" I must tell you in all humility that Hinduism
as I know it entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being, and I find a solace in the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount." This sentence occurs in Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas, by Mr. C. F. Andrews (Allen and Unwin, 12s. 6d.). It is a book which should be studied by all who would try to understand the subtle beauty of the Hindu mind. The task will not be an easy one, and it must be under- taken with the heart rather than with the drilled and formalized brain of the West. Mr. Gandhi seems to us to be full of con tradictions : in his Confession of Faith he has said : " Medical science is the concentrated essence of black magic. Quackery is infinitely preferable to what passes for high medical skill." Yet he willingly underwent an operation for appendicitis at Poona in 1924 and highly praised the skill of the British doctor who operated on him. But if we may question his logic, no one in his senses denies his sincerity and saintliness. Mahatma Gandhi is a great man (greater, some of us think, than Sir Rabindranath Tagore, for instance, who is infinitely cleverer) and a typical Hindu. To know Gandhi, if a European could achieve the necessary feeling-realization, would be to know two hundred million inarticulate peasants.
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