THE PATH OF VISION
too a personal grudge. For philosophers quarrel, not only with what they understand to be the universal will, but also with each other. Indeed, not infrequently, does the human heart cry out through their bulwarks of reason. To be sure, they quarrel not like the village crones or the town trollops; but their panoply of logic is saturated with gall. And their hatreds, their jealousies, their prejudices, wearing the masks of speculation, seldom fail to recognize each other.
But with their readers, the disguise invariably succeeds. Thus we are often the dupes of an abstract theory stretched out to cover the personal prejudices and heredities of the author. It is not ignorance which our philosopher is cudgeling, but a particular ignorant contemporary; not at error or prejudice does he aim his poisoned shafts, but at an erring and prejudiced colleague.
We have a striking instance of this in Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History, where Schopenhauer is disguised
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