One may be true
without being a philosopher, true by guesswork or by revelation.
What distinguishes a philosopher's truth is that it is _reasoned_.
Argument, not supposition, must have put it in his possession. Common
men find themselves inheriting their beliefs, they know not how. They
jump into them with both feet, and stand there. Philosophers must
do more; they must first get reason's license for them; and to the
professional philosophic mind the operation of procuring the license
is usually a thing of much more pith and moment than any particular
beliefs to which the license may give the rights of access. Suppose,
for example, that a philosopher believes in what is called free-will.
That a common man alongside of him should also share that belief,
possessing it by a sort of inborn intuition, does not endear the man
to the philosopher at all--he may even be ashamed to be associated
with such a man. What interests the philosopher is the particular
premises on which the free-will he believes in is established, the
sense in which it is taken, the objections it eludes, the difficulties
it takes account of, in short the whole form and temper and manner
and technical apparatus that goes with the belief in question.
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