man or a good scholar or a good soldier out of my boy, but
whether I want him to become a soldier or a merchant I must decide for
myself with reference to general aims, and that leads me back to the
purposive view of life. Such argument is entirely correct. Yes, it is
evident that it is in full harmony with our whole understanding of the
purpose of psychology. We saw that psychology with its causal treatment
of man's mind does not express the immediate reality, but is a certain
reconstruction which allows a calculation of certain effects. Thus it is
itself a system existing for a subject who has certain ends in view. The
whole causal view of man is thus a tool in the service of the purposive
man. This is the reason why it is indeed utterly absurd to think that
psychology can ever help us to determine which end we ought to reach.

In education, for instance, very many different ends might be reached;
psychology cannot decide anything. The decision as to the aims of
education must be made by ethics, which indeed takes not a causal but a
purposive attitude. Only after ethics has selected the aim, psychology
can teach us how to reach it. Of course this principle must hold for the
physician too. All his causal dealing with the mind presupposes that he
has selected a certain end in harmony with his purpose. The only
difference is that, in the case of the physician, there can be no
possible doubt as to the desirable end; what he aims at is a matter of
course, namely, the health of the patient. To desire the health of the
sufferer is thus itself a function which belongs entirely to the
purposive view of the world, and only in the interest of this purpose
does the physician apply his knowledge of psychology or of the causal
sciences of physics, physiology, and chemistry. Indeed only with this
limitation have we the right to say that the psychotherapist takes the
causal,--and that means the psychological,--view of his patient. As far
as he decides to take care of the health of his patient, this decision
itself belongs to the purposive world and to his moral system. The
physician is thus ultimately just like the minister and just like anyone
who deals with his neighbor, a purposive worker; but while the minister,
for instance, remains on this purposive track, the physician puts a
causal system into the service of his purpose. He knows the end, and his
whole aim is to apply his causal knowledge of the physical and psychical
world to