"A free spirit acts according to his impulses, that is, according to intuitions selected from the totality of his world of ideas by thinking. For an un-free 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 world of percepts given to him, that is, in his past experiences. He recalls, before coming to a decision, what someone else has done or recommended as suitable in a comparable case, or what God has commanded to be done in such a case, and so on, and he acts accordingly.
For a free spirit, these prior conditions are not the only impulses to action. He makes a completely first-hand decision. What others have done in such a case worries him as little as what they have decreed. He has purely ideal reasons which lead him to select from the sum of his concepts just one in particular, and then to translate it into action. But his action will belong to perceptible reality. What he achieves will thus be identical with a quite definite content of perception...."
The fore-going is from Rudolf Steiner's ...freedom philosophy...known as 'Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path: A Philosophy of Freedom'...the first paragraph of chapter 12 entitled Moral Imagination (Darwinism and Ethics). Translation by Michael Wilson
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