144 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
practical a priori, that is, an impulse to act flowing di-
rectly from my intuition.
Clearly, such an impulse no longer belongs, strictly
speaking, to the realm of characterological dispositions.
For what is active here as the motive power is no longer
something merely individual in me, but the conceptual,
and therefore universal, content of my intuition. As soon
as I recognize the justification for making this content the
basis and starting-point for an action, I enter into willing,
regardless of whether the concept was already present in
me beforehand or only entered my consciousness imme-
diately before the action—that is, regardless of whether
or not it was already present in me as disposition.
An act of will is real only if a momentary impulse of ac-
tion influences the characterological disposition in the
form of a concept or mental picture. Such an impulse then
becomes a motive of willing.
The motives of morality are mental pictures and con-
cepts. There are ethicists who also see a motive of moral-
ity in feelings. They claim, for example, that the aim of
moral action is to promote the greatest possible amount of
pleasure in the acting individual. But only themental pic-
ture of pleasure, not pleasure itself, can become a motive.
Themental picture of a future feeling, but not the feeling
itself, can affect my characterological disposition. For the
feeling itself is not present in the moment of action; rath-
er, it must first be produced through the action.
Themental picture of one’s own or another’s well-be-
ing is quite properly recognized as a motive of willing.
The principle of producing through one’s actions the
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