to awaken in them, about their physical, their intellectual, their
moral condition, that divine discontent which is the parent, first
of upward aspiration and then of self-control, thought, effort to
fulfil that aspiration even in part. For to be discontented with
the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is
the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue. Men begin at
first, as boys begin when they grumble at their school and their
schoolmasters, to lay the blame on others; to be discontented with
their circumstances--the things which stand around them; and to
cry, "Oh that I had this!" "Oh that I had that!" But by that way
no deliverance lies. That discontent only ends in revolt and
rebellion, social or political; and that, again, still in the same
worship of circumstances--but this time desperate--which ends, let
it disguise itself under what fine names it will, in what the old
Greeks called a tyranny; in which--as in the Spanish republics of
America, and in France more than once--all have become the
voluntary slaves of one man, because each man fancies that the one
man can improve his circumstances for him.

But the wise man will learn, like Epictetus the heroic slave, the
slave of Epaphroditus, Nero's minion--and in what baser and uglier
circumstances could human being find himself?--to find out the
secret of being truly free; namely, to be discontented with no man
and no thing save himself. To say not--"Oh that I had this and
that!" but "Oh that I were this and that!" Then, by God's help--
and that heroic slave, heathen though he was, believed and trusted
in God's help--"I will make myself that which God has shown me
that I ought to be and can be."

Ten thousand a year, or ten million a year, as Epictetus saw full