[Sidenote: _Phenomenon and noumenon in practical activity._]
As æsthetic intuition knows the phenomenon or nature, and the philosophic concept the noumenon or spirit; so the economic activity wills the phenomenon or nature, and the moral activity the noumenon or spirit. _The spirit which wills itself,_ its true self, the universal which is in the empirical and finite spirit: that is the formula which perhaps defines the essence of morality with the least impropriety. This will for the true self is _absolute freedom._
In this summary sketch that we have given of the entire philosophy of the spirit in its fundamental moments, the spirit is thus conceived as consisting of four moments or degrees, disposed in such a way that the theoretical activity is to the practical as the first theoretical degree is to the second theoretical, and the first practical degree to the second practical. The four moments imply one another regressively by their concreteness. The concept cannot exist without expression, the useful without both and morality without the three preceding degrees. If the æsthetic fact is in a certain sense alone independent while the others are more or less dependent, then the logical is the least dependent and the moral will the most. Moral intention acts on given theoretic bases, with which it cannot dispense, unless we are willing to accept that absurd procedure known to the Jesuits as _direction of intention,_ in which people pretend to themselves not to know what they know only too well.
If the forms of human activity are four, four also are the forms of _genius._ Men endowed with genius in art, in science, and in moral will or heroes, have always been recognized. But the genius of pure economicity has met with repugnance. It is not altogether without reason that a category of bad geniuses or of _geniuses of evil_ has been created. The practical, merely economic genius, which is not directed to a rational end, cannot but excite an admiration mingled with alarm. To dispute as to whether the word "genius" should be applied only to creators of æsthetic expression or also to men of scientific research and of action would be a mere question of words. To observe, on the other hand, that "genius," of whatever kind it be, is always a quantitative conception and an empirical distinction, would be to repeat what has already been explained as regards artistic genius.