If on my return from some voyage I were to tell you of all the things I have _not_ seen, you would justly doubt the order of my senses. Sane reason demands that the description of unfamiliar things be given in a positive, not in a negative manner. If that is so, is it not wrong to proceed negatively by trying to prove in explaining the nature of the intellect that it is not a miracle and no mysterious charm of wisdom? I answer: No. For the present, the intellect is still a sort of _ignis fatuus_ which is magnified into a fiery man. In order to understand the _ignis fatuus_, it is necessary to remove the fiery man. Logic must show that human reason is not a miracle, not a mystical receptacle of wisdom. The negative process is in such a case positively in order. Wherever a thing is obscured by prejudices, these must first be removed, in order that room may be made for the bare fact. It was the famous Kant who posed the question: "How is _a priori_ knowledge possible?" How do we arrive at the knowledge of things which are not accessible to experience? The answer is that the intellect cannot accomplish such a miracle, and Kant substantiates this in a long-winded way and with admirable penetration. But he left a nasty hair in the soup. He found that by the help of our reason we can explain only phenomena. The confusion between truth and phenomena had been handed down to him as an infirmity of ancient times. He worked diligently on its solution, but left some work for those coming after him. Originally the study of supernatural and the profane study of natural things were closely intermingled. Not until the obvious results of natural science became known, did thinkers accommodate themselves to the habit of leaving supernatural things to faith and limiting science to the study of natural phenomena. Science had so to say passed on to the practical order of business, not paying any further attention to the contrast between phenomena and truth. But the logic, which is innate in the human mind, cannot content itself with the dualistic split between faith and science. It demands a monistic system and does not desist until the primeval forests of faith are completely put under cultivation. The logical impulse of culture caused Kant to continue what was begun by Socrates. Philosophy before Socrates searched for truth externally. While our logic teaches that everything is true, and truth is the universe, the Ionic philosophers made a sort of fetish out of the matter. Thales idolized the water as the thing of things, another the fire, a third numbers. This worship of the fetish was the worship of truth. The search for understanding starts out with misunderstanding. From religious to scientific culture, it is a step, not a leap. When Socrates turned to introspection and started out, with his "Know thyself," in submitting the prodigy of the human soul to critique, he made another important step.