In spite of the increased vogue which naturalism has obtained from its alliance with triumphant evolutionism, it cannot be said to represent the prevailing type of thought amongst the English metaphysicians of the last generation.  That generation was remarkable for the reappearance in this country of a reasoned Idealism; and all forms of Idealism have at least this in common, that they refuse to look upon the material process as the ultimate character of reality—­so far as reality is known or knowable.

It may also be said—­and this is a characteristic which is not merely negative—­that all forms of Idealism agree in ascribing special significance to the moral and religious aspects of life.  This holds true of the great idealists, different as their types of thought may be—­of Plato and Aristotle, of Spinoza and Leibniz, of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel.  It holds true also of the leading representatives of recent English idealism.  But the ethical tone of a treatise and the ethical interest of its author are not always a guarantee that ethical conceptions have a secure position in his system of thought.  This is the case, I think, with Spinoza; and it seems to me to hold also of some writers of the present day.  Mr Bradley, for instance, is perhaps the most influential, as he is without doubt not the least brilliant, of contemporary metaphysicians; he carries on the tradition of a school of thought predominantly ethical; his first book was a defence of the ethical positions of that school; but, if we turn to the elaborate metaphysical treatise which has resulted from his mature reflexion, its most impressive feature will be found to be the almost complete bankruptcy of the system in the region of ethics.

Not only had this idealist movement in its beginnings a predominantly ethical tone.  It was really started in the interest of moral ideals as well as of intellectual thoroughness; and its contribution of greatest value to English thought was a work on ethics.  The ’Prolegomena to Ethics’ of T.H.  Green was a fitting result of his unwearied controversies in defence of the spiritual nature of man and the universe.  No one is more worthy than he to be called by the Platonic name a ‘friend of ideas,’ And he was a friend of ideas because he saw their necessity for maintaining and realising the higher capacities of human life.  Green’s ‘Prolegomena’ was published in 1883, the year after his death.  And, had I been speaking twenty years ago, I should have had to emphasise the ethical character of the metaphysics of the day.  His metaphysical thinking, through all its subtleties, never strayed far from the moral ideal.  Owing to his teaching that ideal, and the general character of the philosophy with which it was associated, have permeated a great part of the better thought of the present day, and have influenced its practical activities in various directions,—­social, political, and religious.  But the magnetism of his personality has been removed; and those whose business it is to test intellectual notions have been impressed by the difficulties involved in Green’s metaphysical positions and in his connexion of them with morality.