  For Yorck, as for Dilthey, human life is incorrectly understood if it is subsumed under the generic catch-all category of “existence.” The first point is that human life is inconceivable without temporal and historical development, movement, and change; life always transcends itself, hence it never simply “is.” The mode of being for humans is “life,” not  “existence.”[3] And life, unlike existence, is intrinsically historical. Precisely this distinction is brought home by Yorck's demand to always observe “the generic difference between the ontic and the historical” (CR, p. 191). The ontic is what is simply “there” without inner life, temporality, or history. It includes the physical entities in the world, as well as abstract objects, numbers, essences, ideas, etc. The “ontic” is toto caelo other than “the historical.” Yorck's second point is that all history is a development of human powers or human psychology, where psychology does not mean some inert or fixed “nature,” but the constant play of forces, the ever shifting configurations between understanding, affectivity, and volition. (See Section 3.1 below.) 