s onward constantly
towards a goal which it cannot attain; each achievement leads to a
further effort and a higher reach.

[Footnote 1: Ibid., sec. 171, p. 179.]

By itself, therefore, the assertion that the moral agent 'finds rest'
in the 'true good' does not enable us to distinguish the moral agent
or the moral action from the immoral. For we are unable to define the
'true good.' It is not a part of experience; it is an ideal: and Green
allows that we can give no complete account of it; he even says
that we can give no positive account of it. At the same time this
consideration leads to another and connected method for distinguishing
good from evil.

"Of a life of completed development," Green holds, "of activity with
the end attained, we can only speak or think in negatives, and thus
only can we speak or think of that state of being in which, according
to our theory, the ultimate moral good must consist."[1] But the
development is a real process which manifests itself in habits and
social institutions; and from these its actual achievements we can to
a certain extent see what the moral capability of man "has in it to
become," and thus "know enough of ultimate moral good to guide our
conduct." One of the most valuable portions of Green's own work is his
description of the gradual widening and purifying of human conceptions
regarding goodness in character and conduct. But all this implies some
standard of discrimination and selection between what is good and
what is evil in human achievement. Which developments are truly
realisations of "the moral capability of man," and so tend to the
attainment of ultimate good, and which developments are expressions
of those capacities which seek an apparent good only and are to be
classed as evil, as impediments to the realisation of the good,--these
have to be discriminated; and is it so clear that from the mere record
of human deeds we are able to draw the distinction? Do we not need
some criterion of goodness to guide our judgment? and does not Green
himself use such a criterion when he appeals to the tendency of
certain institutions and habits to "make the welfare of all the
welfare of each," and of certain arts to make nature "the friend of
man"?[2] Common welfare and the utilisation of nature in the service
of man seem to be taken as tests of the true development of moral
capabilities. The criteria themselves may be excellent; but they
are not got out of the mere record: