The Leap of Human Thought

About the Book

Many books have been written on philosophies and religions in the East and the West. I wanted to offer something of an overview, brief and easily understood; so I chose dialogue form, between a retired professor and an ordinary student. The study had also to be compressed within reasonable limits; and to my delight I realized that the lives of many great thinkers were to be found in the narrow compass of only 600 years, namely 800-200 B.C.E., known as the Axial Age. This period covered the lives of the Hebrew prophets, Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, the early figures in Daoism, and the leading Greeks.

About the Author

I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and played rugby football and golf. Then I went abroad – to England – and studied Greek and Latin Classics at Cambridge University. Back in Edinburgh I took a divinity degree, and went farther abroad to Manchuria in China as a missionary of the Church of Scotland – Presbyterian, of course, but of a liberal persuasion. My work was conducted in Chinese, both colloquial and classical. But to help in relations with Japanese police in the state of Manchukuo I spent two years studying Japanese in Japan. Then came World War II, and I escaped just one month before Pearl Harbor. After a chaplaincy in the Royal Air Force, I served in churches in Scotland and the U.S.A. But I kept thinking and reading about China and Japan. I took a late Ph. D. from the University of Edinburgh in ‘Comparative Philosophy, China and the West,’ and had a second career as a professor of Chinese and Japanese History, teaching and writing several books. I wrote this dialogue in order to gather the threads of what I had learned in a popular form.