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 freedom of mind and body, and his freedom is
limited just in so far as he allows those tendencies to control him.
If he controls them by external repression, they are then working
havoc within him, no matter how thoroughly he may appear to be