Albert Schweitzer, Albert Schweitzer: An Anthology, ed. Charles R. Joy. Boston: Beacon, 1947 contains the following note on Schweitzer's first course of lectures:

November 1934. Gifford Lectures at Edinburgh, in which he endeavored to trace the progress of human thought from the great thinkers of India, China, Greece, and Persia. The chapter upon the evolution of Indian thought grew to such an extent that he decided to publish it as a separate book. It was issued under the German title of Die Weltanschauung der indischen Denker by Beck at Munich in 1934; under the French title Les Grands Penseurs d'Inde by Payot at Paris in 1936; and under the English title Indian Thought and Its Development by Hodder and Stoughton at London in 1936. The same year it was published by Henry Holt and Company in New York (p. 328).

The book is comprised of sixteen chapters which trace the contours of Indian thought in relation to European thought. According to Schweitzer, "Indian thought in its very nature is ... entirely different from [European thought] because of the great part which the idea of what is called world and life negation plays in it"[p. 1]. The dialectical opposition between these two worldviews––Indian vs. European, life affirming/ethical vs. life negating, dualistic/doctrinaire vs. monistic/mystical––reveals the need for synthesis: "a mysticism of ethical world and life affirmation" [p. 18]. Each worldview has something to learn from the other. Development is necessary and inevitable. In the end, says Schweitzer, "the thought of mankind must advance to a position where it derives world-view from ethics" [p. 265].