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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



himself out of the business. In fact, in wading 

 through these forgotten controversies, I felt my- 

 self quite at home. Substitute the name of Dar- 

 win for that of Harvey, and the truth that history 

 repeats itself will come home to the dullest appre- 

 hension. It was said of the doctrine of the cir- 

 culation of the blood that nobody over forty could 

 be got to adopt it ; and I think I remember a 

 passage in the "Origin of Species," to the effect 

 that its author expects to convert only young and 

 flexible minds. 



There is another curious point of resemblance 

 in the fact that even those who gave Harvey 

 their general approbation and support sometimes 

 failed to apprehend the value of some of those 

 parts of his doctrine which are, indeed, merely 

 auxiliary to the theory of the circulation, but are 

 only a little less important than it. Harvey's great 

 friend and" champion, Sir George Ent, is in this 

 case ; and I am sorry to be obliged to admit that 

 Descartes falls under the same reprehension. 



This great philosopher, mathematician, and 

 physiologist, whose conception of the phenomena 

 of life as the results of mechanism is now playing 

 as great a part in physiological science as Har- 

 vey's own discovery, never fails to speak with 

 admiration, as Harvey gratefully acknowledges, 

 of the new theory of the circulation. And it is 

 astonishing, I had almost said humiliating, to find 

 that even he is unable to grasp Harvey's pro- 

 foundly true view of the nature of the systole and 

 the diastole, or to see the force of the quantita- 

 tive argument. He adduces experimental evidence 

 against the former position, and is even further 

 from the truth than Galen was, in his ideas of 

 the physical cause of the circulation. 



Yet one more and a last parallel. In spite 

 of all opposition, the doctrine of the circulation 

 propounded by Harvey was, in its essential feat- 

 ures, universally adopted within thirty years of 

 the time of its publication. Harvey's friend, 

 Thomas Hobbes, remarked that he was the only 

 man, in his experience, who had the good fortune 

 to live long enough to see a new doctrine accept- 

 ed by the world at large. Mr. Darwin has been 

 even more fortunate, for not twenty years have 

 yet elapsed since the publication of the " Origin 

 of Species ; " and yet there is no denying the fact 

 that the doctrine of evolution, ignored, or de- 

 rided, and vilified, in 1859, is now accepted, in one 

 shape or other, by the leaders of scientific thought 

 in every region of the civilized world. 



I proposed at the outset of this essay to say 

 something about the method of inquiry which 



Harvey pursued, and which guided him through- 

 out his successful career of discovery. 



It is, I believe, a cherished belief of English- 

 men, that Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, 

 and sometime Lord Chancellor of England, in- 

 vented that "Inductive Philosophy" of which 

 they speak with almost as much respect as they 

 do of church and state ; and that, if it had not 

 been for this " Baconian Induction," science 

 would never have extricated itself from the miser- 

 able condition in which it was left by a set of 

 hair-splitting folk, known as the ancient Greek 

 philosophers. To be accused of departing from 

 the canons of the Baconian philosophy is almost 

 as bad as to be charged with forgetting your as- 

 pirates ; it is understood as a polite way of saying 

 that you are an entirely absurd speculator. 



Now the " Novum Organon " was published in 

 1620, while Harvey began to teach the doctrine 

 of the circulation in his public lectures in 1619. 

 Acquaintance with the "Baconian Induction," 

 therefore, could not have had much to do with 

 Harvey's investigations. The " Exercitatio," how- 

 ever, was not published till 1628. Do we find in 

 it any trace of the influence of the " Novum Orga- 

 non ? " Absolutely none. So far from indulging in 

 the short-sighted and profoundly unscientific de- 

 preciation of the ancients in which Bacon indulges, 

 Harvey invariably spealss of them with that re- 

 spect which the faithful and intelligent study of 

 the fragments of their labors that remain to us 

 must inspire in every one who is practically ac- 

 quainted with the difficulties with which they had 

 to contend, and which they so often mastered. 

 And, as to method, Harvey's method is the method 

 of Galen, the method of Realdus Columbus, the 

 method of Galileo, the method of every genuine 

 worker in science either in the past or the present. 

 On the other hand, judged strictly by the standard 

 of his own time, Bacon's ignorance of the progress 

 which science had up to that time made, is only to 

 be equaled by his insolence toward men in com- 

 parison with whom he was the merest sciolist. 

 Even when he has some hearsay knowledge of what 

 has been done, his want of acquaintance with the 

 facts and his abnormal deficiency in what I may 

 call the scientific sense prevent him from divin- 

 ing its importance. Bacon could see nothing re- 

 markable in the chief contributions to science of 

 Copernicus, or of Kepler, or of Galileo ; Gilbert, 

 his fellow-countryman, is the subject of a sneer; 

 while Galen is bespattered with a shower of im- 

 pertinences, which reach their climax in the epi- 

 thets " puppy " and " plague." ' 



1 "Video Galenum, virum angustissimi animi, de- 



