In two studies well-known in their day (1923, 1929-31) on Wilhelm Dilthey, his student and son-in-law Georg Misch idealized his person and his thought. While studying this idealization, Ortega achieved philosophical maturity between 1929 and 1931. He adjusted Dilthey's philosophy of life, energized by Misch, to the purposes of «vital reason». Ortega's basic doctrines show the impact of Misch´s Dilthey —the idea of human life, the radical reality, to which all others are referred; the all-embracing reform of philosophy from the standpoint of life; the idea of life as a chore for self-authentication; and the views of life as a secret, different from Being, and comprehensible by means of the «categories of our life»—. Ortega weighs and measures the contrasts made by Misch between the categories of Dilthey and those of Heidegger to systematize his own categories and raise them to the rank of «principles of metaphysics in accordance with vital reason».