eally descriptive and explanatory account of mental
life, and is therefore not psychology in the technical sense of the
word.

It is this historical attitude which controls all the studies of the
political economists. They speak of the will-acts of the individuals
and of their demands and desires and satisfactions, but they do not
describe and explain them; they want to interpret and understand them.
They may analyze the motives of the laborer or of the manufacturer,
but those motives and impulses interest them not as contents of
consciousness, but only as acts which are directed toward a goal. The
aim toward which these point by their meaning, and not the elements
from which they are made up or their causes and effects, is the
substance of such economic studies. For such a subjective account of
the meaning of actions the only problem is, indeed, the correct
understanding and interpretation, and the consistent psychologist who
knows that it is not his task to interpret but to explain has no right
to raise any questions here. It is, therefore, only a confusing
disturbance, if a really psychological, causal explanation is mixed
into the interpretation of such a system of will-acts and purposes. It
is true we find this confusion in many modern works on economics.
Economists know that a scientific explanatory study of the human mind
exists, and they have a vague feeling that they have no right to
ignore this real psychology, instead of recognizing that the
psychology really has nothing to do with their particular problem. The
result is that they constantly try to discuss the impulses and
instincts, the hunger and thirst and sexual desire, and the higher
demands for fighting and playing and acquiring, for seeking power and
social influence, as a psychologist would discuss them, referring them
to biological and physiological conditions and explaining them
causally. Yet as soon as they come to their real problems and enter
into the interpretation and meaning of these economic energies, they
naturally slide back into the historical, economic point of view and
discuss the economic relations of men without any reference to their
psychologizing preambles. The application of the psychological,
scientific method to the true economic experience is therefore not
secured at all in this way. The demands and volitions which they
disentangle are not the ones which the psychophysiologist studies,
because they are left in their immediate f