1. Addition to the Revised Edition (1918).
In the second part of this book the attempt has been made to justify the conviction that freedom is to be found in human conduct as it really is. 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 realisations 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 realisation. 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 moral conduct, 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 recognising 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 belief in freedom. The experience to which we here refer reveals in consciousness intuitive thinking, the reality of which does not depend merely on our being conscious of it. Freedom, too, is thereby revealed as the characteristic of all actions which issue from the intuitions of consciousness.