Page:The Harveian oration, 1875 (IA b22314611).pdf/48

 and so setting him on the track of the actual. For the philosopher, with his “scientific insight,” is as truly a poet as if he wrote verses—a poet and something more. Hence we hear without surprise that Harvey, the discoverer, who is found studying mathematics, and working geometric problems within a short period of his death, finds in the pages of Virgil a perpetual spring of rapturous delight. And as the sailor personifies his ship and the engineer his locomotive, and all men everywhere the sun, moon, and stars, so Harvey puts not life only, but thought, will, power into the heart and blood. Of this his tendency to personification I have already given one example from his treatise on the circulation. I will add two others from his work on generation. Speaking of the heart, about which he has thought so often and so much, he says:—“The vesicle and pulsating point construct the rest of the body as their future dwelling-place; ‘developed into the heart’ it enters and conceals itself within its habitation, which it vivifies and governs, and applying the ribs and sternum as a defence, it walls itself about. And there it abides, the household divinity, first seat of the soul, prime receptacle of the innate heat, perennial