“... With his identification of delight in one’s self—that is, pride—as the fundamental movement or orientation of sin, Augustine reconciled a certain division between patristic authors concerning whether the devil’s fall, and thus that of the demons, was due to pride (superbia) or envy (invidia), specifically envy of humanity having been made in the image of God. Augustine reasons that it is impossible that envy should precede pride as its cause, for envy, as the resentment of another’s superiority, presupposes a desire for one’s own superiority. Pride, as Augustine says, is the mother of envy. It is the fundamental logic of all sin, because every transgression presupposes a creature’s preference for its own will in opposition to God’s will for it. This sound reasoning is confirmed by Scripture: If instead [the mind] gets in its own way, so to speak, and it pleases it to imitate God perversely so that it wills to enjoy its own power, it becomes lesser to precisely the extent that it desires itself to be greater. Hence, ‘pride is the beginning of all sin’ and ‘the beginning of pride is when one departs [apostatare] from God’. [...] Lib. arb. 3.25.76, translation modified, citing Sir. 10:13 and 10:12 respectively. For his appeal to Sir. 10 to support pride as the beginning of sin, see s. 159B.11; cf. mus. 6.13.40; Gn. adu. Man. 2.5.6; ciu. 12.6; Gn. litt. 11.15.19. ...”