ABSTRACT
The two central figures of the British school of idealism were T. H. Green (1836–1882) and F. H. Bradley (1846–1924), and of central importance to each of their philosophies was the subject of relations. Both held that a consideration of relations, properly carried through, leads inevitably to a monistic and idealistic conclusion, which they called ‘The Absolute.’ In order to understand Green’s doctrine of relations we need first to remind ourselves of what Locke had to say on this subject, for Green’s philosophy was formed in large part as a reaction against the prevailing empiricist orthodoxy of his day, which in essentials at least had advanced little over the previous century. For Locke (and, it must be admitted, for most other philosophers) ‘not real, but mental’ are two charges which in effect come to the same thing. But Green wishes to challenge this assumption of equivalence.
