Page:Man; king of mind, body, and circumstance (IA mankingofmindbo00alle).pdf/59

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Body and Circumstance

agine their affliction to be poverty; their real trouble is covetousness. They imagine their affliction to be poverty; their real trouble is covetousness. They are not made unhappy by poverty, but by the thirst for riches. Poverty is more often in the mind than in the purse. So long as a man thirsts for more money he will regard himself as poor, and in that sense he is poor, for covetousness is poverty of mind. A miser may be a millionaire, but he is as poor as when he was penniless.

On the other hand, the trouble with so many who are living in indigence and degradation is that they are satisfied with their condition. To be living in dirt, disorder, laziness, and swinish self-indulgence, revelling in foul thoughts, foul words and unclean surroundings, and to be satisfied with oneself, is deplorable. Here again, “poverty” resolves itself into a mental condition, and its solution, as a “problem”, is to be looked for in the improvement of the individual from within, rather than of his outward condition. Let a man be made clean

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