 As the last clause in the quotation makes clear, Collingwood’s account of re-enactment aims to establish a conceptual point about what exactly it is that historians re-enact (the thought as opposed to the acts of thinking) and what the criteria for identifying and distinguishing thoughts are. It is not meant to prescribe to historians an empathetic method for the recovery of inner psychological processes which are not accessible from a third person perspective (Saari 1984 and 1989; Van der Dussen 1981 and 1995; D’Oro 2000). Unfortunately the doctrine of re-enactment has been widely read not as attempting to identify the subject matter of history (thought, rather than acts of thinking), but as seeking to articulate a method by which historian can recover hidden psychological processes that are not accessible from the third person perspective. In the aftermath of the publication of The Idea of History, the re-enactment doctrine was widely associated with Dilthey’s account of empathetic understanding and accused of ascribing to the historian implausible telepathic powers of access to other minds (Gardiner 1952a and 1952b).