I have said that the other great investigation of Harvey is not one which
can be dealt with to a general audience. It is very complex, and therefore
I must ask you to take my word for it that, although not so fortunate an
investigation, not so entirely accordant with later results as the
doctrine of the circulation; yet that still, this little treatise of
Harvey's has in many directions exerted an influence hardly less
remarkable than that exerted by the Essay upon the Circulation of the
Blood.
And now let me ask your attention to two or three closing remarks.
If you look back upon that period of about 100 years which commences with
Harvey's birth—I mean from the year 1578 to 1680 or thereabouts—I
think you will agree with me, that it constitutes one of the most
remarkable epochs in the whole of that thousand years which we may roughly
reckon as constituting the history of Britain. In the commencement of that
period, we may see, if not the setting, at any rate the declension of that
system of personal rule which had existed under previous sovereigns, and
which, after a brief and spasmodic revival in the time of George the
Third, has now sunk, let us hope, into the limbo of forgotten things. The
latter part of that 100 years saw the dawn of that system of free
government which has grown and flourished, and which, if the men of the
present day be the worthy descendants of Eliott and Pym, and Hampden and
Milton, will go on growing as long as this realm lasts. Within that time,
one of the strangest phenomena which I think I may say any nation has ever
manifested arose to its height and fell—I mean that strange and
altogether marvellous phenomenon, English Puritanism. Within that time,
England had to show statesmen like Burleigh, Strafford, and Cromwell—I
mean men who were real statesmen, and not intriguers, seeking to make a
reputation at the expense of the nation. In the course of that time, the
nation had begun to throw off those swarms of hardy colonists which, to
the benefit of the world—and as I fancy, in the long run, to the
benefit of England herself—have now become the United States of
America; and, during the same epoch, the first foundations were laid of
that Indian Empire which, it may be, future generations will not look upon
as so happy a product of English enterprise and ingenuity. In that time we
had poets such as Spenser, Shakespere, and Milton; we had a great
philosopher, in Hobbes; and we had a clever talker about philosophy, in
Bacon. In the beginning of the period, Harvey revolutionized the
biological sciences, and at the end of it, Newton was preparing the
revolution of the physical sciences. I know not any period of our history—I
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