Not so the great men who have renounced all desire. Witness the great trials to which, in the Mahabharata, Bhishma, Vidura, Yudhishthira and Karna were put.

We read in that epic how they solved their several difficulties. Their solutions did not conform to a single moral pattern but reflected their several individualities.

The conduct of each was the reaction of his personality and character to the impact of circumstances.

Modern critics and expositors sometimes forget this underlying basic factor and seek to weigh all in the same scales, which is quite wrong.

We may profit by the way in which, in the Ramayana, Dasaratha, Kumbhakarna, Maricha, Bharata and Lakshmana reacted to the difficulties with which each of them was faced.

Likewise, Balarama's neutrality in the Mahabharata war has a lesson. Only two princes kept out of that war. One was Balarama and the other was Rukma, the ruler of Bhojakata. The story of Rukma, whose younger sister Rukmini married Krishna, is told in the next chapter.