Associationist determinism represents the self as a collection of psychic states, the strongest of which exerts a prevailing influence and carries the others with it. This doctrine thus sharply distinguishes co-existing psychic phenomena from one another. "I could have abstained from murder," says Stuart Mill, "if my aversion to the crime and my dread of its consequences had been weaker than the temptation which impelled me to commit it."[2] And a little further on: "His desire to do right and his aversion to doing wrong are strong enough to overcome ... any other desire or aversion which may conflict with them."[3] Thus desire, aversion, fear, temptation are here presented as distinct things which there is no inconvenience in naming separately. Even when he connects these states with the self which experiences them, the English philosopher still insists on setting up clear-cut distinctions: "The conflict is between me and myself; between (for instance) me desiring a pleasure and me dreading self-reproach."[4] Bain, for his part, devotes a whole chapter to the "Conflict of Motives."[5] In it he balances pleasures and pains as so many terms to which one might attribute, at least by abstraction, an existence of their own. Note that the opponents of determinism agree to follow it into this field. They too speak of associations of ideas and conflicts of motives, and one of the ablest of these philosophers, Alfred Fouillée, goes so far as to make the idea of freedom itself a motive capable of counterbalancing others.[6] Here, however, lies the danger. Both parties commit themselves to a confusion which arises from language, and which is due to the fact that language is not meant to convey all the delicate shades of inner states. [Sidenote: This erroneous tendency aided by language. Illustration.]