Not everything which we affirm is on this account true. Our judgments are frequently quite blind. Many a prejudice which we drank in, as it were, with our mother’s milk presents to us the appearance of an irrefutable principle. To other equally blind judgments all men have, by nature, a kind of instinctive impulsion, as, for example, in trusting blindly to the so-called external impression, or to a recent remembrance. What is so recognized may often be true, but it may equally well be false since the affirming judgment contains nothing which gives to it the character of rightness. Such, however, is the case in certain other judgments, which in contradistinction to these blind judgments may be termed “obvious,” “self-evident” judgments; as, for example, the Principle of Contradiction, and every so-called inner perception which informs me that I am now experiencing sensations of sound or colour, or think and will this or that. In what, then, does the distinction between these lower and higher forms of judgment essentially consist? Is it a distinction in the degree of belief, or is it something else? It is not a distinction in the degree of belief; the instinctive blind assumptions arising from habit are often not in the slightest degree weakened by doubts, and we are unable to get rid of some even when we have already seen their logical falsity. But such assumptions are the results of blind impulse, they have nothing of the clearness peculiar to the higher forms of judgment. Were the question to be raised: “What is then your reason for believing that?” no rational answer would be forthcoming. It is quite true that if the same inquiry were to be made respecting the immediately evident judgment here also no reason could be given, but in face of the clearness of the judgment the inquiry would appear utterly beside the point, in fact ridiculous. Every one experiences for himself the difference between these two classes of judgment, and in the reference to this experience, consists, as in the case of every conception, the final explanation. 27. All this is, in its essentials, universally known,[27] and is contested only by a few, and then not without great inconsistency. Far fewer have noticed an analogous distinction between the higher and lower forms of the feelings of pleasure and displeasure. Our pleasure or displeasure is often quite like blind judgment, only an instinctive or habitual impulse. This is so in the case of the miser’s pleasure in piling up, in those powerful feelings of pleasure and pain connected in men and animals alike with the appearance of certain sensuous qualities, moreover, as is especially noticeable in tastes, different species and even different individuals, are affected in a quite contrary manner.