Undignified as such a treatment may
seem to some of my colleagues, I shall have to take account of this
clash and explain a good many of the divergencies of philosophers by
it. Of whatever temperament a professional philosopher is, he tries
when philosophizing to sink the fact of his temperament. Temperament
is no conventionally recognized reason, so he urges impersonal
reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives
him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective
premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other, making
for a more sentimental or a more hard-hearted view of the universe,
just as this fact or that principle would. He trusts his
temperament. Wanting a universe that suits it, he believes in any
representation of the universe that does suit it. He feels men of
opposite temper to be out of key with the world's character, and in
his heart considers them incompetent and 'not in it,' in the
philosophic business, even tho they may far excel him in dialectical
ability.
Yet in the forum he can make no claim, on the bare ground of his
temperament, to superior discernment or authority. There arises thus
a certain insincerity in our philosophic discussions: the potentest
of all our premises is never mentioned.
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