XII. Moral Imagination Darwinism and Morality

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918: In this interpretation of the human will is presented what man can experience in his actions and, through this, come to the conscious experience: My will is free. It is of particular significance that the right to characterize the will as free is attained through the experience: In my will an ideal intuition comes to realization. This experience can only come about as a result of observation, but it is observation in the sense that the human will is observed within a stream of evolution, the aim of which is to attain for the will the possibility of being carried by pure ideal intuition. This can be attained because in ideal intuition nothing is active but its own self-sustaining essence. If such an intuition is present in human consciousness, then it is not developed out of the processes of the organism (cp. p. 31 ff.), but the organic activity has withdrawn to make room for the ideal activity. If I observe will when it is an image of intuition, then from this will the necessary organic activity has withdrawn. The will is free. This freedom of will no one can observe who is unable to observe how free will consists in the fact that, first, through the intuitive element the necessary activity of the human organism is lamed, pressed back, and in its place is set the spiritual activity of idea-filled will. Only one who is unable to make this observation of the two-fold aspect of will that is free, will believe that every will-impulse is unfree. One who can make the observations will attain the insight that man is unfree insofar as he is unable to carry through completely the process of repressing the organic activity, but that this unfreedom strives to attain freedom, and that this freedom is by no means an abstract ideal, but is a directive force inherent in human nature. Man is free to the degree that he is able to realize in his will the same mood of soul he also experiences when he is conscious of elaborating pure ideal (spiritual) intuitions.