32 THE GROWTH OF TRUTH 



appropriate motto for the period laudamus veteres : sed 

 nostris utimur annis. But even so late as 1671 the old 

 views were maintained in the English edition of Riolan. 

 And yet the knowledge of Harvey's views must have 

 spread broadcast, not only in the profession, but in that 

 large outside circle of distinguished men who felt the 

 new spirit of science working in their veins. From 

 converse or from the Lumleian lectures, which no doubt 

 he often attended, Kenelm Digby must have had the 

 information about Harvey's views on generation, as at 

 the date of the issue of his Two Treatises, 1644, they 

 had not been published anywhere. While he knew well 

 the motion of the blood as expounded by Harvey, and 

 having, in making his great antidote, studied the action 

 of the viper's heart, Digby, like Descartes, could not 

 emancipate himself from the old views, as shown in the 

 following passage : ' But if you desire to follow the 

 blood all along every steppe, in its progresse from the 

 hart round about the body, till it returne back againe to 

 its center, Doctor Harvey, who most acutely teacheth 

 this doctrine, must be your guide. He will show you 

 how it issueth from the hart by the arteries ; from whence 

 it goeth on warming the flesh, untill it arrive to some of 

 the extremities of the body : and by then it is grown so 

 coole (by long absence from the fountaine of its heate ; 

 and by evaporating its owne stocke of spirits, without any 

 new supply) that it hath need of being warmed anew ; 

 it findeth itself returned backe againe to the hart, and is 

 there heated againe, which returne is made by the veines, 

 as its going forwardes, is performed only by the arteries.' 

 Sir William Temple well expresses the attitude of 

 mind of the intellectual Philistine of the time, who 

 looked for immediate results. Speaking of the work of 

 Harvey and of Copernicus he says : ' Whether either of 



