Prabuddha Bharata or Awakened India

The Fifth Volume contains 69 Epistles original and tianslated; 10 inteviews ; Notes from Lectures and Discourses (numbering 21); Questions and answers; Conversations and Dialogues (recorded by Disciples)—I (I—XV); Sayings and utterances—I; Original Writings—Prose and Poems-- II; Translation of Writings—Prose and Poems—II ; and The East and the West. [...] It depicts the best side of life there notes the worst side as well and shows how the virtues and vices of the West are just the products many of them of the environment in which the people of the West live move and have their being. [...] Every vital aspect of life is surveyed—education art religion; newspapers recreation hotels; the place of women the growth of machinery and enterprise the orga_ nisation of labour and capital; the functioning of political parties and of their relation to government and the future of democracy in the light of what is happening. [...] These subjects are studied and discussed in relation to what obtained in the East and life in the West is finally evaluated in its bearing on the highest human ideals If the author's conclusion is that in the ultimate analysis the East has reason to be cautious not to borrow the methods and ideals of the West wholesale and indeed to prize its rich cultural heritage as invaluable