WILLIAM HARVEY, M. D. 41 



writings. In particular, he had a comprehensive working knowl- 

 edge of Aristotle, as well as Aristotle's commentators, Avicenna 

 and Averroes. According to one Harvian lecturer, Harvey refers 

 to Aristotle 269 times.* References are made to Aristotle's 

 logical, physical, biological and metaphysical works. It is clear 

 that Harvey's superior intellectual formation through ancient 

 authors — the Great Books of his day — proved no block to his 

 momentous contribution to the future. 



Finally, it is pertinent to note his basic religious belief as it 

 relates to his scientific work. On the title page of his Prelec- 

 tiones he prefixes from his favorite poet, Virgil, the motto 

 " Stat Jove principium, Musae, Jovis omnia plena." Over 

 thirty years later he explicates this motto in Exercise 54 of the 

 Generation of AniTnals: 



... in the same way, as in the greater world, we are told that ' All 

 things are full of Jove,' so in the slender body of the pullet, and in 

 every one of its actions, does the finger of God or nature no less 

 obviously appear . . . We acknowledge God, the supreme and 

 omnipotent creator, to be present in the production of all animals, 

 and to point, as it were, with a finger to his existence in his works, 

 the parents being in every case but as instruments in his hand. In 

 the generation of the pullet from the egg all things are indeed con- 

 trived and ordered with singular providence, divine wisdom, and 

 most admirable and incomprehensible skill. And to none can these 

 attributes be referred save to the Almighty, first cause of all things, 

 by whatever name this has been designated, — the Divine Mind by 

 Aristotle; the Soul of the Universe by Plato; the Natura Naturans 

 by others; Saturn and Jove by the ancient Greeks and Romans; by 

 ourselves, and as is seeming in these days, the Creator and Father 

 of all that is in heaven and earth, on whom animals depend for 

 their being, and at whose will and pleasure all things are and were 

 engendered.^ 



In his last will and testament he states, " I doe most humbly 

 render my soule to Him that gave it and to my blessed Lord 



* D. F. Fraser-Harris, " William Harvey's Knowledge of Literature Classical, 

 Mediaeval, Renaissance and Contemporary." Proceedings of the Royal Society of 

 Medicine, XXVII (1934), 195-99. 



* Harvey, Works, ed. cit., pp. 401-402. 



