activity or energy, of which it is the essence to be self-conscious, that is, to be itself and not itself in one” (Nettleship).  To this universal consciousness we are related as manifestations or “communications” under the limitations of our physical organization.  As such we are free, that is, self-determined, determined by nothing from without.  The moral ideal is self-realization or perfection, the progressive reproduction of the divine self-consciousness.  This is possible only in terms of a development of persons, for as a self-conscious personality the divine spirit can reproduce itself in persons alone; and, since “social life is to personality what language is to thought,” the realization of the moral ideal implies life in common.  The nearer determination of the ideal is to be sought in the manifestations of the eternal spirit as they have been given in the moral history of individuals and nations.  This shows what has already been implied in the relation of morality to personality and society, that moral good must first of all be a common good, one in which the permanent well-being of self includes the well-being of others also.  This is the germ of morality, the development of which yields, first, a gradual extension of the area of common good, and secondly, a fuller and more concrete determination of its content.  Further representatives of this movement are W. Wallace, Adamson, Bradley; A. Seth is an ex-member.

[Footnote 1:  Cf. on Green the Memoir by Nettleship in vol. iii. of the Works.]

The first and greatest of American philosophical thinkers was the Calvinistic theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-58; treatise on the Freedom of Will, 1754; Works, 10 vols., edited by Dwight, 1830).  Edwards’s deterministic doctrine found numerous adherents (among them his son, who bore his father’s name, died 1801) as well as strenuous opponents (Tappan, Whedon, Hazard among later names), and essentially contributed to the development of philosophical thought in the United States.  For a considerable period this crystallized for the most part around elements derived from British thinkers, especially from Locke and the Scottish School.  In 1829 James Marsh called attention to German speculation [1] by his American edition of Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection, with an important introduction from his own hand.  Later W.E.  Channing (1780-1842), the head of the Unitarian movement, attracted many young and brilliant minds, the most noted of whom, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), became a leader among the New England transcendentalists.  Metaphysical idealism has, perhaps, met with less resistance in America than in England.  Kant and Hegel have been eagerly studied (G.S.  Morris, died 1889; C.C.  Everett; J. Watson in Canada; Josiah Royce, The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 1892; and others); and The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, edited by W.T.  Harris, has since 1867 furnished a rallying point for idealistic interests.