One of the most frequent sources of confusion in stating questions is in failure to distinguish between what is and what ought to be. Considering woman suffrage a man will ask himself “What is woman’s sphere?,” when he really wants to know not what woman’s sphere actually is, but what it ought to be. Our first step, then, is to get our problem or problems clearly in mind, and to state them as definitely as possible. A problem properly stated is a problem partly solved. What we will do next depends on the nature of the question. In the example “What knowledge is of most worth?” we proceeded to look for a criterion of worthiness. And this was really a re-stating of the question. For instead of asking ourselves “What knowledge is of most worth?,” we began asking “What knowledge best prepares for complete living?” Our next move was to classify. This is essential not only to systematic reasoning but to thinking of any kind. Classification is the process of grouping objects according to common qualities. But as almost all objects differ in some qualities and almost all have some qualities in common, it follows that, contrary to common belief, _there is no one classification absolutely essential to any group of objects_. An infinite number of classifications may be made, because every object has an infinite number of attributes, depending on the aspect we take of it. Nor is any one aspect of a thing “truer” than any other. The aspect we take depends entirely on the purpose we have in mind or the problem we wish to solve. As William James pointed out: “Now that I am writing it is essential that I conceive my paper as a surface for inscription. If I failed to do that I should have to stop my work. But if I wished to light a fire and no other materials were by, the essential way of conceiving the paper would be as combustible material; and I need then have no thought of any of its other destinations. It is really all that it is: a combustible, a writing surface, a thin thing, a hydrocarbonaceous thing, a thing eight inches one way and ten another, a thing just one furlong east of a certain stone in my neighbor’s field, an American thing, etc., etc., _ad infinitum_.”[3] And if the reader insist that these qualities are merely “accidental,” and that what the thing really is, is just _paper_ and nothing else, the reply is that the reader is intellectually petrified; that though “paper” may be our commonest title for it and may suggest our usual purpose with it, yet that purpose and this title and the properties which this title suggest have in reality nothing sacramental about them.