[146] STILL as much detached as possible, but it is not completely without involvement because it presupposes a participation^a in those who ACT historically, and in their motives. And if you EXPLAIN Caesar's attack on Rome, then you can find, and you always find, more than one motive. And you evaluate the weight of these motives and thereby you come to an involvement in terms of an analogy which you make with yourselves. Unconsciously, every historian^b puts himself on the place of the great historical actors, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to explain anything. For instance, he must understand what ambition means, what will-to-power means, what the feeling for justice means, what anticipation of danger means---and many other things like that. And he must be able to put these motives into the right proportion. This means involvement, and is more than mere detached analysis. Then there is the third and most difficult thing, namely understanding. Understanding^c is an act of total participation^d. Let me give first an example of a text. How can you understand a text like a Platonic dialogue, or a biblical text? What do you do if you try to understand it? You try to use your organs of understanding of the realm described in this text---in the one case, a philosophy, politics, or aesthetics; in the other case, religion or ethics---you must participate with your organs of understanding just in what has happened, in the text. But now something very difficult occurs, namely it occurs that your organs of understanding do not leave the text unchanged, but something NEW is created: the understood text, , [sic.] which is not only the text as it "STANDS" there, but it is also the text as it has grasped you, or as you have grasped it.