“A man can indeed do what he wills--but he cannot will whatever he pleases, because his will is determined by motives. He cannot will whatever he pleases? Look again at these words more closely. Is there any sensible meaning in them? Freedom of the will ought then to consist in being able to will something without reason, without motive. But what does willing mean other than the ‘having a reason’ for preferring to do or endeavour to attain this, rather than that? To will something without reason, without motive, would mean to will something ‘without willing it.’ The concept of motive is inseparably bound up with that of willing. Without a definite motive the will is an empty potentiality: only through a motive does it become active and real. It is therefore quite correct that man’s will is in so far not free as its direction is always determined by the strongest motive.” For all action that is not accomplished in the light of self-knowledge, the motive, the reason for action, must needs be felt as a constraint. But the matter is otherwise when the reason or motive is taken up into self-knowledge. Then this reason becomes a part of the self. The willing is no longer determined; it determines itself. The law-abidingness, the motives of willing, now no longer rule over the one who wills, but are one and the same with this willing. To illuminate the laws of one’s action with the light of self-observation means to overcome all constraint of motive. By so doing, will transfers itself into the realm of freedom. It is not all human action which bears the marks of freedom. Only such action is free action which in its every part is lighted up with the glow of self-observation. And because self-observation raises the individual self up to the Universal Self, therefore free action is that which flows from the Universal Self. The old controversy whether man’s will is free or subject to a universal law, to an unalterable necessity, is a problem wrongly stated. All action is bound which is done by a man as an individual; all action free which is accomplished after his spiritual re-birth. Man, therefore, is not, in general, either free or bound. He is both the one and the other. He is bound before his re-birth; and he can become free through this re-birth. The individual upward development of man consists in the transformation of unfree willing into will possessing the character of freedom. The man who has realised the law-abidingness of his action as his own, has overcome the constraint of this law-abidingness and therewith of un-freedom. Freedom is not from the outset a fact of human existence, but a goal thereof.