The Gita according to Gandhi 167

The Gita according to Gandhi -Mahadev Desai

VIII. CONCLUSION All, the rest of the things karma, and rebirth, and varna and even the belief in the Incarnation are more or less, like scaffolding to the edifice, unessentials after all. They, do not touch the; universal law, which has been practised in all ages and in all climes by those who, whether they believed or not in these unessentials, lived and moved in conformity with the essential law. To recount such a succession of names is, in the language of Prof. James, "to feel encouraged and washed in better air. The lives of the illustrious founders of the different faiths apart, what were the lives of those souls but lives of utter selfspending, self-effacement, self-dedication? the lives of Job and Harishchandra; of Janaka and Marcus Aurelius, and Jalaluddin Rumi; of Plotinus and Epictetus; of St. Paul, St. Augustine and St. Ignatius; of Vidyaranya, of Shankaracharya and Eckhart; of St. Francis and St. Catherine of Siena, Sister Julian and St.