190 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
characterize an action—for instance, to define it asfree—
must be left to immediate observation of the action itself.
After all, evolutionists also claim only that humans
evolved from non-human ancestors. What humans are ac-
tually like must be ascertained through observation of hu-
man beings themselves. The results of such observation
cannot come into conflict with a properly understood his-
tory of evolution. Only the claim that these results were
such as to preclude a natural world order could not be
aligned with the current trend of natural science.^5
Ethical individualism has nothing to fear from a natural
science that understands itself: observation shows that
freedom is characteristic of the perfected form of human
action. This freedom must be ascribed to the human will
insofar as the will realizes pure conceptual intuitions. For
these intuitions do not result from necessity working upon
them from without; they are self-sustaining. We feel the
action to befree when we find that it is the image of such
an ideal intuition. The freedom of an action lies in this
characteristic.
From this standpoint, what can be said about the dis-
tinction made in Chapter One between the two sentences
“To be free means to be able todo what one wills” and
“The real meaning of the dogma of free will is to be able
- It is quite proper that we speak of thoughts (ethical ideas) as
objects of observation. For even if the products of thinking do not
enter into consciousness during thought-activity, they can still
become the object of observation afterward. It is in this way that we
have been able to characterize human action. (Author’s note)
[17]
[18]
