ANIMAL AUTOMATISM. 207 



If we ask to whom mankind are indebted for this 

 great service, the general voice will name William Har- 

 vey. 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, investigations of the process of development, 

 Harvey solidly laid the foundations of all those physical 

 explanations of the functions of sustentation and repro- 

 duction which modern physiologists have achieved. 



But the living body is not only sustained and repro- 

 duced : 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 sometimes 

 called the vegetative processes. Harvey did not make 

 this attempt himself; but the influence of his work 

 upon the man who did make it is patent and unques- 

 tionable. This man was Rene Descartes, who, though 

 by many years Harvey's junior, died before him ; and 

 yet, in his short span of fifty-four years, took an undis- 

 puted place, not only among the chiefs of philosophy, 

 but amongst the greatest and most original of mathema- 

 ticians; while, in my belief, he is no less certainly en- 

 titled to the rank of a great and original physiologist ""! 

 inasmuch as he did for the physiology of motion and ; 



sensation that which Harvev had done for the circulation ( 



" l 



of the blood, and opened up that road to the mechanical 



