T. H. Green (1836-1882) is sometimes quoted as a Hegelian, but his intellectual affinities were rather with Fichte. According to him, reality is the thought of an Eternal Consciousness, of which personality need not be predicated, while the endless duration of personal spirits seems to be denied. Another idealist, F. H. Bradley (_b._ 1846)--perhaps the greatest living English {144} thinker--develops in his _Appearance and Reality_ (1893) a metaphysical system which, though Absolutist in form, is, to me at least, in substance practically indistinguishable from the dogmatic Agnosticism of Herbert Spencer, and even more destructive of the popular Theism. Finally the writings of Dr. J. E. McTaggart (_b._ 1866), teaching as they do a doctrine of developmental personal immortality without a God, show a tendency to combine Hegel with Lotze. THE GERMAN ECLECTICS. By general consent the most serious and influential of German systematic thinkers since Hegel is R. H. Lotze (1817-1881). His philosophy is built up of materials derived in varying proportions from all his German predecessors, the most distinctive idea being pluralism, probably suggested in the first instance by Herbart, whom he succeeded as Professor at Göttingen. But Lotze discards the rigid monads of his master for the more intelligible soul-substances of Leibniz--or rather of Bruno--whose example he also follows in his attempt to combine pluralism with monism. Very strenuous efforts are made to give the unifying principle the character of a personal God; but the suspicion of a leaning to Pantheism is not altogether eluded.