e thing we may be
sure,--it makes me the instrument of evil, in one way or another.
Repressed evil is not going to lie dormant in us forever; it will rise
in active ferment, sooner or later. Its ultimate action is just as
certain as that a serious impurity of the blood is certain to lead to
physical disease, if it is not counteracted.

Knowing this to be true, we can no longer say of certain people
"So-and-so has remarkable self-control." We can only say, "So-and-so
represses his feelings remarkably well: what a good actor he is!" The
men who have real self-control do exist, and they are the leaven that
saves the race. It is good to know that this habitual repression comes,
in many cases, from want of knowledge of the fact that self-repression
is not self-control.

But the reader may say, "what am I to do, if I feel angry, and want to
hit a man in the face; I am not supposed to hit him am I, rather than
to repress my feelings?"

No, not at all, but you are supposed to use your will to get in behind
the desire to hit him, and, by relaxing in mind and body, and stopping
all resistance to his action, to remove that desire in yourself
entirely. If once you persistently refuse to resist by dropping the
anger of your mind and the tension of your body, you have gained an
opportunity of helping your brother, if he is willing to be helped; you
have cleared the atmosphere of your own mind entirely, so that you can
understand his point of view, and give him the benefit of reasonable
consideration; or, at the very least, you have yourself ceased to be
ruled by his evils, for you can no longer be roused to personal
retaliation. It is interesting and enlightening to recognize the fact
that we are in bondage to any man to the extent that we permit
ourselves to be roused to anger or resentment by his words or actions.

When a man's brain is befogged by the fumes of anger and irritability
it can work neither clearly nor quietly, and, when that is the case, it
is impossible for him to serve himself or his neighbor to his full
ability. If another person has the power to rouse my anger or my
irritability, and I allow the anger or the irritability to control me,
I am, of course, subservient to my own bad state, and at the mercy of
the person who has the power to excite those evil states just in so far
as such excitement confuses my brain.

Every one has in him certain inherited and personal tendencies which
are obstacles to his freedo