xl THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



the way in which ultimate rational truth is arrived at by a 

 succession of inferences than is contained in Harvey's Essay 

 on the Heart and Blood. Had Bacon written his Novum 

 Organum from Harvey's work as a text, he would scarcely 

 have expressed himself otherwise than as he has done, or given 

 different rules for philosophizing than those which he has laid 

 down in his celebrated treatise. 1 



In his introduction, and by way of clearing the ground, 

 Harvey exposes the views of preceding physiologists, ancient 

 and modern, in regard to the motions of the heart, lungs, and 

 blood, to the state of the arteries, &c. in short, he gives 

 the accredited physiology of the thoracic viscera, with com- 

 ments, which prove it a mass of unintelligible and irrecon- 

 cilable confusion. There is room, therefore, for another 

 interpretation, consonant with reason and with anatomical fact, 

 and susceptible of demonstration by the senses. When he first 

 essayed himself to comprehend the motions of the heart, and 

 to make out the uses of the organ from the dissection of living 

 animals, he found the subject so beset with difficulties that 

 he was almost inclined at one time to say with Fraca'storius, 

 that these motions and their purpose could be comprehended 

 by God alone. By degrees, however, by repeating his observa- 

 tions, using greater care, and giving more concentrated atten- 

 tion, he at last discovers a way out of the labyrinth, and a 

 means of explaining simply all that had previously appeared 

 so obscure. Hence the occasion of his writing. Such is the 

 burthen of the proem and first chapter. With Harvey's ad- 

 mirable work now put in an accessible shape into his hands, 

 we should (did we proceed with an analysis) but anticipate the 

 intelligent reader in the great pleasure he will have in follow- 

 ing the author through the different steps of his argument 



1 The Novum Organum appeared in 1620. Though Harvey's work was not 

 published till 1628, he had developed his subject in 1616, and there is every reason 

 to believe, actually written the Exercit, de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis ' before 1619. 



