Moral Imagination 181event. But, as a concept, it cannot contain that event. It
can relate to it only as any concept relates to a percept—
for example, as the concept of “lion” relates to an individ-
ual lion.
The link mediating between a concept and a percept is
themental picture (cf. p. 100). For an unfree spirit, this link
is given in advance—motives are present in advance as
mental pictures in consciousness. When unfree spirits want
to do something, they do it as they have seen it done, or as
they have been told to do in this particular case. Authority,
therefore, works best throughexamples, that is, through the
transmission of quite specific, individual acts to the con-
sciousness of unfree spirits. A Christian acts less in accor-
dance with the teachings than with the model of the
Redeemer. With regard to positive action, rules have less
value than they do for the restraint of particular actions.
Only when they forbid actions, and not when they com-
mand them to be done, do laws take on universal concep-
tual form. Laws concerning what unfree spirits should do
must be given to them in quite concrete form: Clean the
street in front of your doorway! Pay your taxes at just this
rate at tax-office X! and so forth. The laws forbidding ac-
tions take the conceptual form: Thou shaltnotsteal! Thou
shaltnot commit adultery! But these laws, too, affect un-
free spirits only by their appeal to concrete mental pictures,
such as that of the corresponding secular punishment, tor-
ments of conscience, eternal damnation, and so forth.
As soon as an impulse to action is present in the form
of a general concept—for example, thou shalt do good to
thy neighbor, or thou shalt live so as best to further thy