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 be answered, some caprice of the moment, some accidental impulse or arbitrary freak of fancy. The late Professor James makes a valiant attempt to solve the 'dilemma of determinism' by resorting to the idea of 'chance' which he defines as a 'purely relative term, giving us no information about that which is predicated, except that it happens to be disconnected with something else--not controlled, secured or {90} necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence.'[7] 'On my way home,' he says, 'I can choose either of two ways'; and suppose 'the choice is made twice over and each time falls on a different street.' 'Imagine that I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then am set again at the door of this hall just as I was before the choice was made. Imagine then that, _everything else being the same_,[8] I now make a different choice and traverse Oxford Street. Looking outwardly at these universes of which my two acts are a part, can you say which is the impossible and accidental one and which the rational and necessary one?' Perhaps an outsider could not say, but Professor James, if he examined his reasons, could say. He assumes that 'everything else is the same.' But that is just what cannot be. A new factor has been introduced, it may be a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset calculation--a something in his character in virtue of which his second choice is different from his first. It is an utter misnomer to call it 'chance.' Even though he had tossed a coin and acted on the throw, his action would still be determined by the kind of man he was.