 Dilthey’s distinction between the natural and human sciences is not a metaphysical distinction. For that reason he does not create a dualism between nature as the domain of causality and history as the domain of freedom. There are many determining forces at work in history because it cannot be divorced from natural conditions. But to understand how individuals participate in history we must replace the purely external relation of cause and effect with the integral relation of “agency and suffering, of action and reaction” (ca. 1910/SW.III, 219).