wills against the wills of other people leads to new freedom in all
sorts of ways,--in connection with little, everyday questions, as to
whether a thing is one color or another, as well as in the great and
serious problems of life. If, in an argument, we feel confident that
all we want is the truth,--that we do not care whether we or our
opponents are in the right, as long as we. find the right
itself,--then we are free, so far as personal feeling is concerned;
especially if, in addition, we are perfectly willing that our
opponents should not be convinced, even though the right should
ultimately prove to be on our side.

With regard to learning how always to look first to ourselves,--
first we must become conscious of our own resentment and resistance,
then we must acknowledge it heartily and fully, and then we must go
to work firmly and steadily to refuse to harbor it. We must relax
out of the tension of our resistance with both soul and body; for of
course, the resistance contracts the nerves of our bodies, and, if
we relax from the contractions in our bodies, it helps us to gain
freedom from resistance in our hearts and minds. The same resistance
to the same person or the same ideas may return, in different forms,
many times over; but all we have to do is to persist in dropping it
as often as it returns, even if it be thousands of times.

No one need be afraid of losing all backbone and becoming a "mush of
concession" through the process of dropping useless resistance, for
the strength of will required to free ourselves from the habit of
pitting one's own will against that of another is much greater than
the strength we use when we indulge the habit. The two kinds of
strength can no more be compared than the power of natural law can
be compared to the lawless efforts of human waywardness. For the