Synthesized answer
Keynes describes Wilson as a "Nonconformist minister" because his thinking and temperament were essentially theological rather than intellectual [1]. This manner of thought, feeling, and expression carried both strengths and weaknesses [1]. While this description might be less familiar in contemporary England and Scotland, it would provide the ordinary Englishman with a distinct impression of the President [1].
Keynes further elaborates that Wilson's temperament was conscientious and principled, making him adhere strictly to his "great profession of faith" and the Fourteen Points as an absolutely binding contract [4]. He believed in acting honorably and justly, and his forefathers likely used similar methods of self-deception to reconcile their actions with scripture [4]. The theological nature of his thought is also evident in his "long theological struggle" regarding war reparations, where he eventually capitulated to a sophist's argument [3].
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
ident was not the philosopher-king, what was he? After all he was a man who had spent much of his life at a University. He was by no means a business man or an ordinary party politician, but a man of force, personality, and importance. What, then, was his temperament? The clue once found was illuminating. The President was like a Nonconformist minister, perhaps a Presbyterian. His thought and his temperament wore essentially theological not intellectual, with all the strength and the weakness of that manner of thought, feeling, and expression. It is a type of which there are not now in…
g, a majority of whose members had pledged themselves to a great deal more than the Prime Minister's guarded promises. Shortly after their arrival at Westminster I asked a Conservative friend, who had known previous Houses, what he thought of them. "They are a lot of hard-faced men," he said, "who look as if they had done very well out of the war." This was the atmosphere in which the Prime Minister left for Paris, and these the entanglements he had made for himself. He had pledged himself and his Government to make demands of a helpless enemy inconsistent with solemn engagements…
r economic system, is clothed, for the President's sake, in the august language of freedom and international equality. But perhaps the most decisive moment, in the disintegration of the President's moral position and the clouding of his mind, was when at last, to the dismay of his advisers, he allowed himself to be persuaded that the expenditure of the Allied Governments on pensions and separation allowances could be fairly regarded as "damage done to the civilian population of the Allied and Associated Powers by German aggression by land, by sea, and from the air," in a sense in…
ancial power of the United States to secure as much as he could of the substance, even at some sacrifice of the letter. But the President was not capable of so clear an understanding with himself as this implied. He was too conscientious. Although compromises were now necessary, he remained a man of principle and the Fourteen Points a contract absolutely binding upon him. He would do nothing that was not honorable; he would do nothing that was not just and right; he would do nothing that was contrary to his great profession of faith. Thus, without any abatement of the verbal…
ch a man have against Mr. Lloyd George's unerring, almost medium-like, sensibility to every one immediately round him? To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be playing blind man's buff in that…