hither and thither by the sea of vibratory existence.
It is said that every grain of sand in the
ocean bed does, in its turn, get washed up on to
the shore and lie for a moment in the sunshine.
So with human beings, they are driven hither
and thither by a great force, and each, in his
turn, finds the sunrays on him. When a man
is able to regard his own life as part of a whole
like this he will no longer struggle in order
to obtain anything for himself. This is the surrender
of personal rights. The ordinary man
expects, not to take equal fortunes with the
rest of the world, but in some points, about
which he cares, to fare better than the others.
The disciple does not expect this. Therefore,
though he be, like Epictetus, a chained slave,
he has no word to say about it. He knows that
the wheel of life turns ceaselessly. Burne Jones
has shown it in his marvellous picture--the
wheel turns, and on it are bound the rich and
the poor, the great and the small--each has
his moment of good fortune when the wheel
brings him uppermost--the King rises and
falls, the poet is _fêted_ and forgotten, the slave
is happy and afterwards discarded. Each in his
turn is crushed as the wheel turns on. The disciple
knows that this is so, and though it is his
duty to make the utmost of the life that is his,
he neither complains of it nor is elated by it,
nor does he complain against the better fortune