When James's essay "The Will to Believe" was first delivered in 1895,1 it marked the expression of James's mature views on the so-called ethics of belief, a theme which had been an important one in his philosophizing since as early as 1870. James's mature ethics of belief may be characterized roughly as follows. It consists in two duties, one right, and one fact concerning belief. We always have a duty to consult or attend to whatever evidence there might be concerning a given hypothesis, where a "hypothesis" is anything proposed to belief. Further, given that the evidence is sufficient to determine the issue, we have a duty to believe according to the evidence; however, in any case where the evidence is inadequate to determine an issue, we have the right to believe, disbelieve, or withhold belief with respect to a hypothesis concerning that issue. Finally, there are instances where, regardless of our grasp of evidence, we cannot suspend judgment, we must either believe or disbelieve-in short, there exist in real life what James calls "forced options." While the foregoing omits some of the detail of the position, it does, in the main, represent James's doctrine.2 With the publication, in 1897, of that essay in a book bearing the same title,3 there rapidly developed a widespread negative reaction to the workin short, the essay created a scandal. What James had done was deliberately and vigorously to oppose, with his own doctrine, another rather widely accepted ethics of belief, associated with W. K. Clifford in England, who had in 1877