It must not be supposed that in saying this I am an adherent of the wonderful philosophy of the unconscious. I am speaking here only of undeniable and well known truths. Thus it has often been observed that for thousands of years men have drawn right conclusions without bringing the procedure and the principles which form the condition of the formal validity of the inference into clear consciousness by means of reflection. Indeed when Plato first took the step of reflecting upon it, he was led to set up an entirely false theory which assumed that every inference was a process of reminiscence.[55] What was perceived and experienced on earth recalled to the memory knowledge acquired in a pre-mundane existence. Nowadays this error has disappeared. Still, false theories concerning the fundamental principles of syllogism are continually emerging, as, for example, when Albert Lange,[56] finds them in space-perceptions and in synthetic propositions _à priori_, or Alexander Bain[57] in the experience that the moods Barbara, Celarent, etc., have up to the present time been found to be valid in every case: mere crude errors which overlook the immediate intuitions forming the conditions of right conclusions, but which do not prevent Plato, Lange, and Bain from arguing in general exactly like other people. In spite of their false conception of the true fundamental principles, these still continue to operate in their reasoning. But why do I go so far for examples? Let the experiment be made with the first “plain man” who has just drawn a right conclusion, and demand of him that he give you the premises of his conclusion. This he will usually be unable to do and may perhaps make entirely false statements about it. On requiring the same man to define a notion with which he is familiar, he will make the most glaring mistakes and so show once again that he is not able rightly to describe his own thinking. 44. Meantime, however dark the road to ethical knowledge might appear, both to the “plain man” and to the philosopher, we must still expect, since the process is a complicated one and many combined principles operate therein, that the traces of the operation of each separate principle will be evident in history, and this fact, even more than agreement in respect of the final results, is a confirmation of the right theory.