766 THE HAKVEIAN ORATION. 



ad Riolanum,' p. 109) ; the impact of these opposite forces resulting, 

 however, in much benefit for mankind, as without them Harvey 

 might, it is likely enough, have delayed the publication of his 

 works indefinitely. Being self-contained without being self- 

 conscious, he was yet, like all men of real genius, large-hearted 

 and sympathetic. Whilst he could, in a spirit of perhaps a little 

 overstrained charity, make excuses (see p. 614, ' Epistola ad Slege- 

 lium') for the pestilent and irrepressible Riolanus, he would, we 

 may be also sure, have felt an emotion of gratitude upon each of 

 the many instances in which his own true-hearted adherents. Sir 

 George Ent and other Fellows of this College, fought his battles 

 for him, and vindicated for him successfully and during his own 

 lifetime his own irrefragable claims. And I can believe that, 

 answering to the character of the dignified^ stately, and high- 

 minded man so well drawn by the author whom he often quotes 

 (Aristotle, ' Eth. Nic' iv. 3 (7) ), and considering himself worthy 

 of great respect, being worthy of it, he would not have looked 

 disapprovingly upon our attempt to show him respect by the 

 Tercentenary Memorial to which you. Sir, have lent the sanction 

 of your name. I can further conceive of Harvey as entirely sym- 

 pathising with the men who have now in their hands the torch of 

 knowledge which once passed through his, of applauding without 

 any shadow of jealousy the work of the many workers who in these 

 days are going over the ground trodden by him under far less 

 favourable circumstances and with far less assistance from ancillary ^ 

 sciences and their various and still novel instruments and methods. 

 The same spirit which caused him repeatedly to say (as, for example, 

 to Sir George Ent, p. 163 ; to Horstius, p. 630), ^ haec cum mira, 

 ut solet, promptitudine effundens,' that he doubted not that much 

 now hidden in darkness would be brought to light by the inde- 

 fatigable industry of the coming age ; the same spirit which dictated 

 the provision in his will bidding ''his lo. friend Mr. Doctor Ent' 

 sell certain of his 'books, papers, or rare collections,' and, Svith the 

 money buy better,' would have caused him, could he have been 



1 Such an experiment, for example, as that put on record by Professor Haughton 

 ('Principles of Animal Mechanics,' 1873, p. 151), as performed by Professor Mac- 

 namara with his assistance, and as showing that the time occupied by absorption, 

 circulation, and secretion occupies less than four minutes, requires the employment of 

 iodine ; and iodine has been discovered and isolated but some sixty-two years. 



