34 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



rates* grilling dialectic would never have wheedled 

 Harvey into admitting that there was no virtue in the 

 knowledge he had acquired of the structure and move- 

 ments of the heart, or that this knowledge had nothing 

 to do with the sort of self-knowledge that saves souls. 

 The other notable thing in Harvey's mode of inter- 

 pretation of natural phenomena was his insistence on 

 a certain inherency and virtue in each object itself. 

 He gave no quarter to that kind of explanation which 

 tries to refer everything wholly to something else, 

 which is always assuming that the final and real 

 essence of a sensible object is something behind the 

 object and wholly and forever hidden from the senses. 

 His position on this matter is well brought out in a 

 treatise, written some years after the publication of 

 the original disquisition, refuting objections that had 

 been made to his teaching about the circulation. 

 Speaking on the old theory of an imponderable, spir- 

 ituous something in the blood, he says: "Physicians 

 seem for the major part to conclude, with Hippocrates, 

 that our body is composed ... of three elements: 

 containing parts, contained parts, and causes of action, 

 spirits being understood by the latter term. But if 

 spirits are to be taken as synonymous with causes of 

 activity, whatever has power in the living body and a 

 faculty of action must be included under the denomi- 

 nation. It would appear, therefore, that all spirits 

 were neither aerial substances, nor powers, nor habits, 

 nor that all were not incorporeal. . . . The spirits 



