The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Let us recapitulate the results gained in the previous chapters. The world faces man as a multiplicity, as an aggregate of detailed parts. He himself is one of these entities, a being among beings. Of this configuration of the world we say simply that it is given, and inasmuch as we do not evolve it by conscious activity, but simply find it, we say that it consists of percepts. Within this world of percepts we perceive ourselves. This percept of Self would remain merely one among many other percepts, did not something arise from the midst of this percept of Self which proves capable of connecting all percepts one with another and, therefore, the sum of all other; percepts with the percept of Self. This something which emerges is no longer a mere percept; neither is it, like percepts, simply given. It is produced by our activity. It appears, in the first instance, bound up with what each of us perceives as his Self. In its inner significance, however, it transcends the Self. It adds to the separate percepts ideally determined elements, which, however, are related to one another, and which are grounded in a whole. What self-perception yields is ideally determined by this something in the same way as all other percepts, and placed as subject, or “I,” over against the objects. This something is thinking, and the ideally determined elements are the concepts and Ideas. Thinking, therefore, first manifests itself in the percept of Self. But it is not merely subjective, for the Self characterizes itself as subject only with the help of thinking. This relation of the Self to itself by means of thinking is a determination of our personality in life. Through it we lead a purely ideal existence. Through it we feel ourselves to be thinking beings. This determination of our lives would remain a purely conceptual (logical) one, if it were not supplemented by other determinations of our Selves. Our lives would then exhaust themselves in establishing purely ideal connections between percepts themselves, and between them and ourselves. If we call this establishment of an ideal relation an “act of cognition,” and the resulting condition of ourself “knowledge,” then, assuming the above supposition to be true, we should have to consider ourselves as beings who merely cognize or know.

[ 2 ] The supposition is, however, untrue. We relate percepts to ourselves not merely ideally, through concepts, but also, as we have already seen, through feeling. We are, therefore, not beings with a merely conceptual content. The Naive Realist holds that the personality actually lives more genuinely in the life of feeling than in the purely ideal element of knowledge. From his point of view he is quite right in interpreting the matter in this way. Feeling signifies on the subjective side exactly the same as percepts signify on the objective side. From the principle of Naive Realism, that everything is real which can be perceived, it follows that feeling is the guarantee of the reality of one's own personality. Monism, however, as here understood, must bestow on feeling the same supplementation which it considers necessary for percepts, if these are to stand before us as complete reality. For this Monism, feeling is an incomplete reality, which, in the form in, which it first appears to us, does not contain as yet its second factor, the concept or Idea. This is why, in actual life, feelings, like percepts, appear prior to knowledge. At first, we have merely a feeling of existence; and it is only in the course of our gradual development, that we attain to the point at which the concept of Self emerges from within the faint feeling of our own existence. However, what for us does not appear until later, is from the first indissolubly bound up with our feeling. This is how the naive man comes to believe that in feeling he grasps existence immediately, in knowledge only mediately. The development of the life of feeling, therefore, appears to him more important than anything else. He will not believe the nexus of the world to have been grasped until he has received it into his feeling. He attempts to make feeling the instrument of knowledge rather than knowing. Now a feeling is entirely individual, something equivalent to a percept. Hence a Philosopher of Feeling makes a world-principle out of something which has significance only within his own personality. He attempts to permeate the whole world with his own Self. What the Monist, in the sense we have described, strives to grasp by means of concepts the Philosopher of Feeling tries to attain through feeling, and he looks on this community of his with the objects as more immediate than knowledge.

[ 3 ] The tendency just described, the Philosophy of Feeling, is often called Mysticism. The error in such a mystical conception based upon feeling is that it seeks to experience immediately what must be known, that it tries to elevate feeling, which is individual, into a universal principle.

[ 4 ] Feeling is a purely individual activity. It is the relation of the external world to the subject, in so far as this relation finds expression in a purely subjective experience.

[ 5 ] There is yet another expression of human personality. The Self, through thinking, takes part in the universal world-life. Through thinking it relates purely ideally (conceptually) the percepts to itself, and itself to the percepts. In feeling, it has immediate experience of the relation of objects to itself as subject. In will, the opposite is the case. In volition, we are concerned once more with a percept, viz., that of the individual relation of the Self to what is objective. Whatever in the act of will is not an ideal factor, is just as much mere object of perception as is any object in the external world.

[ 6 ] Nevertheless, the Naive Realist believes here again that he has before him something far more real than can be attained by thinking. He sees in the will an element in which he is immediately aware of an occurrence, a causation, in contrast with thinking which afterwards grasps the event in conceptual form. What the I achieves by its will is, on this view, a process which is experienced immediately. The adherent of this philosophy believes that in the will he has really got hold of one “bit” of reality (cf. Chapter III, p. 30 Ed.). Whereas he can follow other occurrences only from the outside by means of perception, he is confident that in his will he experiences a real process quite immediately. The mode of existence presented to him by the will within the Self becomes for him the principle of reality in the universe. His own will appears to him as a special case of the general world-process; hence the latter is conceived as a universal will. The will becomes the world-principle of reality just as, in Mysticism, feeling becomes the principle of knowledge. This kind of theory is called Voluntarism (Thelism). It makes something which can be experienced only individually the fundamental factor of the world.

[ 7 ] Voluntarism can as little be called scientific as can Mysticism. For both assert that the conceptual interpretation of the world is inadequate. Both demand, with a certain amount of justice, in addition to a principle of being which is ideal, also a principle which is real. But as perception is our only means of apprehending these so-called real principles, the assertion of Mysticism and Voluntarism coincides with the view that we have two sources of knowledge, viz., thinking and perception, the latter presenting itself as an individual experience in feeling and will. Since the immediate experiences which flow from the one source cannot be directly absorbed into the experiences of thinking which flow from the other, both experiences—perception and thinking—remain side by side, without any higher form of mediation between them. Besides the conceptual (ideal) principle to which we attain by means of knowledge, there is said to be a real principle which must be experienced. In other words, Mysticism and Voluntarism are both forms of Naive Realism, because they subscribe to the doctrine that the immediately perceived (experienced) is real. Compared with Naive Realism in its primitive form, they are guilty of the yet further inconsistency of accepting one definite form of perception (feeling, will) as the exclusive means of knowing reality. Yet they can do this only so long as they cling to the general principle that everything that is perceived is real. They ought, therefore, to attach an equal value to external perception for purposes of knowledge.

[ 8 ] Voluntarism turns into Metaphysical Realism when it asserts the existence of will also in those spheres of reality in which will can no longer, as in the individual subject, be immediately experienced. It assumes hypothetically that a principle holds good outside the subject, for the existence of which, nevertheless, subjective experience is the sole criterion of reality. As a form of Metaphysical Realism, Voluntarism is open to the criticism developed in the preceding chapter, a criticism which makes it necessary to overcome the contradictory element in every form of Metaphysical Realism, and to acknowledge that the will is a universal world-process only in so far as it is ideally related to the rest of the world.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 9 ] The difficulty of seizing the essential nature of thinking by observation lies in this, that it has eluded the introspecting soul all too easily by the time that the soul tries to bring it into the focus of attention. Nothing but the lifeless abstract, the corpse of living thought, then remains for inspection. When we consider only this abstract, we find it hard, by contrast, to resist entering into the mysticism of feeling, or, again, into the metaphysics of will, both of which are “full of life.” We are tempted to regard it as odd that anyone should want to seize the essence of reality in “mere thoughts.” But if we once succeed in really finding the true life in thinking, we learn to understand that the self-abandonment to feelings, or the intuiting of the will, cannot even be compared with the inward wealth of this life of thinking, which we experience as within itself, ever self-supporting, yet at the same time ever in movement. Still less is it possible to rank will and feeling above thinking. It is owing precisely to this wealth, to this inward abundance of experience, that the counter-image of thinking which presents itself to our ordinary attitude of soul, should appear lifeless and abstract. No other activity of the human soul is so easily misapprehended as thinking. Will and feeling still fill the soul with warmth even when we live through them again in memory. Thinking all too readily leaves us cold in recollection; it is as if the life of the soul had dried out. But this is really nothing but the strongly marked shadow thrown by its luminous warm nature penetrating deeply into the phenomena of the world. This penetration is effected by a power contained in the activity of thinking itself which is the power of love—spiritual love. There is no room here for the objection that thus to perceive love in the activity of thinking is to project into thinking a feeling, viz., love. This objection is, in truth, a confirmation of the view here advocated. If we turn towards the essential nature of thinking, we find in it both feeling and will, and both these in the depth of their reality. If we turn away from thinking towards “mere” feeling and will, these lose for us their genuine reality. If we are willing to make of thinking an intuitive experience, we can do justice, also, to experiences of the type of feeling and will. But the mysticism of feeling and the metaphysics of will are not able to do justice to the penetration of reality by intuitive thinking. They conclude all too readily that they themselves are rooted in reality, but that the intuitive thinker, untouched by feeling, blind to reality, forms out of “abstract thoughts” a shadowy, chilly picture of the world.

[ 1 ] The concept “tree” is conditioned for our knowledge by the percept “tree.” When faced with a determinate percept I can select only one determinate concept from the general system of concepts. The connection of concept and percept is mediately and objectively determined by thinking in conformity with the percept. The connection between a percept and its concept is recognized after the act of perception, but the relevance of the one to the other is determined by the thing itself.

[ 2 ] The procedure is different when we examine knowledge, or rather the relation of man to the world which arises within knowledge. In the preceding chapters the attempt has been made to show that an unprejudiced observation of this relation is able to throw light on its nature. A correct understanding of this observation leads to the insight that thinking may be intuitively apprehended in its self-contained nature. Those who find it necessary, for the explanation of thinking as such, to invoke something else, e.g., physical brain-processes, or unconscious spiritual-processes lying behind the conscious thinking which they observe, fail to grasp the facts which an unprejudiced observation of thinking yields. When we observe our thinking, we live during the observation immediately within the essence of a spiritual, self-sustaining activity. Indeed we may even affirm that if we want to grasp the essential nature of Spirit in the form in which it immediately presents itself to man, we need but look at our own self-sustaining thinking.

[ 3 ] For the study of thinking two things coincide which elsewhere must always appear apart, viz., concept and percept. If we fail to see this, we shall be unable to regard the concepts which we have elaborated in response to percepts as anything but shadowy copies of these percepts, and we shall take the percepts as presenting to us reality as it really is. We shall, further, build up for ourselves a metaphysical world after the pattern of the perceived world. We shall, each according to his habitual thought-pictures, call this world a world of atoms, or of will, or of unconscious spirit, and so on. And we shall fail to notice that all the time we have been doing nothing but erecting hypothetically a metaphysical world modeled on our perceived world. But if we clearly apprehend what thinking consists in, we shall recognize that percepts present to us only a portion of reality, and that the complementary portion which alone imparts to reality its full character as real, is experienced by us in the permeation of percepts by thinking. We shall regard that which enters into consciousness as thinking, not as a shadowy copy of reality, but as a self-sustaining spiritual essence. We shall be able to say of it, that it is revealed to us in consciousness through intuition. Intuition is the purely spiritual conscious experience of a purely spiritual content. It is only through an intuition that we can grasp the essence of thinking.

[ 4 ] Only if one wins through, by means of unprejudiced observation, to the recognition of this truth of the intuitive essence of thinking will one succeed in clearing the way for a conception of the psycho-physical organization of man. One recognizes that this organization can produce no effect whatever on the essential nature of thinking. At first sight this seems to be contradicted by patent and obvious facts. For ordinary experience, human thinking occurs only in connection with, and by means of, such an organization. This dependence on psycho-physical organization is so prominent that its true bearing can be appreciated by us only if we recognize, that in the essential nature of thinking this organization plays no part whatever. Once we appreciate this, we can no longer fail to notice how peculiar is the relation of human organization to thinking. For this organization contributes nothing to the essential nature of thought, but recedes whenever the activity of thinking appears. It suspends its own activity, it yields ground. And the ground thus set free is occupied by thinking. The essence which is active in thinking has a two-fold function: first it restricts the human organization in its own activity; next, it steps into the place of it. Yes, even the former, the restriction of the physical organization, is an effect of the activity of thinking, and more particularly that part of this activity which prepares the manifestation of thinking. This explains the sense in which thinking has its counterpart in the organization of the body. Once we perceive this, we can no longer misapprehend the significance for thinking of this physical counterpart. When we walk over soft ground our feet leave impressions in the soil. We shall not be tempted to say that the forces of the ground, from below, have formed these footprints. We shall not attribute to these forces any share in the production of the footprints. Just so, if without prejudice we observe the essential nature of thinking, we shall not attribute any share in that nature to the traces in the physical organism which thinking produces in preparing its manifestation through the body.¹

[ 5 ] An important question, however, emerges here. If the human organization has no part in the essential nature of thinking, what is the function of this organization within the whole nature of man? The effects of thinking upon this organization have no bearing upon the essence of thinking, but they have a bearing upon the origin of the I-consciousness, through this thinking. Thinking, in its own character, contains the real “I,” but it does not contain, as such, the I-consciousness. To see this we have but to observe thinking with an open mind. The “I” is to be found in thinking. The “I-consciousness” arises through the traces which, in the sense above explained, the activity of thinking impresses upon our general consciousness. (The I-consciousness thus arises through the bodily organization. This view must not, however, be taken to imply that the I-consciousness, once it has arisen, remains dependent on the bodily organization. Once arisen it is taken up into thinking and shares henceforth the spiritual being of the latter.)

[ 6 ] The “I-consciousness” is built upon the human organization. The latter is the source of the acts of will. Following out the direction of the preceding exposition, we can gain insight into the connection of thinking, conscious I, and act of will, only by studying first how an act of will issues from the human organization.²

[ 7 ] In a particular act of will we must distinguish two factors: the motive and the spring of action. The motive is a factor of the nature of concept or representation; the spring of action is the factor in will which is directly conditioned in the human organization. The conceptual factor, or motive, is the momentary determining cause of an act of will; the spring of action is the permanent determining factor in the individual. The motive of an act of will may be a pure concept, or else a concept with a definite relation to perception, i.e., a representation. General and individual concepts (representations) become motives of will by influencing the human individual and determining him to action in a particular direction. One and the same concept however, or one and the same representation, influence different individuals differently. They impel different men to different actions. An act of will is, therefore, not merely the outcome of the concept or the representation, but also of the individual make-up of human beings. This individual make-up we will call, following Eduard von Hartmann, the “characterological disposition.” The manner in which concept and representation act on the characterological disposition of a man gives to his life a definite moral or ethical stamp.³

[ 8 ] The characterological disposition is formed by the more or less permanent content of the individual's life, that is, of the content of his representations and feelings. Whether a representation which enters my mind at this moment stimulates me to an act of will or not, depends on its relation to the rest of my representations, and also to my peculiar modes of feeling. The content of my representations in turn, is conditioned by the sum total of those concepts which have, in the course of my individual life, come in contact with percepts, that is, have become representations. This sum, again, depends on my greater or lesser capacity for intuition, and on the range of my observations, that is, on the subjective and objective factors of my experiences, on my inner nature (development) and place in life, and on my environment. My life of feeling more especially determines my characterological disposition. Whether I shall make a certain representation or concept the motive for action will depend on whether it gives me pleasure or pain.

These are the elements which we have to consider in an act of will. The immediately present representation or concept, which becomes the motive, determines the aim or the purpose of my will; my characterological disposition determines me to direct my activity towards this aim. The representation of taking a walk in the next half-hour determines the aim of my action. But this representation is raised to the level of a motive only if it meets with a suitable characterological disposition, that is, if during my past life I have formed the representations of the wholesomeness of walking and the value of health; and, further, if the representation of walking is accompanied in me by a feeling of pleasure.

[ 9 ] We must, therefore, distinguish (1) the possible subjective dispositions which are likely to turn given representations and concepts into motives, and (2) the possible representations and concepts which are capable of so influencing my characterological disposition that an act of will results. The former are for morality the springs of action, the latter its aims.

[ 10 ] The springs of action in the moral life can be discovered by finding out the elements of which individual life is composed.

[ 11 ] The first level of individual life is that of perception, more particularly sense-perception. This is the stage of our individual lives in which a perceiving translates itself into will immediately, without the intervention of either a feeling or a concept. The spring of action here involved may be called simply instinct. Our lower, purely animal, needs (hunger, sexual intercourse, etc.), find their satisfaction in this way. The main characteristic of instinctive life is the immediacy with which the percept releases the act of will. This kind of determination of the will, which belongs originally only to the life of the lower senses, may, however, become extended also to the percepts of the higher senses. We may react to the percept of a certain event in the external world without reflecting on what we do, without any special feeling connecting itself with the percept. We have examples of this especially in our ordinary conventional intercourse. The spring of this kind of action is called tact or moral good taste. The more often such immediate reactions to a percept occur, the more the agent will prove himself able to act purely under the guidance of tact; that is, tact becomes his characterological disposition.

[ 12 ] The second level of human life is feeling. Definite feelings accompany the percepts of the external world. These feelings may become springs of action. When I see a hungry man, my pity for him may become the spring of my action. Such feelings, for example, are shame, pride, sense of honour, humility, remorse, pity, revenge, gratitude, piety, loyalty, love, and duty.⁴

[ 13 ] The third and last level of life is to think and to form representations. A representation or a concept may become the motive of an action through mere reflection. Representations become motives because, in the course of my life, I regularly connect certain aims of my will with percepts which recur again and again in a more or less modified form. Hence it is that with men who are not wholly without experience, the occurrence of certain percepts is always accompanied also by the consciousness of representations of actions, which they have themselves carried out in a similar case or which they have seen others carry out. These representations float before their minds as determining models in all subsequent decisions; they become parts of their characterological disposition. We may give the name of practical experience to the spring of action just described. Practical experience merges gradually into purely tactful behaviour. That happens, when definite typical pictures of actions have become so closely connected in our minds with representations of certain situations in life, that, in any given instance, we omit all deliberation based on experience and pass immediately from the percept to the action.

[ 14 ] The highest level of individual life is that of conceptual thinking without reference to any definite perceptual content. We determine the content of a concept through pure intuition from the ideal sphere. Such a concept contains, at first, no reference to any definite percepts. When an act of will comes about under the influence of a concept which refers to a percept, i.e., under the influence of a representation, then it is this percept which determines our action indirectly by way of the conceptual thinking. But when we act under the influence of intuitions, the spring of our action is pure thinking. As it is the custom in philosophy to call the faculty of pure thinking “reason,” we may perhaps be justified in giving the name of practical reason to the moral spring of action characteristic of this level of life. The clearest account of this spring of action has been given by Kreyenbuehl (Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. xviii, No. 3).⁵ In my opinion his article on this subject is one of the most important contributions to present-day philosophy, more especially to Ethics. Kreyenbuehl calls the spring of action, of which we are treating, the practical a priori, i.e., a spring of action issuing immediately from my intuition.

