History of Instrtutions. 
 Marx, Karl. Communist Manifesto. 
 Mill, J. S. On Liberty. 
 
 Representative Government. 
 Montesqlheu. The Spirit of the Laws. 
 Muirhead. The Service of the State. 
 Pease, Edward. History of the Fabian Society. 
 Ritchie, David. The Principles of State Interference. 
 Rousseau, J. J. Social Contract. Tozer Translation. 
 Spencer, Herbert. Man versus State. 
 
 Essays Scientific, Political and Spec- 
 ulative. 
 Smith, Adam. Wealth of Nations. 
 Wallas, Graham. Human Nature in Politics. 
 Woodworth. Christian Socialism in England. 
 
 i 
 
 VITA. 
 
 The writer of this monograph was born In Hunan, 
 China. He studied in Ming-teh, Yale and Tsing Hua pre- 
 paratory schools before coming to the United States. In 
 1917 he was graduated from the University of Pennsylvania 
 and in the following year he obtained from Columbia the 
 degree of A.M., for which he wrote ''The Financial Powers 
 of the Governors of the Different States.*' At Columbia 
 he studied under Professors Dunning, Robinson, Hayes, 
 Schuyler, McBain, Powell, Beard, Sait, J. B. Moore, Munroe 
 Smith, Seligman, Giddings and Simkhovitch. 
 
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