Coming from Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy to Bertrand Russel’s A History of Western Philosophy is an interesting transition. Both men have tremendous knowledge and intellect, but they are very different writers. Huxley’s wordiness, at least in The Perennial Philosophy, dulls the impact of his ideas, and when he quotes at length from various writers and mystics he makes little effort to explain how the quotes tie in to his own ideas. He simply assumes the reader gets it, when often the reader sees only hints of connections that should be more explicitly drawn out.