Steiner there is using the term "ideal" to refer to pure ideation or pure thinking in Steiner's sense. "The action is therefore neither stereotyped, carried out according to set rules, nor is it performed automatically in response to an external impetus; the action is determined solely through its ideal content." What is individual in us is to be distinguished from what is generic by its ideal character. If an act proceeds out of genuine thinking, or practical reason, then it is free. Steiner concludes by pointing out that to achieve this level of freedom, we must lift ourselves out of our group-existence: out of the prejudices we receive from our family, nation, ethnic group and religion, and all that we inherit from the past that limits our creative and imaginative capacity to meet the world directly. Only when we realize our potential to be a unique individual are we free. Thus, it lies in our freedom to achieve freedom; only when we actively strive towards freedom do we have some chance of attaining it. Before 1900, Steiner was laying the epistemological basis of his thought. Steiner mentioned that "The Philosophy of Freedom" was intended to give the philosophical foundations for what had been outlined in his earlier work "Truth and Science" (1892). In works written after 1900, Steiner began to explain how thinking can evolve to become an organ of perception of higher worlds of living, creative, spiritual beings. Steiner frequently referred to "The Philosophy of Freedom" in his later lectures and in written works. Near the end of his life, he suggested that "The Philosophy of Freedom" would outlive all his other works. Steiner's principal works on philosophy include: from the Prefaces to the First, Second, and Third Editions  It contained, he claimed, the entire content, in a philosophical form, of what he later developed explicitly as anthroposophy. The first edition of "Die Philosophie der Freiheit" was published in 1893/4. A second revised edition appeared in 1918. Further German editions reprinted the 1918 text until 1973, when a revised edition was produced based on Steiner's corrections of the galley proofs of the 1918 edition. Minor changes, including corrections to some of Steiner's citations, were made in the 1987 German edition. The first edition included the following passage Steiner removed from later editions: “We no longer believe that there is a norm to which we must all strive to conform. Nothing is accepted as valid, unless it springs from the roots of individuality.