 This second phase of Dilthey’s thought is characterized by a stress on the reality of lived experience and on the immediate understanding of human life that this makes possible. It is in the “Ideas for a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology” of 1894 that Dilthey works out his explanation-understanding distinction. “We explain through purely intellectual processes, but we understand through the cooperation of all the powers of the mind activated by apprehension” (1894/SW.II, 147). The human sciences will henceforth be conceived as primarily concerned with understanding the meaning of human action and interaction. Also central to this second phase of Dilthey’s thought is the essay “The Origin of Our Belief in the Reality of the External World and Its Justification” of 1890. Our initial access to the external world is not inferential, but is felt as resistance to the will. The world of lived experience is not merely a theoretical representation, but is directly present to us as embodying values that are relevant to our purposes. The stress on feeling and immediacy in this second phase amounts to a rejection of Hegel’s dialectical approach.