THE BLOOD THE INNATE HEAT
The latter part of Harvey's treatise On Generation is devoted to that of the mammal; but the treatise does not end with the end of this subject, for from his account of generation the author turns abruptly to append two Exercises on other topics. The first of these two is entitled "On the Innate Heat," and the second, which is very brief, is entitled "On the Primitive Moisture."
The Exercise On the Innate Heat is Harvey's express and polemical contribution to this subject, which had been much discussed both during and before his time;[310] a subject with which the famous discoverer deals roundly by maintaining that the innate heat is neither more nor less than the circulating blood. So the last words as to the significance of the circulating blood which he wrote for publication are contained in this Exercise. It begins as follows:—
"Since mention is often made of the innate heat, I propose now, by way of dessert, briefly to discuss the same and the primitive moisture also; and this the more willingly that I see there are many who take the greatest delight in those names and yet, in my judgment, comprehend but little of the things themselves. Truly, there is no need to seek for any spirits distinct from the blood, or to bring in heat from elsewhere, or call gods upon the stage and load philosophy with fanciful opinions; for what we so commonly would fetch from the stars is born at home. In truth, the blood alone is the innate warmth, or the first-born psychical heat;[311] as is proved excellently well by our observations of the generation of animals, especially of the chick in the egg; so that it were superfluous to multiply entities. Indeed, there is nothing to be met with in the animal body prior to the blood, or more excellent; nor are the spirits which they distinguish from the blood to be found anywhere separate from it; for the very blood itself, if without spirits or heat, does not deserve the name of blood, but of cruor....
"Scaliger, Fernelius, and others lay less weight on the extraordinary endowments of the blood and imagine other spirits to exist, aërial or ethereal or composed of substance both ethereal and elemental, constituting an innate heat more excellent and more divine, as it were; and these spirits they believe to be the soul's most immediate instrument, the fittest for every use. They rely especially upon this argument, viz.: that the blood, being composed of elements, can exert no activity beyond the powers of the elements or of bodies consisting of a mixture thereof. Therefore, they imagine a spirit, another innate heat, of celestial origin and nature, to wit: a body most simple, most subtile, most fine, most mobile, most swift, most clear, ethereal, and sharing in the quintessence. Nowhere, however, has any such gift of spirit been demonstrated by them, nor that the same acts beyond the powers of the elements, or accomplishes greater works than could the blood alone. As for us who use our senses to guide us in the scrutiny of things, nowhere have we been able to find anything of the kind. Furthermore, there exist no cavities destined for the generation or preservation of these spirits, or even assigned thereto by the persons aforesaid."[312]
A little farther on we read:—
"I deem it, however, most wonderful that spirits which draw their origin from heaven and are adorned with such surpassing endowments should be nourished by our common and elemental air; especially seeing that their advocates hold that none of the elements can act beyond its own powers....[313] What need then is there, say I, of that foreign guest, ethereal heat, since all can be accomplished by the blood, even as by it; while from the blood the spirits cannot withdraw a hair's breadth without perishing? Most assuredly nowhere do they wander or penetrate as separate bodies without the blood. For whether it be said that they are generated, nourished, and increased from the thinner part of the blood, as some believe, or from the primitive moisture, as others hold; yet it is confessed that they are never found outside the blood but forever cleave to the same as to their sustenance, as flame does to oil or to a wick. Wherefore their tenuity, subtility, mobility, and so forth, confer no greater advantage than does the blood which they continually accompany. It follows that the blood suffices and is fit to be the immediate instrument of the soul, since the blood is present everywhere and most swiftly permeates hither and thither."[314]
The two opponents named by Harvey were not his contemporaries, but worthies of the Renaissance who had written about one hundred years before the publication of his treatise On Generation and had died before he was born. The Italian physician Julius Cæsar Scaliger had written learned commentaries on Aristotle, as well as other works; and the Frenchman Jean Fernel, physician to King Henri II of France, had taught anatomy at Paris and had been a medical writer of importance. Each of these two authors was nearly sixty years of age in 1543, in which memorable year were first published the revolutionary writings of the aged astronomer Copernicus and of the young anatomist Vesalius, in the second year after the death of the hardy innovator Paracelsus. Such were the men against whose doctrines Harvey was impelled in his old age to launch his vigorous criticism, in order to clear the way for his own doctrine of the preëminence of the blood. What can we workers of to-day make of their opinions, which were living for Harvey but now are so deeply buried? Test-tube and balance, telescope, spectroscope, microscope, manometer, and the rest, have served their purpose so well since Harvey's time that even he, one of the foremost worthies of science, must seem merely to beat the air with words in his last message to us, unless we can recover his standpoint. Happily he himself shall attempt to clarify the meaning of his polemic by setting before us certain words of Aristotle, embodying far-reaching speculations as to body and soul in relation to the universe. Yet we shall find these not easy to understand.