[ 15 ] It is clear that such a spring of action can no longer be counted in the strictest sense as a characterological disposition. For what is here effective in me as a spring of action is no longer something purely individual, but the ideal, and hence universal, content of my intuition. As soon as I regard the validity of this content as the basis and starting-point of an action, I pass over into willing, irrespective of whether the concept was already in me beforehand, or whether it only enters my consciousness immediately before the action, that is, irrespective of whether it was present in the form of a disposition in me or not.

[ 16 ] A real act of will results only when a present impulse to action, in the form of a concept or representation, acts on the characterological disposition. Such an impulse thereupon becomes the motive of the will.

[ 17 ] The motives of moral conduct are representations and concepts. There are Moralists who see in feeling also a motive of morality; they assert, e.g., that the aim of moral conduct is to secure the greatest possible quantity of pleasure for the acting individual. Pleasure itself, however, cannot become a motive; only its representation can. The representation of a future feeling, but not the feeling itself, can act on my characterological disposition. For the feeling does not yet exist in the moment of action; it has first to be produced by the action.

[ 18 ] The representation of one's own or another's well-being is, however, rightly regarded as a motive of the will. The principle of producing the greatest quantity of pleasure for oneself through one's action, that is, to attain individual happiness, is called Egoism. The attainment of this individual happiness is sought either by thinking ruthlessly only of one's own good, and striving to attain it even at the cost of the happiness of other individuals (Pure Egoism), or by promoting the good of others, either because one anticipates indirectly a favourable influence on one's own person through the happiness of others, or because one fears to endanger one's own interest by injuring others (Morality of Prudence). The special content of the egoistical principles of morality will depend on the representations which we form of what constitutes our own, or others', happiness. A man will determine the content of his egoistical striving in accordance with what he regards as one of life's good things (luxury, hope of happiness, deliverance from different evils, etc.).

[ 19 ] Further, the purely conceptual content of an action is to be regarded as yet another kind of motive. This content has no reference, like the representation of one's own pleasures, solely to the particular action, but to the deduction of an action from a system of moral principles. These moral principles, in the form of abstract concepts, may guide the individual's moral life without his worrying himself about the origin of his concepts. In that case, we feel merely the moral necessity of submitting to a moral concept which, in the form of law, overhangs our actions. The justification of this necessity we leave to those who demand from us moral subjection, that is, to those whose moral authority over us we acknowledge (the head of the family, the state, social custom, the authority of the church, divine revelation). We meet with a special kind of these moral principles when the law is not proclaimed to us by an external authority, but comes from our own inner life (moral autonomy). In this case we hear the voice, to which we have to submit ourselves, in our own souls. This voice expresses itself as conscience.

[ 20 ] It is a great moral advance when a man no longer takes as the motive of his action the commands of an external or the internal authority, but tries to understand the reason why a given maxim of action ought to be effective as a motive in him. This is the advance from morality based on authority to action from moral insight. At this level of morality, a man will try to discover the demands of the moral life, and will let his action be determined by this knowledge. Such demands are (1) the greatest possible happiness of humanity as a whole purely for its own sake; (2) the progress of civilization, or the moral development of mankind towards ever greater perfection; (3) the realization of individual moral aims conceived by an act of pure intuition.

[ 21 ] The greatest possible happiness of humanity as a whole will naturally be differently conceived by different people. The above-mentioned maxim does not refer to any definite representation of this happiness, but rather means that everyone who acknowledges this principle strives to do all that, in his opinion, most promotes the good of the whole of humanity.

[ 22 ] The progress of civilization is seen to be a special application of the moral principle just mentioned, at any rate for those to whom the goods which civilization produces bring feelings of pleasure. They will only have to pay the price in the decay and annihilation of several things which also contribute to the happiness of humanity. It is, however, also possible that some men look upon the progress of civilization as a moral necessity, quite apart from the feelings of pleasure which it brings. If so, the progress of civilization will be a new moral principle for them, different from the previous one.

[ 23 ] Both the principle of the public good, and that of the progress of civilization alike, are based on the representation, i.e., on the way in which we apply the content of our moral Ideas to particular experiences (percepts). The highest principle of morality which we can think of, however, is that which contains, to start with, no such reference to particular experiences, but which springs from the source of pure intuition and does not seek until later any connection with percepts, i.e., with life. The determination of what ought to be willed issues here from an arbiter very different from that of the previous two principles. Who accepts the principle of the public good will in all his actions ask first what his ideals contribute to this public good. The upholder of the progress of civilization as the principle of morality will act similarly. There is, however, a still higher mode of conduct which, in a given case, does not start from any single limited moral ideal, but which sees a certain value in all moral principles, always asking whether this or that principle is more important in a particular case. It may happen that a man considers in certain circumstances the promotion of the public good, in others that of the progress of civilization, and in yet others the furthering of his own good, to be the right course, and makes that the motive of his action. But when all other grounds of determination take second place, then we rely, in the first place, on conceptual intuition itself. All other motives now yield place, and the ideal content of an action alone becomes its motive.

[ 24 ] Among the levels of characterological disposition, we have singled out as the highest that which manifests itself as pure thinking, or practical reason. Among the motives, we have just singled out conceptual intuition as the highest. On nearer consideration, we now perceive that at this level of morality the spring of action and the motive coincide, i.e., that neither a predetermined characterological disposition, nor an external moral principle accepted on authority, influences our conduct. The action, therefore, is neither a merely stereotyped one which follows certain rules, nor is it automatically performed in response to an external impulse. Rather it is determined solely through its ideal content.^*

[ 25 ] For such an action to be possible, we must first be capable of moral intuitions. Whoever lacks the capacity to experience for himself the moral principle that applies in each particular case, will never rise to the level of genuine individual willing.

[ 26 ] Kant's principle of morality: Act so that the principle of your action may be valid for all men—is the exact opposite of ours. His principle would mean death to all individual impulses of action. The norm for me can never be what all men would do, but rather what it is right for me to do in each special case.

[ 27 ] A superficial criticism might urge against these arguments: How can an action be individually adapted to the special case and the special situation, and yet at the same time be ideally determined by pure intuition? This objection rests upon a confusion of the moral motive with the perceptual content of an action. The latter, indeed, may be a motive, and is actually a motive when we act for the progress of culture, or from pure egoism, etc., but in action based on pure moral intuition it never is a motive. Of course, my “I” takes notice of these perceptual contents, but it does not allow itself to be determined by them. The content is used only to construct a cognitive concept, but the corresponding moral concept is not derived from the object. The cognitive concept of a given situation which faces me, is a moral concept also only if I adopt the standpoint of a particular moral principle. If I base all my conduct on the principle of the progress of civilization, then my way through life is tied down to a fixed route. From every occurrence which I perceive and which attracts my interest there springs a moral duty, viz., to do my tiny share towards using this occurrence in the service of the progress of civilization. In addition to the concept which reveals to me the connections of events or objects according to the laws of nature, there is also a moral label attached to them which contains for me, as a moral agent, ethical directions as to how I have to conduct myself. Such a moral label is justified on its own ground; at a higher level it coincides with the Idea which reveals itself to me prompted by the concrete instance.

[ 28 ] Men vary greatly in their capacity for intuition. In some, Ideas bubble up like a spring, others acquire them with much labour. The situations in which men live, and which are the scenes of their actions, are no less widely different. The conduct of a man will depend, therefore, on the manner in which his faculty of intuition works in a given situation. The aggregate of Ideas which are effective in us, the concrete content of our intuitions, constitute that which is individual in each of us, notwithstanding the universal character of the world of Ideas. In so far as this intuitive content has reference to action, it constitutes the moral content of the individual. To let this content express itself in his life is the highest moral spring of action and at the same time, the highest motive of the man who regards all other moral principles as subordinate. We may call this point of view Ethical Individualism.

[ 29 ] The decisive factor of an intuitively determined action in any concrete instance, is the discovery of the corresponding purely individual intuition. At this level of morality, there can be no question of general moral concepts (norms, laws), except in so far as these result from the generalization of the individual impulses. General norms always presuppose concrete facts from which they can be deduced. But facts have first to be created by human action.

[ 30 ] When we investigate the leading principles (the conceptual principles guiding the actions of individuals, peoples, epochs), we obtain a science of Ethics which is, however, not a science of moral norms, but rather a natural science of morality. Only, the laws discovered in this way are related to human action as the laws of nature are related to a particular phenomenon. These laws, however, are very far from being identical with the impulses on which we base our actions. If we want to understand how a man's action arises from his moral will, we must first study the relation of this will to the action. For this purpose we must single out for study those actions in which this relation is the determining factor. When I, or another, subsequently review my action we may discover what moral principles come into play in it. So long as I am acting, I am influenced by the principle of morality in so far as it lives in me intuitively; it is united with my love for the object which I want to realize through my action. I ask of no man and of no moral code, whether I shall perform this action or not. I carry it out as soon as I have formed the Idea of it. This alone makes it my action. If a man acts only because he accepts certain moral norms, his action is the outcome of the principles which compose his moral code. He merely carries out orders. He is a superior kind of automaton. Inject some stimulus to action into his mind, and at once the clockwork of his moral principles will begin to work and run its prescribed course, so as to issue in an action which is Christian, or humane, or seemingly unselfish, or calculated to promote the progress of culture. It is only when I follow solely my love for the object, that it is I, myself, who act. At this level of morality, I acknowledge no lord over me, neither an external authority, nor my so-called inner voice. I acknowledge no external principle of my action, because I have found in myself the ground for my action, viz., my love of the action. I do not examine with my intellect whether my action is good or bad; I perform it, because I am in love with it. My action is “good” when my intuition, immersed in love, inserts itself in the right way into the world-nexus as I experience it intuitively; it is “bad” when this is not the case. Neither do I ask myself how another man would act in my position. I act as I, this unique individuality, feel impelled to act. No general usage, no common custom, no general maxim current among men, no moral norm is my immediate guide, but my love for the action. I feel no compulsion, neither the compulsion of nature which dominates me through my instincts, nor the compulsion of the moral commandments. My will is simply to realize what in me lies.

[ 31 ] Those who defend general moral norms will reply to these arguments that, if everyone strives to live his own life and do what he pleases, there can be no distinction between a good action and a crime; every fraudulent impulse in me has the same right to issue in action as the intention to serve the general good. It is not the mere fact of my having conceived the Idea of an action which ought to determine me as a moral being, but the examination of whether it is a good or an evil action. Only if it is good shall I carry it out.

[ 32 ] This objection is easily intelligible, and yet it had its root in what is but a misapprehension of my meaning. My reply to it is this: If we want to get at the essence of human volition we must distinguish between the path along which volition attains to a certain degree of development, and the unique character which volition assumes as it approaches its goal. It is on the path towards the goal that the norms play a legitimate part. The goal consists of the realization of moral aims which are apprehended by pure intuition. Man attains such aims in proportion as he is able to rise at all to the level at which intuition grasps the Idea-content of the world. In any particular volition, other elements will, as a rule, be mixed up, as springs of action or motives, with such moral aims. But, for all that, intuition may be, wholly or in part, the determining factor in human volition. What one should do, that one does. One supplies the stage upon which, what one should do, becomes action. One's own action is what one lets come forth from oneself. The impulse, here, can only be wholly individual. And, in fact, only an action which issues out of intuition can be individual. To regard evil, the deed of a criminal, as a manifestation of the human individuality in the same sense as the embodiment of pure intuition, is a confusion which only becomes possible when blind instincts are reckoned as part of the human individuality.

[ 33 ] But the blind impulse which drives a man to a criminal act does not spring from intuition, and does not belong to what is individual in him, but rather to that which is most general in him, to that which is equally present in all individuals and from which man finds his way out with the help of his individual part. The individual part in me is not my organism with its instincts and feelings, but rather the unified world of Ideas which reveals itself through this organism. My instincts, cravings, passions, justify no further assertion about me than that I belong to the general species man. The fact that something ideal expresses itself in a particular way through these instincts, passions, and feelings, provides the foundation of my individuality. My instincts and cravings make me the sort of man of whom there are twelve to the dozen. The unique character of the Idea, by means of which I distinguish myself within the dozen as “I,” makes of me an individual. Only a being other than myself could distinguish me from others by the difference in my animal nature. Through my thinking, i.e., by the active grasping of the Ideal-element working itself out through my organism, I distinguish myself from others. Hence it is impossible to say of the action of a criminal that it issues from the Idea within him. Indeed, the characteristic feature of criminal actions is precisely that they spring from the non-ideal elements in man.

[ 34 ] An act the grounds for which lie in the ideal part of my individual nature is felt to be free. Every other part of an act, whether done under the compulsion of nature or under the obligation imposed by a moral norm, is felt to be unfree.

[ 35 ] Man is free in so far as, in every moment of his life, he is able to obey only himself. A moral act is my act only when it can be called free in this sense. So far we are concerned here with the presuppositions under which an act of will is felt to be free; the sequel will show how this purely ethical Idea of freedom becomes realized in the essential nature of man.

[ 36 ] Action on the basis of freedom does not at all exclude, but includes, the moral laws. Only, it shows that it stands on a higher level than actions which are dictated by these laws. Why should my act serve the general good less well when I do it from pure love of it, than when I perform it only because I feel it is a duty to serve the general good? The concept of mere duty excludes freedom, because it will not acknowledge the individual element, but demands the subjection of the latter to a general norm. Freedom of action is conceivable only from the standpoint of Ethical Individualism.

[ 37 ] But how about the possibility, of social life for men, if each aims only at asserting his own individuality? This question expresses yet another objection on the part of Moralism wrongly understood. The Moralist believes that a social community is possible only if all men are held together by a commonly fixed moral order. This shows that the Moralist does not understand the identity of the world of Ideas. He does not grasp that the world of Ideas which inspires me is no other than that which inspires my fellow-man. This unity is, indeed, but a result of the experience of the world. It cannot be anything else. For if we could recognize it in any other way than by observation, it would follow that not individual experience, but universal norms, were dominant in its sphere. Individuality is possible only if every individual being knows of others only through individual observation. I differ from my neighbour, not at all because we are living in two entirely different spiritual worlds, but because from our common world of Ideas we receive different intuitions. He desires to live out his intuitions, I mine. If we both draw our intuitions really from the world of Ideas, and do not obey mere external impulses (physical or spiritual), then we cannot but meet one another in striving for the same aims, in having the same intentions. A moral misunderstanding, a clash is impossible between men who are morally free. Only the morally unfree who follow their natural instincts or the accepted commands of duty, turn their backs on their neighbours, if these do not obey the same instincts and the same laws as themselves. To live in love of action and to let live in understanding of the other's volition, this is the fundamental maxim of the free man. He knows no other “ought” than that with which his will intuitively puts itself in harmony. How he shall will in any given case, that will be determined for him by his faculty of conceiving Ideas.

[ 38 ] If sociability were not deeply rooted in human nature, no external laws would be able to inoculate us with it. It is only because human beings are one in spirit that they can live out their lives side by side. The free man lives out his life in the full confidence that all other free men belong to one spiritual world with himself, and that their intentions will harmonize with his. The free man does not demand accord from his fellow-man, but he expects it none the less, because it is inherent in human nature. I am not referring here to the necessity for this or that external institution. I refer to the disposition, the attitude of soul, through which a man, aware of himself among his fellow-men for whom he cares, comes nearest to living up to the ideal of human dignity.

[ 39 ] There are many who will say that the concept of the free man which I have here developed, is a chimera nowhere to be found realized, and that we have got to deal with actual human beings, from whom we can expect morality only if they obey some moral law, i.e., if they regard their moral task as a duty and do not simply follow their inclinations and loves. I do not doubt this. Only a blind man could do that. But away with all this hypocrisy of morality if this is the final conclusion! Let us then say simply that human nature must be compelled to act as long as it is not free. Whether the compulsion of man's unfree nature is effected by physical force or through moral laws, whether man is unfree because he indulges his unmeasured sexual desire, or because he is bound tight in the bonds of conventional morality, is quite immaterial from a certain point of view. Only let us not assert that such a man can rightly call his actions his own, seeing that he is driven to them by a force which is not his own. But in the midst of all this network of compulsion, there arise free spirits who, in all the welter of customs, legal codes, religious observances, etc., learn to find themselves. They are free in so far as they obey only themselves; unfree in so far as they submit to control. Which of us can say that he is really free in all his actions? Yet in each of us there dwells some deeper being in which the free man finds expression.

[ 40 ] Our life is made up of free and unfree actions. We cannot, however, form a final concept of human nature without coming upon the free spirit as its purest expression. After all, we are men in the fullest sense only in so far as we are free.

[ 41 ] This is an ideal, many will say. Doubtless; but it is an ideal which is a real element in us working its way to the surface of our nature. It is no ideal born of mere imagination or dream, but one which has life, and which announces itself clearly even in the least perfect form of its existence. If men were nothing but beings of nature, the search for ideals, that is, for Ideas which as yet are not actual but the realization of which we demand, would be an impossibility. In dealing with external objects the Idea is determined by the percept. We have done our share when we have recognized the connection between Idea and percept. But with the human being the case is different. The content of his existence is not determined without him. His true concept as a moral being (free spirit) is not a priori united objectively with the percept-picture “man,” so that knowledge need only register the fact subsequently. Man must by his own act unite his concept with the percept “man.” Concept and percept coincide with one another in this instance only in so far as man himself makes them coincide. This he can do only if he has found the concept of the free spirit, that is, if he has found his own concept. In the objective world, a boundary-line is drawn by our organization between percept and concept. Knowledge breaks down this barrier. In our subjective nature this barrier is no less present. Man overcomes it in the course of his development, by unfolding his concept in his outward existence. Hence man's intellectual as well as his moral life lead alike to his two-fold nature, perception (immediate experience) and thinking. The intellectual life overcomes his two-fold nature by means of knowledge, the moral life succeeds through the actual realization of the free spirit. Every being has its inborn concept (the law of its existence and action), but in external objects this concept is indissolubly bound up with the percept, and separated from it only in our spiritual organization. In man concept and percept are, at first, actually separated, to be just as actually reunited by him.

Someone might object that to our percept of a man there corresponds at every moment of his life a definite concept, just as with every other object. I can form for myself the concept of an average man, and I may also find such a man given to me as percept. Suppose now I add to this the concept of a free spirit, then I have two concepts for the same object.

[ 42 ] Such an objection is one-sided. As object of perception I am subject to perpetual change. As a child I was one thing, another as a youth, yet another as a man. Moreover, at every moment I am different, as a percept-picture, from what I was the moment before. These changes may take place in such a way that either it is always only the same (average) man who exhibits himself in them, or that they represent the expression of a free spirit. To such changes my action, as object of perception, is subjected.

[ 43 ] In the perceptual object “man” there is given the possibility of transformation, just as in the plant-seed there lies the possibility of growth into a fully developed plant. The plant transforms itself in growth, because of the objective law which is inherent in it. The human being remains in his imperfected state, unless he takes hold of the material for transformation within him and transforms himself through his own force. Nature makes of man merely a natural being; society makes of him a being who acts according to law; only he himself can make a free man of himself. At a definite stage in his development nature releases man from her fetters; society carries his development a step farther; he alone can give himself the final polish.

