Franklin Merrell-Wolff examines the distinction that William James makes between two types of judgment: existential judgment and spiritual judgment. He offers several examples of this distinction and submits that the truth or validity of a statement or thesis is not determined by the circumstances on the occasion of the thesis, but by the content and value of the thesis itself. Wolff refers to the Declaration of Independence, to an article on creativity written by the mathematician Henri Poincare, to the sometimes peculiar behavior of Sir Isaac Newton, and to the philosophic thesis of Immanuel Kant to clarify this position.