THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS 385
must not be one that essentially baffles and disappoints our dearest desires
and most cherished hopes. ... But a second and worse defect in a philosophy
than contradicting our active propensities is to give them no object
whatever to press against. A philosophy whose principle is so incommensurate
with our most intimate powers as to deny them all relevancy in
universal affairs, as to annihilate their motives at one blow, will be even
more unpopular than pessimism. . . . That is why materialism will always
fail of universal adoption. 68
Men accept or reject philosophies, then, according to their needs and
their temperaments, not according to "objective truth"; they do not ask,
Is this logical? they ask, What will the actual practice of this philosophy
mean for our lives and our interests? Arguments for and against may
serve to illuminate, but they never prove.
Logic and sermons never convince;
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
Now I re-examine philosophies and religions.
. . .
They may prove well in lecture rooms, yet not prove at all
spacious clouds, and along the landscape and flowing currents.
under the
64
We know that arguments are dictated by our needs, and that our needs
cannot be dictated to by arguments.
The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of
human temperaments. ... 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 im-
personal reasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperament really gives
him a stronger bias than any of his more stricxly objective premises. 55
These temperaments which select and dictate philosophies may be
divided into the tender-minded and the tough-minded. The tenderminded
temperament is religious, it likes to have definite and unchanging
dogmas and it priori truths; it takes naturally to free will, idealism, mon-
ism, and optimism. The tough-minded temperament is materialistic, irre-
ligious, empiricist (going only on "facts"), sensationalistic (tracing all
knowledge to sensation), fatalistic, pluralistic, pessimistic, sceptical. In
each group there are gaping contradictions; and no doubt there are
temperaments that select their theories partly from one group and partly
from the other. There are people (William James, for example) who are
"tough-minded" in their addiction to facts and in their reliance on the
senses, and yet "tender-minded" in their horror of determinism and their
need for religious belief. Can a philosophy be found that will harmonize
these apparently contradictory demands?
"Principles of Psychology, New York, 1890, vol. ii, p. 312.
Whitman, Leavts of Grass Philadelphia, 1900, pp. 61, 172.
^Pragmatism, p. 6.