 In the same works Herder also indicates that interpretation, especially in its psychological aspect, requires the interpreter to use “divination”. This is another principle that is liable to sound disturbingly touchy-feely at first hearing—in particular, it can sound as though Herder means some sort of prophetic process endowed with a religious basis and perhaps even infallibility. However, what he really has in mind here is instead, quite differently and far more sensibly, a process of hypothesis, based on the meager empirical evidence that is available, but also going well beyond it, and therefore vulnerable to subsequent falsification, and abandonment or revision if falsified. (Etymologically, the French word “deviner”, to guess/conjecture is relevant here.)