knowledge[201];" but he soon proceeds to fortify himself with the
authority of Aristotle. In doing this, however, he has the very great
merit of giving a living and practical character to truths which exist
in the Aristotelian works, but which had hitherto been barren and empty
professions. We have seen that Aristotle had asserted the importance
of experience as one root of knowledge; and in this had been followed
by the schoolmen of the middle ages: but this assertion came with very
different force and effect from a man, the whole of whose life had been
spent in obtaining, by means of experience, knowledge which no man had
possessed before. In Harvey's general reflections, the necessity of
both the elements of knowledge, sensations and ideas, experience and
reason, is fully brought into view, and rightly connected with the
metaphysics of Aristotle. He puts the antithesis of these two elements
with great clearness. "Universals are chiefly known to us, for science
is begot by reasoning from universals to particulars; yet that very
comprehension of universals in the understanding springs from the
perception of singulars in our sense." Again, he quotes Aristotle's
apparently opposite assertions:--that made in his _Physics_[202],
"that we must advance from things which are first known to us, though
confusedly, to things more distinctly intelligible in themselves;
from the whole to the part; from the universal to the particular;"
and that made in the _Analytics_[203]; that "Singulars are more known
to us and do first exist according to sense: for nothing is in the
understanding which was not before in the sense." Both, he says, are
true, though at first they seem to clash: for "though in knowledge
we begin with sense, sensation itself is a universal thing." This he
further illustrates; and quotes Seneca, who says, that "Art itself is
nothing but the _reason_ of the work, implanted in the Artist's mind:"
and adds, "the same way by which we gain an Art, by the very same way
we attain any kind of science or knowledge whatever; for as Art is
a habit whose object is something to be done, so Science is a habit
whose object is something to be known; and as the former proceedeth
from the imitation of examples, so this latter, from the knowledge of
things natural. The source of both is from sense and experience; since
[but?] it is impossible that Art should be rightly purchased by the one
or Science by the other without a direction from ideas." Without here
dwelling on the relation of Art and Science, (very justly stated by
Harvey, except that ideas exist in a very different form in the mind
of the Artist and the Scientist) it will be seen that this doctrine,
of science springing from experience with a direction from ideas, is
exactly that which we have repeatedly urged, as the true view of the
subject. From this view, Harvey proceeds to infer the importance of a
reference to sense in his own subject, not only for first discovering,
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