"All partitions of knowledge should be accepted, rather for line& to mark and distinguish than for sections to divide, and separate, so that the continuance and entirety of knowledge be preserved." - Bacon,

This saying of the greatest and wisest man of his age has now greater application in these days and in the land of Bharata, than it was in Bacon's own days. It brings out clearly enough what the purpose and utmost scope of all knowledge can be, and the true principle of toleration and liberalism that ought to guide us in our search after knowledge and the ascertainment of truth. Unless we carefully sift and see what each is, which is placed before us as knowledge and truth and for our acceptance, and mark their lines of similarity and difference, we will gradually emerge into a condition of intellectual colour-blindness; we cease to know what is colour and what is knowledge and what is truth ; and the final result is an intellectual and moral atrophy and death. When in, therefore, seeking to avoid such a catastrophe and suicide, we indulge in moral and intellectual disquisitions, the caution has to be borne in mind also that such differences in thought should never divide people in their mutual sympathies and their aspirations in the pursuit of the common good. There is no necessity at all for angry discussions or acrimonious language. Whatever the capabilities of the human mind may be, which may yet remain hidden, yet the human mind is in a sense limited.

The laws of thought can be determined positively, and they are as fixed as possible. We can only think on a particular question in a particular number of modes and no more, which in number, in their permutations and combinations, is fully exhibited. Difference in point of time, in clime and in nationality have not affected thought in the least. People have given expression to the same moral sentiments, the same feelings; and the same beauties in nature, and the similarities and the disparities that may exist, have been minutely noted by the poets of all lands. As such, it would not surprise us if the same theories about some of the grand problems of human existence have been discussed and held since man began to ask himself those questions, and for ages to come, also the same theories will endure. The same stories have been told and the same battles have been fought over and over again, but we note also that the honors of the war have often rested and followed the predilections of the people and the eminence of the story teller for the time being. Theories and Schools of Philosophy have had each its own hey-day of life and glory, and each has had its fall, and a subsequent resurrection.

Even in the course of a single generation, we see a thinker who is accounted as the greatest Philosopher of the day, as one who has revolutionized all thought and philosophy, discounted very much and pale before the rising stars, whose fads take the popular fancy. By these observations, we do not mean to discourage all theorizing but only to show the uselessness of any dogmatism upon any points, and we, more than ever hold that all partitions of knowledge are useful and should be accepted for consideration. We have ventured upon these observations as in these days, and in this land, what is considered as knowledge and jnanam and philosophy is all seeking a narrow groove and partaking of an one-sided character, and thereby tending to obliterate thought, ignoring the thin and delicate partitions obtaining between different kinds of knowledge and the consequences could not altogether be beneficial. This process of ignorance and obliteration has been going on for some time past, and has been mainly assisted by false or queer notions of what constitutes toleration and universalism. The habit of trying to defend everything and explain away everything from one's own preconceived point of view is clearly a pernicious habit intellectually and morally.

The vain search after a fancied unity has ended in a snare often-times; and a similar attempt now a days to reduce every view to one view is purely a procrustean method and fallacious in the extreme. Where is the good of such a procedure? There could neither be profit nor pleasure in seeking such similarities and uniformities in things that are essentially different. Will there be any good in such knowledge and reasoning as this? Black is the same as read, because both are colours. A crow is the same thing as ink, as both are black. Such attempted unification of knowledge is purely delusive and of no moment whatever. When again, commentators say and contend that a certain passage only bears, out their interpretation and no other and that each one's own interpretation is the best, yet it must stand to common sense that these views could not all be correct nor could the author have intended all these meanings himself. Our Hindu commentators have often taken the greatest liberties with their author and they have often proved the worst offenders in forcing meanings upon words and passages which they and the context clearly show they do not bear. Yet we are often asked by some very tolerant people to accept every view as truth and to adopt their view as the greatest truth of all.

As many of these ancient books are written and commented on in an obsolete tongue and which very few could find time and trouble to master, this delusion has been kept up by a few, and people have often been led by the use of certain charmed names. But the illusions begin to be dispelled, as we get to understand what the real text is, in plain literal language, thanks to the labours of European Scholars, and without encumbering ourselves as to what this commentator and that commentator says. And some of these scholars and translators have been quite honest and outspoken in what they think as the true view as borne out by the text. And no scholar has as yet come forward to controvert the view taken by Dr. Thibaut as to how far Sankara's views are borne out by the text of the Vedanta Sutras. We hope to discuss these, in course of time, as the translation of Srikanta Bhashya, we are publishing proceeds apace, by comparing and contrasting these; it being only borne in mind now that Srikantha was the elder contem-porary of Sankara and the commentary of the former is the oldest of all those on the Vedanta Sutras now extant.