Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/264

 what else, as we have it delivered to us by writers. In like manner, before a fowl had attained to maturity or perfection,—because capable of engendering its like,—it was a chicken; previous to which it was an embryo or fœtus in the egg; and before this, Hieronymus Fabricius, of Aquapendente, has observed rudiments of the head, eyes, and spine. But when he asserts that the bones are formed before the muscles, heart, liver, lungs, and precordial parts, and contends that all the internal organs must exist before the external ones, he follows probabilities according to previous notions rather than inspection; and quitting the evidences of sense that rest on anatomy, he seeks refuge in reasonings upon mechanical principles; a procedure that is anything but becoming in a great anatomist, whose duty it was faithfully to narrate the changes he observed taking place day by day in the egg, up to the period when the foetus is perfected; and this the rather as he expressly proposed to himself to write the history of the formation of the chick in the egg, and to exhibit in figures what happens in the course of each successive day. It would have been in harmony with such a design, I say, had we been informed, on the testimony of the senses, of what parts are formed first, together, or subsequently in the egg; and not had mere opinions or musty conjectures, and the instances of houses and ships, adduced in illustration of the order and mode of formation of the parts.

We, therefore, in conformity with the method proposed, shall show in the first place in the egg, and then in the conceptions of other animals, what parts are first, and what are subsequently formed by the great God of Nature with inimitable providence and intelligence, and most admirable order. Next we shall inquire into the primary matter out of which, and the efficient cause by which generation is accomplished, and also the order and economy of generation, as observed by us; that from thence, from its own work, we may have some certain information of the several faculties of the formative and vege-