CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY, MIDDLE AGES 7 



dogmatic currents of thought which have always had, and indeed always 

 will have, a powerful influence on the development of human culture will 

 receive guidance from this quarter. 



Hindu and Chinese science 

 The civilized peoples of eastern Asia, the Hindus and Chinese, have like- 

 wise contributed very little of importance to the development of the science 

 of biology. Hindu science, indeed, especially in the sphere of mathematics, 

 reached a high standard, and the tendency to employ figures even in the 

 other branches of learning which this people cultivated is unmistakable. 

 Thus a Hindu work on medicine states that the human body has seven skins, 

 300 bones, 107 joints, 900 tendons, 700 blood-vessels, and 500 nerves. But 

 they had very primitive ideas as to the functions of these organs, and 

 similarly the various fluids and kinds of air which provide for the body's 

 renewal are of interest to them more from the numerical than from the func- 

 tional point of view. Chinese culture, again, has essentially occupied itself 

 with ethical and social problems. Chinese medicine has on the whole ad- 

 vanced little beyond that of primitive peoples, although certain isolated 

 instances of progress achieved — for example, smallpox inoculation — might 

 perhaps be traced back to the experiences of this people. Even pure zoology 

 has on the whole made no advance; as early as about a thousand years before 

 Christ mention is made of an imperial zoological garden, but the thorough 

 study of the causal connexion in living nature did not come within the 

 sphere of Chinese interest. 



