The sense of smell in animals is the initial wellspring of all intuitions of meaning. The first art form expressing such perception is divination, or mantics. The informal mental intuitions of today's humans in the form of suspicions or guesses reveal traces of the ongoing presence of such original divination. The metaphysical aim to provide an eloquent voice for these traces may be understood as metaphysics from below.

Wolfram Hogrebe, Universität Bonn.