Individual Autonomy and Responsibility in Late Imperial China By ...

themselves, and one part of the self must be controlled by the other. One of these two parts of the mind is the rational part, identified with intellect, while the other part is irrational, identified with feelings and instincts. Thus, self-control is the control of reason on passions and impulses, seen as natural forces, like boiling waters or burning fire, which are very difficult to resist. Saint Paul’s words are clear, too: “[w]hen I want to do what is good, what is evil is the only choice I have. My inner being delights in the law of God. But I see a different law at work in my body—a law that fights against the law that my mind approves of. It makes me prisoner to the law of sin which is at work in my body.”¹⁰⁴

The inner struggle was further developed by Augustine, who stressed that the source of evil in the world was not in God, but in the misuse of freedom, as the human will has been corrupted through the original sin.¹⁰⁵ He also emphasized that salvation is attained entirely through the actions of God: due to the wrong direction of desires, freedom can be attained only by a transformative operation of divine Grace.¹⁰⁶ The point here is the struggle between body and spirit, and the will against itself, as re-elaborated in Augustine’s aegritudo animi and in his statement “I was at war with myself”:¹⁰⁷

[…] The mind commands the body, and the body obeys. The mind commands itself and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to be moved and there is such readiness that the command is scarcely distinguished from the obedience in act. Yet the mind is mind, and the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, and yet though it be itself it does not obey itself. Whence this strange anomaly and why should it be? I repeat: The will commands itself to will, and could not give the command unless it wills, yet what is commanded is not done. But actually, the will does not will entirely; therefore it does not command entirely. For as far as it wills, it commands. And as far as it does not will, the thing commanded is not done. For the will commands that there be an act of will—not another, but itself. But it does not command entirely. Therefore, what is commanded does not happen; for if the will were whole and entire, it would not even command it