_The Freedom of Indifference._ It is this potential freedom, arising from the power of proposing various ends of action, which, misinterpreted, gives rise to the theory of a liberty of indifferent choice--the theory that the agent can choose this or that without any ground or motive. The real experience is the knowledge, after the choice of one end, that since another end was also present to consciousness that other end might have been chosen, _if only the character had been such as to find its satisfaction in that other end_. The theory of indifference misconstrues this fact to mean that the agent might just as well have chosen that other end, without any if or qualification whatever. The theory of indifference, moreover, defeats its own end. The point which it is anxious to save is responsibility. It sees that if only one course of action were ever open to an agent, without the possibility of any _conception_ of another course, an agent, so acting, could not be held responsible for not having adopted that other course. And so it argues that there must always be the possibility of indifferent or alternate choice; the possibility of adopting this or that line of action without any motive. But if such were the case responsibility would be destroyed. If the end chosen is not an expression of character, if it does not manifest the agent's ideal of himself, if its choice is a matter of indifference, it does not signify morally, but is mere accident or caprice. It is because choice is _not_ a matter of indifference, but an outcome of character that the agent feels responsibility, and approves or disapproves. He virtually says: "I am responsible for this outcome, not because I could have chosen another end just as well _without any reason_, but because I thought of another end and rejected it; because my character was such that that end did not seem good, and was such that this end did seem good. My character is myself, and in this unworthy end I stand self-condemned." LI. Moral Reformation.