d their
laws. In one case I wanted to interpret the man, and finally to
appreciate him; in the other case I wanted to describe his inner life,
and finally to explain it. The man whose inner life I want to share I
treat as a subject, the man whose inner life I want to describe and
explain I treat as an object.

I might express these two standpoints still otherwise. If my neighbor is
to me a subject, for instance, in the midst of an ordinary conversation,
he comes in question only with reference to his aims and meanings:
whatever he utters has a purpose and end. I understand his inner life by
taking a purposive point of view. On the other hand, the man whose inner
life is to me an object can satisfy my interest only if I understand
every particular happening in his mind from its preceding causes. I
transform his whole life into a chain of causes and effects. My
standpoint is thus a causal one. No doubt in our daily life, our
purposive interest and our causal interest may intertwine at any moment.
I may sympathize with the hopes and fears of my neighbor in a purposive
way, and may yet in the next moment consider from a causal standpoint
how these emotions of his are perhaps affected by his fatigue or by some
glasses of wine, or by a hereditary disposition, or by a suggestion; in
short, at one time I look out for the meaning of the emotion as a part
of the expression of a self, and at another time for the structure and
appearance of the emotion as a part of a causal chain of events. In both
directions I can go on with entire consistency, and there cannot be any
part of inner experience which cannot be fully brought under either
point of view. How far we have a right to mix the two standpoints in
practical life, we shall carefully examine; but it is clear that if we
want to understand the true meaning of the study of inner life, we have
no longer any right carelessly to mix the two standpoints without being
conscious of their fundamental difference. We must understand exactly
what the aim of the one and of the other is, and where each has its
particular value; science certainly has no right to throw together such
different views of life. And now this may be said at once: the causal
view only is the view of psychology; the purposive view lies outside of
psychology.

Such a separation does not at all aim to indicate that the one view is
more important than the other, or that the one has more scientific
dignity than the other