[ 44 ] From the standpoint of free morality, then, it is not asserted that the free spirit is the only form in which a man can exist. The freedom of the spirit is looked upon only as the last stage in man's evolution. This is not to deny that conduct according to norms has its legitimate place as a stage in development. The point is that we cannot acknowledge it to be the absolute standpoint in morality. For the free spirit transcends norms, in the sense that he recognizes as motives not commands alone, but he regulates his conduct in accordance with his impulses (intuitions).

[ 45 ] When Kant apostrophizes duty: “Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name, that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission,” thou that “holdest forth a law ... before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly counter-work it,” ⁶ then the free spirit replies: “Freedom! thou kindly and humane name, which dost embrace within thyself all that is morally most beloved, all that my manhood most prizes, and which makest me the servant of nobody, which settest up no mere law, but waitest what my moral love itself will recognize as law, because it feels itself unfree in presence of every law that is forced upon it.”

[ 46 ] This is the contrast of morality according to law and according to freedom.

[ 47 ] The philistine who looks upon an external code as embodied morality is sure to look upon the free spirit even as a danger to society. But that is only because his view is narrowly focused on a limited period of time. If he were able to look beyond, he would soon find that the free spirit needs to go beyond the laws of his state as seldom as the philistine himself, and that he never needs to confront them with any real contradiction. For the laws of the state, one and all, have had their origin in the intuitions of free spirits, just like all other objective laws of morality. There is no traditional law enforced by the authority of a family, which was not, once upon a time, intuitively conceived and laid down by an ancestor. Similarly the conventional laws of morality are first of all established by particular men, and the laws of the state are always born in the brain of a statesman. These free spirits have set up laws over the rest of mankind, and only he is unfree who forgets this origin and makes them either extra-human commands, or objective moral duties independent of the human content, or—falsely mystical—the compelling voice of his own conscience.

He, on the other hand, who does not forget the origin of laws, but looks for it in man, will respect them as belonging to the same world of Ideas which is the source also of his own moral intuitions. If he thinks his intuitions better than those already existing, he will try to put them into the place of the latter. If he thinks the latter justified, he will act in accordance with them as if they were his own intuitions.

[ 48 ] We must not coin the formula: Man exists only in order to realize a moral world-order which is independent of him. Anyone who maintains that he does stands, in his science of man, still at that same point at which natural science stood when it believed that a bull has horns in order that it may butt. Scientists, happily, have cast the concept of objective purposes in nature into the limbo of dead theories. For Ethics, it is more difficult to achieve the same emancipation. But just as horns do not exist for the sake of butting, but butting because of horns, so man does not exist for the sake of morality, but morality exists through man. The free man acts morally because he has a moral Idea, he does not act in order that morality may come into being. Human individuals, with the moral Ideas belonging to their nature, are the presupposition of a moral world-order.

[ 49 ] The human individual is the fountain of all morality and the centre of earthly life. State and society exist only because they have necessarily grown out of the life of individuals. That state and society, in turn, should react upon the lives of individuals, is no more difficult to comprehend, than that the butting which is the result of the existence of horns, reacts in turn upon the further development of the horns of the bull, which would become atrophied by prolonged disuse. Similarly, the individual must degenerate if he leads an isolated existence outside human society. That is just the reason why the social order arises, viz., that it may react favourably upon the individual.

• 1. The way in which the above view has influenced psychology, physiology, etc., in various directions has been set forth by the author in works published after this book. Here he is concerned only with characterizing the results of an unbiased observation of thinking itself.
• 2. The passage from p. 111 down to this point was added, or rewritten for the Revised Edition (1918).
• 3. Students of modern science may care to turn at once to the Editor's Note on p. 135.
• 4. A complete catalogue of the principles of morality (from the point of view of Metaphysical Realism) may be found in Eduard von Hartmann's Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins.
• 5. Ethical-Spiritual Activity in Kant
• *. Editor's Note: The distinction here drawn by Dr. Steiner between “motive” and “spring of action” is of fundamental importance and is implicit in the common English usage of these terms. But because this distinction has been blurred in recent scientific works the word “motive” has come to have a different technical usage which may confuse some readers of this book.
  An example of the psychological usage is R. Woodworth's definition of “motive” as “a state or set of the individual which disposes him for certain behaviour and for seeking certain goals.” This does not bring out the important difference, to which Steiner draws attention, between having a goal, purpose or task, which a man finds by the characteristically human activity of thinking and adopts as the right thing to do in the particular circumstances, and being stimulated by a percept or feeling to an impulsive or emotional act. Steiner uses the term “motive” only when the act of will comes about under the influence of a concept or representation, and he traces a progressive ascent in this direction to the point where action is determined by the content of pure intuition.
  An instance of contemporary ethical usage is A. C. Ewing's alternative definitions of “motive” as “(i) Desires causing action or (ii) Circumstances relevant to an action to which attention is directed at the time.” Here, also, recognition of the unique character of a motive grasped out of pure intuition is precluded.
  In the first part of this book Dr. Steiner has shown how a concept can be grasped by the Ego from the thought-content of the world in a fully conscious act of intuition. In this chapter and the subsequent discussion of moral imagination he shows how such a freely grasped concept can be imprinted on the world as deed without losing the element of freedom. Thus it is shown how the spirit can work creatively in a human act of free will.
  Upon the recognition of this fact depends a clear understanding of the essential difference between man, who can develop the power to create freely out of the spirit, and the animal.
• 6. Translation by Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 180; Critique of Practical Reason, chap. iii.

[ 1 ] The ¹ naive man who acknowledges nothing as real except what he can see with his eyes and grasp with his hands, demands for his moral life, too, grounds of action which are perceptible to his senses. He wants someone who will impart to him these grounds of action in a manner that his senses can apprehend. He is ready to allow these grounds of action to be dictated to him as commands by any man whom he considers wiser or more powerful than himself, or whom he acknowledges, for another reason, to be a power superior to himself. This accounts for the moral principles enumerated above, viz., the principles which rest on the authority of family, state, society, church and God. The most narrow-minded man still believes in the authority of some one person. He who is a little more advanced allows his moral conduct to be dictated by a majority (state, society). In every case he relies on some power which is perceptible. When, at last, the conviction dawns on someone that his authorities are fundamentally human beings just as weak as himself, then he seeks guidance from a higher power, from a Divine Being, whom, in turn, he endows with qualities perceptible to the senses. He conceives this Being as communicating to him the conceptual content of his moral life in a perceptible way—believing, for example, that God appears in the burning bush, or that He moves about among men in manifest human shape, and that their ears can hear His voice telling them what they are to do and what not to do.

[ 2 ] The highest stage of development which Naive Realism attains in the sphere of morality is that at which the moral command (the moral Idea) is conceived as having no connection with any external being, but, hypothetically, as being an absolute power in one's own inner life. What man first beheld as the external voice of God, that he now beholds as an independent power in his own interior and he now talks of this inner voice in a way which identifies it with conscience.

[ 3 ] This conception, however, takes us already beyond the level of the naive consciousness into the sphere where moral laws have become independent norms. They are there no longer transmitted by a carrier, but are turned into self-existent metaphysical entities. They are analogous to the visible-invisible forces of Metaphysical Realism, which seek reality, not through the part which human nature, through its thinking, plays in this reality, but which hypothetically adds it to the facts of experience. Hence these extra-human moral norms always appear as accompanying Metaphysical Realism. For this theory is bound to look for the origin of morality likewise in the sphere of extra-human reality. There are different views possible. If the supposed extra-human being is conceived to be unthinking and acts according to purely mechanical laws, as modern Materialism conceives that it does, then it must also produce out of itself, by purely mechanical necessity, the human individual and all that belongs to him. On that view the consciousness of freedom can be nothing more than an illusion. For whilst I consider myself the author of my action, it is the matter of which I am composed and the movements which are going on in it that work within me. I imagine myself free, but actually all my actions are nothing but the effects of the material processes which are the basis of my physical and mental organization. It is only because we do not know the motives which compel us that we have the feeling of freedom. “We must emphasize that the feeling of freedom is caused by the absence of external compelling motives.” “Our actions are as much subject to necessity as our thoughts” (Ziehen, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, pp. 207, ft.).²

[ 4 ] Another possibility is that someone will find in a spiritual being the Absolute hidden behind all phenomena. If so, he will look for the spring of action in such a kind of spiritual power. He will regard the moral principles which his reason contains as the manifestation of this absolute being, which pursues in men its own special purposes. Moral laws appear to the Dualist, who holds this view, as dictated by the Absolute, and man's only task is to discover, by means of his reason, the decisions of the Absolute and to carry them out. For the Dualist, the moral order of the world is the perceptible reflection of the higher order that lies behind it. Our earthly morality is the manifestation of the extra-human world-order. It is not man who matters in this moral order but the Absolute, that is, the extra-human Being. Man ought to do what this being wills. Eduard von Hartmann, who identifies this being as such with a Godhead whose existence is a life of suffering, believes that this Divine Being has created the world in order to gain, by means of the world, release from his infinite suffering. Hence this philosopher regards the moral evolution of humanity as a process, the function of which is the redemption of God. “Only through the building up of a moral world-order on the part of rational, self-conscious individuals is it possible for the world-process to be led to its goal.” “Real existence is the incarnation of the Godhead. The world-process is the passion of the incarnated God, and at the same time the way of redemption for him who was crucified in the flesh; morality, however, is co-operation in the shortening of this path of suffering and redemption” (Hartmann, Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, p. 871). On this view man does not act because he wills, but he ought to act because it is God's will to be redeemed. Whereas the Materialistic Dualist turns man into an automaton, the action of which is nothing but the effect of causality according to purely mechanical laws, the Spiritualistic Dualist (i.e., he who treats the Absolute, the thing-in-itself, as a spiritual something in which man with his conscious experience has no share), makes man the slave of the will of the Absolute. Freedom (spiritual activity) is excluded in Materialism, as well as in one-sided Spiritualism, and in general Metaphysical Realism which infers, as true reality, an extra-human something which it does not experience.

[ 5 ] Naive and Metaphysical Realism, if they are to be consistent, have to deny freedom for one and the same reason, viz., because, for them, man does nothing but carry out, or execute, principles necessarily imposed upon him. Naive Realism destroys freedom by subjecting man to authority, whether it be that of a perceptible being, or that of a being conceived on the analogy of perceptible beings, or lastly, that of the abstract inner voice which he interprets as “conscience.” The Metaphysician, content merely to infer an extra-human reality, is unable to acknowledge freedom because, for him, man is determined, mechanically or morally, by a “Being-in-itself.”

[ 6 ] Monism will have to admit the partial justification of Naive Realism, with which it agrees in admitting the justification of the world of percepts. He who is incapable of producing moral Ideas through intuition must receive them from others. In so far as a man receives his moral principles from without he is actually unfree. But Monism ascribes to the Idea the same importance as to the percept. The Idea can manifest itself in the human individual. In so far as man follows the impulses coming from this side he feels himself to be free. But Monism denies all justification to Metaphysics which merely draws inferences, and consequently also to the impulses of action which are derived from so-called “Beings-in-themselves.” According to the Monistic view, man's action is unfree when he obeys some perceptible external compulsion; it is free when he obeys none but himself. There is no room in Monism for any kind of unconscious compulsion hidden behind percept and concept. If anybody maintains of the action of a fellow-man that it has not been freely done, he is bound to point out within the perceptible world the thing or the person or the institution which has caused the agent to act. And if he supports his contention by an appeal to causes of action lying outside the perceptible or spiritually real world, then Monism must decline to take account of such an assertion.

[ 7 ] According to the Monistic conception, then, man's action is partly free, partly unfree. He is conscious of himself as unfree in the world of percepts, and he realizes in himself the free spirit.

[ 8 ] The moral laws which his inferences compel the Metaphysician to regard as issuing from a higher power are, according to the upholder of Monism, thoughts of men. To him the moral order is neither a replica of a purely mechanical order of nature nor of an extra-human world-order, but through and through the free creation of men. It is not man's business to carry out the will of some being outside himself in the world, but his own. He carries out his own decisions and intentions, not those of another being. Monism does not find behind human agents the purposes of a foreign world ruler, determining them to act according to his will. On the contrary, men, in so far as they realize their intuitive Ideas, pursue merely their own human ends. Moreover, each individual pursues his own particular ends. For the world of Ideas realizes itself, not in a community, but only in individual men. What appears as the common goal of a community is nothing but the result of the separate volitions of its individual members, and most commonly of a few outstanding men whom the rest follow as their authorities. Each one of us has it in him to be a free spirit, just as every rose germ is destined to become a rose.

[ 9 ] Monism, then, is in the sphere of genuinely moral action the true philosophy of spiritual activity (freedom). Being also a philosophy of reality, it rejects the metaphysical (unreal) restriction of the free spirit as emphatically as it acknowledges the physical and historical (naively real) restrictions of the naive man. Inasmuch as it does not look upon man as a finished product, exhibiting in every moment of his life his full nature, it considers idle the dispute whether man, as such, is free or not. It looks upon man as a developing being, and asks whether, in the course of this development, the stage of the free spirit can be attained.

[ 10 ] Monism knows that nature does not send forth man ready-made as a free spirit, but that she leads him up to a certain stage, from which he continues to develop still as an unfree being, until he reaches the point where he finds his own self.

[ 11 ] Monism perceives clearly that a being acting under physical or moral compulsion cannot be truly moral. It regards the stages of automatic action (in accordance with natural urges and instincts), and of obedient action (in accordance with moral norms), as necessary preparatory stages for morality, but it understands that it is possible for the free spirit to transcend both these transitory stages. Monism emancipates the truly moral world-view in general from all the internal fetters of the maxims of naive morality, and from all the externally imposed maxims of speculative Metaphysicians. The former Monism can as little eliminate from the world as it can eliminate percepts. The latter it rejects, because it looks for all principles of elucidation of the phenomena of the world within that world and not outside it. Just as Monism refuses even to entertain the thought of cognitive principles other than those applicable to men (p. 96), so it rejects also the thought of moral maxims other than those applicable to men. Human morality, like human knowledge, is conditioned by human nature, and just as beings of a different order will mean by knowledge something very different from what we mean by it, so other beings will have a very different morality. For Monists, morality is a specifically human quality, and spiritual activity (freedom) the human way of being moral.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 12 ] 1. In forming a judgment about the argument of the two preceding chapters, a difficulty may arise from what may appear to be a contradiction. On the one side, we have spoken of the experience of thinking as one the significance of which is universal and equally valid for every human consciousness. On the other side, we have pointed out that the Ideas which we realize in moral action and which are of the same nature as those that thinking elaborates, manifest themselves in every human consciousness in an uniquely individual way. If we cannot get beyond regarding this antithesis as a “contradiction,” and if we do not recognize that in the living recognition of this actually existing antithesis a piece of man's essential nature reveals itself, we shall not be able to apprehend in the true light either the Idea of knowledge or the Idea of freedom. Those who think of concepts as nothing more than abstractions from the world of percepts, and who do not acknowledge the part which intuition plays, cannot but regard as a “pure contradiction” the thought for which we have here claimed reality. But if we understand how Ideas are experienced intuitively in their self-sustaining essence, we see clearly that, in knowledge, man lives and enters into the world of Ideas as into something which is identical for all men. On the other hand, when man derives from that Idea-world the intuitions for his voluntary actions, he individualizes a member of the world of Ideas by that same activity which he practises as a universally human one in the spiritual and ideal process of cognition. The apparent logical contradiction between the universal character of cognitive Ideas and the individual character of moral Ideas becomes, when seen in its reality, a living concept. It is a criterion of the essential nature of man that what we intuitively apprehend oscillates within man, like a living pendulum, between knowledge which is universally valid, and individualized experience of this universal content. Those who fail to perceive the one oscillation in its real character, will regard thinking as a merely subjective human activity. For those who are unable to grasp the other oscillation, man's activity in thinking will seem to lose all individual life. Knowledge is to the former, the moral life to the latter, an unintelligible fact. Both will fall back on all sorts of suppositions for the explanation of the one or of the other, because both either do not understand at all how thinking can be intuitively experienced, or else misunderstand it as an activity which merely abstracts.

[ 13 ] 2. On p. 139 I have spoken of Materialism. I am well aware that there are thinkers, like the above-mentioned Th. Ziehen, who do not call themselves Materialists at all, but yet who must be called so from the point of view put forward in this book. It does not matter whether a thinker says that for him the world is not restricted to merely material being, and that, therefore, he is not a Materialist. No, what matters is whether he develops concepts which are applicable only to material being. Anyone who says, “Our action, like our thought, is necessitated,” lays down a concept which is applicable only to material processes, but not applicable either to action or to existence. And if he were to think out what his concept implies, he would end by thinking materialistically. He saves himself from this fate only by the same inconsistency which so often results from not thinking one's thoughts out to the end. It is often said nowadays that the Materialism of the nineteenth century is scientifically dead. But in truth it is not so. It is only that nowadays people frequently fail to notice that they have no other Ideas than those which can approach only the material world. Thus recent Materialism is veiled, whereas in the second half of the nineteenth century it openly flaunted itself. Towards a conception which apprehends the world spiritually the camouflaged Materialism of the present is no less intolerant than the self-confessed Materialism of the last century. But it deceives many who think they have a right to reject a conception of the world which takes spirit into account, on the ground that the scientific world-view “has long ago abandoned Materialism.”

• 1. Here the term “spiritual activity” is introduced by the Editor following a suggestion of Rudolf Steiner himself, instead of the word “freedom” which he considers does not adequately represent the German “Freiheit.”
• 2. For the manner in which I have here spoken of “Materialism,” and for the justification of so speaking of it, see the Addition on page 145.

[ 1 ] A free spirit acts according to his impulses, i.e., intuitions, which his thinking has selected out of the whole world of his Ideas. For an unfree spirit, the reason why he singles out a particular intuition from his world of Ideas, in order to make it the basis of an action, lies in the perceptual world which is given to him, i.e., in his past experiences. He recalls, before making a decision, what someone else has done, or recommended as proper in an analogous case, or what God has commanded to be done in such a case, etc., and he acts on these recollections. For a free spirit these preliminary conditions are not the only impulses to action. He takes an absolutely original decision. He cares as little what others have done in such a case as what commands they had laid down. He has purely ideal reasons which determine him to select a particular concept out of the sum of his concepts, and to realize it in action. But his action will belong to perceptible reality. Consequently, what he achieves will be identical with a definite content of perception. The concept will have to realize itself in a concrete particular event. As a concept it will not contain this particular event. It will refer to the event only in the same way as, in general, a concept is related to a percept, e.g., the concept lion to a particular lion. The link between concept and percept is the representation.¹ To the unfree spirit this intermediate link is given from the outset. Motives exist in his consciousness from the first in the form of representations. Whenever he intends to do anything he acts as he has seen others act, or as he is ordered to do in each separate case. Hence authority is most effective in the form of examples, i.e., in the form of quite definite particular actions handed down for the consciousness of the unfree spirit. A Christian models his conduct less on the teaching than on the model of the Saviour. Rules have less value for telling men positively what to do than for telling them what to leave undone. Laws take on the form of general concepts only when they forbid actions, not when they prescribe actions. Laws concerning what we ought to do must be given to the unfree spirit in wholly concrete form. Clean the street in front of your door! Pay your taxes to such and such an amount to the tax-collector! etc. Conceptual form belongs to laws which inhibit actions. Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not commit adultery! These laws, too, influence the unfree spirit only by means of a concrete representation, e.g., that of the punishments attached by human authority, or of the pangs of conscience, or of eternal damnation, etc.

