Tobias examines the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean, the ascetics of Sinai and Tibet, and the Pure Land Buddhists. He introduces the reader to the Jains of India, whose lifestyle is one of the most ecologically balanced in all of human history. In profiling various artists of 19th-century Europe and America, Tobias discovers incisive continuities among such luminaries as British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Austrian impressionist Emilie Mediz-Pelikan, and American intimist painters Ralph Blakelock and George Inness.