ABSTRACT
In the history of thought the problem of philosophy is approached in two different ways. There are some who take up particular groups of phenomena for investigation and leave the links to take care of themselves. Others view the world as a whole and seek to give general syntheses which comprehend the vast variety of the universe. The two ways of approach cannot be sharply separated. The universe is an interrelated changing process. When we study its parts, by separating out in thought certain aspects, we cannot help raising the question of the nature of the universe as a whole and man’s place in it. In India philosophy has been interpreted as an enquiry into the nature of man, his origin and destiny. It is not a mere putting together or an assemblage of the results obtained by the investigation of different specialised problems, not a mere logical generalisation intended to satisfy the demand for all-inclusiveness. Such abstract views will have formal coherence, if any, and little organic relationship with the concrete problems of life. To the Indian mind, philosophy is essentially practical, dealing as it does with the fundamental anxieties of human beings, which are more insistent than abstract speculations. We are not contemplating the world from outside but are in it.
