ABSTRACT
The doctrine that the true Good is necessarily common or non-competitive in character is not new to ethical thought. The idea that the true Good is necessarily a common Good might be said to be the master-thought of Greek ethical reflection, and it has been enforced anew by G. W. F. Hegel and his successors. Henry Sidgwick's criticisms of it are to be found in the posthumously published Lectures on the Ethics of T. H. Green, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and J. Martineau. As Green says, the Common Good "may be pursued in many different forms by persons quite unconscious of any community in their pursuits". Green seems to consider the "extension of the area of the Common Good" as a more direct and unbroken process than it has actually been, and to overlook the difficulty mentioned by Sidgwick, that conflicts frequently occur, not only between egoistic and altruistic interests, but between a wider and a narrower altruism.
