Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th, 1899 (IA b24975941).pdf/21

 knew the uses of fanaticism, he was not one to tolerate the mastery of a mob. One cannot but contrast the safety of Harvey with the fate of Lavoisier, who, a hundred and fifty years later, was burried to execution with the cry that "The Republic has no need of savants."

I have next, by Harvey's bidding, to exhort my brethren to search out the secrets of nature by way of experiment.

Not only is it true that, as Aristotle pointed out, the greatest pleasure in life is contemplation, but the philosophic mind is never dull, and the joys of the successful investigator are probably the greatest which this world has to give.

We are told how Archimedes, when the idea of specific gravity" flashed upon him, was overcome by a paroxysm of delight.

Surely, also, we may surmise that the sight of the New World on October 12th, 1492, must have more than compensated Columbus for all his toil. (6

One wonders what must have been the feeling of Horrocks, the gifted contemporary of Harvey, the parish priest of Hoole in Lancashire, who at the age of twenty, having foretold a transit of Venus, which Kepler had overlooked, verified his prophecy by actual observation, on Sunday, November 24th, 1649, in the short and precious interval between matins and evensong.