Let Harvey continue his criticism of his predecessors. He says:—
"But while they believe that there are found in animals spirits and ultimate or primitive nourishment, or something else, which acts beyond the powers of the elements more than does the blood, they do not seem to have a sufficient grasp of what it may be to 'act beyond the powers of the elements'; nor have they rightly interpreted the words of Aristotle where he says:[315] 'The virtue or potency of every soul[316] seems to be associated with a body[317] other than the so-called elements and more divine.'"
And a little farther on:[318]—
"'For there exists in the semen of all [animals] that which makes their semen generative, the so-called heat. Yet this is not fire, nor any such power, but the spirits[319] included in the semen and in foaminess, and in the spirits the nature which is analogous to the element of the stars.[320] Wherefore fire generates no animal, nor does anything [animal] appear in process of formation in that, whether moist or dry, which is undergoing the action of fire;[321] whereas the heat of the sun and that of animals—not only that [which acts] through the semen,[322] but also, should there occur some excretion of a different nature[323]—even this, too, possesses a life-giving principle. It is patent, then, from such [facts] as these that the heat in animals is not fire and does not take its origin from fire.'[324]
"I, too, would say the same, for my part, of the innate heat and the blood, to wit: that it is not fire and does not take its origin from fire, but is associated with another body and that more divine, and, therefore, does not act by reason of any elemental faculty; but, just as there exists in the semen something which makes it generative and exceeds the powers of the elements in building an animal—to wit, spirits, and in the spirits a nature analogous[325] to the element of the stars—so likewise in the blood there exist spirits or some power which acts beyond the powers of the elements, a power very conspicuous in the nourishing and preserving of the several parts of an animal; and in the spirits and blood exist a nature, yea, a soul, analogous to the element of the stars. It is manifest, therefore, that the heat in the blood of animals during life is not fire and does not take its origin from fire; and this is taught excellently well by our own observations....[326]
"Therefore, those who assert that nothing composed of the elements can work beyond the powers of these, unless it be associated at the same time with another body and that more divine, and maintain, therefore, that the spirits aforesaid consist in part of the elements, in part of some ethereal and celestial substance—truly, such persons seem to me to have drawn their conclusions ill. For you shall find scarcely any elemental body which, when in action, will not exceed its own proper powers."[327]
On reaching the end of the last quoted words of Harvey's polemic, a physician or biologist of to-day may easily be conscious of disappointment, even of a mild despair; for the once celebrated passage from Aristotle, about the interpretation of which Harvey gives battle, seems at first the source of all the obscurities of the controversy, rather than of the promised light which shall clear them away. Yet that light must come by way of that rugged passage. The gist of the first part of the Aristotelian passage may be set forth as follows: In the semen soul is potential, being associated therein with a "body" or "nature" which possesses a "life-giving principle" and is in the spirits, i.e., in the hot vapor, within the foam-bubbles of the semen. This body or nature is called heat, yet it is not that one of the four elemental bodies which is known as fire, nor yet a derivative of this, but is "a body other than the so-called elements and more divine," a "nature analogous to the element of the stars." What is this "element of the stars"? It is clear that only from the answer to this question can the light which we are seeking begin to shine. To find this celestial element we must immediately take a rapid glance at the Aristotelian universe—that grand conception which the master mainly accepted from his predecessors and contemporaries, but owed, in part, to the work of his own mind. Let us swiftly scan what he styled the "Cosmos."
