We do not seek their elements but their meaning, we do not seek their
causes and effects but their inner relations and their inner
purposes. In short, we do not take them at all as objects but as
functions of the subject, and our dealing with them has no similarity
to the method of the naturalist.
This method of practical life in which we seek to express and to
understand a meaning, and relate every will-act to its aim, is not
confined to the mere popular aspect; it can lead to very systematic
scholarly treatment. It is exactly the treatment which is fundamental
in the case of all history, for example, or of law, or of logic. That
is, the historian makes us understand the meaning of a personality of
the past and is really interested in past events only as far as human
needs are to be interpreted. It would be pseudo-psychology, if we
called such an account in the truly historical spirit a psychological
description and explanation. The student of law interprets the meaning
of the will of the legislator; he does not deal with the idea of the
law as a psychological content. And the logician has nothing to do
with the idea as a conscious object in the mind; he asks as to the
inner relations of it and as to the conclusions from the premises. In
short, wherever historical interpretations or logical deductions are
needed, we move on in the sphere of human life as it presents itself
from the standpoint of immediate true experience without artificially
moulding it into the conceptions of psychology.
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