THE GROWTH OF TRUTH 39 



consummation, is evolved directly from truths which 

 cannot be translated into terms intelligible to ordinary 

 minds. Newton's great work influenced neither the 

 morals nor the manners of his age, nor was there any 

 immediate tangible benefit that could be explained to 

 the edification or appreciation of the ' ordinary man ' of 

 his day; yet it set forward at a bound the human mind, 

 as did such truths as were proclaimed by Copernicus, 

 by Kepler, by Darwin, and others. In a less conspicuous 

 manner Harvey's triumph was on the same high plane. 

 There was nothing in it which could be converted 

 immediately into practical benefit, nothing that even 

 the Sydenhams of his day could take hold of and use. 

 Not so much really in the demonstration of the fact of 

 the circulation as in the demonstration of the method 

 the Inventum mirabile sought for by Descartes, the 

 Novum Organum of Bacon lies the true merit of 

 Harvey's work. While Bacon was thinking, Harvey 

 was acting; and before Descartes had left his happy 

 school at La Fleche Harvey was using la nouvette 

 ntethode ; and it is in this way that the de Motu Cordis 

 marks the break of the modern spirit with the old 

 traditions. No longer were men to rest content with 

 careful observation and with accurate description ; no 

 longer were men to be content with finely-spun theories 

 and dreams, which ' serve as a common subterfuge of 

 ignorance ' ; but here for the first time a great physio- 

 logical problem was approached from the experimental 

 side by a man with a modern scientific mind, who could 

 weigh evidence and not go beyond it, and who had the 

 sense to let the conclusions emerge naturally but firmly 

 from the observations. To the age of the hearer, in 

 which men had heard, and heard only, had succeeded 

 the age of the eye, in which men had seen and had been 



