. Newman in the religious sphere,
though their influence was already past its meridian, and the writings
of John Stuart Mill in the sphere of logic and philosophy. By neither
of these, save in the way of antagonism, had Green been influenced. He
heartily hated all the Utilitarian school, and had an especial scorn
for Buckle, who, now almost forgotten, enjoyed in those days, as being
supposed to be a philosophic historian, a brief term of popularity.
Green had been led by Carlyle to the Germans, and his philosophic
thinking was determined chiefly by Kant and Hegel, more perhaps by the
former than by the latter, for it was always upon ethical rather than
upon purely metaphysical problems that his mind was bent. His
religious vein and his hold upon practical life made him more
interested in morals than in abstract speculation. Thus he became the
leader in Oxford of a new philosophic school which looked to Kant as
its master, and which for a time, partly perhaps because it
effectively attacked the school of Mill, received the adhesion of some
among the most thoughtful of the younger High Churchmen. Like Kant, he
set himself to answer David Hume, and the essay prefixed to his
edition of Hume's _Treatise on Human Nature_. along with his
_Prolegomena to Ethics_, are the only books in which his doctrines
have been given to the world, for he did not live to write the more
systematic exposition he had planned. These two essays are hard
reading, for his philosophical style was usually technical, and
sometimes verged on obscurity. But when he wrote on less abstruse
matters he was intelligible as well as weighty, full of thought, and
with an occasional underglow of restrained eloquence. The force of
character and convictions makes itself felt through the language.

His mind, though constructive, was not, having regard to its general
power, either fertile or versatile. Like most of those who prefer
solitary musings to the commerce of men, he had little facility, and
found it hard to express his thoughts in any other words than those
into which his musings had first flowed. Thus even his oral teaching
was not easy to follow. An anecdote was current how when one day he
had been explaining to a small class his theory of the origin of our
ideas, the class listened in rapt attention to his forcible rhetoric,
admiring each sentence as it fell, and thinking that all their
difficulties were being removed. When he ended they expressed their