Freedom-Philosophy and Monism 165this entity will also produce out of itself—by purely me-
chanical necessity—human beings and everything associ-
ated with them. The consciousness of freedom can then be
only an illusion. For, although I consider myself the creator
of my action, what operates within me is the matter of
which I am composed and its inner processes. I believe my-
self to be free, but actually all my actions are merely results
of material processes underlying my bodily and spiritual
organism. This view holds that we have the feeling of free-
dom only because we do not know the motives that compel
us. “We must... emphasize that the feeling of freedom de-
pends upon the absence of externally compelling motives.
Our action, like our thinking, is necessitated.”^1
Another possibility is to see a spiritual being as the extra-
human absolute behind phenomena. We would then also
seek the impulse for action in such a spiritual power. We
would regard the moral principles in our reason as an ex-
pression of this being-in-itself, which has its own particu-
lar goals for humanity. To the dualist of this persuasion,
moral laws appear to be dictated by the absolute. Human
beings through their intelligence need only discover and
carry out the decrees of this absolute being. To the dual-
ist, the moral world order appears as the perceptible re-
flection of a higher order standing behind it. Earthly
morality is the manifestation of the extra-human world
- Ziehen,Leitfaden der physiologischen Psychologie, First Edition,
p. 207f. For the way in which “materialism” is discussed here, and
the justification for discussing it in this way, see the “Addition” at the
end of this chapter. (Author’s note)