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fellowmen" (p. 653). Meditation on God leads finally, though only after many lives, to eternal bliss (p. 616). The aspirant (to quote a passage typical of Sarma's grumpy style) "should continue along the lines taught to him by his Gurus—spiritual preceptors, not the commercial-minded teachers and professors in modern educational institutions" (p. 616). The highest good is heaven, an eternal life of activity and freedom (p. 619).
Professor Sarma maintains that this realistic pluralism, well known in India but ignored by Western and Westernized interpreters of Indian philosophy, is the only sound basis for morality, is in accord with common sense, experience, and reason, is taught by the scriptures when correctly understood, and is true.
A conciliation of all points of view is attempted in a book of essays," all written for special occasions and most previously published, by Professor P. R. Damle of Wadia College in Poona. These simple essays, written in a popular style, can be read by persons with no training in philosophy. But their sound good sense and penetrating insight show the maturity and intelligence of their author. "They are," as he says, "genuine attempts to think for one's self on problems of philosophical significance" (p. vii). The twenty-four essays deal with all sorts of philosophical problems. But Professor Damle's treatment of them is invariably the same. In all controversial problems he maintains that both sides are right. Here we have the spirit of dualistic non-dualism, but the non-technical language makes clear that the author does not wish to be associated with this or any other school of philosophy. The value of the book is in the firmness with which all exclusive views are refuted and the simple reasonableness with which these all-inclusive views are defended as the adequate expression of self-conscious experience.
The boundlessness of Professor Damle's tolerance is shown by the fact that he even has a good word to say for Charvaka. Charvaka is radically empirical, atheistic, and hedonistic materialism. Opposition to it is the one thing which all Indian philosophers (except Damle) seem to have in common. In India it is customary to begin any philosophical work by refuting Char
17 P. R. Damle, Philosophical Essays (Bombay and Calcutta, 1954).
