The love of truth in the abstract is probably the weakest of human passions;but truth when attained ultimately gives the fulcrum for a reconstruction of the world.When a solid core of ascertained and verifiable truth has once been formed and applied to practical results it becomes the fixed pivot upon which all beliefs must ultimately turn.The influence,however,is often obscure and still indirect.The more cultivated recognise the necessity of bringing their whole doctrine into conformity with the definitely organised and established system;and,at the present day,even the uneducated begin to have an inkling of possible results.yet the desire for logical consistency is not one which presses forcibly upon the less cultivated intellects.They do not feel the necessity of unifying knowledge or bringing their various opinions into consistency and into harmony with facts.There are easy methods of avoiding any troublesome conflict of belief The philosopher is ready to show them the way.He,like other people,has to start from postulates,and to see how they will work.When he meets with a difficulty it is perfectly legitimate that he should try how far the old formula can be applied to cover the new applications.He may be led to a process of 'rationalising'or 'spiritualising'which is dangerous to intellectual honesty.The vagueness of the general conceptions with which he is concerned facilitates the adaptation;and his words slide into new meanings by imperceptible gradations.His error is in taking a legitimate tentative process for a conclusive test;and inferring that opinions are confirmed because a non-natural interpretation can be forced upon them.This,however,is only the vicious application of the normal process through which new ideas are diffused or slowly infiltrate the old systems till the necessity of a thoroughgoing reconstruction forces itself upon our attention.Nor can it be denied that an opposite fallacy is equally possible,especially in times of revolutionary passion.The apparent irreconcilability of some new doctrine with the old may lead to the summary rejection of the implicit truth,together with the error involved in its imperfect recognition.
Hence arises the necessity for taking into account not only a man's intellectual idiosyncrasies and the special intellectual horizon,but all the prepossessions due to his personal character,his social environment,and his consequent sympathies and antipathies.The philosopher has his passions like other men.
He does not really live in the thin air of abstract speculation.On the contrary,he starts generally,and surely is right in starting,with keen interest in the great religious,ethical,and social problems of the time.He wishes --honestly and eagerly --to try them by the severest tests,and to hold fast only what is clearly valid.The desire to apply his principles in fact justifies his pursuit,and redeems him from the charge that he is delighting in barren intellectual subtleties.But to an outsider his procedure may appear in a different light.His real problem comes to be:how the conclusions which are agreeable to his emotions can be connected with the postulates which are congenial to his intellect?He may be absolutely honest and quite unconscious that his conclusions were prearranged by his sympathies.No philosophic creed of any importance has ever been constructed,we may well believe,without such sincerity and without such plausibility as results from its correspondence to at least some aspects of the truth.But the result is sufficiently shown by the perplexed controversies which arise.Men agree in their conclusions,though starting from opposite premises;or from the same premises reach the most diverging conclusions.The same code of practical morality,it is often said,is accepted by thinkers who deny each other's first principles;dogmatism often appears to its opponents to be thorough-going scepticism in disguise,and men establish victoriously results which turn out in the end to be really a stronghold for their antagonists.
