The upright, direct method is according to the honorable laws of human intercourse, and brings always better results in the end, even though there may be some immediate failures in the process.
To adjust ourselves rightly to another nature and go with it to a good end, along the lines of least resistance, is of course the best means of a real acquaintance, but to allow ourselves to manage a fellow-being is an indignity to the man and worse than an indignity to the mind who is willing to do the managing.
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.
The men who are slaves to this fear do not stop even to consider the question.

They resist and refuse a request at once, for fear that pausing for consideration would open them to the danger of appearing to yield to the will of another.
When we are quite as willing to yield to another as to refuse him, then we are free, and can give any question that is placed before us intelligent consideration, and decide according to our best judgment.
No amount of willfulness can force a man to any action or attitude of mind if he is willing to yield to the willful pressure if it seems to him best.
The worse bondage of man to man is the bondage of fear..