[ 2 ] When the motive to an action exists in general conceptual form (e.g., Thou shalt do good to thy fellow-men! Thou shalt live so that thou promotest best thy welfare!) there must first be found, in the particular case, the concrete representation of the action (the relation of the concept to a content of perception). For a free spirit who is not compelled by any model nor by fear of punishment, etc., this translation of the concept into a representation is always necessary.

[ 3 ] Now man produces concrete representations from out of the sum of his Ideas by means of the imagination. Hence what the free spirit needs in order to realize his Ideas, in order to assert himself in the world, is moral imagination. This is the source of the free spirit's action. Only those men, therefore, who are endowed with moral imagination are, properly speaking, morally productive. Those who merely preach morality, i.e., those who merely excogitate moral rules without being able to condense them into concrete representations, are morally unproductive. They are like those critics who can explain very reasonably how a work of art ought to be made, but who are themselves incapable of the smallest artistic production.

[ 4 ] Moral imagination, in order to realize its representation, must set to work upon a determinate sphere of percepts. Human action does not create percepts, but transforms already existing percepts and gives them a new form. In order to be able to transform a definite object of perception, or a sum of such objects, in accordance with a moral representation, one must have grasped the law-abiding content of the percept-picture (its hitherto existing mode of working to which one wants to give a new form or a new direction). Further, it is necessary to discover the procedure by which it is possible to change the given law into the new one. This part of effective moral activity depends on knowledge of the particular world of phenomena with which one has got to deal. We shall, therefore, find it in some branch of scientific knowledge in general. Moral action, then, presupposes, in addition to the faculty of moral Ideation ² and of moral imagination, the ability to transform the world of percepts without breaking the natural laws by which they are connected. This ability is moral technique. It may be learnt in the same sense in which science in general may be learnt. For, in general, men are better able to find concepts for the ready-made world than productively to originate out of their imagination future, and as yet non-existing, actions. Hence, it is very well possible for men without moral imagination to receive moral representations from others, and to engrave them skillfully into the actual world. Vice versa, it may happen that men with moral imagination lack technical skill, and are dependent on the service of other men for the realization of their representations.

[ 5 ] In so far as we require for moral action knowledge of the objects upon which we are about to act, our action depends upon such knowledge. What we need to know here are laws of nature. These belong to the Natural Sciences, not to Ethics.

[ 6 ] Moral imagination and the faculty of moral Ideation can become objects of knowledge only after they have first been produced by the individual. But, then, they no longer regulate life, but have already regulated it. They must now be treated as efficient causes, like all other causes (they are purposes only for the subject). The study of them is, as it were, the Natural Science of moral representations.

[ 7 ] Ethics as a Normative Science, over and above this science, cannot exist.

[ 8 ] Some would maintain the normative character of moral laws at least in the sense that Ethics is to be taken as a kind of dietetic which from the conditions of the organism's life, deduces general rules, on the basis of which it hopes to give detailed directions to the body. (Paulsen, System der Ethik.) This comparison is mistaken, because our moral life cannot be compared with the life of the organism. The function of the organism occurs without any volition on our part. We find its laws ready-made in the world; hence we can discover them and apply them when discovered. Moral laws, on the other hand, do not exist until we create them. We cannot apply them until we have created them. The error is due to the fact that moral laws are not, in their content, at every moment new creations, but are handed down by tradition. Those which we take over from our ancestors appear to be given like the natural laws of the organism. But it does not follow that a later generation has the right to apply them in the same way as dietetic rules. For they apply to individuals, and not, like natural laws, to specimens of a genus. Considered as an organism I am such a generic specimen, and I shall live in accordance with nature if I apply the laws of my genus to my particular case. As a moral being I am an individual and have laws which are wholly my own.³

[ 9 ] The view here upheld appears to contradict that fundamental doctrine of modern Natural Science which is known as the Theory of Evolution. But it only appears to do so. By evolution we mean the real development of the later out of the earlier in accordance with natural law. In the organic world, evolution means that the later (more perfect) organic forms are real descendants of the earlier (imperfect) forms, and have grown out of them in accordance with natural laws. The upholders of the theory of organic evolution ought really to believe that there was once a time on our earth, when a being could have observed with his own eyes the gradual evolution of reptiles out of proto-amniotes, supposing that he could have been present as an observer, and had been endowed with a sufficiently long span of life. Similarly, Evolutionists ought to suppose that a being could have watched the development of the solar system out of the primordial nebula of the Kant-Laplace hypothesis, if he could have occupied a suitable spot in the world-ether during that infinitely long period. [That on this supposition, the nature of both the proto-amniotes and of the primordial nebula of the Kant-Laplace hypothesis would have to be conceived differently from the Materialist's conception of it, is here irrelevant.] But no Evolutionist should ever dream of maintaining that he could from his concept of the proto-amniote deduce that of the reptile with all its qualities, if he had never seen a reptile. Just as little would it be possible to derive the solar system from the concept of the Kant-Laplace nebula, if this concept of an original nebula had been formed only from the percept of the nebula. In other words, if the Evolutionist is to think consistently, he is bound to maintain that out of earlier phases of evolution later ones really develop; that once the concept of the imperfect and that of the perfect have been given, we can understand the connection. But in no case should he admit that the concept formed from the earlier phases is, in itself, sufficient for deducing from it the later phases. From this it follows for Ethics that, whilst we can understand the connection of later moral concepts with earlier ones, it is not possible to deduce a single new moral Idea from earlier ones. The individual, as a moral being, produces his own content. This content, thus produced, is for Ethics a datum, as much as reptiles are a datum for Natural Science. Reptiles have evolved out of proto-amniotes, but the scientist cannot manufacture the concept of reptiles out of the concept of the proto-amniotes. Later moral Ideas evolve out of the earlier ones, but Ethics cannot manufacture out of the moral principles of an earlier culture those of a later one. The confusion is due to the fact that, as scientists, we start with the facts before us, and then make them objects of knowledge, whereas in moral action we first produce the facts ourselves, and then gain knowledge of them. In the evolution of the moral world-order we accomplish what, at a lower level, nature accomplishes: we alter some part of the perceptual world. Hence the ethical norm cannot straightway be made an object of knowledge, like a law of nature, for it must first be created. Only when that has been done can the norm become an object of knowledge.

[ 10 ] But is it not possible to make the old a measure for the new? Is not every man compelled to measure the products of his moral imagination by the standard of traditional moral doctrines? If he would be truly productive in morality, such measuring is as much an absurdity as it would be an absurdity if one were to measure a new species in nature by an old one and say that reptiles, because they do not agree with the proto-amniotes, are an illegitimate (degenerate) species.

[ 11 ] Ethical Individualism, then, so far from being in opposition to the theory of evolution rightly understood, is a direct consequence of it. Haeckel's genealogical tree, from protozoa up to man as an organic being, ought to be capable of being worked out without a breach of natural law, and without a gap in its uniform evolution, up to the individual as a moral being in a definite sense. But in no case could we deduce the nature of a later species from the nature of an ancestral species. However true it is that the moral Ideas of the individual have perceptibly grown out of those of his ancestors, it is also true that the individual is morally barren, unless he has moral Ideas of his own.

[ 12 ] The same Ethical Individualism, which I have developed on the basis of the preceding conceptions, might be equally well developed on the basis of the theory of evolution. The final result would be the same; only the path by which it was reached would be different.

[ 13 ] That absolutely new moral Ideas should be developed by the moral imagination is for the theory of evolution no more miraculous than the development of one animal species out of another, provided only that this theory, as a Monistic world-view, rejects, in morality as in science, every transcendent (metaphysical) influence which cannot be ideally experienced. In doing so, it follows the same principle by which it is guided in seeking the causes of new organic forms without referring to the interference of an extra-mundane Being, who produces every new species in accordance with a new creative thought through supernatural influence. Just as Monism has no use for supernatural creative thoughts in explaining living organisms, so it is equally impossible for it to derive the moral world-order from causes which do not lie within the world of our experience. It cannot admit that the nature of moral will is exhausted by being traced back to a continuous supernatural influence upon moral life (divine government of the world from the outside), or a particular act of revelation at a particular moment in history (giving of the ten commandments), or through God's appearance on the earth (as Christ). All that happens in this way to and in man becomes a moral element only when it enters into human experience and becomes an individual's own. Moral processes are, for Monism, products of the world like everything else that exists, and their causes must be looked for in the world, i.e., in man, because man is the bearer of morality.

[ 14 ] Ethical Individualism, then, is the crown of the edifice that Darwin and Haeckel have striven for Natural Science. It is Spiritualized Evolutionism applied to the moral life.

[ 15 ] Anyone who restricts the concept of the natural from the outset to an arbitrarily narrowed sphere, is easily tempted not to find any room within it for free individual action. The consistent Evolutionist does not easily fall a prey to such a narrow-minded view. He cannot let the natural process of evolution terminate with the ape, and acknowledge for man a “supernatural” origin. He is bound, in his very search for the natural progenitors of man to seek Spirit even in nature. Again, he cannot stop short at the organic functions of man, and regard only these as natural. He is bound to look on the life of moral self-determination as the spiritual continuation of organic life.

[ 16 ] The Evolutionist, then, in accordance with his fundamental principles, can maintain only that the present form of moral action evolves out of other kinds of world-happenings. He must leave the characterization of action, i.e., its determination as a free action, to the immediate observation of each action. All that he maintains is only that men have developed out of non-human ancestors. What the nature of men actually is must be determined by observation of men themselves. The results of this observation cannot possibly contradict the true history of evolution. Only the assertion that the results are such as to exclude their being due to a natural world-order would contradict recent developments in the Natural Sciences.⁴

[ 17 ] Ethical Individualism, then, has nothing to fear from a Natural Science which understands itself. Observation yields spiritual activity (freedom) as the characteristic quality of the perfect form of human action. Freedom must be attributed to the human will, in so far as the will realizes purely ideal intuitions. For these are not the results of a necessity acting upon them from without, but are grounded in themselves. When we find that an action embodies such an ideal intuition, we feel it to be free. Freedom consists in this character of an action.

[ 18 ] What, then, from this standpoint are we to say of the distinction, already mentioned above (p. 7) between the two statements “To be free means to be able to do what you will,” and “To be able, as you please, to desire or not to desire is the real meaning of the dogma of freewill”? Hamerling bases his theory of freewill precisely on this distinction, by declaring the first statement to be correct but the second to be an absurd tautology. He says, “I can do what I will, but to say I can will what I will is an empty tautology.” Whether I am able to do, i.e., to make real, what I will, i.e., what I have set before myself as my Idea of action, that depends on external circumstances and on my technical skill (cp. p. 156). To be free means to be able to determine by moral imagination out of oneself those representations (motives) which lie at the basis of the action. Freedom is impossible if anything other than I myself (whether a mechanical process or extra-mundane God whose existence is only inferred) determines my moral representations. In other words, I am free only when I myself produce these representations, but not when I am merely able to realize the motives which another being has implanted in me. A free being is one who can will what he regards as right. Whoever does anything other than what he wills must be impelled to it by motives which do not lie in himself. Such a man is unfree in his action. Accordingly, to be able to will, as you please, what you consider right or what you consider wrong would mean to be free or unfree as you please. This is, of course, just as absurd as to identify freedom with the ability to do what one is compelled to will. But this is just what Hamerling maintains when he says, “It is perfectly true that the will is always determined by motives, but it is absurd to say that on this ground it is unfree; for a greater freedom can neither be desired nor conceived than the freedom to realize oneself in proportion to one's own power and strength of decision.” On the contrary, it is well possible to desire a greater freedom and that a true freedom, viz., the freedom to determine for oneself the reasons for one's volitions.

[ 19 ] Under certain conditions a man may be induced to abandon the execution of his will; but to allow others to prescribe to him what he ought to do—in other words, to will what another and not what he himself regards as right—to this a man will submit only when he does not feel free.

[ 20 ] External powers may prevent me from doing what I will, but that is only to condemn me to do nothing or to be unfree. Not until they enslave my spirit, drive my motives out of my head, and put their own motives in the place of mine, do they really aim at making me unfree. That is the reason why the church attacks not only the mere doing, but especially the impure thoughts, i.e., motives of my action. The church makes me unfree if she calls impure all those motives which she has not enunciated. A church or other community produces unfreedom when its priests or teachers turn themselves into rulers of consciences, i.e., when the faithful are compelled to go to them (to the confessional) for the motives of their actions.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 21 ] In the preceding chapters on human willing I have pointed out what man can experience in his actions, so as, through this experience, to become conscious that his willing is free. It is especially important to recognize that we derive the right to call an act of will free from the experiment of an ideal intuition realizing itself in the act. This can be nothing but a result of observation, in the sense that we observe the development of human volition in the direction towards the goal of attaining the possibility of just-such volition sustained by purely ideal intuition. This attainment is possible because the ideal intuition is effective through nothing but its own self-dependent essence. Where such an intuition is present in human consciousness, it has not developed itself out of the processes in the organism (cp. p. 111 ff.), but the organic activity has retired to make room for the ideal activity. Observation of an act of will which is an image of an intuition shows that out of it, likewise, all organically necessary activity has retired. The act of will is free. No one can observe this freedom of will who is unable to see how free will consists in this, that, first, the intuitive element lames and represses the necessary activity of the human organism and then puts in its place the spiritual activity of a will permeated by the Idea. Only those who are unable to observe these two factors in the free act of will believe that every act of will is unfree. Those who are able to observe them win through to the recognition that man is unfree in so far as he cannot carry through the repressing of the organic activity, but that this unfreedom is tending towards freedom, and that this freedom, so far from being an abstract ideal, is a directive force inherent in human nature. Man is free in proportion as he succeeds in realizing in his acts of will the same mood of soul which pervades him when he is conscious in himself of the formation of purely ideal (spiritual) intuitions.

• 1. See Translator's Preface (cp. p. 80 ff.)
• 2. Only a superficial critic will find in the use of the word “faculty,” in this and other passages, a relapse into the old-fashioned doctrine of faculties of the soul. The precise meaning of this word is evident from what is said on pp. 70 – 71.
• 3. When Paulsen, p. 15 of the book mentioned above, says: “Different natural endowments and different conditions of life demand both a different bodily and also a different spiritual-moral diet,” he is very close to the correct view, but yet he misses the decisive point. In so far as I am an individual, I need no diet. Dietetic means the art of bringing a particular specimen into harmony with the general laws of the genus. But as an individual I am not a specimen of a genus.
• 4. We are entitled to speak of thoughts (ethical Ideas) as objects of observation. For, although the products of thinking do not enter the field of observation, so long as thinking goes on, they may well become objects of observation subsequently. In this way we have gained our characterization of action.

[ 1 ] A counterpart of the question concerning the purpose and destination of life (cp. pp. 147 ff.) is the question concerning its value. We meet here with two mutually opposed views, and between them with all conceivable attempts at compromise. One view says that this world is the best conceivable which could exist at all, and that to live and act in it is a good of inestimable value. Everything that exists displays harmonious and purposive co-operation and is worthy of admiration. Even what is apparently bad and evil may, from a higher point of view, be seen to be good, for it represents an agreeable contrast with the good; we are the more able to appreciate the good when it is clearly contrasted with evil. Moreover, evil is not genuinely real: it is only that we perceive as evil a lesser degree of good. Evil is the absence of good, it has no positive import of its own.

[ 2 ] The other view maintains that life is full of misery and agony. Everywhere pain outweighs pleasure, sorrow outweighs joy. Existence is a burden, and non-existence would, from every point of view, be preferable to existence.

[ 3 ] The chief representatives of the former view, i.e., Optimism, are Shaftesbury and Leibnitz; the chief representatives of the second, i.e., Pessimism, are Schopenhauer and Eduard von Hartmann.

[ 4 ] Leibnitz says the world is the best of all possible worlds. A better one is impossible. For God is good and wise.

A good God wills to create the best possible world, a wise God knows which is the best possible. He is able to distinguish the best from all other and worse possibilities. Only an evil or an unwise God would be able to create a world worse than the best possible.

[ 5 ] Whoever starts from this point of view will find it easy to lay down the direction which human action must follow, in order to make its contribution to the greatest good of the universe. All that man need do will be to find out the counsels of God and to behave in accordance with them. If he knows what God's purposes are concerning the world and mankind, he will be able to do what is right. And he will be happy in the feeling that he is adding his share to the other good in the world. From this optimistic standpoint, then, life is worth living. It is such as to stimulate us to interest and co-operation.

[ 6 ] Quite different is the picture Schopenhauer paints. He thinks of the foundation of the world not as an all-wise and all-beneficent being, but as blind striving or will. Eternal striving, ceaseless craving for satisfaction which yet is ever beyond reach, this is the fundamental characteristic of all will. For as soon as we have attained what we want, a fresh need springs up, and so on. Satisfaction, when it occurs, endures always only for an infinitesimal time. The whole rest of our lives in unsatisfied craving, i.e., dissatisfaction and suffering. When at last blind craving is dulled, every definite content is gone from our lives. Existence is filled with nothing but an endless ennui. Hence the best we can do is to throttle all desires and needs within us and exterminate the will. Schopenhauer's Pessimism leads to complete inactivity; his moral aim is universal idleness.

[ 7 ] By a very different argument von Hartmann attempts to establish Pessimism and to make use of it for Ethics. He attempts, in keeping with the favourite trend of our age, to base his world-view on experience. By observation of life he hopes to discover whether there is more pain or more pleasure in the world. He passes in review before the tribunal of reason whatever men consider to be happiness and a good, in order to show that all apparent satisfaction turns out, on closer inspection, to be nothing but illusion. It is illusion when we believe that in health, youth, freedom, sufficient income, love (sexual satisfaction), pity, friendship and family life, honour, reputation, glory, power, religious edification, pursuit of science and of art, hope of a life after death, participation in the advancement of civilization, that in all these we have sources of happiness and satisfaction. Soberly considered, every enjoyment brings much more evil and misery than pleasure into the world. The disagreeableness of “the morning after” is always greater than the agreeableness of intoxication. Pain far outweighs pleasure in the world. No man, even though relatively the happiest, would, if asked, wish to live through this miserable life a second time. Now, since Hartmann does not deny the presence of an ideal factor (wisdom) in the world, but, on the contrary, grants to it equal rights with blind striving (will), he can attribute the creation of the world to his Absolute Being only on condition that He makes the pain in the world subserve a world-purpose that is wise. But the pain of created beings is nothing but God's pain itself, for the life of the world as a whole is identical with the life of God. An All-wise Being can aim only at release from pain, and since all existence is pain, at release from existence. Hence the purpose of the creation of the world is to transform existence into the non-existence which is so much better. The world-process is nothing but a continuous battle against God's pain, a battle which ends with the annihilation of all existence. The moral life for men, therefore, will consist in taking part in the annihilation of existence. The reason why God has created the world is that through the world He may free Himself from His infinite pain. The world must be regarded, “as it were, as an itching eruption on the Absolute,” by means of which the unconscious healing power of the Absolute rids itself of an inward disease: or it may be regarded “as a painful drawing-plaster which the All-One applies to itself in order first to divert the inner pain outwards, and then to get rid of it altogether.” Human beings are members of the world. In their sufferings God suffers. He has created them in order to split up in them His infinite pain. The pain which each one of us suffers is but a drop in the infinite ocean of God's pain (Hartmann, Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins, pp. 866 ff.).

