 But the real categories are not the same in the natural and human sciences. Whereas time is an ideal abstract form for the natural sciences, for the human sciences it has a qualitative content. It is experienced as advancing into the future and “always contains the memory of what has just been present” (ca. 1910/SW.III, 216). The relation between the past and the present becomes the source for the category of meaning which is Dilthey’s main historical category. The present never merely is in the sense of being observable and it can be understood meaningfully only to the extent that the past asserts its presence in it. When the present is lived, “the positive or negative value of the realities that fill it are experienced through feeling. And when we face the future, the category of purpose arises through a projective attitude” (ca. 1910/SW.III, 222). Meaning, value, and purpose are the three central categories of the human sciences and each relates to time in its own way. What is valued by feeling focuses on the momentary present, but for the will everything in the present tends to be subordinated to some future purpose. Only the category of meaning can expand the present into a presence that includes the past and overcomes the mere juxtaposition or subordination of the various aspects of life to each other. The understanding of meaning involves the encompassing sense of reflective knowledge that attempts to relate cognition to evaluation and the setting of goals.