242 ON THE NATURE AND PRINCIPLES OP 



To some these ideas may perhaps appear too purely 

 mechanical ; but they arc not more so than that 

 which, supported by similar principles of reasoning, 

 enabled Harvey to anticipate the evidence of the 

 senses. And, for my own part, I cannot understand 

 how any doctrine can be too chemical, or too me- 

 chanical, if it be but. true. No one can wish to intro- 

 duce the spirit of sectarianism into science; and, :n 

 nature will neither change nor suspend her laws to 

 suit our prejudices, it behoves us, before rejecting 

 any new views on an obscure but important question, 

 to advance against them some stronger argument 

 than their mere antagonism to, or incongruity with, 

 received opinions. 



But the adoption of these views by no means 

 implies the recognition of an exclusively mechanical 

 system of physiology ; for no one can be more 

 willing than myself to confess the immensity of the 

 distinction between living and dead matter, or to 

 admit that the minutely-varied physical and vital 

 endowments which characterise the different com- 

 ponent tissues of each animal body, can only ori- 

 ginate in a creative power infinitely superior to the 

 laws regulating the phenomena of the inorganic 

 world. 



Any attempt at dispelling the darkness which has 

 so long obscured the physiology and pathology of the 

 circulation must, in a great measure, be necessarily 

 founded upon physical reasoning; and, as all phy- 

 siologists are not even yet prepared to admit that 

 the motion of the blood is a purely mechanical 

 action, it is not wonderful that, at the end of two 



