Schuon's essay "Remarks on some Kings of France" draws sharp distinctions between the worldliness and "civilizationism" of the later King XIV, and the piety and modesty of the earlier St. Louis. Schuon's objective, however, is to demonstrate that the "king, like the pontiff, is not merely an official, he is also, by reason of his central position, an object of contemplation, in the sense of the Sanskrit term darshan: to benefit from the darshan of a saint is to be penetrated by his appearance in all its unassessable aspects.…" This essay is a fascinating study of how a civilization reaches its "exact limit of normal development" which is manifested by its great, and spiritually centered, leaders.

Author Marco Pallis here presents a detailed and comprehensive explanation of the fundamental Buddhist concept of karma. In order to accomplish this, he also explains such related terms as samsara, dharma, "selfhood," "rebirth," and "Buddhahood." Although the emphasis is clearly upon the Buddhist perspective, Pallis finds ways to make points about spiritual states of mind, human actions, and eschatological states that apply equally to Christians and practitioners of other faiths.

Lord Northbourne in this essay analyzes the viewpoint of many modern scientists that certain fundamental events occurring in the domain of sub-atomic physics are exempt from laws of causality—in other words, that these events are random, or occur by chance. The author is most concerned that "from this position it is but a step to a declaration that the ruling principle of the universe is chance, and not a principle of strict causality. There are then no longer any certainties, but only probabilities.…" Of course, this is a challenge to any philosophy that "takes a metaphysical or religious turn." Lord Northbourne leads the reader through a logical process of reasoning to conclude that within our reality there is, indeed, order by design, and that the Principle and Its manifestations cannot be reduced to the random operations of chance.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr begins this essay with the observation that "it was in the destiny of Islam as the last religion of the present humanity to integrate into its intellectual and spiritual universe all the elements of the knowledge and wisdom of earlier traditions that were in accordance with it unitary perspective." Islam's tendency and, one might add, mission to integrate earlier religious figures, sciences, and traditional thought into its own system, includes the field of philosophy. However, while much attention has been given to the influence of ancient Graeco-Alexandrian elements of thought upon Islamic philosophy, the ancient Iranian elements have largely been neglected. Through a survey of these latter influences and the history of the development of Islamic philosophy, Dr. Nasr addresses this imbalance and convincingly shows that the particular genius of Persian "intellection" has cast an indelible and unique character upon centuries of Islamic thought.

In this two-part essay, A.K. Coomaraswamy sets out to prove "that our use of the term 'aesthetic' forbids us also to speak of art as pertaining to the 'higher things of life' or the immortal part of us; that the distinction of 'fine' from 'applied' art, and corresponding manufacture of art in studios and artless industry in factories, takes it for granted that neither the artist nor the artisan shall be a whole man.…" Using primarily Platonic and Hindu sources, he shows quite convincingly that modern arts education and production may result in an endless variety of arts for leisure, but that this situation encourages neither the understanding of traditional art, nor the production of arts that are "effective" in ennobling people with those "higher things of life."