deal is said and written which does not fulfil the requirement. The
fact that words lose their meaning when removed from the connections in
which that meaning has been acquired and put to higher uses, is one
which, I think, is rarely recognized. There is nothing in the history
of philosophical inquiry more curious than the frequency of
interminable disputes on subjects where no agreement can be reached
because the opposing parties do not use words in the same sense. That
the history of science is not free from this reproach is shown by the
fact of the long dispute whether the force of a moving body was
proportional to the simple velocity or to its square. Neither of the
parties to the dispute thought it worth while to define what they meant
by the word "force," and it was at length found that if a definition
was agreed upon the seeming difference of opinion would vanish. Perhaps
the most striking feature of the case, and one peculiar to a scientific
dispute, was that the opposing parties did not differ in their solution
of a single mechanical problem. I say this is curious, because the very
fact of their agreeing upon every concrete question which could have
been presented ought to have made it clear that some fallacy was
lacking in the discussion as to the measure of force. The good effect
of a scientific spirit is shown by the fact that this discussion is
almost unique in the history of science during the past two centuries,
and that scientific men themselves were able to see the fallacy
involved, and thus to bring the matter to a conclusion.

If we now turn to the discussion of philosophers, we shall find at
least one yet more striking example of the same kind. The question of
the freedom of the human will has, I believe, raged for centuries. It
cannot yet be said that any conclusion has been reached. Indeed, I have
heard it admitted by men of high intellectual attainments that the
question was insoluble. Now a curious feature of this dispute is that
none of the combatants, at least on the affirmative side, have made any
serious attempt to define what should be meant by the phrase freedom of
the will, except by using such terms as require definition equally with
the word freedom itself. It can, I conceive, be made quite clear that
the assertion, "The will is free," is one without meaning, until we
analyze more fully the different meanings to be attached to the word
free. Now this word has a perfectly well-defined sig