ABSTRACT
We have frequently mentioned in these investigations that intellectual energy is the psychic energy which the specific phenomena of the money economy produces, in contrast to those energies generally denoted as emotions or sentiments which prevail in periods and spheres of interest not permeated by the money economy. Above all, this is the consequence of money’s character as a means. All means as such imply that the conditions and concatenations of reality are incorporated in the process of our will. They are possible only because we possess an objective image of actual causal relationships, and certainly a mind that commands a perfect view of the total situation would also master the most appropriate means for every purpose and from every starting point. Yet this intellect that had a perfect knowledge of the appropriate means would not yet be able to transpose them into reality because their use is dependent on setting a purpose, only in relation to which those actual energies and connections acquire the status of means. For its part, a purpose can be created only by an act of will. Just as nothing is purposeful in the objective world unless there is a will, so too in the intellectual world, which is only a more or less perfect representation of the content of the world. It has been correctly stated, but mostly misunderstood, that the will is blind. The will is not blind in the same sense as Hödhr or the blinded cyclops who rush at a venture; the will does not produce anything irrational, in the sense of the value concept of reason. Rather, it is unable to effect anything at all unless it gains some kind of content that is completely external to it. For by itself, the will is nothing but one of the psychological forms (such as being, duty or hope, etc.) which make up the content of our life. It is one of those categoriesprobably realized psychologically by concomitant muscular or nervous
reactions-by which we comprehend the ideal content of the world in order to give it a practical significance for us. Just as the will-the mere name of the form raised to a certain degree of independence-does not by itself choose any definite content whatsoever, so too the mere awareness of the word’s content, that is from an intellectual standpoint, does not bring about any purposefulness. Rather, the contents of the world are completely neutral, but at one point or another they unpredictably become coloured by the will. Once this occurs, one finds that the will is transferred in a purely logical objective manner to other conceptions that are causally related to the earlier ones and that now possess the status of ‘means’ to that ‘final purpose’. Wherever the intellect leads us, we are completely dependent, since it leads us solely through the actual connections between things. The intellect is the mediator through which volition adjusts itself to independent being. If we conceive of a rigid conception of the calculation of means and abide by it, then we are purely theoretical, absolutely nonpractical beings when we act in this manner. Volition only accompanies the series of our considerations like an organ pedal note or like the general presupposition of a domain in whose peculiarities and conditions it does not interfere, yet which alone can give life and reality to it.
