 When Rickert insists that concepts of historical individuals are formed through employing principles of selection that are universally valid, he is bringing into the philosophy of history the characteristic SW distinction between fact and value. The principles of selection are given by values. The Koh-i-noor diamond is a historical individual because it is widely held to be uniquely beautiful, and it forms a central part of the crown jewels of the British monarch; it is thus related, say, to the values of beauty, social order, and national  identity.[31]  Rickert therefore concludes that “the claim that historical concepts have an unconditionally general validity presupposes the acknowledgment of unconditionally general values” (Rickert 1902: 360). The SW view of history thus attempts to thread the needle between positivism and more radical forms of historicism: it makes history an autonomous science, without falling into relativism. (Clearly, in arguing that the concepts of history are objectively valid, despite the fact that history does not include universal laws, the SW Neo-Kantians are rejecting the Marburg view that objective validity depends on laws. This is a paradigm case where their differing conceptions of objective validity, as normative or nomological, are brought to bear.) Indeed, Rickert claims that there are certain a priori conditions of history, just as Kant had claimed in the first Critique that there are certain a priori conditions for natural science. It is a priori that every historical individual is value-relevant. It is also a priori that there are certain values, such as beauty or social order, that are universally valid. Inasmuch as a culture is a collection of values, or value-relevant individuals, the most apt way of characterizing the subject matter of a science like history is as a science of culture, as opposed to a science of mind  (Geisteswissenschaft).[32]