Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/611

 In the first place, and especially, it is possessed by a soul which is not only vegetative, but sensitive and motive also ; it penetrates everywhere and is ubiquitous ; abstracted, the soul or the life too is gone, so that the blood does not seem to dif- fer in any respect from the soul or the life itself (anima) ; at all events, it is to be regarded as the substance whose act is the soul or the life. Such, I say, is the soul, which is neither wholly corporeal nor yet wholly incorporeal ; which is derived in part from abroad, and is partly produced at home ; which in one way is part of the body, but in another way is the be- ginning and cause of all that is contained in the animal body, viz. nutrition, sense, and motion, and consequently of life and of death alike; for whatever is nourished, is itself vivified, and vice versa. In like manner, that which is abundantly nourished increases ; what is not sufficiently supplied shrinks ; what is perfectly nourished preserves its health ; what is not perfectly nourished falls into disease. The blood, therefore, even as the soul, is to be regarded as the cause and author of youth and old age, of sleep and waking, and also of respi- ration; all the more and especially as the first instrument in natural things contains the internal moving cause within itself. It therefore comes to the same thing, whether we say that the soul and the blood, or the blood with the soul, or the soul with the blood, performs all the acts in the animal organism.

We are too much in the habit, neglecting things, of wor- shipping specious names. The word blood, signifying a sub- stance, which we have before our eyes, and can touch, has nothing of grandiloquence about it; but before such titles as spirits, and calidum innatum or innate heat, we stand agape. But the mask removed, as the error disappears, so does the idle admiration. The celebrated stone, so much vaunted for its virtues by Pipinus to Migaldus, seems to have filled not only him but also Thuanus, an excellent historian, with wonder and admiration. Let me be allowed to append the riddle: " Lately," says he, " there was brought from the East Indies to our king a stone, which we have seen, wonderfully radiant with light and effulgence, the whole of which, as if burning and in flames, was resplendent with an incredible brilliancy of light. Tossed hither and thither, it filled the ambient air with beams that were scarcely bearable by any eyes. It was