For one thing, it gives occasion to remark on the influence exerted over our opinions by the feeling of Personal Dignity.  Of sources of bias, prejudices, “Idola,” “fallacies a priori” this may be allowed precedence.  For example, the maxim has been enunciated by some philosophers, that, of two differing opinions, preference is to be given (not to what is true, but) to what ennobles and dignifies human nature.  One of the objections seriously entertained against Darwin’s theory is that it humbles our ancestral pride.  So, to ascribe to our mental powers a material foundation is held to be degrading to our nobler part.  Again, a philosopher of our own day—­Sir W. Hamilton—­has placed on the title-page of his principal work this piece of rhetoric:  “On earth, there is nothing great but man; in man, there is nothing great but mind”.  Now one would suppose that there are on earth many things besides man deserving the appellation of “great”; and that the mechanism of the body is, in any view, quite as remarkable a piece of work as the mechanism of the mind.  There was one step more that Hamilton, as an Aristotelian, should have made:  “In mind, there is nothing great but intellect”.  Doubtless, we ought not to dissect an epigram; but epigrams brought into a perverting contact with science are not harmless.  Such gross pandering to human vanity must be held as disfiguring a work on philosophy.

The sentiment of dignity has much to answer for in the doctrine of Free-will.  In Aristotle, the question had not assumed its modern perplexity; but the vicious element of factitious personal importance had already peeped out, it being one of the few points wherein the bias of the feelings operated decidedly in his well-balanced mind.  In maintaining the doctrine that vice is voluntary, he argues, that if virtue is voluntary, vice (its opposite) must also be voluntary; now to assert virtue not to be voluntary would be to cast an indignity upon it.  This is the earliest association of the feeling of personal dignity 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.