248 PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 



689. Save some knowledge of medicinal herbs and spe 

 cial animal products, with perhaps a little information about 

 minerals, often joined with such observations of weather- 

 signs as enable them to foresee coining 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, &quot; received their first impulse from the exigen 

 cies of religious worship. 77 More specific, as well as wider, 

 is the following statement of Dr. Thibaut : 



&quot;The want of some norm by which to fix the right time for the sac 

 rifices, gave the first impulse to astronomical observations ; urged by 

 this want, the priests remained watching night after night the ad 

 vance of the moon . . . and day after day the alternate progress of 

 the sun towards the north and the south. The laws of phonetics were 

 investigated, because the wrath of the gods followed the wrong pro 

 nunciation of a single letter of the sacrificial formulas ; grammar and 

 etymology had the task of securing the right understanding of the 

 holy texts.&quot; 



Further, according to Dutt, &quot; geometry was developed in 

 India from the rules for the construction of altars.&quot; A sen 

 tence from the same writer implies that there presently arose 

 a differentiation 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.&quot; 



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

 a part of the indefinite body of knowledge possessed by the 



