Thus our theme, which originally comprised only the limited problem of present-day civilization, broadens itself into a new philosophy—_the_ philosophy of the future, so far as the metaphysically-exhausted soil of the West can bear such, and in any case the only philosophy which is within the _possibilities_ of the West-European mind in its next stages. It expands into the conception of a _morphology of world history_, of the world-as-history in contrast to the morphology of the world-as- nature that hitherto has been almost the only theme of philosophy. And it reviews once again the forms and movements of the world in their depths and final significance, but this time according to an entirely different ordering which groups them, not in an ensemble picture inclusive of everything known, but in a picture of _life_, and presents them not as things-become, but as things-becoming. The _world-as-history_, conceived, viewed and given form from out of its opposite the _world-as-nature_—here is a new aspect of human existence on this earth. As yet, in spite of its immense significance, both practical and theoretical, this aspect has not been realized, still less presented. Some obscure inkling of it there may have been, a distant momentary glimpse there has often been, but no one has deliberately faced it and taken it in with all its implications. We have before us two possible ways in which man may inwardly possess and experience the world around him. With all rigour I distinguish (as to form, not substance) the organic from the mechanical world-impression, the content of images from that of laws, the picture and symbol from the formula and the system, the instantly actual from the constantly possible, the intents and purposes of imagination ordering according to plan from the intents and purposes of experience dissecting according to scheme; and— to mention even thus early an opposition that has never yet been noted, in spite of its significance—the domain of _chronological_ from that of _mathematical number_.[1]