122. THE SELF-REALIZATION DOCTRINE.--The ethical school which makes the realization of the capacities of the self the aim of moral action has for a generation, especially in England and America, had the support of many acute and scholarly minds. The doctrine, often spoken of as the Neo- Kantian or the Neo-Hegelian, may be said to be influenced by Kant, so far as concerns metaphysical theory, but its ethical character is more properly Hegelian and suggests in many particulars that great German philosopher's "Philosophy of Right." We may conveniently take as the protagonist of the school the Oxford scholar, Thomas Hill Green, whose "Prolegomena to Ethics" has had, directly and indirectly, a powerful influence upon the minds of the men of our generation. We find the doctrine of self-realization, as set forth by Green, to be as follows: (1) In all desire some object is presented to the mind as not yet real, and there is a striving to make it real, and thus to satisfy, or extinguish, the desire. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 131.] (2) Self-consciousness knits the desires into a system, and thus attains to the conception of "well-being," which implies the satisfaction of desire in general, and not merely of this or that desire. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 128.] (3) "Good" is that which satisfies some desire. Any good at which an agent aims must be his own good; and "true good" is nothing else than "permanent well-being." [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec Sec 190, 92, 203.] (4) A desire is determined by the nature of the creature desiring; man can attain satisfaction only in the realization of his capacities. His true good lies only in their complete realization--in his becoming all that it is in him to become. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec Sec 171-2, 180.] (5) But man is a social being, and has an interest in other persons than himself. Hence his complete self-satisfaction implies the satisfaction of his social as well as of his other impulses. That is, his true good includes the good of others. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec Sec 199- 205.] (6) We can only discover what our "capacities" are by observing them as so far realized, and thus gaining the idea of future progress. The ultimate end is unknown to us. [Footnote: Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 172.] (7) But we see enough to recognize that man's capacities can be realized, his self-satisfaction intelligently sought, only in a social state based upon the notion of the common good. The right reveals itself in the actual evolution of society. [Footnote: Ibid., Sec Sec 172-76, 205.] 123. THE DOCTRINE AKIN TO THAT OF FOLLOWING NATURE.--The self- realization doctrine has much in common with the doctrine of following nature. Thus: 1. It evidently does not recommend the realization of all the capacities of the individual as such, but holds in view a "pattern" man.