192 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
But wecan wish for a greater freedom, and only then
is it true freedom: namely, to determine for ourselves the
motive of our will.
Under certain circumstances, we can be induced to re-
frain from what we want to do. To allow ourselves to be
told what weought to do, that is, to want what others, and
not we ourselves, consider to be right—to this we submit
only to the extent that we do not feelfree.
Outer forces can prevent me from doing what I will. In
that case, they simply condemn me to inaction or to un-
freedom. Only if they subjugate my spirit, drive my mo-
tives from my head, and replace them with their own—
only then do they really intend to make me unfree. This is
why the Church is not merely againstactions, but partic-
ularly against impure thoughts, the motives for my ac-
tions. The Church makes me unfree when it sees as
impure all motives it has not itself decreed. A church or
any other community creates unfreedom when its priests
or teachers turn themselves into keepers of conscience, so
that the faithful (in the confessional) must take the mo-
tives for their actions from them.
Addendum to the new edition (1918)
This discussion of human will shows what human beings
can experience in their actions so that, through this expe-
rience, they arrive at the awareness: “My will is free.” It
is especially significant that the justification for calling a
will “free” comes from the experience that a conceptual
intuition realizes itself in the will. Thiscanresult only
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