Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison

“ In this he showed how a deep faith in certain principles may be united with the questioning temper of science, and even with a scrupulous scepticism which is ever ready to go back to the beginning, that it may exhaust everything that can be said against them. For such a mind there must always be a wide division between faith and reason, or (what in philosophy comes to the same thing) between a principle and its development into a system. ”

“ Moreover, this change of the mental atmosphere and environment is itself part of a development which must affect the doctrine also, if it is no mere dead tradition, but a seed of new intellectual life. Anyone who writes about philosophy must have his work judged, not by its relation to the intellectual wants of a past generation, but by its power to meet the wants of the present time — wants which arise out of the advance of science, and the new currents of influence which are transforming man’s social and religious life. ”

“ This attitude of mind was, indeed, characteristic of one who scarcely felt that he had a scientific right to any principle which he had not submitted to a testing process of years, and who never satisfied himself — as men of idealistic tendencies are too apt to satisfy themselves — with an intuitive grasp of any comprehensive idea, until he had vindicated every element of it by the hard toil of an exhaustive reflexion. ”

“ Wanting in superficial readiness of sympathy, wanting also in the sanguine flow of animal spirits, and by constitutional reserve often prevented from expressing what he felt and wished to express, he yet gradually created in those around him a sense of security in trusting him which was due to the transparent purity of his aims and to the entire absence of personal assumption and petty ambition. ”

“ For them the only question of interest is, whether in the writer they have immediately to deal with, there is a living source of light which is original in the sense that, whatever may be its history, it carries its evidence in itself. ”

“ And such reproduction, again, is not possible except for those who are impelled by the very teaching they have received to give it a fresh expression and a new application. Valuable as may be the history of thought, the literal importation of Kant and Hegel into another country and time would not be possible if it were desirable, or desirable if it were possible. The mere change of time and place, if there were nothing more, implies new questions and a new attitude of mind in those whom the writer addresses, which would make a bare reproduction unmeaning. ”

“ Nevertheless, so long as in such controversy it remains possible to appeal to one principle, so long as the differences are due to the various development of one way of thinking in different minds, the division and opposition is a sign of life, and may be expected ultimately to be overcome by the same spiritual energy which has produced it. ”

“ Those friends who can look back on Professor Green’s life with the intimate knowledge of contemporaries cannot fail to be struck with the evidence of consistency and unswerving truth to himself, which it presents. His fellow-students at the University were specially impressed by two features of bis character, which then stood out with the greater clearness from their contrast with the usual tendencies of youth. The first was the distinctness with which he lived by conviction and not by impulse. No man could be less pedantic ”

“ For a reference to definite names is in philosophy often taken to imply a kind of discipleship which cannot be acknowledged by those who believe that the history of philosophy is a living development, and who, therefore, are adherents of a school only in the sense that they trace the last steps of that development in a particular way. ”

“ I use this word for want of a better, but what I mean is, that from a somewhat exclusive interest in the essentials of humanity — in the spiritual experiences in which all men are alike — and from a natural disregard for the outward differences of rank and position and even of culture, by which these essentials are invested and concealed, his sympathies were always with the many rather than with the few. ”

“ 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 recognise themselves, and be recognised by each other, as gentlemen. ”

“ The belief in the essential equality of men might, indeed, be said to be one of the things most deeply rooted in bis character, though it showed itself not in any readiness to echo the commonplaces of Radicalism, but rather in an habitual direction of thought and interest to practical schemes for ‘levelling up’ the inequalities of human lot, and giving to the many the opportunities of the few. ”

“ The work of Kant and Hegel, like the work of earlier philosophers, can have no speculative value except for those who are able critically to reproduce it, and so to assist in the sifting process by which its permanent meaning is separated from the accidents of its first expression. ”

“ The writers of this volume agree in believing that the line of investigation which philosophy must follow, or in which it may be expected to make most important contributions to the intellectual life of man, is that which was opened up by Kant, and for the successful prosecution of which no one has done so much as Hegel. ”

“ There are not a few among the Oxford men of the last fifteen years to whom, as was once said of another teacher, ‘his existence was one of the things that gave reality to the distinction between good and evil.’ The loss of such an educative influence cannot be easily replaced ”

“ In this respect his character seemed to invert the usual order of development. What is called the ‘enthusiasm of humanity,’ or at least a sympathy with great intellectual and political movements, was with him a primary, and one might almost say an instinctive, passion ”