The article is devoted to the philosophical and scientific understanding of the problem of mentalities. It presents a brief outline of the ideas and research that preceded the explicit formulation of a problem of mentalities, analyzed some of the ideas of the French historical school of annals, and linguistic science regarding the issue of mentalities. The article argues that appropriate and heuristically fruitful to consider the mentality as "the subconscious" of culture by analogy with the personal subconscious.