ABSTRACT
That it is permissible to say that a man may govern himself must be accepted as an axiom in morals; otherwise precepts, or even private decisions, would be entirely vain. Yet on reflection the axiom appears self-contradictory, or at least equivocal. If one part of a man can govern another, neither part could be said to be the whole man, and the attribution of dominion to himself cannot be strictly correct. Theology has wrestled with this difficulty, sometimes pronouncing boldly that it is only God, or the total automatism of nature, that can govern any event, and sometimes deciding that only the part that freely governs the material part of the man is truly the man himself, the “flesh” being only an alien burden or recalcitrant instrument with which he has to struggle.