[ 8 ] It is man's duty to permeate his whole being with the recognition that the pursuit of individual satisfaction (egoism) is a folly, and that he ought to be guided solely by the task of assisting in the redemption of God by unselfish service of the world-process. Thus, in contrast with the Pessimism of Schopenhauer, that of von Hartmann leads us to devoted activity in a sublime cause.

[ 9 ] But what of the claim that this view is based on experience?

[ 10 ] To strive after satisfaction means that our activity reaches out beyond the actual content of our lives. A creature is hungry, i.e., it desires satiety, when its organic functions demand for their continuation the supply of fresh means of life in the form of nourishment. The pursuit of honour requires that a man does not regard what he personally does or leaves undone as valuable unless it is endorsed by the approval of others from without. The striving for knowledge arises when a man is not content with the world which he sees, hears, etc., so long as he has not understood it. The fulfilment of the striving causes pleasure in the individual who strives, failure causes pain. It is important here to observe that pleasure and pain are attached only to the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of my striving. The striving itself is by no means to be regarded as a pain. Hence, if we find that, in the very moment in which a striving is fulfilled, at once a new striving arises, this is no ground for saying that pleasure had given birth to pain, because enjoyment in every case gives rise to a desire for its repetition, or for a fresh pleasure. I can speak of pain only when desire runs up against the impossibility of fulfilment. Even when an enjoyment that I have had causes in me the desire for the experience of a greater, or more refined pleasure, I have no right to speak of this desire as a pain caused by the previous pleasure until the means fail me to gain the greater or more refined pleasure. I have no right to regard pleasure as the cause of pain unless pain follows on pleasure as its consequence by natural law, e.g., when a woman's sexual pleasure is followed by the suffering of child-birth and the cares of nursing. If striving by itself caused pain, then the removal of striving ought to be accompanied by pleasure. But the very reverse is true. To have no striving in one's life causes boredom, and boredom is always bound up with displeasure. Now, since it may be a long time before striving meets with fulfilment, and since, in the interval, it is content with the hope of fulfilment, we must acknowledge that there is no connection between pain and striving as such, but that pain depends solely on the non-fulfilment of the striving. Schopenhauer, then, is wrong, in any case, in regarding desire or striving (will) as being in principle the source of pain.

[ 11 ] In truth, the very reverse of this is correct. Striving (desire) is in itself pleasurable. Who does not know the pleasure which is caused by the hope of a remote but intensely desired aim? This pleasure is the companion of all labour, the results of which will be enjoyed by us only in the future. It is a pleasure which is wholly independent of the attainment of the end. For when the aim has been attained, the pleasure of satisfaction is added as something new to the pleasure of striving. If anyone were to argue that the pain caused by the non-attainment of an aim is increased by the pain of disappointed hope, and that thus, in the end, the pain of non-fulfilment will eventually outweigh the possible pleasure of fulfilment, we shall have to reply that the reverse may be the case, and that the recollection of past pleasure at a time of unsatisfied desire will as often mitigate the displeasure of non-satisfaction. Whoever at the moment when his hopes suffer shipwreck exclaims, “I have done my part,” proves thereby my assertion. The blessed feeling of having willed the best within one's powers is ignored by all who make every unsatisfied desire an occasion for asserting that, not only has the pleasure of fulfilment been lost, but that the enjoyment of the striving itself has been destroyed.

[ 12 ] The satisfaction of a desire causes pleasure and its non-satisfaction causes pain. But we have no right to infer from this fact that pleasure is the satisfaction of a desire, and pain its non-satisfaction. Both pleasure and pain may be experienced without being the consequence of desire. Illness is pain not preceded by any desire. If anyone were to maintain that illness is unsatisfied desire for health, he would commit the error of regarding the inevitable and unconscious wish not to fall ill as a positive desire. When someone receives a legacy from a rich relative of whose existence he had not the faintest idea, he experiences a pleasure without having felt any preceding desire.

[ 13 ] Hence, if we set out to inquire whether the balance is on the side of pleasure or of pain, we must allow in our calculation for the pleasure of striving, the pleasure of the satisfaction of striving, and the pleasure which comes to us without any striving whatever. On the debit side we shall have to enter the displeasure of boredom, the displeasure of unfulfilled striving, and, lastly, the displeasure which comes to us without any striving on our part. Under .this last heading we shall have to put also the displeasure caused by work that has been forced upon us, not chosen by ourselves.

[ 14 ] This leads us to the question: What is the right method for striking the balance between the credit and the debit columns? Eduard von Hartmann asserts that reason holds the scales. It is true that he says (Philosophie des Unbewussten, 7th edition, vol. ii, p. 290): “Pain and pleasure exist only in so far as they are actually being felt.” It follows that there can be no standard for pleasure other than the subjective standard of feeling. I must feel whether the sum of my disagreeable feelings, contrasted with my agreeable feelings, results in me in a balance of pleasure or of pain. But, notwithstanding this, von Hartmann maintains that “though the value of the life of every being can be set down only according to its own subjective measure, yet it follows by no means that every being is able to compute the correct algebraic sum of all that affects its life—or, in other words, that its total estimate of its own life, with regard to its subjective feelings, should be correct.” But this means that rational estimation of feelings is reinstated as the standard of value.¹

[ 15 ] Anyone who more or less adopts this view of thinkers like Eduard von Hartmann may think it necessary, in order to arrive at a correct valuation of life, to clear out of the way those factors which falsify our judgment about the balance of pleasure and of pain. He can try to do this in two ways: first, by showing that our desire (instinct, will) operates as a disturbing factor in the sober estimation of feeling-values, e.g., whereas we ought to judge that sexual enjoyment is a source of evil, we are beguiled by the fact that the sexual instinct is very strong in us into anticipating a pleasure which does not occur in the alleged intensity at all. We are bent on indulging ourselves, hence we do not confess to ourselves that the indulgence makes us suffer. Secondly, von Hartmann subjects feelings to a criticism designed to show that the objects to which our feelings attach themselves reveal themselves as illusions when examined by reason, and that they are destroyed from the moment that our constantly growing intelligence sees through the illusions.

[ 16 ] He, then, can conceive the matter as follows. Suppose an ambitious man wants to determine clearly whether, up to the moment of his inquiry, there has been a surplus of pleasure or of pain in his life. He has to eliminate two sources of error that may affect his judgment. Being ambitious, this fundamental feature of his character will make him see the pleasures of the public recognition of his achievements larger than they are, and the offences suffered through rebuffs smaller than they are. At the time when he suffered the rebuffs he felt the offences just because he is ambitious, but in recollection they appear to him in a milder light, whereas the pleasures of recognition to which he is so much more susceptible leave a far deeper impression. Undeniably, it is a real benefit to an ambitious man that it should be so. The deception diminishes his pain in the moment of self-analysis. But, none the less, his judgment is misled. The sufferings which he now reviews as through a veil were actually experienced by him in all their intensity. Hence he enters them at a wrong valuation on the debit side of his life account. In order to arrive at a correct estimate, an ambitious man would have to lay aside his ambition for the time of his inquiry. He would have to review his past life without any distorting glasses before his mind's eye, else he will resemble a merchant who, in making up his books, enters among the items on the credit side his own zeal in business.

[ 17 ] But the holder of this view can go even further. He can say the ambitious man must make clear to himself that the public recognition which he craves is a thing without value. By himself, or with the guidance of others, he must attain the insight that rational beings cannot attach any value to recognition by others, seeing that “in all matters which are not vital questions of development, or which have not been definitely settled by science,” it is always as certain as anything can be “that the majority is wrong and the minority right.” “Whoever makes ambition the lode-star of his life puts the happiness of his life at the mercy of so fallible a judgment” (Philosophie des Unbewussten, vol. ii, p. 332). If the ambitious man acknowledges all this to himself, he is bound to regard all the imaginary realities of his ambition as illusions, including even the feelings which attach themselves to the illusions produced by his ambition. This is the reason why it-could be said that we must also strike out of the balance-sheet of our life-values whatever is produced by illusions in our feelings of pleasure. What remains after that represents the sum-total of pleasure in life deprived of illusions, and this sum is so small compared with the sum-total of pain that life is no enjoyment and non-existence preferable to existence.

[ 18 ] But whilst it is immediately evident that the interference of the instinct of ambition produces self-deception in striking the balance of pleasures and thus leads to a false result, we must none the less challenge what is said here concerning the illusory character of the objects to which pleasure is attached. For the elimination, from the credit side of life, of all pleasurable feelings which accompany actual or supposed illusions would positively falsify the balance of pleasure and of pain. An ambitious man has genuinely enjoyed the acclamations of the multitude, irrespective of whether subsequently he himself, or some other person, recognizes that this acclamation is an illusion. The pleasure, once enjoyed, is not one whit diminished by such recognitions. Consequently the elimination of all these “illusory” feelings from life's balance, so far from making our judgment about our feelings more correct, actually cancels out of life feelings which were genuinely there.

[ 19 ] And why are these feelings to be eliminated? He who has them derives pleasure from them; he who has overcome them, gains through the experience of self-conquest (not through the vain emotion: What a noble fellow I am! but through the objective sources of pleasure which lie in the self-conquest) a pleasure which is, indeed, spiritualized, but none the less valuable for that. If we strike feelings from the credit side of pleasure in our account, on the ground that they are attached to objects which turn out to have been illusory, we make the value of life dependent, not on the quantity, but on the quality of pleasure, and this, in turn, on the value of the objects which cause the pleasure. But if I am to determine the value of life only by the quantity of pleasure or pain which it brings, I have no right to presuppose something else by which first to determine the positive or negative value of pleasure. If I say I want to compare quantity of pleasure and quantity of pain, in order to see which is greater, I am bound to bring into my account all pleasures and pains in their actual intensities, regardless of whether they are based on illusions or not. If I credit a pleasure which rests on an illusion with a lesser value for life than one which can justify itself before the tribunal of reason, I make the value of life dependent on factors other than mere quantity of pleasure.

[ 20 ] Whoever puts down pleasure as less valuable when it is attached to a worthless object, is like a merchant who enters the considerable profits of a toy-factory at only one-quarter of their real value on the ground that the factory produces nothing but playthings for children.

[ 21 ] If the point is simply to weigh quantity of pleasure against quantity of pain, we ought to leave the illusory character of the objects of some pleasures entirely out of account.

[ 22 ] The method, then, which von Hartmann recommends, viz., rational consideration of the quantities of pleasure and pain produced by life, has taught us so far how we are to get the data for our calculation, i.e., what we are to put down on the one side of our account and what on the other. But how are we to make the actual calculation? Is reason able also to strike the balance?

[ 23 ] A merchant has made a miscalculation when the gain calculated by him does not agree with the profits which he has demonstrably enjoyed from his business or is still expecting to enjoy. Similarly, the philosopher will undoubtedly have made a mistake in his estimate, if he cannot demonstrate in actual feeling the surplus of pleasure or, as the case may be, of pain which his manipulation of the account has yielded.

[ 24 ] For the present I shall not criticize the calculations of those Pessimists who support their estimate of the value of the world by an appeal to reason. But if we are to decide whether to carry on the business of life or not, we shall demand first to be shown where the alleged surplus of pain is to be found.

[ 25 ] Here we touch the point where reason is not in a position by itself to determine the surplus of pleasure or of pain, but where it must demonstrate this surplus in life as percept. For man reaches reality not through concepts by themselves, but through the interpenetration of concepts and percepts (and feelings are percepts) which thinking brings about (cp. pp. 78 ff.). A merchant will give up his business only when the loss of goods, as calculated with his accountant, is actually confirmed by the facts. If the facts do not bear out the calculation, he asks his accountant to check the account once more. That is exactly what a man will do in the business of life. If a philosopher wants to prove to him that the pain is far greater than the pleasure, but that he does not feel it so, then he will reply: “You have made a mistake in your theorizings: repeat your analysis once more.” But if there comes a time in a business when the losses are really so great that the firms' credit no longer suffices to satisfy the creditors, bankruptcy results, even though the merchant may avoid keeping himself informed by careful accounts about the state of his affairs. Similarly, supposing the quantity of pain in a man's life became at any time so great that no hope (credit) of future pleasure could help him to get over the pain, the bankruptcy of life's business would inevitably follow.

[ 26 ] Now the number of those who commit suicide is relatively small compared with the number of those who live bravely on. Only very few men give up the business of life because of the pain involved. What follows? Either that it is untrue to say that the quantity of pain is greater than the quantity of pleasure, or that we do not make the continuation of life dependent on the quantity of felt pleasure or pain.

[ 27 ] In a very curious way, Eduard von Hartmann's Pessimism, having concluded that life is valueless because it contains a surplus of pain, yet affirms the necessity of going on with life. This necessity lies in the fact that the world-purpose mentioned above (p. 167) can be achieved only by the ceaseless, devoted labour of human beings. But so long as men still pursue their egotistical appetites they are unfit for this devoted labour. It is not until experience and reason have convinced them that the pleasures which egoism pursues are incapable of attainment, that they give themselves up to their proper task. In this way the pessimistic conviction is offered as the fountain of unselfishness. An education based on Pessimism is to exterminate Egoism by convincing it of the hopelessness of achieving its aims.

[ 28 ] According to this view, then, the striving for pleasure is fundamentally inherent in human nature. It is only through the insight into the impossibility of satisfaction that the striving abdicates in favour of higher tasks of humanity.

[ 29 ] It is, however, impossible to say of this ethical conception, which expects from the establishment of Pessimism a devotion to unselfish ends in life, that it really overcomes Egoism in the proper sense of the word. The moral ideals are said not to be strong enough to dominate the will until man has learnt that the selfish striving after pleasure cannot lead to any satisfaction. Man, whose selfishness desires the grapes of pleasure, finds them sour because he cannot attain them, and so he turns his back on them and devotes himself to an unselfish life. Moral ideals, then, according to the opinion of Pessimists, are too weak to overcome Egoism, but they establish their kingdom on the territory which previous recognition of the hopelessness of Egoism has cleared for them.

[ 30 ] If men by nature strive after pleasure but are unable to attain it, it follows that annihilation of existence and salvation through non-existence are the only rational goal. And if we accept the view that the real bearer of the pain of the world is God, it follows that the task of men consists in helping to bring about the salvation of God. To commit suicide does not advance, but hinders, the realization of this aim. God must rationally be conceived as having created men for the sole purpose of bringing about his salvation through their action, else would creation be purposeless. And such a world conception envisages extra-human purposes. Every one of us has to perform his own definite task in the general work of salvation. If he withdraws from the task by suicide, another has to do the work which was intended for him. Somebody else must bear in his stead the agony of his existence. And since in every being it is, fundamentally, God who is the ultimate bearer of all pain, it follows that to commit suicide does not in the least diminish the quantity of God's pain, but rather imposes upon God the additional difficulty of providing a substitute.

[ 31 ] This whole theory presupposes that pleasure is the standard of value for life. Now life manifests itself through a number of instincts (needs). If the value of life depended on its producing more pleasure than pain, an instinct would have to be called valueless which brought to its owner a balance of pain. Let us, if you please, inspect instinct and pleasure, in order to see whether the former can be measured by the latter. And lest we give rise to the suspicion that life does not begin for us below the sphere of the “aristocrats of the intellect,” we shall begin our examination with a “purely animal” need, viz., hunger.

[ 32 ] Hunger arises when our organs are unable to continue their proper function without a fresh supply of food. What a hungry man desires, in the first instance, is to have his hunger stilled. As soon as the supply of nourishment has reached the point where hunger ceases, everything has been attained that the food-instinct craves. The pleasure which is connected with satiety consists, to begin with, in the removal of the pain which is caused by hunger. But to the mere food-instinct there is added a further need. For man does not merely desire to restore, by the consumption of food, the disturbance in the functioning of his organs, or to get rid of the pain of hunger, but he seeks to effect this to the accompaniment of pleasurable sensations of taste. When he feels hungry, and is within half an hour of a meal to which he looks forward with pleasure, he may even avoid spoiling his enjoyment of the better food by taking inferior food which might satisfy his hunger sooner. He needs hunger in order to get the full enjoyment out of his meal. Thus hunger becomes for him at the same time a cause of pleasure. Supposing all the hunger in the world could be satisfied, we should get the total quantity of pleasure which we owe to the existence of the desire for nourishment. But we should still have to add the additional pleasure which gourmets gain by cultivating the sensibility of their taste-nerves beyond the common measure.

[ 33 ] The greatest conceivable value of this quantity of pleasure would be reached, if no need remained unsatisfied which in any way aims at this kind of pleasure, and if with the smooth of pleasure we had not at the same time to take a certain amount of the rough of pain.

[ 34 ] Modern Science holds the view that nature produces more life than it can maintain, i.e., that nature also produces more hunger than it is able to satisfy. The surplus of life thus produced is condemned to perish in pain in the struggle for existence. Granted that the needs of life are, at every moment of the world-process, greater than the available means of satisfaction, and that the enjoyment of life is correspondingly diminished, yet such enjoyment as actually occurs is not one whit reduced thereby. Wherever a desire is satisfied, there the corresponding quantity of pleasure exists, even though in the creature itself which desires, or in its fellow-creatures, there are a large number of unsatisfied instincts. What is hereby diminished is, not the quantity, but the “value” of the enjoyment of life. If only a part of the needs of a living creature finds satisfaction, it experiences a corresponding pleasure. This pleasure is inferior in value in proportion as it is inadequate to the total demand of life within the desires in question. We might represent this value as a fraction, the numerator of which is the actually experienced pleasure, whilst the denominator is the sum-total of needs. This fraction has the value 1 when the numerator and the denominator are equal, i.e., when all needs are also satisfied. The fraction becomes greater than 1 when a creature experiences more pleasure than its desires demand. It becomes smaller than 1 when the quantity of pleasure falls short of the sum-total of desires. But the fraction can never have the value 0 so long as the numerator has any value at all, however small. If a man were to make up the account before his death and to distribute in imagination over the whole of life the quantity belonging to a particular instinct (e.g., hunger), including all its demands, then the total pleasure which he has experienced might have only a very small value, but this value would never become altogether nil. If the quantity of pleasure remains constant, then, with every increase in the needs of the creature, the value of the pleasure diminishes. The same is true for the totality of life in nature. The greater the number of creatures in proportion to those which are able fully to satisfy their instincts, the smaller is the average pleasure-value of life. The cheques on life's pleasure which are drawn in our favour in the form of our instincts, become increasingly less valuable in proportion as we cannot expect to cash them at their full face value. Suppose I get enough to eat on three days and am then compelled to go hungry for another three days, the actual pleasure on the three days of eating is not thereby diminished. But I have now to think of it as distributed over six days, and this reduces its “value” for my food-instinct by half. The same applies to the quantity of pleasure as measured by the degree of my need. Suppose I have hunger enough for two sandwiches and can only get one, the pleasure which this one gives me has only half the value it would have had if the eating of it had stilled my hunger. This is the way in which we determine the value of a pleasure in life. We determine it by the needs of life. Our desires supply the measure; pleasure is what is measured. The pleasure of stilling hunger has value only because hunger exists, and it has determinate value through the proportion which it bears to the intensity of the hunger.

