Moral Imagination 193from observation; and itdoesso only when human willing
observes itself in a stream of development whose aim is
precisely to make possible willing carried by purely con-
ceptual intuition. This is achievable because in conceptu-
al intuition nothing but its own self-based essence is at
work. Whenever such an intuition is present in human
consciousness, it has not developed from the processes of
the organism (cf. pp. 135 ff.). Rather, organic activity has
withdrawn to make room for conceptual activity. If I ob-
serve willing that is the image of an intuition, then all or-
ganically necessary activity has withdrawn from that
willing. The will is free. Such freedom of will cannot be
observed by someone unable to see that free willing con-
sists in the fact that the necessary activity of the human
organism is first numbed and suppressed by the intuitive
element, and then replaced by the spiritual activity of the
idea-filled will. Only someone who cannot make this ob-
servation of the twofold nature of a free act of will be-
lieves that all willing is unfree. Anyone who can make the
observation struggles through to the insight that human
beings are unfree to the extent that they cannot complete
the process of restraining the organic activity; but that
such unfreedom strives toward freedom, which is in no
way an abstract ideal, but a guiding power inherent in hu-
man nature. Human beings are free to the extent that they
can realize, in their willing, the same mood of soul that
lives in them when they are conscious of forming purely
conceptual (spiritual) intuitions.