148 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
We described the stage of characterological disposition
that works aspure thinking, orpractical reason, as the
highest. We have now describedconceptual intuition as
the highest motive. More exact reflection soon reveals
that motive power and motive coincide at this level of
morality. That is, neither a previously determined charac-
terological disposition nor an outer ethical principle taken
as a standard influences our action. The action is there-
fore not executed robotically according to certain rules,
nor is it action performed automatically in response to
outer pressure, but rather it is action determined solely by
its own conceptual content.
Such an action presupposes the capacity for moral intu-
itions. Whoever lacks the capacity to experience the par-
ticular ethical principle of each individual case will also
never achieve truly individual willing.
The exact opposite of this ethical principle is the Kan-
tian: Act in such a way that the bases of your action are
applicable to all human beings. This sentence is the death
of all individual impulses of action. My standard cannot
be how all humans would act but rather what I am to do
in the individual case.
A superficial judgment might perhaps object to these
arguments by asking: How can an action be formed indi-
vidually, for the particular case and the particular situa-
tion, and yet simultaneously be determined purely
conceptually, out of intuition? This objection rests on
confusing the ethical motive with the perceptible content
of an action. The lattercan be a motive, and even is so,
for example, in the case of the progress of civilization, in
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