He recognized that the orchestral opening to the "Rhinegold", which he must have carried about within him yet had never been able to put into form, had at last taken its shape within him. In this example, the conscious mind at the moment of creation knew nothing of the actual processes by which the solution was found. As a contrast, we may consider a famous story: the discovery by Henri Poincare, the great French mathematician, of a new mathematical method called the Fuchsian functions. Here we see the conscious mind, in a person of highest ability, actually watching the unconscious at work. For weeks, he sat at his table every day and spent an hour or two trying a great number of combinations but he arrived at no result.