200 ANIMAL AUTOMATISM v 



firm root in irrefragable fact, this conception has 

 not only successfully repelled every assault which 

 has been made upon it, but has steadily grown in 

 force and extent of application, until it is now the 

 expressed or implied fundamental proposition of 

 the whole doctrine of scientific Physiology. 



If we ask to whom mankind are indebted for 

 this great service, the general voice will name 

 William Harvey. For, by his discovery of the 

 circulation of the blood in the higher animals, by 

 his explanation of the nature of the mechanism 

 by which that circulation is effected, and by his 

 no less remarkable, though less known, investiga- 

 tions of the process of development, Harvey solidly 

 laid the foundations of all those physical ex- 

 planations of the functions of sustentation and 

 reproduction which modern physiologists have- 

 achieved. 



But the living body is not only sustained and 

 reproduced : it adjusts itself to external and 

 internal changes; it moves and feels. The 

 attempt to reduce the endless complexities of 

 animal motion and feeling to law and order is, at 

 least, as important a part of the task of the 

 physiologist as the elucidation of what are sonie- 

 timc's called the vegetative processes. Harvey 

 did not make this attempt himself; but the 

 it if 1 nonce of his work upon the man who did niata 

 it is patent and unquestionable. This man was 

 Kenc Descartes, who, though by many years 



