There exists a strange abuse relative to the nature and essence of the will. Very often, parents, blinded by a false prejudice, see with pleasure, and admire in their children, stubbornness and obstinacy of character; and, looking forward to their future with an air of pride, they say: "That child will have a strong will." Deplorable error! Woe to the parents who fall into it, and the children who are its object! When the will is truly strong, far from being obstinate it is, on the contrary, pliant and tractable. No human power can restore suppleness to the arm which a convulsive paroxysm has stiffened, yet it does not follow that this arm is stronger than when it was in a healthy condition. The stiffness, far from increasing its strength, decidedly weakens it. In like manner the will's strength does not lie in stubborn obstinacy, but rather in that pliancy which enables it to dispose itself as circumstances may require. A stubborn character has nothing in common with this noble and precious faculty of the soul. And, like all the others, this faculty possesses two degrees of elevation; in the one it comes in direct contact with the senses and, the external world; and in the other, raised above all sensibility, it receives its light and movement from on high. The will, taken in its inferior part, is nothing else than that appetite or blind instinct which we hold in common with the brute creation; and by which animals are governed in their choice of some things and their rejection of others. If the will, properly so called, consisted in this blind instinct, man would be inferior to the ass and the mule, whose attractions and repugnances are more imperious than those of other animals. The will, as understood in the true Christian sense of the term, acts in contradiction to this brutal appetite; hence they alone have a strong will who can, when duty and conscience require it, obey their voice with docility, in spite of all instinctive opposition.