At the center thereof is the earth, spherical and motionless. The core of the universe consists not only of this central globe with everything in or upon it, but also of the atmosphere or, more correctly, of all which extends between the surface of the globe and the nearest of the distant revolving hollow spheres of heaven, in some of which spheres are set the heavenly bodies. Below the heavenly spheres this core of the universe is made up of the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire; and all things composed of these are subject to opposed and limited and compounded motions, to generation, alteration, and corruption. The inclosing heaven, on the other hand, is unchangeable and eternal, has never been created, and will never be destroyed. Its many component hollow spheres are contiguous and concentric, and concentric also with our globe. In a single sphere, the outermost, called the "first heaven," all the fixed stars are set. In separate spheres, nearer to the earth, are set the seven bodies which the astronomy of Aristotle's day styled "planets." To these (here designated by their present names) that ancient astronomy assigned the following order from the earth outward toward the fixed stars: the moon, the sun, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each of the celestial spheres revolves with simple circular motion in one direction forever. The "first heaven," the sphere of the fixed stars, needs but the one simple motion which is its own, and it carries with it in its daily revolution all the inner spheres. These are more numerous than the seven planets; for though each planet is set in but a single sphere, each planet's complex course results from the combined simple motions of more spheres than one. In spite of these more or less intimate relations, the spheres of heaven are separate existences, self-moved, like animals; and, like animals, possess activity, life, and soul. But the motion and life of the heavenly existences are continuous and eternal, and hence these existences—the spheres, and the planets and fixed stars set therein—are all divine; much more divine than man, though man possesses a far larger share of the divine than other animals.[328]
Just as the troubled regions which lie below the sphere of the moon are contrasted with the serene heaven which incloses and limits them, so the changing forms of matter which compose our globe and its nearer surroundings are contrasted with the simple unalterable substance of the heavenly spheres. "Of necessity," says Aristotle, "there exists a simple body whose very nature it is to be borne on in circular motion."[329] Elsewhere he says that the men of old "would seem to have assumed that the body which moves forever is likewise divine by nature."[330] This is "an embodied substance different from the compounds here, more divine and prior to them all";[331] a body "of a nature the more precious the farther it is withdrawn from what is here."[332] After reasoning about this body Aristotle says:—
"If what has been laid down be accepted, it is plain from the foregoing why the first of bodies is eternal, and shows neither growth nor decay nor old age nor alteration, and is affected by nothing. The conception seems to testify to the phenomena and the phenomena to the conception.... Therefore, as the first body is something different from earth and fire and air and water, [the ancients] gave the name of ether to the region most on high, naming it from its moving always during all eternity."[333]
The place in nature of "the first element," so grandly conceived, is fixed more definitely by Aristotle when he says "that the whole universe in the region of the courses on high is filled with that body."[334]
Now, therefore, we have attained the object of our rapid quest; at last we have reached "the element of the stars"; for Aristotle tells us that not only heaven, but all the heavenly bodies as well, consist of the ether, saying:—
"It is most reasonable and consequent, in view of things already said, for us to make each of the stars out of that body in which it has its course, since we have declared the existence of something of which the nature is to be borne in a circle."[335]
At a later day the ethereal element of the stars was distinguished from the four inferior elements not by its Aristotelian name of first element but by that of fifth element, or fifth existence, or fifth "essence." Hence arose and was applied to the fifth element the name "quintessence"; a word which in its turn acquired various meanings.
Ten years after Harvey's death Milton published his description of the creation of heaven; a description couched, however, in terms of the uncreated heaven of Aristotle. Milton wrote:—
"And this ethereal quintessence of heaven
Flew upward, spirited with various forms,
That roll'd orbicular, and turned to stars
Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;
Each had his place appointed, each his course;
The rest in circuit walls this universe."[336]
We may now return from this excursion through the "Cosmos," to bring its light to bear upon those high-sounding words of Aristotle which, according to Harvey, formed the basis of speculations about the innate heat, the spirits, and the blood, which were handed down by "Scaliger, Fernelius, and others," and affected the views of Harvey himself. Aristotle had written:—
"The virtue or potency of every soul[316] seems to be associated with a body[317] other than the so-called elements, and more divine."
And a little farther on:—
"For there exists in the semen of all [animals] that which makes their semen generative, the so-called heat. Yet this is not fire, nor any such power, but the spirits[319] included in the semen and in foaminess, and in the spirits the nature which is analogous to the element of the stars."[337]
That generative heat which is not elemental fire, but a "body" or "nature" diviner than the lower elements, can be the analogue of nothing else than the celestial ether.
