Page:Science and medieval thought. The Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900 (IA sciencemedievalt00allbrich).pdf/51

 nation of the female by the conception of a "general immaterial idea," we find in him realism still very much alive indeed. Hlad Harvey been content with innate heat he would have done well enough; but the innate heat of the blood, as he explains it, is not fire nor derived from fire; nor is the blood occupied by a spirit, but is a spirit: it is also " celestial in nature, the soul, that which answers to the essence of the stars......is something analogous to heaven, the instrument of heaven."

In denying that a spirit descends and stows itself in the body, as "an extraneous inmate," Harvey advances beyond Cremoninus, who then taught in the chair of Averroistic philosophy in Padua; for, says Harvey, I cannot discover this spirit with my senses, nor any seat of it. In another passage indeed Harvey warns us "not to derive from the stars what is in truth produced at home"; in yet another he tells us that philosophers produce principles as indifferent poets thrust gods upon the stage, to unravel plots and to bring about catastrophes: yet he concludes that "the spirit in the blood acting superiorly to the powers of the elements,......the soul in this spirit and blood, is identical with the essence of the stars."