[ 35 ] Unfulfilled demands of our life throw their shadow even upon fulfilled desires, and thus detract from the value of pleasurable hours. But we may speak also of the present value of a feeling of pleasure. This value is the smaller, the more insignificant the pleasure is in proportion to the duration and intensity of our desire.

[ 36 ] A quantity of pleasure has its full value for us when its duration and degree exactly coincide with our desire. A quantity of pleasure which is smaller than our desire diminishes the value of the pleasure. A quantity which is greater produces a surplus which has not been demanded and which is felt as pleasure only so long as, whilst enjoying the pleasure, we can correspondingly increase the intensity of our desire. If we are not able to keep pace in the increase of our desire with the increase in pleasure, then pleasure turns into displeasure. The object which would otherwise satisfy us, when it assails us unbidden makes us suffer. This proves that pleasure has value for us only so long as we have desires by which to measure it. An excess of pleasurable feeling turns into pain. This may be observed especially in those men whose desire for a given kind of pleasure is very small. In people whose desire for food is dulled, eating easily produces nausea. This again shows that desire is the measure of value for pleasure.

[ 37 ] Now Pessimism might reply that an unsatisfied desire for food produces, not only the pain of a lost enjoyment, but also positive pains, agony, and misery in the world. It appeals for confirmation to the untold misery of all who are harassed by anxieties about food, and to the vast amount of pain which for these unfortunates results indirectly from their lack of food. And if it wants to extend its assertion also to non-human nature, it can point to the agonies of animals which, in certain seasons, die from lack of food. Concerning all these evils the Pessimist maintains that they far outweigh the quantity of pleasure which the food-instinct brings into the world.

[ 38 ] There is no doubt that it is possible to compare pleasure and pain one with another, and determine the surplus of the one or the other as we determine commercial gain or loss. But if Pessimists think that a surplus on the side of pain is a ground for inferring that life is valueless, they fall into the mistake of making a calculation which in actual life is never made.

[ 39 ] Our desire, in any given case, is directed to a particular object. The value of the pleasure of satisfaction, as we have seen, will be the greater in proportion as the quantity of the pleasure is greater relatively to the intensity of our desire.² It depends, further, on this intensity how large a quantity of pain we are willing to bear in order to gain the pleasure. We compare the quantity of pain, not with the quantity of pleasure, but with the intensity of our desire. He who finds great pleasure in eating will, by reason of his pleasure in better times, be more easily able to bear a period of hunger than one who does not derive pleasure from the satisfaction of the instinct for food. A woman who wants a child compares the pleasures resulting from the possession of a child, not with the quantities of pain due to pregnancy, birth, nursing, etc., but with her desire for the possession of the child.

[ 40 ] We never aim at a certain quantity of pleasure in the abstract, but at concrete satisfaction in a perfectly definite way. When we are aiming at a pleasure which must be satisfied by a definite object or a definite sensation, it will not satisfy us to be offered some other object or some other sensation, even though they give the same amount of pleasure. If we desire satisfaction of hunger, we cannot substitute for the pleasure which this satisfaction would bring a pleasure equally great but produced by a walk. Only if our desire were, quite generally, for a certain quantity of pleasure, would it have to die away at once if this pleasure were unattainable except at the price of an even greater quantity of pain. But because we desire a determinate kind of satisfaction, we experience the pleasure of realization even when, along with it, we have to bear an even greater pain. The instincts of living beings tend in a determinate direction and aim at concrete objects, and it is just for this reason that it is impossible, in our calculations, to set down as an equivalent factor the quantities of pain which we have to bear in the pursuit of our object. Provided the desire is sufficiently intense to be still to some degree in existence even after having overcome the pain—however great that pain, taken by itself, may be—the pleasure of satisfaction may still be enjoyed to its full extent. The desire, therefore, does not measure the pain directly against the pleasure which we attain, but indirectly by measuring its own intensity proportionately against the pain. The question is not whether the pleasure to be gained is greater than the pain, but whether the desire for the object at which we aim is greater than the inhibitory effect of the pain which we have to face. If the inhibition is greater than the desire, the latter yields to the inevitable, slackens, and ceases to strive. But inasmuch as we strive after a determinate kind of satisfaction, the pleasure we gain thereby acquires an importance which makes it possible, once satisfaction has been attained, to allow in our calculation for the inevitable quantity of pain only in so far as it has diminished the intensity of our desires. If I am passionately fond of beautiful views, I never calculate the amount of pleasure which the view from the mountain-top gives me as compared directly with the pain of the toilsome ascent and descent; but I reflect whether, after having overcome all difficulties, my desire for the view will still be sufficiently intense. Thus pleasure and pain can be made commensurate only mediately through the intensity of the desire. Hence the question is not at all whether there is a surplus of pleasure or of pain, but whether the desire for pleasure is sufficiently intense to overcome the pain.

[ 41 ] A proof for the accuracy of this view is to be found in the fact that we put a higher value on pleasure when it has to be purchased at the price of great pain than when it simply falls into our lap like a gift from heaven. When sufferings and agonies have toned down our desire and yet after all our aim is attained, then the pleasure is all the greater in proportion to the intensity of the desire that has survived. Now it is just this proportion which, as I have shown (p. 181), represents the value of the pleasure. A further proof is to be found in the fact that all living creatures (including men) develop their instincts as long as they are able to bear the opposition of pains and agonies. The struggle for existence is but a consequence of this fact. All living creatures strive to fulfil themselves, and only those abandon the struggle whose desires are throttled by the overwhelming magnitude of the difficulties with which they meet. Every living creature seeks food until sheer lack of food destroys its life. Man, too, does not turn his hand against himself until, rightly or wrongly, he believes that he cannot attain those aims in life which alone seem to him worth striving for. So long as he still believes in the possibility of attaining what he thinks worth striving for, he will battle against all pains and miseries. Philosophy would have to convince man that willing is rational only when pleasure outweighs pain, for it is his nature to strive for the attainment of the objects which he desires, so long as he can bear the inevitable incidental pain, however great that may be. Such a philosophy, however, would be mistaken, because it would make the human will dependent on a factor (the surplus of pleasure over pain) which, at first, is foreign to man's point of view. The original measure of his will is his desire, and desire asserts itself as long as it can. The balance between pleasure and pain which is struck in life, though not in intellectualistic philosophy, can be compared with the following. If I am compelled, in purchasing a certain quantity of apples, to take twice as many rotten ones as sound ones—because the seller wishes to clear out his stock—I shall not hesitate a moment to take the bad apples as well, if I put so high a value on the smaller quantity of good apples that I am prepared, in addition to the purchase price, to bear also the expense of the transportation of the rotten goods. This example illustrates the relation between the quantities of pleasure and of pain which are caused by a given instinct. I determine the value of the good apples not by subtracting the sum of the good from that of the bad ones, but by the fact that, in spite of the presence of the bad ones, I still attach a value to the good ones.

[ 42 ] Just as I leave out of account the bad apples in the enjoyment of the good ones, so I surrender myself to the satisfaction of a desire after having shaken off the inevitable pains.

[ 43 ] Supposing even Pessimism were in the right with its assertion that the world contains more pain than pleasure, it would nevertheless have no influence upon the will, for living beings would still strive after such pleasure as remains. The empirical proof that pain overbalances pleasure (if such proof could be given) is indeed effective for showing up the futility of that school of philosophy, which sees the value of life in a surplus of pleasure (Eudaemonism), but not for exhibiting the will, as such, as void of reason. For the will is not set upon a surplus of pleasure, but on whatever quantity of pleasure remains after subtracting the pain. This remaining pleasure still appears always as an object worth pursuing.

[ 44 ] An attempt has been made to refute Pessimism by asserting that it is impossible to determine by calculation the surplus of pleasure or of pain in the world. The possibility of every calculation depends on our being able to compare the things to be calculated in respect of their quantity. Every pain and every pleasure has a definite quantity (intensity and duration). Further, we can compare pleasurable feelings of different kinds one with another, at least approximately, with regard to their intensity. We know whether we derive more pleasure from a good cigar or from a good joke. No objection can be raised against the comparability of different pleasures and pains in respect of their intensity. The investigator who sets himself the task of determining the surplus of pleasure or pain in the world, starts from presuppositions which are undeniably legitimate. It is possible to maintain that the Pessimistic results are false, but it is not possible to doubt that quantities of pleasure and pain can be scientifically estimated, and that the balance of pleasure can thereby be determined. It is incorrect, however, to assert that from the experience of this calculation any consequences arise for the human will. The cases in which we really make the value of our activity dependent on whether pleasure or pain shows a surplus, are those in which the objects towards which our activity is directed are indifferent to us. If it is a question whether, after the day's work, I am to amuse myself by a game or by light conversation, and if I am totally indifferent what I do so long as it fulfils the purpose, then I simply ask myself: What gives me the greatest surplus of pleasure? And I abandon the activity altogether if the scales incline towards the side of displeasure. If we are buying a toy for a child we consider, in selecting, what will give him the greatest pleasure, but in all other cases we are not determined exclusively by considerations of the balance of pleasure.

[ 45 ] Hence, if Pessimistic thinkers believe that they are preparing the ground for an unselfish devotion to the work of civilization, by demonstrating that there is a greater quantity of pain than of pleasure in life, they forget altogether that the human will is so constituted that it cannot be influenced by this insight. The whole striving of men is given its direction by the measure of satisfaction attainable after overcoming all difficulties. The hope of this satisfaction is the basis of all human activity. The work of every single individual and the whole achievement of civilization have their roots in this hope. The Pessimistic theory of Ethics thinks it necessary to represent the pursuit of pleasure as impossible, in order that man may devote himself to his proper moral tasks. But these moral tasks are nothing but the concrete natural and spiritual instincts; and he strives to satisfy these notwithstanding all incidental pain. The pursuit of pleasure, then, which the Pessimist sets himself to eradicate is nowhere to be found. But the tasks which man has to fulfil are fulfilled by him because from his very nature he wills to fulfil them after he has clearly recognized their nature. The Pessimistic system of Ethics maintains that a man cannot devote himself to what he recognizes as his task in life until he has first given up the desire for pleasure. But no system of Ethics can ever invent other tasks than the realization of those satisfactions which human desires demand, and the fulfilment of man's moral Ideas. No Ethical theory can deprive him of the pleasure which he experiences in the realization of what he desires. When the Pessimist says, “Do not strive after pleasure, for pleasure is unattainable; strive instead after what you recognize to be your task,” we must reply that it is human nature to strive to do one's tasks, and that philosophy has gone astray in inventing the principle that man strives for nothing but pleasure. He aims at the satisfaction of what his being demands, and he has in mind the concrete objects of his striving—not an abstract “happiness.” The fulfilment of his striving is to him a pleasure. Pessimistic Ethics, in demanding that we should strive, not after pleasure, but after the realization of what we recognize as our task in life, lays its finger on the very thing which man wills in virtue of his own nature. There is no need for man to be turned inside out by philosophy, there is no need for him to discard his nature, in order to be moral. Morality means striving for an end recognized as justified; it is human nature to pursue it so long as the pain connected with this striving does not inhibit the desire for the end altogether; and this is the essence of all genuine will. Ethics is not founded on the eradication of all desires for pleasure, in order that, in its place, bloodless moral Ideas may set up their rule where no strong desire for enjoyment stands in their way, but it is based on the strong will, sustained by ideal intuitions, which attains its end even when the path to it is full of thorns.

[ 46 ] Moral ideals have their root in the moral imagination of man. Their realization depends on the desire for them being sufficiently intense in man to overcome pains and agonies. They are his intuitions, the springs of action which his spirit manipulates. He wills them, because their realization is his highest pleasure. He needs no Ethical theory first to forbid him to strive for pleasure and then to prescribe to him what he shall strive for. He will, of himself, strive for moral ideals provided his moral imagination is sufficiently active to provide him with the intuitions, which give strength to his will to overcome all the obstacles which lie in his own organization, including the unavoidable pain.

[ 47 ] If a man strives towards sublimely great ideals, it is because their realization will bring him an enjoyment compared with which the pleasure which inferior spirits draw from the satisfaction of their commonplace needs is a mere nothing. Idealists revel in spirit in translating their ideals into reality.

[ 48 ] Anyone who wants to eradicate the pleasure which the fulfilment of human desires brings, will have first to degrade man to the position of a slave who does not act because he wills, but because he must. For the attainment of the object of will gives pleasure. What we call the good is not what a man must do, but what he wills to do when he unfolds the fullness of his nature. Anyone who does not acknowledge this must deprive man of all the objects of his will, and then prescribe to him from without what he is to make the content of his will.

[ 49 ] Man values the satisfaction of a desire because the desire springs from his own nature. What he attains is valuable because it is the object of his will. If we deny any value to the aim of human willing, then we shall have to look for the aims that are valuable among objects which men do not will.

[ 50 ] A system of Ethics, then, which is built up on Pessimism has its root in the contempt for man's moral imagination. Only he who does not consider the individual human spirit capable of determining for itself the content of its striving, can look for the totality of will in the craving for pleasure. A man without imagination does not create moral Ideas; they must be imparted to him. Physical nature sees to it that he seeks the satisfaction of his lower desires; but for the development of the whole man the desires which have their origin in the spirit are fully as necessary. Only those who believe that man has no such spiritual desires at all can maintain that they must be imparted to him from without. On that view it will also be correct to say that it is man's duty to do what he does not will to do. Every Ethical system which demands of man that he should suppress his will in order to fulfil tasks which he does not will, reckons, not with the whole man, but with a stunted being who lacks the faculty of spiritual desires. For a man who has been harmoniously developed, the so-called Ideas of the Good lie, not without, but within the sphere of his own being. Moral action consists, not in the extirpation of a one-sided individual will, but in the full development of human nature. To regard moral ideals as attainable only on condition that man destroys his individual will, is to ignore the fact that these ideals are as much rooted in man's will as the satisfaction of the so-called animal instincts.

[ 51 ] It cannot be denied that the views here outlined may easily be misunderstood. Immature persons without any moral imagination like to look upon the instincts of their half-developed natures as the full content of humanity, and reject all moral Ideas which they have not themselves originated, in order that they may “live themselves out” without restriction. But it goes without saying that a truth which holds for a fully developed human being does not hold for half-developed human natures. Anyone who still requires to be brought by education to the point where his moral nature breaks through the shell of his lower passions, cannot expect to be measured by the same standard as a mature man. But it was not my intention to set down what an undeveloped man requires to be taught, but what is contained in the essential nature of a mature human being. My intention was to demonstrate the possibility of freedom, and freedom is manifested, not in actions performed under sensual or soul constraint, but in actions sustained by Spiritual intuitions.

[ 52 ] The mature man is the maker of his own value. He does not aim at pleasure, which comes to him as a gift of grace on the part of nature or of the Creator; nor does he live for the sake of what he recognizes as abstract duty, after he has put away from him the desire for pleasure. He acts as he wills, that is, in accordance with his moral intuitions: and he finds in the attainment of what he wills the true enjoyment of life. He determines the value of his life by measuring his attainments against his aims. An Ethical system which puts “ought” in the place of “will,” duty in the place of inclination, is consistent in determining the value of man by the ratio between the demands of duty and his actual achievements. It applies to man a measure that is external to his own nature. The view which I have here developed points man back to himself. It recognizes as the true value of life nothing except what each individual regards as such by the measure of his own will. A value of life which the individual does not recognize is as little acknowledged by my views as a purpose of life which does not spring from the value thus recognized. My view looks upon the individual who recognizes his own being in all its parts as his own master and the assessor of his own value.

Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 53 ] The argument of this chapter is open to misapprehension by those who obstinately insist on the apparent objection, that the will, as such, is the factor in man which is void of reason, and that its lack of reason should be exhibited in order to make man see that the goal of his moral endeavour ought to be his ultimate emancipation from will. Precisely such an illusory objection has been brought against me by a competent critic who urged that it is the business of the philosopher to make good what animals and most men thoughtlessly forget, viz., to strike a genuine balance of life's account. But the objection ignores precisely the main point. If freedom is to be realized, the will in human nature must be sustained by intuitive thinking. At the same time we find that the will may also be determined by factors other than intuition, and that morality and its worth can have no other root than the free realization of intuition issuing from man's essential nature. Ethical Individualism is well fitted to exhibit morality in its full dignity, for it does not regard true morality as the outward conformity of the will to a norm. Morality, for it, consists in what issues from the unfolding of man's moral will as an integral part of his whole nature, so that to do what is not moral appears to man as a stunting and crippling of his nature.

• 1. Those who want to settle by calculation whether the sum total of pleasure or that of pain is bigger, ignore that they are subjecting to calculation something which is nowhere experienced. Feeling does not calculate, and what matters for the real valuing of life is what we really experience, not what results from an imaginary calculation.
• 2. We disregard here the case where excessive increase of pleasure turns pleasure into pain.

[ 1 ] The view that man is intended to become a wholly self-contained, free individuality stands in apparent conflict with the facts, that he appears as a member of a natural whole (race, tribe, nation, family, male or female sex), and that he acts within a whole (state, church, etc.). He exhibits the general characteristics of the community to which he belongs, and gives to his actions a content which is defined by the place which he occupies within a social whole.

[ 2 ] This being so, is individuality possible at all? Can we regard man as a whole in himself, in view of the fact that he grows out of a whole and fits as a member into a whole?

[ 3 ] The character and function of a member of a whole are defined by the whole. A tribe is a whole, and all its members exhibit the peculiar characteristics which are conditioned by the nature of the tribe. The character and activity of the individual member are determined by the character of the tribe. Hence the physiognomy and the conduct of the individual have something generic about them. When we ask why this or that in a man is so or so, we are referred from the individual to the genus. The genus explains why something in the individual appears in the form observed by us.

[ 4 ] But man emancipates himself from this generic type. For the generic qualities of the human race, when experienced by the individual in the right way, do not restrict his freedom, and ought not by artificial arrangements to be made to restrict it. The individual develops qualities and activities of his own, the reason for which we can seek only in himself. The generic type serves him only as a means to express his own special being in it. He uses the characteristics which nature has given him as a foundation and gives them the form which expresses his own being. We seek in vain for the reason of such an expression of this being in the laws of the genus. We are dealing here with an individual who can be explained only through himself. If a man has reached the point of emancipation from what is generic in him, and we still attempt to explain all his qualities by reference to the character of the genus, then we lack the organ for apprehending what is individual.

