Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/80

 74 much of what Aubrey has left on record about him, feeling more and more strongly as I grew better acquainted with Harvey that — ' These were slanders : never yet • Was noble man but made ignoble talk.' I will speak first of his scientific character, though it may seem strange to speak of scientific character, as character implies, per- haps, a moral element ; and science, so far as it is really science, and based exclusively upon sound reasoning, has no moral element in it; reasoning, so long as it is sound, being of one kind always, and devoid there- fore of all distinctive or personal factors. It is necessary for me to say that I do not forget that Harvey was but eighteen years junior to Bacon, 'Whom a wise king and Nature chose Lord Chancellor of both their laws.' But neither do I forget that the Novum Organon was published in 1620, subse- quently to the discovery and actual de- monstration of the circulation (see Dedicatio to the treatise De Motu Cordis), if not to the publication of the treatise on the Motion of