Page:The Harveian oration, 1875 (IA b22314611).pdf/49

 entre of animal action source and origin of all the faculties, only solace in adversity !” Of the blood, which Harvey saw coming into existence in the embryo before the heart itself, he says, there is “a spirit or certain force” inherent in it, superior to “the power of the elements, very conspicuously displayed in the nutrition and preservation of the several parts of the animal body; and the nature, yea, the soul in this spirit and blood, is identical with the essence of the stars.” The blood is “spirit,” a something “celestial,” “analogous to heaven, vicarious of heaven!”

Here, and not here only, but sometimes when treating of the circulation, often when discoursing on generation, we lose sight of Harvey the discoverer, with his foot firmly planted on the earth, to see in his place Harvey the mystic, floating indistinctly in the clouds, in company with Democritus, Leucippus, and their atoms, Eudoxus and his pupil Epicurus, with their theory of pleasure as the chief good, Empedocles and Hippocrates misleading Aristotle by their doctrine of the four elements, Pythagoras and Plato, interpreters of the fantastic notions of the ancient Thebans. But Harvey is not at home in cloud-land. His fine