The single word ‘self-realisation’ has been taken to express the view of the moral ideal enforced by Green.  And it is as suitable as any single word could be.  But it is clear that, in every action whatever of a conscious being, self-realisation may be said to be the end:  some capacity is being developed, satisfaction is being sought for some desire.  A man may develop his capacities, seek and to some extent attain satisfaction—­in a manner, realise himself—­not only in devotion to a scientific or artistic ideal or in labours for the common good, but also in selfish pursuit of power or even in sensual enjoyment.  So far as the word ‘self-realisation’ can be made to cover such different activities, it is void of moral content and cannot express the nature of the moral ideal.  Green is perfectly alive to the need of a distinction—­and to the difficulty of drawing it.  According to his own statement it is true not only of moral activity but of every act of willing that in it “a self-conscious individual directs himself to the realisation of some idea, as to an object in which for the time he seeks self-satisfaction."[1] And he proceeds to ask the question, “How can there be any such intrinsic difference between the objects willed as justifies the distinction which ‘moral sense’ seems to draw between good and bad action, between virtue and vice?  And if there is such a difference, in what does it consist?"[2] Now we may define a good action as the sort of action which proceeds from a good man; or we may define a good man as a man who performs good actions.  And for each method of definition something may be said.  But if we adopt both methods together and say in one breath that good is what the good man does and that the good man is he who does good, is our logic any better than that of the ordination-candidate who defined the functions of an archdeacon as archdiaconal functions?  And yet Green comes very near to describing this logical circle.  “The moral good,” he says, is “that which satisfies the desire of amoral agent”; but “the question, ...  What do we mean by calling ourselves moral agents? is one to which a final answer cannot be given without an answer to the question, What is moral good?"[3]

[Footnote 1:  Prolegomena to Ethics, sec. 154, p. 160.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., sec. 156, p. 163.]

[Footnote 3:  Prolegomena to Ethics, secs. 171, 172, p. 179.]

When Green really grapples with the difficulty of distinguishing the moral from the immoral in character or in conduct, it is possible to distinguish different ways in which he attempts to draw the distinction—­these different ways being, however, not independent but complementary to one another in his thought.  The first suggestion is that good is distinguished from evil, or the true good from a good which is merely apparent, by its permanence.  It gives a lasting satisfaction instead of a merely transient satisfaction:  “the true good ... is an end in which the effort