SCIENCE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 29 



became of worldwide application. Indeed, Egyptian 

 medicine generally had an extended influence : the 

 Greeks acquired it, perhaps by way of Crete, and, in 

 after ages, from Greece it passed with the rest of their 

 learning into Western Europe. 



The scientific development of the Indo-Teutonic 

 races in Northern India early reached a very high 

 point both in philosophy and mathe- 

 matics, in which subjects their influence 

 travelled to Greece by way of Persia and Assyria. 

 These people, in the first stages of their settlement, 

 possessed the open confidence in their own mission, 

 the friendly attitude towards their divine powers, the 

 broad sweep of thought, the restless energy, which are 

 characteristic of their stock, whether in Asia or Europe. 

 But, from various causes, of which, in spite of their caste 

 or colour restrictions, intermarriage with the native 

 races was probably the most effective, their scientific 

 development seems to have been checked, or, at least, 

 progressed only in certain restricted directions. The 

 advent of Buddhism arrested their normal expansion, 

 and turned the thoughts of their great men away from 

 the problems presented in the ordinary course of 

 existence. A religion took root and grew up among 

 them, which, emphasizing the transitoriness and vanity 

 of earthly existence, made self-annihilation and 

 loss of individuality a condition in the attainment 

 of spiritual completion. This attitude of mind, 

 apparently a concentrated and overbalanced form of 

 mysticism, by distracting the attention from all 

 immediate surroundings, must at once arrest that 

 desire for material improvement which is often the 



