74 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



products, with perhaps a little information about minerals, often 

 joined with such observations of weather-signs as enables them 

 to foresee coming changes, and so, apparently, to bring rain or 

 sunshine, there is little to be named as rudimentary science among 

 the medicine-men, or quasi-priests, of savages. Only when there 

 has arisen that settled life which yields facilities for investigation 

 and for transmitting the knowledge gained, can we expect priests 

 to display a character approaching to the scientific. Hence we 

 may pass at once to early civilizations. 



Evidence from the books of Ancient India may first be set 

 down. Demonstration is yielded by it that science was originally 

 a part of religion. Both astronomy and medicine, says Weber, 

 "received their first impulse from the exigencies of religious wor- 

 ship." More specific, as well as wider, is the following statement 

 of Dr. Thibaut : 



'* The want of some rule by which to fix the right time for the sacrifices 

 gave the first impulse to astronomical observations ; urged by this want the 

 priest remained watching night after night the advance of the moon. . . . 

 and day after day the alternate progress of the sun toward the north and 

 the south. The laws of phonetics were investigated because the wrath of 

 the gods followed the wrong pronunciation of a single letter of the sacri- 

 ficial formulas; grammar and etymology had the task of securing the right 

 understanding of the holy texts." 



Further, according to Dutt, " geometry was developed in India 

 from the rules for the construction of altars." A sentence from 

 the same writer implies that there presently arose a differentia- 

 tion of the learned class from the ceremonial class. 



" Astronomy had now come to be regarded as a distinct science, and 

 astronomers by profession were called Nakshatra, Darsa, and Ganaka . . . 

 sacrificial rites were regulated by the position of the moon in reference to 

 these lunar asterisms." 



So, too, we have proof that philosophy, originally forming a part 

 of the indefinite body of knowledge possessed by the priesthood, 

 eventually developed independently. Hunter writes : 



" The Brahmans, therefore, treated philosophy as a branch of religion. 

 . . . Brahman philosophy exhausted the possible solutions ... of most of 

 the other great problems which have since perplexed Greek and Roman 

 sage, mediaeval schoolman, and modern man of science." 

 And in this, as in other cases, the speculative and critical activity 

 presently led to rationalism. There came " a time when philoso- 

 phers and laymen were alike drifting toward agnostic and hetero- 

 dox opinions." 



Concerning the relations of science to theology among the 

 Babylonians and Assyrians, current statements almost suffice for 

 the purpose of the argument. A few facts in illustration must, 

 however, be given. All the astronomical knowledge of the Baby- 

 lonians had as its ends the regulation of religious worship, the 



