RENAISSANCE III 



of view the relation of God to the world and man. Every conceivable prob- 

 lem of life is drawn into discussion in this connexion — jurisprudence and 

 statesmanship as well as astronomy, physics, and medicine. In the discussion 

 on the Holy Spirit he points out that this cannot be properly comprehended 

 without knowledge of the spirit of man, and the spirit of man in turn, if it 

 is to be rightly understood, requires a knowledge of the human body. In 

 this way Server arrives at a discussion of the structure and function of the 

 human body, and in particular the part played by the blood, which is so 

 vital in its spiritual aspect. And here he pronounces the dictum that has 

 given him, the religious idealist, a place in the history of biology; this was 

 his exposition of the course of the pulmonary circulation. In order to gain 

 an idea of the relation of the spiritual to the physical life we must, says 

 Server, realize the three vital elements in the body, which are: the blood, 

 with its seat in the liver and the veins; " spiritus vitalis," in the heart and 

 the arteries; and " spiritus animalisy' which is a ray of light and is situated 

 in the brain and the nerves. In all these dwells the power of God's spirit. 

 The vital spirit is communicated by the heart to the liver, for in the heart 

 dwells first of all the spirit communicated by God, as we see from the embry- 

 onic life, in which the heart is the first point that lives. On the other hand, 

 the liver provides through the blood material to the spirit, which is formed 

 by the union of the finest components of the blood with the inhaled air. This 

 union takes place in the lungs, to which the blood is conveyed from the 

 right heart-chamber, to be conveyed thence, purged of soot through exhala- 

 tion and mingled with inhaled air, back to the left heart-chamber. That the 

 blood does not, as is commonly imagined, pass through the heart wall is 

 proved not only by the latter's solid consistency, but also by the powerful 

 structure of the pulmonary veins, which cannot be explained simply by their 

 function of feeding the lungs. All this is really obvious, concludes Server, 

 from the observations recorded by Galen, if only one understands how to 

 interpret them aright. 



The strange, strongly spiritualistic physiology which Server expounds 

 in his description of the importance of the blood, above referred to, is in 

 itself nothing peculiar to him; on the contrary, it recurs often in the authors 

 of the Renaissance and even of the seventeenth century; in Swedenborg, too, 

 we find a similar method of speculation. Indeed, Server reminds us of the 

 latter in having arrived at his theories by way of speculation rather than 

 through his own observations. True, he had dissected, as mentioned above, 

 and that too under Vesalius himself, though he makes no reference to his 

 experiences in that line, but tries to give a correct interpretation of Galen. 

 What in these circumstances is surprising is that he gives such a clear idea 

 of the pulmonary circulation — all the more so as his view of the blood- 

 vessel system is otherwise purely Galenian, with the liver as the principal 



