time: the refreshing river 



interesting examples, and the conviction, then widely held, that 

 research into the nature of generation would throw light on orthodox 

 theological doctrines, such as that of original sin, led to an economic 

 situation of value for biological development. Finally, it would be 

 rash to minimise the factor of pure curiosity in seventeenth-century 

 science. This was extremely marked in Leeuwenhoek's microscopical 

 investigations, as Becking^ has pointed out. 



Scientific Co-operation. 



Next comes Co-operation of Scholars. In the civilisation of the 

 Hellenistic age, it may be said, a considerable measure of such co- 

 operation had been attained ; the works of Aristotle and Hippocrates 

 were fairly readily available in written form, and evidence has been 

 brought forward, particularly with regard to Jewish thought, that 

 this was well used. 



During the period when the biological school of Alexandria was 

 at its height, that city became an important Jewish centre. Two 

 centuries later it was to produce Philo, but now the Alexandrian Jews 

 were writing that part of the modern Bible known as the Wisdom 

 Literature. In books such as the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, 

 Proverbs, etc., the typical Hellenic exclusion of the action of gods in 

 natural phenomena is clearly to be seen. There are two passages of 

 embryological importance. First, in the book of Job (x. lo). Job is 

 made to say, "Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned 

 me as clay; and wilt thou bring me into the dust again .'^ Hast thou 

 not poured me out like milk, and curdled me like cheese.'^ Thou hast 

 clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and 

 sinews." This comparison of embryogeny with the making of cheese 

 is interesting in view of the fact that precisely the same comparison 

 occurs in Aristotle's book On the Generation of Animals. Still 

 more extraordinary, the only other embryological reference in the 

 Wisdom Literature, which occurs in the Wisdom of Solomon (vii. 2), 

 also copies an Aristotelian theory, namely, that the embryo is formed 

 from (menstrual) blood. 



The Talmudists thought, moreover, that the bones and tendons, 

 the nails, the marrow in the head and the white of the eye, were 

 derived from the father, "who sows the white," but the skin, flesh, 

 blood, hair, and the dark part of the eye from the mother "who sows 

 the red." This is evidently in direct descent from Aristotle through 



^ Sci. Monthly, 1924, 18, 547. 

 146 



