 This brings us to the key notion of “hypothesis”. The pursuit of science—its “method” in Natorp’s special sense—proceeds by hypothesis. Sometimes he puts it more pointedly: hypothesis is method. Since method is for him a “going-after” or pursuit of the “perpetually distant goal” (Natorp 1910c: 97) or focus imaginarius of complete objective determination, Natorp interprets “hypothesis” in a correspondingly active sense. He takes the term “hypo-thesis” quite literally as a “setting-down” or “laying-under”, or as he puts it, a “Ge-setz” or “Grund-legung” (cf. Cohen 1902: 449; 1916: 308, ff.). These glosses all emphasize the activity of hypothesis: it is less a posit than a positing, an act by which thinking proceeds and becomes experience. Natorp writes: 