Perhaps we need not reject even this comparison. But see now to what deep-seated differences our attempt to investigate the apparently harmless problems of errors has brought us, differences which at this stage we do not know in the least how to reconcile. I suggest that we should make a temporary compromise on the basis of the analogy with the judge and the prisoner. You shall grant me that the meaning of an error admits of no doubt when the subject of the analysis acknowledges it himself. I, in turn, will admit that a direct proof for the suspected meaning cannot be obtained if the subject refuses us the information, and, of course, this applies also when the subject is not present to give us the information. As also in legal proceedings, we are then thrown back upon indications in order to form a decision, the truth of which is sometimes more and sometimes less probable. At law, for practical reasons, guilt has to be declared also on circumstantial evidence. There is no such necessity here; but neither are we bound to refrain from considering such evidence. It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the religious catechism by something else, even if it be a scientific one. Science in its catechism has but few apodictic precepts; it consists mainly of statements which it has developed to varying degrees of probability. The capacity to be content with these approximations to certainty and the ability to carry on constructive work despite the lack of final confirmation are actually a mark of the scientific habit of mind. But where shall we find a starting-point for our interpretations, and the indications for our proof, in cases where the subject under analysis says nothing to explain the meaning of the error? From various sources. First, by analogy with similar phenomena not produced by error, as when we maintain that the distortion of a name by mistake has the same intention to ridicule behind it as intentional distortion of names. And then, from the mental situation in which the error arose, from our knowledge of the character of the person who commits it, and of the feelings active in him before the error, to which it may be a response. As a rule what happens is that we find the meaning of the error according to general principles; and this, to begin with, is only a conjecture, a tentative solution, proof being discovered later by an examination of the mental situation. Sometimes it is necessary to await further developments, which have been, so to speak, foreshadowed by the error, before we can find confirmation of our conjecture.