I recently finished reading "The Passion of the Western Mind" by Richard Tarnas. Strangely, I remember receiving this book as a present some twenty years ago and quickly concluding - without much study of its contents - that it was too bland for my taste. Well, clearly something significant had changed in the meantime as on this occasion, I read it straight through, remaining enthralled with the unfolding narrative from start to finish. It put me in mind of an earlier book that I had read in the 60's "The Western Intellectual Tradition" by Bronowski and Mazlish. However whereas this was confined to a relatively short period from about 1500 to 1850, Tarnas provides a marvellous perspective for consideration of all major developments spanning ancient Classical Greece right up to the end of the 2nd millennium. Then at the end he summarises his conclusions "For the deepest passion of the Western mind has been to reunite with the ground of its being.&quo