 But the fact that history derives a special intimacy through the capacity for autobiography does not mean that we should be content to understand history through individuals alone. This also becomes evident in relation to Dilthey’s own work as a biographer of Schleiermacher. It became ever more clear to Dilthey that his biography could not solve its task of understanding the life of Schleiermacher without considering the intellectual life of Berlin in which he participated. A biography is likely to bring more contextual determining factors into play than an autobiography, but the biographer must remain open to the interplay of these influences and individual initiative. Dilthey writes that an individual 