ABSTRACT
Firstly, that the self-awareness of the individual, his experience of the processes in his own mind and his personal sense of life form the basis for his understanding of the human world. Secondly, that the understanding of individual lives is fundamental for the understanding of society and history. Thirdly, that the study of the patterns which constitute the course of individual lives provides the evidence for the systematic human studies. This chapter underlines the fact that the understanding of others helps us to understand ourselves, that individuals can only be understood in terms of the human, social and historical contexts in which they stand and that historical knowledge itself, that is, knowledge of successions of individual events, is made possible only by recourse to the findings of the systematic human studies. From the world of objective mind, the self receives sustenance from earliest childhood. It is the medium in which the understanding of other people and their expressions takes place.
