A book of this sort has so many debts to acknowledge that it should be thickly set with notes and references, and yet in writing for the general reader this is not possible. Therefore I can only say, speaking generally, how much I owe to many and great thinkers from those of three millenniums ago down to the present time. I am often asked to recommend books on these subjects, but it is difficult to do so, for with regard to many of the Indian thinkers on whom so much depends their invaluable writings, even when translated, are hampered with Sanskrit terms very difficult for those unused to them, and modern writers sometimes assume more patience and perhaps knowledge than the average man with all the preoccupations of life has time to possess. Yet he may wish to know. This book is therefore an effort to interpret, to suggest, and no one knows better than myself what a contracted statement it is of what a great subject. Yet I venture to hope there are those to whom my experiences and conclusions,