Moreover, there is a real need for a clearing away of all the verbal lumber that has been allowed to gather round subjects concerning which intelligent men and women will think even though they may be unable to reach reliable or satisfactory conclusions. And I have good grounds for believing that so far this little work has achieved the purpose for which it was written. If I may say it without being accused of conceit, it has made the subject clear to many who before found it incomprehensible. And, really, philosophy would not be so very obscure, if it were not for the philosophers. We may not always be able to find answers to our questions, but we ought always to understand what the questions are about. That it is not always the case is largely due to those who mistake obscurity for profundity, and in their haste to rise from the ground lose altogether their touch with the earth. C. C. DETERMINISM OR FREE-WILL? I. THE QUESTION STATED. At the tail end of a lengthy series of writers, from Augustine to Martineau, and from Spinoza to William James, one might well be excused the assumption that nothing new remains to be said on so well-worn a topic as that of Free-Will. Against this, however, lies the feeling that in the case of any subject which continuously absorbs attention some service to the cause of truth is rendered by a re-statement of the problem in contemporary language, with such modifications in terminology as may be necessary, and with such illustrations from current positive knowledge as may serve to make the issue clear to a new generation. In the course of time new words are created, while old ones change their meanings and implications. This results not only in the terminology of a few generations back taking on the character of a dead language to the average contemporary reader, but may occasion the not unusual spectacle of disputants using words with such widely different meanings that even a clear comprehension of the question at issue becomes impossible. So much may be assumed without directly controverting or endorsing Professor Paulsen's opinion that the "Free-Will problem is one which arose under certain conditions and has disappeared with the disappearance of those conditions;" or the opposite opinion of Professor William James that there is no other subject on which an inventive genius has a better chance of breaking new ground. If mankind--even educated mankind--were composed of individuals whose brains functioned with the accuracy of the most approved text-books of logic, Professor Paulsen's opinion would be self-evidently true. Granting that the conditions which gave rise to the belief in Free-Will have disappeared, the belief itself should have disappeared likewise. Professor Paulsen's own case proves that he is either wrong in thinking that these conditions have disappeared, or in assuming that, this being the case, the belief has also died out.