What do we mean by character? Suppose we reply with T. H. Green by defining character as the way in which a man seeks self-satisfaction.[7] We are next faced with the problem of accounting for the different ways in which self-satisfaction is sought. One man is a drunkard and another temperate, one is benevolent and another grasping, one is cruel and another kind; there are endless diversities of human conduct, and all come within the scope of Green's definition of character. We have to look farther and deeper. A satisfactory answer clearly cannot be found in the assumption that each person's actions proceed from an unfettered, autonomous will. The reason for the choice would still have to be discovered. Nor will it do to attribute the difference of choice to different environmental influences in which the "self" is placed. This would indeed be reducing the man to the level of a machine, or to a lower level still. And the same environmental influences do _not_ produce identical results. This is one of the commonest facts of daily experience. Stimulus from the environment is the essential condition of action, but the precise nature of the action elicited is an affair of the organism. If I am courageous by nature I shall stay and face a threatened danger. If I am cowardly I shall run away. Thus, while circumstances are the cause of my acting, how I shall act is in turn caused by my character, the net result being due to their interaction. This seems so obvious that it may well be accepted as a datum common to both parties in the dispute. [7] _Works_, vol. ii. p. 142. We may, then, freely grant the Indeterminist--what he foolishly assumes is inconsistent with the Deterministic position--that environment may be modified by character, that a man is not the creature of circumstances, if we restrict that word to external circumstances, as is so often done. A man, we will say, allowing for the influence of external circumstances, acts according to his character. The question then becomes, "What is his character? How does he acquire it?[8] And whence the varieties of character?" To these queries the only intelligible reply is that a man's character represents his psychic heritage, as his body represents his physical heritage, both of them being subject to development and modification by post-natal influences. Each one thus brings a different psychic force, or a different character, to bear upon the world around him. He is thus the author of his acts, not in the unintelligible sense of absolutely originating the sequence that proceeds from his actions, but in the rational sense of being that point in the sequence that is represented by his personality. And his actions bear the stamp of his personality because had his antecedents been different his actions would have varied accordingly. Each is properly judged in terms of character, because it is the character which determines the form taken by the reaction of the organism on the environment.