Our humanity is in our freedom. Our freedom is in our humanity. When
one, man tries to manage another, he is putting that other in the
attitude of a beast. The man who is allowing himself to be managed
is classing himself with the beasts.
Although this is a fact so evident on the base of it that it needs
neither explanation nor enlargement, there is hardly a day passes
that some one does not say to some one, "You cannot manage me in
that way," and the answer should be, "Why should you want to be
managed in any way; and why should I want to insult you by trying to
manage you at all?"
The girl and her father might have been intelligent friends by this
time, if the practice of the "contrary method" had not tainted the
girl with habitual hypocrisy, and cultivated in the father the
warped mind which results from the habit of resistance, and blind
weakness which comes from the false idea that he is always having
his own way.
If we want an open brain and a good, freely working nervous system,
we must respect our own freedom and the freedom of other
people,--for only as individuals stand alone can they really
influence one another to any good end.
It is curious to see how the men of habitual resistance pride
themselves on being in bondage to no one, not knowing that the fear
of such bondage is what makes them resist, and the fear of being
influenced by another is one of the most painful forms of bondage in
which a man can be.
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