Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on October 18, 1884 (IA b21778929).pdf/35

 obtain an insight into the lighter (? higher) mysteries of Nature, but there perceive a kind of image or reflex of the omnipotent Creator himself."

2. If Harvey, though a devout believer in God, was yet free from all the restraints of the so-called "theologic stage;' he also, although a learned and keen metaphysician, had escaped from the trammels of what has been termed the inetaphysic stage." He had "cast them off with as much ease as Samson his green withes." He meets the metaphy- sician on his own ground with clever dialectic; but he pours contempt on those "who advocate incorporeal spirits, having no ground of experience to stand upon;" adding that "their spirits indeed are synonymous with powers or faculties, such as a concoctive spirit, a chylopoietic, &c., they admit as many spirits as there are faculties or organs." And, before this, with regard to the nature of "the spirits," he says "There are so many and such conflicting opinions, that it is not wonderful that the spirits whose nature is thus left so wholly ambiguous should serve as the common subterfuge of nce. Persons of limited information, when they are at a loss to assign a cause for anything, very commonly reply that it is done by the spirits; and so they bring the spirits into play upon all occasions; even as indifferent poets are always thrusting the gods upon the stage as a means of unravelling the plot, and bringing about the catastrophe." Harvey did not base his conclusions upon à priori metaphysics, but on solid facts.

3. If it be asked what was, then, his position; and what was the method he employed ?-my reply is that he being one of the freemen whom the truth makes free," held the position of an observer, a questioner, and inter-

27 Epistle Dedicatory, p. 146. 28 On the Circulation, p. 115 et seq.