GREEN, THOMAS HILL: English philosopher; b. at Birkin (10 m. s.e. of Leeds), Yorkshire, Apr. 7, 1836; d. at Oxford Mar. 26, 1882. He was educated at Rugby and at Balliol College, Oxford (B.A., 1859; M.A., 1862), where he was elected fellow in 1860. His life henceforth was devoted chiefly to teaching in the university, first as tutor, after 1878 as Whyte professor of moral philosophy. Certain scruples prevented him from entering the ministry, though on taking his M.A. degree he signed the Thirty-Nine Articles. He was a disciple of Rant and Hegel, but by his independent treatment of philosophical problems he won, and still holds, extremely high rank as an original thinker. By his trenchant criticism of Hume, from the idealistic viewpoint, he broke the sway of empiricism in England and afterward became the founder of the so-called Neo-Hegelian school, which is now practically dominant in English and American speculation. Briefly, his view is, that only the experienced is real, and that finite experience forms a system of relations which are caught up in one eternal self-conscious whole, via., the Absolute or God. While for God the world is, for man it becomes; and human experience is only God partially and gradually revealing himself in man. Green's ethics is based on his idealistic metaphysics. The ethical ideal, the end in which the effort of a moral agent "can really find rest," is revealed to the self-conscious subject by the reason; and the difference between a good man and a bad man is, that while the one wills what the eternal and divine intelligence reproduced in him demands, the other wills contrary to reason, and therefore in violation of divine law. Green's character is described in Mrs. Humphry Ward's Robert Elsmere, under the name of Mr. Gray. His principal works are, the famous Introduction to Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (i. 1-310, London, 1874); his posthumous Prolegomena to Ethics (ed. A. C. Bradley, Oxford, 1883), one of the most valuable contributions to constructive philosophy ever made by an Englishman; and The Witness of God, and Faith (London, 1883), two lay sermons delivered to his pupils at Oxford. His Works, exclusive of the Prolegomena, were edited by R. L. Nettleship (3 vols., London, 1885,88).

Bibliography: A Life, by R. L. Nettleship, was prefixed to vol. iii. of the Works, reprinted separately, London, 1908. Consult: DNB, xxii. 55-56; W. H. Fairbrother, The Philosophy of Thomas Hill Green, New York, 1896; full bibliography in Baldwin. Dictionary; III., i. 228.