What led Aristotle to so lofty a flight of speculation? He does not tell. One may guess, however, that it may well have been this: that he had found himself obliged not only to deny the identity of the generative heat of the semen with elemental fire, but also to deny the identity with elemental fire even of the glowing sun, as well as of the other planets and the fixed stars; and to maintain that all the heavenly bodies consist of ether. These denials we have read already; they shall presently be commented on. Taking them for granted: now, since the life-giving sun is not elemental fire but ether, would not the life-giving seminal heat, which also is not elemental fire, naturally be the analogue of the ether? "Man and the sun generate man," said Aristotle, in a famous passage.[338] He needed no knowledge of chlorophyll to teach him this. The ether is the element of the sun, moon, stars, and spheres; of it consist the bodies associated with the souls of the living, unalterable, immortal, divine existences of the eternal heaven. To associate a body analogous to this ether with the dormant soul of a living existence—a living existence alterable and mortal as an individual, but one of an immortal race—in the medium which shall maintain that racial immortality by begetting a new individual out of the lower elements—this is a stroke characteristic of the man who declared that "the race of men, and of animals, and of plants, exists forever";[339] the man who assigned to every bloodless animal an analogue of the blood and an analogue of the heart,[340] to the octopus, an analogue of the brain;[341] the man in whose eyes the heavenly bodies were divine living existences running eternal courses and so, we may presume, were analogous in some degree to the living existences of the earth.[342]
Harvey in one of the earlier Exercises of his treatise On Generation had already followed the ancient master's footsteps in this matter. Discoursing of the endless succession of generations the pupil says that this
"makes the race of fowls eternal; since now the chick and now the egg, in an ever-continued series, produce an immortal species out of individuals which fail and perish. We discern, too, that in similar fashion many lower things rival the perpetuity of higher things. And whether or no we say that there is a soul in the egg, it clearly appears from the cycle aforesaid that there underlies this revolution from hen to egg and from egg again to hen, a principle which bestows eternity upon them. That same, according to Aristotle,[343] is analogous to the element of the stars; and it makes parents generate, makes their semen or eggs prolific, and, like Proteus, is ever present."[344]
Let us return now to Harvey's polemic. In it he does not give chapter and verse by which we can properly verify more than a few of his statements of the views of "Scaliger, Fernelius, and others"; but the words of Aristotle which Harvey quotes go far to justify his intimation that the views which he states and combats, as the champion of the circulating blood, are largely derived from those Aristotelian words—whether by misinterpretation, as he roundly but indefinitely declares, or with deliberate modification of doctrine, need not now concern us.
At the very outset of Harvey's discourse about the innate heat, the first doctrine that he reprobates is a striking one, viz.: that the innate heat is one and the same thing with spirits distinguishable from the blood, though not separable from it. Of these spirits he stoutly denies the existence, on the true scientific ground of lack of all evidence from observation in their favor. Our earlier studies of ancient doctrines of respiration have brought before us, as supposed to exist in the blood, spirits variously styled "elemental," "aërial," "nourished by our common and elemental air," "nourished and increased from the thinner part of the blood." We have even read Galen's words of spirits which are "the soul's most immediate instrument," viz.: the "animal spirits" in the brain and nerves. Indeed, during the eighteen centuries between the death of Aristotle and the boyhood of Fernelius and Scaliger, the word "pneuma"—"spirits" or "spirit"—did most varied duties in the service of physicians, philosophers, alchemists, and theologians; and this same word is of great importance in the scriptures.[345] It is noticeable that, although Harvey rejects the doctrine of spirits in the blood, even he himself talks of the blood being itself spirits.[346] This fact, however, should not militate against him or lead to confusion. The word "spirits" being a very comprehensive technical term of his day, he does not refuse to employ it as a label for qualities of the blood after he has denied the very existence of what is properly denoted by the word "spirits." He simply behaves as we behave when we talk of the "sympathetic" nerves, though the theory is exploded which the adjective expresses; or when we speak of "animal cell," well knowing that no proper wall necessarily surrounds the living substance.
Despite the protean forms of the spirits it is not till we have reached Harvey's Exercise On the Innate Heat that we have fallen in with spirits in the blood which, for some of his predecessors, "constitute an innate heat more excellent and more divine, as it were"; nor with "a spirit, another innate heat, of celestial origin and nature." For this treatment of spirits within the blood and of innate heat, as convertible terms, the way may well have been paved by the words in which Aristotle intimates that the generative heat of the semen resides in the spirits therein, i.e., in hot vapor produced within the body of the male and included within the films of foam-bubbles in the semen. Referring to "the so-called heat" the words of Aristotle are: "Yet this is not fire nor any such power, but the spirits included in the semen and in foaminess, and in the spirits the nature which is analogous to the element of the stars."[347] The transition can hardly have been too difficult from the view of Aristotle that in the spirits of the semen is heat which is not elemental fire, to the view combated by Harvey that the spirits of the blood are heat which is not elemental fire.
