We are not here then, by the caprice of God. He has not placed
one in clover and another in a desert nor has He given one a healthy body so that he may
live at ease[pg 044]from pain and sickness, while He placed another in poor circumstances with
never a rest from pain. But what we are, we are, on account of our own diligence or
negligence, and what we shall be in the future depends upon what we will to be and not upon
Divine caprice or upon inexorable fate. No matter what the circumstances, it lies with us to
master them, or to be mastered, as we will. Sir Edwin Arnold puts the teaching most
beautifully in his “Light of Asia.”