y determined. But, on the
other hand, moral continuity in its last analysis is only a half truth,
and must find its complement in the recognition of the possibilities of
new beginnings. The very nature of moral action implies, as Lotze has
said, that new factors may enter into the stream of causal sequence, and
that even though a man's life may be, and must be, largely conditioned by
his circumstances, his activity may be really originative and free. What
the determinists seem to forget is, as Green says, that 'character is
only formed through a man's conscious presentation to himself of objects
as _his_ good, as that in which his self-satisfaction is found.'[6] {89}
Desires are always for objects which have a value for the individual. A
man's real character is reflected in his desires, and it is not that he
is moved by some outside abstract force, which, being the strongest, he
cannot resist, but it is because he puts _himself_ into the desire or
motive that it becomes the strongest, the one which he chooses to follow.
My motives are really part of myself, of which all my actions are the
outcome. Human desires, in short, are not merely external tendencies
forcing a man this way or that way. They are a part of the man himself,
and are always directed towards objects related to a self; and it is the
satisfaction of self that makes them desirable.

On the other hand, the fallacy lurking in the libertarian view arises
from the fact that it also makes a hard and fast distinction between the
self and the will. The indeterminists speak as if the self had amongst
its several faculties a will which is free in the sense of being able to
act independently of all desires and motives. But, as a matter of fact,
the will, as we have said, is simply the man, and it cannot be separated
from his history, his character, and the objects which his character
desires. To speak, as people sometimes do in popular language, of being
free to do as they like--that is, to be influenced by no motive whatever,
is not only an idea absurd in itself, but one which, if pushed to its
consequences, would be subversive of all freedom, and consequently of all
moral value. 'The liberty of indifference,' if the phrase means anything
at all, implies not merely that the agent is free from all external
compulsion, but that he is free from himself, not determined even by his
own character. And if we ask what it really is that causes him to act,
it must