To any of the more cautious and moderate Marxians it is plainly evident that the researches of the Hedonists are not merely to be rejected as erroneous or unfounded; and hence an attempt has been made to vindicate them in reference to the Marxian doctrine as an _economic psychology_, having its place alongside of true economics itself. But this definition contains a curious equivocation. Pure economics is quite apart from psychology. Indeed, to begin with, it is hard to fix the meaning of the words _economic psychology_. The science of psychology is divided into _formal_ and _descriptive_. In formal psychology there is no place either for economic fact nor for any other fact which may represent a particular content. In descriptive psychology, it is true, are included representations, sentiments and desires of an economic content, but included as they appear in reality, mixed with the other psychical phenomena of different content, and inseparable from them. Thus _descriptive economic psychology_ can be, at most, an approximate limitation, by which we take as a subject of special description the way in which men (at a given time and place, or even in the mass as hitherto they have appeared in history) think, feel and desire in respect to a certain class of goods which are usually called material or economic, and which, however, stand in need of specification and definition. Subject-matter, in truth, better suited to history than to science, which regards such matters only as empty and unimportant generalisations. This may be seen in the long discussion of the matter by that most weighty of pedants, Wagner, in his manual, which, of all that has been written on the question, I think the most worthy of notice, and which is yet, in itself, a thing very little worthy of notice or conclusive.[35] An enumeration and description of the various tendencies which exist in men as they appear in ordinary life: egoistical and altruistic tendencies, love of self-advantage and fear of disadvantage, fear of punishment and hope of reward, sense of honour and fear of disgrace and public contempt, love of activity and dislike of idleness, feeling of reverence for the moral code, etc., this is what Wagner calls _economic psychology_; and which might better be called: _various observations in descriptive psychology, to be kept in mind whilst studying the practical questions of economics_.[36]