Green's
subsequent argument to have thus established the position of the will as
the ultimate fact of consciousness, but he goes on to assert that he has
thus secured the immovable ground of a philosophy of Realism. For since
man, "in affirming his Personality by the verb substantive I am, asserts,
nay, acquires, the knowledge of his own Substance as a Spiritual being,
and thereby knows what substance truly and properly is--so he
contemplates the outward, persons or things, as subjects partaking of
reality by virtue of the same substance of which he is conscious in his
own person." So far, however, from this being a philosophy of Realism, it
is in effect, if not indeed in actual terms, a philosophy of Idealism. I,
at least, am unable to see how any Idealist, from Berkeley downwards,
could ask for a better definition of his theory of the external world
than that it "partakes of reality by virtue of the same substance of
which he is conscious in his own person."
But it is, of course, with the second volume of Mr. Green's work that one
is chiefly concerned. Had Coleridge been a mere Transcendentalist for
Transcendentalism's sake, had there been no connection between his
philosophy of Being and his religious creed, it might be a question
whether even the highly condensed and necessarily imperfect sketch which
has here been given of it would not have been superfluous and out of
place.
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