with the exercise of the human will.

[FALSE PRIDE IN CONNECTION WITH FREE-WILL.]

The Stoics are commonly said to have started the free-will difficulty.
This needs an explanation. A leading tenet of theirs was the distinction
between things in our power and things not in our power; and they
greatly overstrained the limits of what is in our power. Looking at the
sentiment about death, where the _idea_ is everything, and at many of
our desires and aversions, also purely sentimental, that is, made and
unmade by our education (as, for example, pride of birth), they
considered that pains in general, even physical pains and grief for
the loss of friends, could be got over by a mental discipline, by
intellectually holding them not to be pains. They extolled and magnified
the power of the will that could command such a transcendent discipline,
and infused an emotion of _pride_ into the consciousness of this
greatness of will. In subsequent ages, poets, moralists, and theologians
followed up the theme; and the appeal to the pride of will may be said
to be a standing engine of moral suasion. This originating of a point of
honour or dignity in connection with our Will has been the main lure in
bringing us into the jungle of Free-will and Necessity.

It is in the Alexandrian school that we find the next move in the
question. In Philo Judaeus, the good man is spoken of as free, the
wicked man as a slave. Except as the medium of a compliment to virtue,
the word "freedom" is not very apposite, seeing that, to the highest
goodness, there attaches submission or restraint, rather than liberty.

The early Christian Fathers (notably Augustine) advanced the question to
the Theological stage, by connecting it with the great doctrines of