Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/28

Rh dawning biology, like the cosmological physics of which it appears as part, was free from superstitious fear; it admitted no magic, recognized no supernatural; it had little religious awe. Such unembarrassed observation of nature, such free and rational conclusions, were unique in the world; and unique the consequent endeavor to build up a systematic body of natural knowledge, with accordant hypotheses, or explanations, which should rationally account for the world in which man lived. Even with the Greeks these intellectual aims were not to become common. And as such an observation of nature was then utterly unknown in Babylonia or Egypt or anywhere else on earth, so outside of the elect of the Greek race and a very few others who imbibed their spirit, it was never accepted by the ancient world.

And here at once be it said that, taking full account of the admirable Greek achievements in biology and medicine, our modern indebtedness is less for their substance than for the clear spirit of scientific investigation which was one of the immortal legacies of Greece, however few the men or periods that could accept it. In medicine, in surgery, in every field of science, modern investigation has advanced