[ 5 ] It is impossible to understand a human being completely if one makes the concept of the genus the basis of one's judgment. The tendency to judge according to the genus is most persistent where differences of sex are involved. Man sees in woman, woman in man, almost always too much of the generic characteristics of the other sex, and too little of what is individual in the other. In practical life this does less harm to men than to women. The social position of women is, in most instances, so humiliating because it is not determined by the individual characteristics of each woman herself, but by the general representations which are current concerning the natural function and needs of woman. A man's activity in life is determined by his individual capacity and inclination, whereas a woman's activity is supposed to be determined solely by the fact that she is “just a woman.” Woman is to be the slave of the generic, of the general functions of womanhood. So long as men debate whether woman, from her “natural disposition,” is fitted for this, that, or the other profession, the so-called Woman's Question will never advance beyond the most elementary stage. What it lies in woman's nature to strive for had better be left to woman herself to decide. If it is true that women are fitted only for that profession which is theirs at present, then they will hardly have it in them to attain any other. But they must be allowed to decide for themselves what is conformable to their nature. To all who fear an upheaval of our social structure, should women be treated as individuals and not as specimens of their sex, we must reply that a social structure in which the status of one-half of humanity is unworthy of a human being stands itself in great need of improvement.¹

[ 6 ] Anyone who judges human beings according to their generic character stops short at the very limit beyond which they begin to be individuals whose activity rests on free self-determination. Whatever lies short of this limit may naturally become matter for scientific study. Thus the characteristics of race, tribe, nation, and sex are the subject-matter of special sciences. Only men who simply wish to live as specimens of the genus could possibly fit the generic picture which the methods of these sciences produce. But all these sciences are unable to get as far as the unique character of the single individual. Where the sphere of freedom (in thinking and acting) begins, there the possibility of determining the individual according to the laws of his genus ceases. The conceptual content which man, by an act of thinking has to connect with percepts, in order to possess himself fully of reality (cp. pp. 64 – 65 ff.) cannot be fixed by anyone once and for all, and handed down to humanity ready-made. The individual must gain his concepts through his own intuition. It is impossible to deduce from any concept of the genus how the individual ought to think; that depends singly and solely on the individual himself. So, again, it is just as impossible to determine, on the basis of the universal characteristics of human nature, what concrete aims the individual will set before himself. Anyone who wants to understand the single individual must penetrate to the innermost core of his being, and not stop short at those qualities which are typical. In this sense every single human being is a problem. And every science which deals only with abstract thoughts and generic concepts is but a preparation for the kind of knowledge which we gain when a human individual communicates to us his way of viewing the world, and for that other kind of knowledge which we gain from the content of his will. Wherever we feel that here we are dealing with that element in a man which is free from the typical kind of thinking and from willing according to type, there we must cease to call in any concepts of our own making if we would understand his nature. Knowledge consists in the combination by thinking of a concept and a percept. With all other objects the observer has to gain his concepts through his intuition; but if the problem is to understand a free individuality, we need to take over into our own spirit those concepts by which the individual determines himself, in their pure form (without mixing with them our own conceptual contents). Those who always mix their own concepts into their judgment on another person can never attain to the understanding of an individuality. Just as the free individuality emancipates himself from the characteristics of the genus, so our knowledge of the individual must emancipate itself from the methods by which we understand what is generic.

[ 7 ] A man counts as a free spirit in a human community only to the degree in which he has emancipated himself, in the way we have indicated, from all that is generic. No man is all genus, none is all individuality; but every man gradually emancipates a greater or lesser sphere of his being, both from the generic characteristics of animal life, and from the laws of human authorities which rule him.

[ 8 ] In respect of that part of his nature for which man is not able to win this freedom for himself, he forms a member within the organism of nature and of spirit. He lives, in this respect, by the imitation of others, or in obedience to their command. But ethical value in the true sense belongs only to that part of his conduct which springs from his intuitions. And whatever moral instincts man possesses through the inheritance of social instincts, acquire ethical value through being taken up into his intuitions. In such individual ethical intuitions and their acceptance by human communities all moral activity of men has its root. To put this differently: the moral life of humanity is the sum-total of the products of the moral imagination of free human individuals. This is the conclusion reached by Monism.

• 1. Immediately upon the publication of this book (1894), critics objected to the above arguments that, even now, within the generic character of her sex, a woman is able to shape her life individually, just as she pleases, and far more freely than a man who is already de-individualized, first by the school, and later by war and profession. I am aware that this objection will be urged to-day, even more strongly. None the less, I feel bound to let my sentences stand, in the hope that there are readers who appreciate how violently such an objection runs counter to the concept of freedom advocated in this book, and who will judge my sentences above by another standard than that of man's loss of individuality through school and profession.

[ 1 ] An explanation of nature on a single principle (Monism) derives from human experience all the material which it requires for the explanation of the world. In the same way, it looks for the sources of action also within the world of observation, i.e., in that part of human nature which is accessible to our self-observation, and more particularly in the moral imagination. Monism declines to seek through abstract inferences the ultimate causes of the world which is given to our perception and thinking, in a sphere outside this world. For Monism, the unity which the experienced thoughtful observation brings to the manifold multiplicity of percepts, is identical with the unity which the human desire for knowledge demands, and through which this desire seeks entrance into the physical and spiritual realms. Whoever looks for another unity behind this one, only shows that he fails to perceive the coincidence of what is found by thinking with the demands of the desire for knowledge. A particular human individual is not actually cut off from the universe. He is a part of the universe, and his connection with the cosmic whole is broken, not in reality, but only for our perception. At first we apprehend this part of the universe as a self-existing thing, because we are unable to perceive the cords and ropes by which the fundamental forces of the cosmos keep turning the wheel of our life.

All who remain at this standpoint see the part of the whole as if it were a truly independent, self-existing thing, a monad which gains all its knowledge of the rest of the world in some way from without. But the Monism described in this book shows that we can believe in this independence only so long as thinking does not gather our percepts into the network of the conceptual world. As soon as this happens, all partial existence in the universe reveals itself as a mere appearance due to perception. Man can find his existence as a self-contained whole in the universe only through the experience of intuitive thought. Thinking destroys the mere appearance due to perception and assigns to our individual existence a place in the life of the cosmos. The unity of the conceptual world which contains all objective percepts, has room also within itself for the content of our subjective personality. Thinking gives us the true shape of reality as a self-contained unity, whereas the multiplicity of percepts is but an appearance conditioned by our organization (cp. p. 63 ff.). The recognition of the true reality as against the appearance of perception, has at all times been the goal of human thinking. Science has striven to recognize percepts as reality by tracing their inter-relations according to natural law. But, owing to the view than an inter-relation discovered by human thinking has only a subjective validity, thinkers have sought the true ground of unity in some object transcending the world of our experience (inferred God, will, absolute spirit, etc.). Further, basing themselves on this opinion, men have tried to gain, in addition to their knowledge of inter-relations within experience, a second kind of knowledge transcending experience which should reveal the connection between empirical inter-relations and those realities which lie beyond the limits of experience (Metaphysics gained not by experience, but by inference). The reason why, by correct thinking, we understand the nexus of the world, was thought to be that an original creator has built up the world according to logical laws, and, similarly, the ground of our actions was thought to lie in the will of this original being. It was overlooked that thinking embraces in one grasp the subjective and the objective, and that it communicates to us the whole of reality in the union which it effects between percept and concept. Only so long as we contemplate the laws which pervade and determine all percepts, in the abstract form of concepts, do we indeed deal only with something purely subjective. But this subjectivity does not belong to the content of the concept which, by means of thinking, is added to the percept. This content is taken, not from the subject but from reality. It is that part of reality which is inaccessible to perception. It is experience, but not the kind of experience which comes from perception. Those who cannot understand that the concept is something real, have in mind only the abstract form, in which we grasp it in our spirit. But the concept exists in this abstract form solely because of our organization, just as the percept does. The tree which I perceive, taken in isolation by itself, has no existence; it exists only as a member in the immense organism of nature, and it is possible only in real connection with nature. An abstract concept, taken by itself, has as little reality as a percept taken by itself. The percept is that part of reality which is given objectively, the concept that part which is given subjectively (by intuition; cp. p. 70 ff.). Our spiritual organization breaks up reality into these two factors. The one factor appears to perception, the other to intuition. Only the union of the two, which consists of the percept fitted according to law into its place in the universe, is reality in its full character. If we take mere percepts by themselves, we have no reality but only a disconnected chaos. If we take by themselves the laws which permeate percepts we have nothing but abstract concepts. Reality is not contained in the abstract concept. It is revealed to thoughtful observation which considers neither the concept by itself nor the percept by itself, but the union of both.

[ 2 ] Even the most orthodox Subjective Idealist will not deny that we live in the real world (that, as real beings, we are rooted in it); but he will deny that our knowledge, by means of its Ideas, is able to grasp reality as we live it. As against this view, Monism shows that thinking is neither subjective nor objective, but a principle which holds together both sides of reality. The thoughtful observation is a process which belongs itself to the sequence of real events. By thinking we overcome, within the limits of experience itself, the one-sidedness of mere perception. We are not able by means of abstract conceptual hypotheses (purely conceptual reflection) to puzzle out the essence of the real, but in so far as we find the Ideas for our percepts we live in the real. Monism does not seek to supplement experience by something unknowable (transcending experience), but finds reality in concept and percept. It does not manufacture a metaphysical system out of mere abstract concepts, because it looks upon the concept as only one side of reality, viz., the side which remains hidden from perception, but is meaningless except in union with percepts. But Monism gives man the conviction that he lives in the world of reality, and has no need to seek beyond his world for a higher reality which cannot be experienced. It restrains man from looking for Absolute Reality anywhere but in experience, because it recognizes reality in the very content of experience. Monism is satisfied with this reality, because it knows that our thinking is able to guarantee it. What Dualism seeks first behind the world of observation, that Monism finds in this world itself. Monism shows that our knowledge grasps reality in its true shape, not in a subjective image which inserts itself between man and reality. It holds the conceptual content of the world to be identical for all human individuals (cp. p. 64 ff.). According to Monistic principles, every human individual regards every other as akin to himself, because it is the same world-content which expresses itself in all. In the single conceptual world there are not as many concepts of “lion” as there are individuals who form the thought of “lion,” but only one. And the concept which A adds to the percept of “lion” is identical with B's concept, except that in each case, it is apprehended by a different perceiving subject (cp. p. 66). Thinking leads all perceiving subjects back to the ideal unity in all multiplicity, which is common to them all. There is but one world of Ideas, but it lives in all human beings as in a multiplicity of individuals. So long as man apprehends himself merely by self-perception he looks upon himself as this particular being, but so soon as he becomes conscious of the world of Ideas which flashes up within him, and which embraces all particulars, he sees that the Absolute Reality lives and shines forth within him. Dualism fixes upon the Divine Being as that which permeates all men and lives in them all. Monism finds this universal Divine Life in Reality itself. The ideal content of another human being is also my content, and I regard it as a different content only so long as I perceive, but no longer when I think. Every man embraces in his thinking only a part of the total world of Ideas, and to that extent, individuals are distinguished one from another also by the actual contents of their thinking. But all these contents belong to a self-contained whole, which comprises within itself the thought-contents of all men. Hence every man, in his thinking, lays hold of the common primary being which pervades all men. To fill one's life with the content of thought is to live in Reality, and at the same time to live in God. A Beyond that is merely inferred and cannot be experienced owes its origin to the misconception of those who believe that this world cannot have the ground of its existence in itself. They do not understand that, by thinking, they discover just what they demand for the explanation of the perceptual world. This is the reason why no speculation has ever produced any content which has not been borrowed from reality as it is given to us. A God inferred by abstract reasoning is nothing but a human being transplanted into the Beyond. Schopenhauer's will is the human will made absolute. Hartmann's Unconscious, made up of Idea and will, is but a compound of two abstractions drawn from experience. Exactly the same is true of all other transcendent principles which are not based on the experience of thinking.

[ 3 ] The truth is that the human spirit never transcends the reality in which it lives. Indeed, it has no need to transcend it, seeing that this world contains everything that is required for its own explanation. If philosophers declare themselves eventually content when they have deduced the world from principles which they borrow from experience and then transplant into an hypothetical Beyond, the same satisfaction ought to be possible, if these same principles are allowed to remain in this world to which they belong as experienced by thinking. All attempts to transcend the world are purely illusory, and the principles transplanted into the Beyond do not explain the world any better than the principles which are immanent in it. When thinking understands itself, it does not demand any such transcendence at all, for every thought-content must find within the world, not outside it, a perceptual content, in union with which it can form a real object. The objects of imagination, too, are contents which have validity only when transformed into representations that refer to a perceptual content. Through this perceptual content they have their place in reality. A concept the content of which is supposed to lie beyond the world given to us, is an abstraction to which no reality corresponds. We can think out only the concepts of reality; in order to find reality itself, we need also perception. An Absolute Being for which we invent a content, is a hypothesis which thinking finds impossible to entertain if it understands itself. Monism does not deny ideal elements; indeed, it refuses to recognize as fully real a perceptual content which has no ideal counterpart; but it finds nothing within the whole range of thinking which could oblige us, by denying the objective spiritual reality of thinking, to transcend the sphere of experience accessible to thinking. A science which restricts itself to a description of percepts, without advancing to their ideal complements is, for Monism, but a fragment. But Monism regards as equally fragmentary all abstract concepts which do not find their complement in percepts, and which fit nowhere into the conceptual net that embraces the whole perceptual world. Hence it knows no Ideas referring to objective factors lying beyond our experience and supposed to form the content of purely hypothetical Metaphysics. Whatever mankind has produced in the way of such Ideas Monism regards as abstractions from experience, whose origin in experience has been overlooked by their authors.

[ 4 ] Just as little, according to Monistic principles, are the aims of our actions capable of being derived from an extra-human Beyond. So far as we can think them, they must have their origin in human intuition. Man does not adopt the purposes of an objective (transcendent) primary being as his own individual purposes, but he pursues the aims which his own moral imagination sets before him. The Idea which realizes itself in an action is selected by the agent from the single world of Ideas and made the basis of his will. Consequently his action is not a realization of commands which have been implanted into this world from the Beyond, but of human intuitions which belong to this world. For Monism there is no ruler of the world standing outside us and determining the aim and direction of our actions. There is for man no transcendent ground of existence, the counsels of which he might discover, in order thence to learn the aims to which he ought to direct his action. Man is thrown back upon himself. He himself must give a content to his action. It is in vain that he seeks outside the world in which he lives for any motive forces of his will. If he is to go at all beyond the satisfaction of the natural instincts for which Mother Nature has provided, he must look for those motive forces which are in his own moral imagination, unless he finds it more convenient to let himself be determined by the moral imagination of others. In other words, he must either cease acting altogether, or else act from motives which he puts before himself from the world of his Ideas, or which others select for him from that same world. If he develops at all beyond a life absorbed in sensuous instincts and in the execution of the commands of others, then there is nothing that can determine him except himself. He has to act from an impulse which he gives to himself and which nothing else can determine for him except himself. It is true that this impulse is ideally determined in the single world of Ideas; but in actual fact it is only by man that it can be selected from that world and translated into reality. Monism can find the ground for the actual translation of an Idea through human action only in the human being himself. For an Idea to pass into action it must be willed by man before it can happen. Such a will consequently has its ground only in man himself. Man, then, is the ultimate determinant of his action. He is free.

Additions to the Revised Edition, 1918

[ 5 ] I. In the second part of this book the attempt has been made to justify the conviction that freedom is to be found in the reality of human conduct. For this purpose it was necessary to sort out, from the whole sphere of human conduct, those actions with respect to which unprejudiced self-observation may appropriately speak of freedom. These are the actions which appear as realizations of ideal intuitions. No other actions will be called free by an unprejudiced observer. However, open-minded self-observation compels man to regard himself as endowed with the capacity for progress on the road towards ethical intuitions and their realization. Yet this open-minded observation of the ethical nature of man is, by itself, insufficient to constitute the final court of appeal for the question of freedom. For suppose intuitive thinking had itself sprung from some other essence; suppose its essence were not grounded in itself, then the consciousness of freedom, which issues from the moral sphere, would prove to be a mere illusion. But the second part of this book finds its natural support in the first part, which presents intuitive thinking as an inward spiritual activity which man experiences as such. To appreciate through experience this essence of thinking is equivalent to recognizing the freedom of intuitive thinking. And once we know that this thinking is free, we know also the sphere within which will may be called free. We shall regard man as a free agent, if on the basis of inner experience we may attribute to the life of intuitive thinking a self-sustaining essence. Whoever cannot do this will be unable to discover any wholly unassailable road to the acceptance of freedom. The experience to which we here refer discovers in consciousness intuitive thinking, the reality of which is not confined to consciousness. Freedom, too, is thereby discovered as the characteristic of all actions which proceed from the intuitions of consciousness.

[ 6 ] II. The argument of this book is built up on the fact of intuitive thinking, which may be experienced in a purely spiritual way, and which, in an act of knowledge, assigns to every percept its place in reality. All that this book aimed at presenting was the result of a survey from the basis of our experience of intuitive thinking. However, the intention also was to emphasize what is required of us as regards experiencing this way of forming thoughts. It demands that we shall not deny its presence in cognition as a self-sustaining experience. It demands that we acknowledge its capacity for experiencing reality in cooperation with perception, and that we do not seek reality in a world outside experience and accessible only to inference, in the face of which human thinking would be only a subjective activity.

[ 7 ] Thus thinking is characterized as that factor in man through which he inserts himself spiritually into reality. (And, strictly, no one should confuse this kind of world-conception which is based on thinking as directly experienced, with mere Rationalism.) But, on the other hand, the whole spirit of the preceding argumentation shows that the perceptual element yields a determination of reality for human knowledge only when it is taken hold of in thinking. Outside thinking there is nothing to characterize reality for what it is. Hence we have no right to imagine that the sensual kind of perception is the only witness to reality. Whatever comes to us by way of perception on our journey through life, we cannot but expect. The only point open to question would be whether, from the exclusive point of view of thinking as we intuitively experience it, we have a right to expect that over and above sensuous perception there is also spiritual perception. This expectation is justified. For, though intuitively experienced thinking is, on the one hand, an active process taking place in the human spirit, it is, on the other hand, also a spiritual perception mediated by no physical organ. It is a perception in which the percipient is himself active, and a self-activity which is at the same time perceived. In intuitively experienced thinking man is transported into a spiritual world also as a percipient. Whatever within this world presents itself to him as percept in the same way in which the spiritual world of his own thinking presents itself, that is recognized by him as a world of spiritual perception. This world of spiritual perception we may suppose to be standing in the same relation to thinking as does, on the sensuous side, the world of sense-perception. Man cannot feel the world of spiritual perception as something alien, because he has already in his intuitive thinking an experience of purely spiritual character. With such a world of spiritual perception a number of the writings are concerned which I have published since this present book appeared. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity lays the philosophical foundation for these later writings. For it attempts to show that in the very experience of thinking, rightly understood, we experience Spirit. This is the reason why it appears to the author that no one will stop short of entering the world of spiritual perception who has been able to adopt, in all seriousness, the point of view of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. True, logical deduction—by syllogisms—will not extract out of the contents of this book the contents of the author's later books. But a living understanding of what is meant in this book by “intuitive thinking” will naturally prepare the way for living entry into the world of spiritual perception.

