58 Borelli and the Influence [lect. 



plished physicist; his theory of the Universe (Le Monde, 1664) 

 influenced men's opinions about nature for many a year. Above 

 all he was a philosopher. His Discours de la Methode, 1637, 

 made an epoch. But he was neither an anatomist nor a 

 physiologist ; he studied both anatomy and physiology, but not 

 a.^ an inquirer. He approached these matters as an amateur, 

 but as an amateur having a special purpose, as one desirous to 

 construct out of the current knowledge of the time a physio- 

 logical basis for his philosophical views. 



I.t was part of his philosophy to shew that man consisted of 

 an earthly machine {machine de terre) inhabited and governed 

 by a rational soul (dme raisonnable) ; and under the title of 

 'Man,' U Homme (De Homine Liber, 1662), he wrote a treatise 

 of physiology, not, as I have said, as a contribution to physio- 

 logic al knowledge, but as a popular exposition of the features 

 o/i the earthly machine in illustration of its relations to the 

 rational soul. The work thus stands out as the first Text-Book 

 of Physiology, written after the modern fashion, though in a 

 popular way. We may perhaps speak of him as the Herbert 

 Spencer of the age in so far that his treatise on man bore 

 somewhat the same relation to the physiological inquiries of 

 the time as the Principles of Biology do to the biological 

 researches of the present, day. 



But Descartes had much more distinctly in view than had 

 Spencer the object of popular exposition, and he had especially 

 in view the exposition of the mode of action of the soul. Thus 

 though he begins with the beginning, namely with the ingestion 

 of food, he hurries over digestion and also over the circulation. 

 He was acquainted with Harvey's work, but he had not been 

 convinced by Harvey's arguments ; he was not familiar enough 

 with the details of physiological inquiry to feel the full force 

 of Harvey's reasonings. He admitted Harvey's great and new 

 conclusion, the greater circulation, the passage of blood from the 

 arteries to the veins, but he would not admit what Harvey 

 insisted, and truly insisted upon as the keystone of his whole 

 argument, the propulsion of the blood by the systole, by the 

 contraction of the heart. He clung in the main to the old 

 doctrines. This is what he says : 



