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is there properly opportunity for choice unless these two are distinct motives, subordinate to distinct ends. If the relation is one of means simply, it does not involve an act of choice, but one of intellectual estimates, of judgment. As the word choice is applied both to selection and election, both to the purely mental act deciding on adaptations and to the volitional act deciding between courses of conduct with different and independent moral characteristics, we easily confound the two. These motives, then, must be present, and so present as to furnish a true alternative of action not a seeming one. Five dollars as opposed to ten dollars, as detached, single considerations, constitute no true alternative. They are exactly of the same kind, and, in ordinary states of mind, there is no basis of action on which the less can be preferred to the greater, since that which gives value to five dollars gives double value to ten dollars; and to feel the first inducement without feeling the greater force of the second is simply to disclose a defective estimate, or an abnormal state either of the mind or of social wants. In all cases of which this is a type, there is no proper freedom. The mind can only choose the less valuable, the less desirable of things, like in kind, by adding to the smaller inducement a distinct, factitious consideration, as that of evincing independence, or the exhibition of eccentricity. If, then, all motives are resolvable at bottom into impulse, and measurable on one standard, we assert that there is no real liberty, but only that semblance presented by an intellectual inquiry into the intrinsic value of things not bearing their sale-mark on them.
Lesson 100 - 3. Motives must be unlike in kind A moral element - p.403
3. There is necessary, then, to liberty not only two motives, but motives unlike in kind, resting back ultimately on different principles, revealing different forms of good and phases of character. In other words, there is no choice without the moral element which can alone oppose itself to
