The Alchemy of Happiness

rpHE object of the Editors of this series is a -L very definite one. They desire above ail things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West — the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper know¬ ledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. Finally, in thanking press and public for the very cordial reception given to the “ Wisdom of the East ” Series, they wish to state that no pains have been spared to secure the best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects at hand. L. CRANMER-BYNG. S. A. KAPADIA. Northbrook Society, 185 Piccadilly, W. Renan, whose easy-going mind was the exact antithesis to the intense earnestness of Ghazzali, calls him “ the most original mind among Arabian philosophers.” 1 Notwithstanding this, his fame as a philosopher has been greatly overshadowed by Avicenna, his predecessor, and Averroes, his successor and opponent. It is a significant fact that the Encyclopcedia Britannica devotes five columns to each of the others and only a column and a half to Ghazzali. Yet it is doubtful whether it is as a philosopher that he would have wished to be chiefly remembered. Several of his works, it is true, are polemics against the philosophers, especially his Tehafot-al-falasifa, or “ Destruction of the Philosophers,” and, as Solomon Munk says in his Mela?iges de philosophise Juive et Arabe, Ghazzali dealt “ a fatal blow ” to Arabian philosophy in the East, from which it never recovered, though it revived for a while in Spain and culminated in Averroes.…