In the next three chapters it is proposed to take up some of the considerations that lie on the borderland between the larger and the narrower conceptions of logical theory. I shall discuss the _locus_ of the function of thought, so far as such _locus_ enables us to select and characterize some of the most fundamental distinctions, or divisions of labor, within the reflective process. In taking up the problem of the subject-matter of thought, I shall try to make clear that it assumes three quite distinct forms according to the epochal moment reached in transformation of experience; and that continual confusion and inconsistency are introduced when these respective meanings are not identified and described according to their respective geneses and places. I shall attempt to show that we must consider subject-matter from the standpoint, first, of the _antecedents_ or conditions that evoke thought; second, of the _datum_ or _immediate material_ presented to thought; and, third, of the _proper content_ of thought. Of these three distinctions the first, that of antecedent and stimulus, clearly refers to the situation that is immediately prior to the thought-function as such. The second, that of datum or immediately given matter, refers to a distinction which is made within the thought-process as a part of and for the sake of its own _modus operandi_. It is a status in the scheme of thinking. The third, that of content or object, refers to the progress actually made in any thought-function; the material which is organized into the thought-situation, so far as this has fulfilled its purpose. It goes without saying that these are to be discriminated as stages of a life-process in the natural history of experience, not as ready-made or ontological; it is contended that, save as they are differentiated in connection with well-defined historical stages, they are either lumped off as equivalents, or else treated as absolute divisions--or as each by turns, according to the exigencies of the particular argument. In fact, this chapter will get at the matter of preliminary conditions of thought indirectly rather than directly, by indicating the contradictory positions into which one of the most vigorous and acute of modern logicians, Lotze, has been forced through failing to define logical distinctions in terms of the history of readjustment of experience, and therefore endeavoring to interpret certain notions as absolute instead of as periodic and methodological.