SECT. 3] AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 145 



they are at once similar and dissimilar, and from a small similar is 

 a great organ made." Harvey was thus very certain that the processes 

 of growth in size and differentiation in shape went on quite con- 

 currently, though he had no inkling of changes in the relative rapidity 

 of each process. On this point he goes further than Fabricius. 

 Fabricius thought that growth was a more or less mechanical process, 

 taking its origin from the properties of elementary substances, but 

 that differentiation was brought about by some more spiritual or 

 subtle activity. "Fabricius", says Harvey, "affirmes amisse, that 

 the Immutative Faculty doth operate by the qualities of the elements, 

 namely. Heat, Gold, Moisture, and Dryness (as being its instruments) 

 but the Formative works without them and after a more divine 

 manner; as if (forsooth) she did finish her task with Meditation, 

 Choice, and Providence. For had he looked deeper into the thing, 

 he would have seen that the Formative as well as the Alterative 

 Faculty makes use of Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, (as her instruments) 

 and would have deprehended as much divinity and skill in Nutrition 

 and Immutation as in the operations of the Formative Faculty her 

 self." "I say the Concocting and Immutative, the Nutritive and 

 Augmenting Faculties (which Fabricius would have to busie them- 

 selves only about Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, without all knowledge) 

 do operate with as much artifice, and as much to a designed end, as 

 the Formative faculty, which he affirms to possess the knowledge 

 and fore-sight of the future action and use of every particular part 

 and organ." Thus although in nearly every respect Harvey makes an 

 advance on Fabricius, yet here he is retrograde, for, in the former's 

 thought, the growth process at least had struggled towards a deter- 

 ministic schema; with Harvey this movement is rigidly suppressed. 

 "All things are full of deity" {Jovis omnia plena), said he, "so also in 

 the little edifice of a chicken, and all its actions and operations, Digitus 

 Dei, the Finger of God, or the God of Nature, doth reveal himself" 



There can be no doubt that Harvey's leanings were vitalistic. In 

 the following passage, he argues against both those who wished to 

 deduce generation from properties of bodies (like Sir Kenelm Digby) 

 and the Atomists ; in other words, against the outlook of those types 

 of mind which in later times were to build up biophysics and bio- 

 chemistry. Aubrey notes that Harvey was "disdainfull of the chymists 

 and undervalued them". 



"It is the usual error of philosophers of these times", says he, "to 



