46. The honest man is strengthened by his contentment and flourishes with full glee, as a flower tree is decked with blooming blossoms in the flowering season. 47. As the poor emmet is likely to be crushed under the foot of every passer, in its ceaseless search and hoarding of food; so the greedy and needy man is liable to be spurned, for his incessant wanderings after paltry gains and lucre. 48. The deformed and disfigured beggar, is as a man plunged in a sea of troubles, and buffeting in its waves without finding a support for rest, or any prospect of ever reaching to the shore. 49. Prosperity like a beauty, is as frail and fickle as the unstable waves of the ocean; what wiseman is there that can expect to find his reliance in them, or have his rest under the shade of the hood of hideous serpent? (This simile is borrowed in the Nyáya wherein world is said _kupita phani phaná chháyeva_). 50. He who knowing the pains attending on the gaining, keeping and losing of money, still persists to pursue in its search, is no better than a brute, and deserves to be shunned by the wise as unsociable. 51. He who mows down at once the growing grass of his internal and external appetites, from the field of his heart, by the means of the scythe of _insouciance_, gets it prepared for reception of the seeds of Divine knowledge. 52. Ignorant people take the world for a reality, and wise men also conduct themselves under this supposition though they are well aware of its unreality; and this owing to their neglect of practicing what they are taught to believe. (The wise and foolish are in the same footing, by equally unwise conduct in life). 53. The sum of the whole is that, it is the resignation of the world which leads men to the society of sages and study of the scriptures; and then by reliance in the holy precepts, one abandons his worldliness, and at last his firm dislike of the temporal, leads him to seek his spiritual bliss. CHAPTER XLVIII. ON THE DIGNITY OF RIGHT DISCRIMINATION. Argument:—The state of holy Resignation. Vasishtha continued:—After a man has come to his resignation of the world, and to his association with holy men; and after he has well digested the precepts of the sástras, and abandoned his carnal appetites and enjoyments:— 2. And then having a distaste to worldly objects, and gained the reputation of being a man of probity; and being outwardly an inquirer after truth, and inwardly full of enlightenment. 3. He does not long for wealth, but shuns it as one flies from darkness; he gives away whatever he has in hand, as a man casts aside the dry and rotten leaves from his house. 4. Every one is seen to be worn out with toil and care, for the supportance of his family and friends throughout his life; and yet like a weary traveller labouring under his load, he is rarely found to cast off his burthen, as long he has strength to bear it.