Calderwood, H. (1888). The will. In H. Calderwood, Handbook of moral philosophy (pp. 170-205). London, Great Britain: Macmillan and Co.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/13003-009
There now comes into view the great central problem of Ethics--the question of Self-control. Is man capable of this, in accordance with his judgment of obligation and his sense of duty? Is he able to take the management of his life, giving effect to his views of his good on the whole, by subordinating present desire, to a conception of higher possibilities in life? Is he a moral agent in any proper sense, capable of lifting up before himself Moral Law as the representation of an ideal of life, contemplating it as an imperative, and setting himself deliberately and persistently to govern his impulses? This is the problem. Any lower statement of it either distorts the problem or ignores it. A vast and perplexing problem it is; but it springs so out of the very conditions of intelligent existence that it is impossible to expel it from the region of Philosophy, or to lessen in any way its magnitude. To acknowledge Moral Law, as every man does, is to raise the question of the distinction between a merely sentient life and an intelligently directed existence; it is to walk with eyes open into the forest of logical entanglements to be encountered in distinguishing between 'self-determination' in animal and in intelligent life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)