Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/71

 65 or in the words of a poet of another country, and a later age, '"We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.' 1 do not wish to assert that Harvey was wholly independent of the works of his pre- decessors ; he himself w ould, as his repeated references to_ih em show, have been the very la st man to make any such claim for him- self; nor would I say th at he owed nothing to the" times — ' The spacious times of great Elizabeth' — in which he lived. It is true, I think, in science, as it is also true in morals and politics, that the times make great men as much as great men make the times. Many metaphors have been used to express this latter half-truth. Such is the metaphor, an acquaintance with which I owe to Mr. Pic- ton's new and striking work The Mystery of Matter, p. 265, used by St. Augustine, in which great men are compared to great mountains, dwelling apart in loneliness, and sending floods of blessings down upon the little hills and plains at their feet. Such, p