XII. Moral Imagination Darwinism and Morality

A free spirit acts according to his impulses, i.e., intuitions, which his thinking has selected out of the whole world of his Ideas. For an unfree spirit, the reason why he singles out a particular intuition from his world of Ideas, in order to make it the basis of an action, lies in the perceptual world which is given to him, i.e., in his past experiences. He recalls, before making a decision, what someone else has done, or recommended as proper in an analogous case, or what God has commanded to be done in such a case, etc., and he acts on these recollections. For a free spirit these preliminary conditions are not the only impulses to action. He takes an absolutely original decision. He cares as little what others have done in such a case as what commands they had laid down. He has purely ideal reasons which determine him to select a particular concept out of the sum of his concepts, and to realize it in action. But his action will belong to perceptible reality. Consequently, what he achieves will be identical with a definite content of perception. The concept will have to realize itself in a concrete particular event. As a concept it will not contain this particular event. It will refer to the event only in the same way as, in general, a concept is related to a percept, e.g., the concept lion to a particular lion. The link between concept and percept is the representation.[^1] To the unfree spirit this intermediate link is given from the outset. Motives exist in his consciousness from the first in the form of representations. Whenever he intends to do anything he acts as he has seen others act, or as he is ordered to do in each separate case. Hence authority is most effective in the form of examples, i.e., in the form of quite definite particular actions handed down for the consciousness of the unfree spirit. A Christian models his conduct less on the teaching than on the model of the Saviour. Rules have less value for telling men positively what to do than for telling them what to leave undone. Laws take on the form of general concepts only when they forbid actions, not when they prescribe actions. Laws concerning what we ought to do must be given to the unfree spirit in wholly concrete form. Clean the street in front of your door! Pay your taxes to such and such an amount to the tax-collector! etc. Conceptual form belongs to laws which inhibit actions. Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not commit adultery! These laws, too, influence the unfree spirit only by means of a concrete representation, e.g., that of the punishments attached by human authority, or of the pangs of conscience, or of eternal damnation, etc.