24 



and draws from them that which adds to the store 

 of knowledge already possessed. He seeks for 

 facts, and interprets their meaning as they come 

 before him. 



This was the course pursued by Harvey. 

 Instead of giving himself up, as others had done 

 before him, to arguing out conclusions from 

 accepted axioms, he struck out into the hitherto 

 untrodden path of inquiry — that of induction — and 

 sought knowledge by a direct appeal to nature 

 through the medium of observation and experi- 

 ment. "It were disgraceful," he says, " with this 

 most spacious and admirable realm of nature 

 before us, did we take the reports of others upon 

 trust, and go on coining crude problems out of 

 these, and on them hanging knotty and captious 

 and petty disputations. Nature is herself to be 

 addressed, the paths she shows us are to be boldly 

 trodden." 



In the discovery of the circulation Harvey applied 

 the principles of induction and argued upon them 

 in a strictly logical way. He showed himself to be 

 a good and careful observer, judged even by the 



