ABSTRACT
Every professional task has its own "inherent norms" and should be fulfilled accordingly. In the execution of his professional responsibility, a man should confine himself to it alone and should exclude whatever is not strictly proper to it—particularly his own loves and hates. The empirical-psychological and historical analysis of certain evaluations with respect to the individual social conditions of their emergence and continued existence can never, under any circumstances, lead to anything other than an "understanding" explanation. An "ethical" conviction which is dissolved by the psychological "understanding" of other values is about as valuable as religious beliefs which are destroyed by scientific knowledge, which is of course a quite frequent occurrence. Finally, when Schmoller asserts that the exponents of "ethical neutrality" in the empirical disciplines can acknowledge only "formal" ethical truths a few comments are called for even though the problem, as such, is not integral to the present issue.
