The Idea of Freedom 157else. Who of us can say that they are really free in all their
actions? But in each of us there dwells a deeper being in
whom the free human comes to expression.
Our life is made up of free and unfree actions. Yet we
cannot think the concept of the human through to the end
without arriving at thefree spirit as the purest expression
of human nature. Indeed, we are only truly human to the
extent that we are free.
That is an ideal, many will say. No doubt. But it is an
ideal that works as a real element in our being and mani-
fests its effects on the surface. It is no thought-up or
dreamed-up ideal, but one that has life and makes itself
clearly known in even its most imperfect form of exist-
ence. Were human beings merely natural creatures, it
would be absurd to look for ideals—that is, ideas that are
not currently effective and requiring realization. With
things of the external world, the idea is determined by the
percept, and we have done our part once we have recog-
nized the connection between idea and percept. But this is
not so with humans. The totality of human existence is not
determined apart from the human beings themselves;
their true concepts asethical human beings (free spirits)
are not united in advance, objectively, with the perceptual
picture of “human beings,” needing merely to be con-
firmed afterward by cognition. As human beings, we
must each unite our own concept with the percept of “hu-
man” through our own activity. Concept and percept co-
incide here only if we ourselves make them coincide. But
we can only do so if we have discovered the concept of
the free spirit, which is our own concept. In the objective