Page:The Harveian oration, 1875 (IA b22314611).pdf/13

when Harvey died) was collecting materials for his immortal works, when Harvey was demonstrating the Circulation of the Blood. It is worthy of note that the fC Novum Organon,” and Harvey’s great work, “De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis,” appeared within a few years of each other. Need I add that Harvey, surviving the execution of his royal master and patron, died in the same year with Oliver Cromwell?

As to foreign contemporaries, Harvey was only by seven years the junior of Kepler, and by fourteen of Galileo, and the senior by several years both of Descartes and of Spinoza. So that Harvey was of an age to have shared that Italian journey of Milton"’ s, during which, as Milton tells us in his Areopagitica, “ he found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought.” And here I am reminded of another advantage Harvey had in dealing with his great discovery. The views he might form and promulgate were not likely to clash with the preconceived notions of those who drew their science equally with their theology from the same source—from that Bible of which