The readers of the German original of this book (Philosophie der Freiheit, second edition, 1918) will know that the author's argument is largely based upon a distinction between the different elements making up the act of Knowledge. English philosophical terms are rarely exact equivalents of German philosophical terms, and the translator's standing problem is to avoid, or at least to minimize, the ambiguities resulting therefrom. The aim of the present revision of the original translation has been to help the reader to understand the analysis of the act of Knowledge and to enable him to follow the subsequent chapters without being troubled by ambiguous terms.

“Wahrnehmung” has been rendered as “percept,” and “Begriff” as “concept,” in accordance with general use. There has been, however, a difficulty in finding any satisfactory means of making clear in English, by choice of words, the distinction which exists in German between “Vorstellung” and “Idee.” Both are covered in English philosophical usage by one and the same word: “idea.” Here a definite decision had to be made to which, we trust, the reader will soon become accustomed.

The mental picture which the thinker forms to represent the concept in an individual way (“Vorstellung”) is here called a “representation.” This word, however clumsy it may seem at the first glance, is justified, because the mental picture indeed stands for the concept and represents it Coleridge has used the term representation in this sense. Recent writers on psychology have adopted it with the obvious aim of avoiding confusion.

The German term “Idee,” on the other hand, means more than an ordinary concept. It is a “fuller, more saturated, more comprehensive concept.” The philosophic systems of Kant, Schelling, Hegel and indeed the whole of German philosophy are quite unthinkable without this term. Chapter IX of this book gives an outstanding example in its title: “Die Idee der Freiheit.” In order to indicate this reference with the German term “Idee” we have translated it as “Idea,” printed with a capital “ I ” throughout the book.

Thus, the ambiguous English term “idea” had to be altogether avoided and to be replaced by “representation,” whenever the German text has “Vorstellung,” and by “Idea” when the text has “Idee.”

The point is that a distinction had to be made without which vital passages of this book remain obscure.

It goes without saying that the merits of the previous translation are fully recognized in this revision. Alterations, therefore, have been made only where a greater truth towards the original seemed desirable and could be achieved without spoiling the style, which gave such an excellent reflection of the beauties of the original.

I should like to thank the many friends who contributed to this revision from almost all English-speaking countries.

H. POPPELBAUM.
London, Whitsun, 1939.

[ 1 ] There are two fundamental problems in the life of the human soul, to which everything tends that is to be discussed in this book. One of these problems concerns the possibility of attaining to such a view of the essential nature of man as will serve as a support for whatever else comes to meet him by way of life or of science, which, he feels, cannot support itself and is liable to be driven, by doubt and criticism, into the realm of uncertainties. The other problem is this: Is man, as voluntary agent, entitled to attribute freedom to himself, or is freedom a mere illusion begotten of his inability to recognize the threads of necessity on which his volition, like any natural event, depends? It is no artificial tissue of theories which provokes this question. In a certain mood it presents itself quite naturally to the human soul. And it is easy to feel that the soul would lack something of its full stature which has never once confronted with the utmost seriousness of inquiry the two possibilities—freedom of the will or necessity. This book is intended to show that the experiences which the second problem causes man's soul to undergo, depend upon the position he is able to take up towards the first problem. An attempt is made to prove that there is a view concerning man's being which can support the rest of knowledge; and, further, an attempt to point out how with this view we gain a complete justification for the Idea of free will, provided only that we have first discovered that region of the soul in which free volition can unfold itself.

[ 2 ] The view to which we here refer is one which, once gained, is capable of becoming part and parcel of the very life of the soul itself. The answer given to the two problems will not be of the purely theoretical sort which, once mastered, may be carried about as a conviction preserved by memory. Such an answer would, for the whole manner of thinking adopted in this book, be no real answer at all. The book will not give a ready-made and conclusive answer of this sort, but point to a field of experience in which man's own inward soul activity supplies a living answer to these questions at every moment when he needs one. Whoever has once discovered the region of the soul where these questions unfold, will find precisely in his actual acquaintance with this region all that he needs for the solution of these two problems. With the knowledge thus acquired, he may then, as desire or destiny impels him, adventure further into the breadths and depths of this unfathomable life of ours. Thus it would appear that there is a kind of knowledge which proves its justification and validity by its own inner life as well as by the kinship of its own life with the whole life of the human soul.

[ 3 ] This is what I thought of the contents of this book when I first wrote it twenty-five years ago. To-day, once again, I have to set down similar sentences if I am to characterize the leading thoughts of my book. At the original writing I contented myself with saying no more than was in the strictest sense connected with the two fundamental problems which I have outlined. If anyone should be astonished at not finding in this book as yet any reference to that region of the world of spiritual experience of which I have given an account in my later writings, I would ask him to bear in mind that it was not my purpose at that time to set down the results of spiritual research, but first to lay the foundations on which such results can rest. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity contains no special results of this spiritual sort, as little as it contains special results of the natural sciences. But what it does contain is, in my judgment, indispensable for anyone who desires a secure foundation for such knowledge. What I have said in this book may be acceptable even to some who, for reasons of their own, refuse to have anything to do with the results of my researches into the Spiritual Realm. But anyone who finds something to attract him in my inquiries into the Spiritual Realm may well appreciate the importance of what I was here trying to do. It is this: to show that open-minded consideration simply of the two problems which I have indicated and which are fundamental for every kind of knowledge, leads to the view that man lives in the midst of a genuine Spiritual World.

The aim of this book is to demonstrate, prior to our entry upon spiritual experience, that knowledge of the Spiritual World is justified. This justification is so conducted that it is never necessary, in order to accept the present arguments, to cast furtive glances at the experiences on which I have dwelt in my later writings. All that is necessary is that the reader should be willing and able to adapt himself to the manner of the present discussions.

[ 4 ] Thus it seems to me that in one sense this book occupies a position completely independent of my writings on strictly spiritual scientific matters. Yet in another sense it seems to be most intimately connected with them. These considerations have moved me now, after a lapse of twenty-five years, to republish the contents of this book in the main without essential alterations. I have only made additions of some length to a number of chapters. The misunderstandings of my argument with which I have met seemed to make these more detailed elaborations necessary. Changes of text have been made only where it appeared to me that I had said clumsily what I meant to say a quarter of a century ago. (Only ill-will could find in these changes occasion to suggest that I have changed my fundamental conviction.)

[ 5 ] For many years my book has been out of print. In spite of the fact, which is apparent from what I have just said, that my utterances of twenty-five years ago about these problems still seem to me just as relevant to-day, I hesitated a long time about the completion of this revised edition. Again and again I have asked myself whether I ought not, at this point or that, to define my position towards the numerous philosophical views which have been put forward since the publication of the first edition. Yet my preoccupation in recent years with researches into the purely Spiritual Realm prevented my doing as I could have wished. However, a survey, as thorough as I could make it, of the philosophical literature of the present day has convinced me that such a critical discussion, tempting though it would be in itself, would be out of place in the context of what my book has to say. All that, from the point of view of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, it seemed to me necessary to say about recent philosophical tendencies may be found in the second volume of my Riddles of Philosophy

RUDOLF STEINER.
April, 1918.

[ 1 ] Various objections brought forward by philosophers immediately after this book was first published induce me to add the following brief statement to this revised edition. I can well understand that there are readers for whom the rest of the book is of interest, but who will regard the following as superfluous, as a remote and abstract spinning of thoughts. They may well leave this short description unread. However, problems arise within philosophical world views which originate in certain prejudices on the part of the philosophers, rather than in the natural sequence of human thinking in general. What has so far been dealt with here appears to me to be a task that confronts every human being who is striving for clarity about man's being and his relationship to the world. What follows, however, is rather a problem which certain philosophers demand should be considered when such questions are under discussion as those dealt with here, because through their whole way of thinking, they have created difficulties which do not otherwise exist. If one simply ignores such problems, certain people will soon come forward with accusations of dilettantism and so on. And the opinion arises that the author of a discussion such as this book contains has not thought out his position in regard to those views he does not mention in the book.

[ 2 ] The problem to which I refer is this: There are thinkers who are of the opinion that a particular difficulty exists when it is a question of understanding how the soul life of another person can affect one's own (the soul life of the observer). They say: My conscious world is enclosed within me; the conscious world of another person likewise is enclosed within him. I cannot see into the world of another's consciousness. How, then, do I come to know that we share the same world? A world view which considers that from a conscious sphere it is possible to draw conclusions about an unconscious sphere that can never become conscious, attempts to solve this difficulty in the following way. This world view says: The content of my consciousness is only a representative of a real world which I cannot consciously reach. In that real world lies the unknown cause of the content of my consciousness. In that world is also my real being, of which likewise I have in my consciousness only a representative. And in it exists also the being of the other person who confronts me. What is experienced consciously by him has its corresponding reality in his real being, independent of his consciousness. This reality reacts on my fundamental but unconscious being in the sphere that cannot become conscious, and in this way a representative that is quite independent of my conscious experience is produced in my consciousness. One sees here that to the sphere accessible to my consciousness, hypothetically is added another sphere, inaccessible to my consciousness, and this is done because it is believed that we would otherwise be forced to maintain that the whole external world which seems to confront me is only a world of my consciousness, and this would result in the—solipsistic—absurdity that the other persons also exist only in my consciousness.

[ 3 ] It is possible to attain clarity about this problem, which has been created by several of the more recent approaches to a theory of knowledge, if one endeavors to survey the matter from the point of view that observes facts in accordance with their spiritual aspect, as presented in this book. To begin with, what do I have before me when I confront another personality? Let us consider what the very first impression is. The first impression is the physical, bodily appearance of the other person, given me as perception, then the audible perception of what he is saying, and so on. I do not merely stare at all this; it sets my thinking activity in motion. To the extent that I confront the other personality with my thinking, the perceptions become transparent to my soul. To the extent that I grasp the perceptions in thinking, I am obliged to say that they are not at all what they appear to be to the external senses. Within the perceptions as they appear directly to the senses something else is revealed, namely what they are indirectly. The fact that I bring them before me means at the same time their extinction as mere appearances to the senses. But what, in their extinction, they bring to revelation, this, for the duration of its effect on me, forces me—as a thinking being—to extinguish my own thinking and to put in its place the thinking of what is revealed. And this thinking I grasp as an experience that is like the experience of my own thinking. I have really perceived the thinking of the other. For the direct perceptions, which extinguish themselves as appearances to the senses, are grasped by my thinking, and this is a process that takes place completely within my consciousness; it consists in the fact that the thinking of the other takes the place of my thinking. The division between the two spheres of consciousness is actually canceled out through the extinction of the appearances to the senses. In my consciousness this expresses itself in the fact that in experiencing the content of the other's consciousness I am aware of my own consciousness as little as I am aware of it in dreamless sleep. Just as my day-consciousness is excluded in dreamless sleep, so in the perceiving of the foreign content of consciousness, the content of my own is excluded. There are two reasons why one tends to be deluded about these facts; one is that in perceiving the other person, the extinction of the content of one's own consciousness is replaced not by unconsciousness as in sleep, but by the content of the other's consciousness; the other reason is that the alternation between extinction and re-appearance of self-consciousness occurs too quickly to be noticed in ordinary life.—This whole problem cannot be solved by an artificial construction of concepts which draws conclusions from what is conscious to what can never become conscious, but by actual experience of what occurs in the union of thinking with perception. Instances like the above often occur in regard to many problems which appear in philosophical literature. Thinkers should seek the path to unprejudiced observation in accordance with facts, both physical and spiritual, but instead they erect an artificial construction of concepts, inserting this between themselves and reality.

[ 4 ] Eduard von Hartmann, in an essay ⁶³ includes my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity among philosophical works which are based on “epistemological monism.” And this theory is rejected by him as one that cannot even be considered. The reason for this is as follows. According to the viewpoint expressed in the essay mentioned above, only three possible epistemological standpoints exist. The first is when a person remains at the naive standpoint and takes perceived phenomena to be realities existing outside of human consciousness. In this case critical insight is lacking. It is not recognized that after all one remains with the content of one's consciousness merely within one's own consciousness. It is not realized that one is not dealing with a table-in-itself but only with the object of one's own consciousness. One remaining at this standpoint, or returning to it for any reason, is a naive realist. However, this standpoint is impossible, for it overlooks the fact that consciousness has no other object than itself. The second standpoint is when all this is recognized and is taken into account fully. Then to begin with, one becomes a transcendental idealist. As transcendental idealist one has to give up hope that anything from a “thing-in-itself” could ever reach human consciousness. And if one is consistent, then it is impossible not to become an absolute illusionist. For the world one confronts is transformed into a mere sum of objects of consciousness, and indeed only objects of one's own consciousness. One is forced to think of other people too—absurd though it is—as being present only as the content of one's own consciousness. According to von Hartmann the only possible standpoint is the third one, transcendental realism. This view assumes that “things-in-themselves” exist, but our consciousness cannot have direct experience of them in any way. Beyond human consciousness—in a way that remains unconscious—they are said to cause objects of consciousness to appear in human consciousness. All we can do is to draw conclusions about these “things-in-themselves” from the merely represented content of our consciousness which we experience. In the essay mentioned above, Eduard von Hartmann maintains that “epistemological monism”—and this he considers my standpoint to be—would in reality have to confess to one of the three standpoints just mentioned; this is not done, because the epistemological monist does not draw the actual conclusion of his presuppositions. The essay goes on to say:

“If one wants to find out what position a supposed monist occupies in regard to a theory of knowledge, it is only necessary to ask him certain questions and compel him to answer them. Voluntarily he will not give any opinion on these points, and he will go to any length to avoid answering direct questions on them, because each answer will show that as a monist his claim to belong to some other standpoint than one of the above three, in relation to a theory of knowledge, is out of the question. These questions are as follows: 1) Are things continuous or intermittent in their existence? If the answer is: They are continuous, then we are dealing with one form or another of naive realism. If the answer is: They are intermittent, then we have transcendental idealism. But if the answer is: They are on the one hand continuous (as content of the absolute consciousness, or as unconscious representations, or existing as possibilities of perceptions), on the other hand they are intermittent (as content of limited consciousness), then we recognize transcendental realism.—2) If three persons sit at a table, how many examples of the table are present? He who answers: One, is a naive realist; he who answers: Three, is a transcendental idealist; but he who answers: Four, is a transcendental realist. This last answer does indeed presuppose that it is legitimate to put under the one heading, 'examples of the table' something so dissimilar as the one table as thing-in-itself, and the three tables as perceptual objects in the three consciousnesses. Whoever finds this too much will have to answer 'one and three' instead of 'four.'—3) If two persons are in a room by themselves, how many examples of these persons are present? One answering: Two, is a naive realist; one answering: Four (namely, one 'I' and one 'other' in each of the two consciousnesses), is a transcendental idealist; but one answering: Six (namely, two persons as 'things-in-themselves' and four objects of representation of persons in the two consciousnesses), is a transcendental realist. One wishing to prove that epistemological monism is a different standpoint from any of these three, would have to answer each of the above questions differently, and I cannot imagine what such answers could be.”

The answers of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity would be: 1) He who only grasps the perceptual content and takes this to be the reality, is a naive realist; he does not make it clear to himself that he can actually regard the perceptual content as enduring only so long as he is looking at it and he must, therefore, think of what he has before him as intermittent. However, as soon as he realizes that reality is present only when the perceptual content is permeated by thought, he reaches the insight that the perceptual content that comes to meet him as intermittent, is revealed as continuous when it is permeated with what thinking elaborates. Therefore: the perceptual content, grasped by a thinking that is also experienced, is continuous, whereas what is only perceived must be thought of as intermittent—that is, if it were real, which is not the case.—2) When three persons are sitting at a table, how many examples of the table are present? One table only is present; but as long as the three persons remain at their perceptual pictures they will have to say: These perceptual pictures are no reality at all. And as soon as they pass over to the table as grasped in their thinking, there is revealed to them the one reality of the table; with their three contents of consciousness they are united in this one reality.—3) When two persons are in a room by themselves, how many examples of these persons are present? There are most definitely not six examples present—not even in the sense of transcendental realism—there are two. Only to begin with, each of the two persons has merely the unreal perceptual, picture of himself as well as that of the other person. Of these pictures there are four, and the result of their presence in the thinking-activity of the two persons is that reality is grasped. In their thinking-activity each of the persons goes beyond the sphere of his own consciousness; within each of them lives the sphere of the other person's consciousness, as well as his own. At moments when this merging takes place, the persons are as little confined within their own consciousness as they are in sleep. But the next moment, consciousness of the merging with the other person returns, so that the consciousness of each person—in his experience of thinking—grasps himself and the other. I know that the transcendental realist describes this as a relapse into naive realism. But then I have already pointed out in this book that naive realism retains its justification when applied to a thinking that is experienced. The transcendental realist does not enter into the actual facts concerned in the process of knowledge; he excludes himself from them by the network of thoughts in which he gets entangled. Also, the monism which is presented in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity should not be called “epistemological,” but rather, if a name is wanted, a monism of thought. All this has been misunderstood by Eduard von Hartmann. He did not enter into the specific points raised in the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, but maintained that I had made an attempt to combine Hegel's universalistic panlogism ⁶⁴ with Hume's ⁶⁵ individualistic phenomenalism ⁶⁶ whereas in actual fact the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity has no similarity with these two views it is supposed to combine. (This is also the reason I did not feel inclined to compare my view with the “epistemological monism” of Johannes Rehmke,⁶⁷ for example. In fact, the viewpoint of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity is utterly different from what Eduard von Hartmann and others call epistemological monism.)

• 63. Die letzten Fragen der Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik, Ultimate Problems of Epistemology and Metaphysics, publ. in Vol. 108, pp. 55 seq. of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, the Periodical for Philosophy and Philosophical Criticism.
• 64. For data on Hegel's “universal panlogism,” see any standard encyclopedia.
• 65. David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher and historian. Albert Einstein wrote, “If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many sometimes highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even to find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best philosophers who came after him.” Among those influenced by Hume may be numbered Immanuel Kant, William James, George Santayana, and Bertrand Russell. Hume's writings and biographical and critical works concerning him and his ideas can be located by consulting any standard encyclopedia.
• 66. A note on page 71 of the Zeitschrift für Philosophie (Periodical for Philosophy) Vol. 108.
• 67. Johannes Rehmke, 1848–1930, philosopher. His principal works are Logik oder Philosophie als Wissenslehre (Logic or Philosophy as Theory of Knowledge) and Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff (The World as Percept and Concept), Berlin, 1880.