"1. A boy, in order to divert himself, reads an inspiring book; the motive is accounted, perhaps, a good one: at any rate, not a bad one. 2. He sets his top a-spinning: the motive is deemed at any rate not a bad one. 3. He sets loose a mad ox among a crowd: his motive is now, perhaps, termed an abominable one. Yet in all three cases the motive may be the very same: it may be neither more nor less than curiosity."[123] Mill writes to the following effect: "The morality of the action depends entirely upon the _intention_----that is, upon _what_ the agent wills to do. But the motive, that is, the feeling which made him will so to do, when it makes no difference in the act, makes none in the morality."[124] Now if motives were merely inert feelings or bare states of consciousness happening to fill a person's mind apart from his desires and his ideas, they certainly would not modify his acts, and we should be compelled to admit the correctness of this position. But Mill gives the whole case away when he says that the motive which makes a man will something, "_when it makes no difference in the act_," makes none in its morality. Every motive does make a difference in the act; it makes precisely the difference between one act and another. It is a contradiction in terms to speak of the motive as that _which makes a man_ will to do an act or intend to effect certain consequences, and then speak of the motive making no difference to the act! How can that which makes an intention make no difference to it, and to the act which proceeds from it? =Concrete Identity of Motive and Intention.=--Ordinary speech uses motive and intention interchangeably. It says, indifferently, that a man's motive in writing a letter was to warn the person addressed or was friendliness. According to Bentham and Mill, only so-called states of consciousness in which one feels friendly can be called motive; the object aimed at, the warning of the person, is intention, not motive. Again ordinary speech says either that a doctor's intention was to relieve his patient, or that it was kind and proper, although the act turned out badly. But the utilitarians would insist that only the first usage is correct, the latter confounding intent with motive. In general, such large terms as ambition, revenge, benevolence, patriotism, justice, avarice, are used to signify both motives and aims; both dispositions _from_ which one acts and results _for_ which one acts. It is the gist of the following discussion that common speech is essentially correct in this interchangeable use of intention and motive. The same set of real facts, _the entire voluntary act_, is pointed to by both terms.