Page:The Harveian oration, 1875 (IA b22314611).pdf/43

 poetic fancy. He is as ingenious in devising experiments, as skilful in performing them. He displays all the logical acumen of an Aristotle, all the industry of a Hunter. He brings to bear on his subject a large and exact knowledge of anatomy, human and comparative, healthy and morbid, and of intra-uterine life, and he makes, for the time in which he lived, an unwonted use of vivisection. And here I may remark that no thought of cruelty, no misgiving as to the lawfulness of the proceeding, ever seems to have crossed his mind.

But what has impressed me most strongly in studying Harvey’s works, is the fine logical faculty which, so to speak, pervades and permeates the whole mass, and struggling for distinct and independent expression, breaks forth into clear enunciations of the principles of that philosophy which the great Italian genius Leonardo da Ahnci first announced, and Harvey’s contemporary, Lord Bacon, recommended to the world with all the force and eloquence of a practised advocate. Harvey, indeed, seems to have carried on together the demonstration of a great truth, and the vindication of the methods by which all truths must be explored and established, bio that we have only