754 THE HARVEIAN ORATION. 



of Harvey's College to satisfy himself abundantly, and within our 



own walls, as to the real merits of the claimant before us, if the 



College will allow it to find a place in their library. In the words 



of Harvey's favourite poet, 



* His saltern accumulem donis et fungar inani 

 Munere.' 



In all seriousness it is something to know what a contemporary 

 of Harvey, and he a mathematician of some eminence, could write 

 less than ten years before the actual demonstration of the circula- 

 tion of the blood was given to the world. 



Let me say, however, that I do not think it by any means im- 

 possible that Harvey may have read this treatise of Warner's, hard 

 though the labour of gathering hints, or rather warnings, from its 

 many guesses must have been to him. For in many parts of 

 Harvey's treatise, ' De Motu Cordis,' we meet with phrases which 

 seem as if they had been used with a special reference to Warner's 

 views ; and his dissertation has at least this claim upon my grati- 

 tude, that it has made me think that I understand Harvey's mean- 

 ing the better for having read it. I fancy, in fact, that I recognise 

 such phrases in Harvey's words (' De Motu,' pp. 58, 61, ed. 1766 ; 

 p. ^6, ed. Willis), ' Absque dolore vel calore vel fugd vacui^ and in 

 such words as ' longe plus est qu^m partium nutritioni congruens 

 est,^ p. 64 ; ' avToxj/ia, non mentis agitatio,' p. 133. He might have 

 been alluding to almost any page of Warner's MS. in his repudia^- 

 tion (p. 116, see *^EpistolaSecunda ad Riolanum') of the hypothesis 

 of various sorts of spirits. But there is one of Harvey's many 

 noble and candid, whilst measured and well-balanced utterances, 

 which seems to me to be admirably suited to serve as a text for an 

 exposition which perhaps some future Harveian orator may under- 

 take, of the exact relation which his discoveries held to the know- 

 ledge and the ignorance, not only of Walter Warner, but of all 

 others of his contemporaries or predecessors. These words run thus 

 (' De Motu,' p. 34, ed. 1766; p. ^^, ed. Willis) : — ' Sed et hoe ' (viz. 

 the transmission of the blood by the action of the heart, from the 

 veins into the arteries, through the ventricles of the heart into the 

 whole body), ' omnes aliquo modo concedunt et ex cordis fabrica et 

 valvularum artificio positione et usu colligunt. Verum tanquam 

 in loco obscuro titubantes caecutire videntur et varia subcontraria 

 et non cohaerentia componunt et ex conjectura plurima pronunciant 



