Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/71

Rh Columbus? Not in possession of more numerous facts than their contemporaries, but endowed with nobler and more vigorous intellects, the one developed the intricate system of the heavenly bodies and the other discovered an unheard-of continent. Was it not in the same way, by the exertion of superior intellect, that Harvey made his immortal discovery? I know not what has happened in the world unseen; but if I may judge from the records of history and the annals of fame, the spirit of Bacon, the spirits of Columbus, Copernicus and Newton have not been ashamed to welcome and associate with the congenial spirit of Harvey." To this fine passage there is little to be added: Harvey's discovery was of the rational and inductive and therefore higher class, according to our estimate; it was made in virtue of the intellectual powers which peculiarly distinguish man, possessed in a state of the highest perfection.

THE WORK ON GENERATION.

In our account of Harvey's public career we found him busy with the subject of Generation at Oxford in 1642; but he had certainly turned his attention that way at a much earlier period, for one of the chief causes of his regret, as expressed to Dr. Ent, for the destruction of his papers during the civil war, is the loss of his Observations on the Generation of Insects, which could only have been made and reduced to form many years previously, probably before his engagement to accompany the Duke of Lennox on his travels. And then we see that all his notes on the gestation of the hind or doe were made in the palmy days of the first Charles, before the differences between him and the people of these countries had come to the arbitrement of arms. Harvey probably occupied a good deal of his leisure in arranging and writing the work on Generation, after quitting the service of Charles in 1646; his practice