Aristotle's striking biological doctrine that the generative seminal heat is a "nature which is analogous to the element of the stars" appears to be an obvious source of those seeming fantasies, written down eighteen centuries later, at which Harvey girds when he says: "For what we so commonly would fetch from the stars is born at home." If we use our judgment simply, upon Harvey's statement of their opinions, the men whom he castigates, having strayed from the ancient master's footsteps by making the spirits one and the same with the innate heat instead of the vehicle thereof, next stray still more blindly by identifying this heat, alias these spirits, not with an analogue of the ether, but with a portion of the ether itself. Therefore is it that we read in the words of Harvey's polemic, of "that foreign guest, ethereal heat"; of those spirits "aërial or ethereal, or composed of substance both ethereal and elemental"; of spirits "which draw their origin from heaven" and elicit Harvey's ironical wonder that they "should be nourished by our common and elemental air." Therefore, too, is he able to tell us of that amazing spirit, alias innate heat, which is "a body" and qualified by many imposing adjectives and finally styled "ethereal and sharing in the quintessence." The doctrine of Aristotle that in the semen there are spirits which are the vehicle of generative heat which is analogous to the element of the stars, is a baseless doctrine, but it is a subtle and far-reaching speculation. The doctrine stated and attacked by Harvey that in the blood there are spirits which are the innate heat, which consists as a whole or in part of the element of the stars, is not only a baseless doctrine, as Harvey vigorously shows, but certainly is lame as speculation despite its glittering appeal to the imagination. To make spirits and innate heat convertible terms may pass as but one among many phases of speculation. But to bring down actual ether from heaven to earth, although attempted by eminent thinkers[348] centuries before Scaliger and Fernelius, is to bring chaos into that conception of the universe which requires the "first element" to revolve forever on high, above that lower world which lies beneath the sphere of the moon. To Aristotle such chaos surely would have been abhorrent; indeed, it runs counter to his expressed description of the ether.[349] Moreover, Aristotle's application of the term "analogue" to the generative heat is equivalent to a denial that the generative heat is actually ether; for analogues do frequent service in his doctrines and he explicitly states the analogue of a thing to be something different from the thing itself.[350] What that mysterious analogue of the ether may be with which the generative heat is identified we are not explicitly told, as we are not told what the analogue of the heat may be in bloodless animals. We are left to judge for ourselves after deeper investigation of nature or deeper study of the Aristotelian writings. Had Aristotle been ready to define and describe the body which is more divine than the four lower elements, but is not the first element on high, he probably would not have chosen an analogue as the fittest vehicle for his thought.
According to Harvey the horse of battle of his criticized predecessors was the argument stated by him as follows: "That nothing composed of the elements can work beyond the powers of these, unless it be associated at the same time with another body and that more divine; and ... therefore, that the spirits aforesaid consist in part of the elements, in part of some ethereal and celestial substance."[351] The "spirits aforesaid" are held to be one and the same with the innate heat and reside in the blood. Aristotle had written, we remember: "The virtue or potency of every soul seems to be associated with a body other than the so-called elements and more divine,"[352] viz.: the generative seminal heat, which is not fire but an analogue of the ether. It would seem fairly probable that largely from this doctrine of Aristotle was developed the doctrine about the "powers of the elements" which Harvey sets forth in his polemic. Nothing can be more emphatic than his disagreement with the advocates of this doctrine. "Such persons," he says, "seem to me to have drawn their conclusions ill. For you shall find scarcely any elemental body which, when in action, will not exceed its own proper powers."[353] On the same page with this sweeping statement we find it supported by the following very simple line of thought:—
"All natural bodies present themselves in a double relation, to wit: according as they are reckoned with apart and comprehended within the circuit of their own proper nature, or according as they are the instruments of some nobler and superior authority. For, as to their own proper powers, there is no doubt that all things which are subject to generation and corruption derive their origin from the elements, and work according to the standard thereof. In so far, however, as all things so subject are instruments of a more excellent agent and are regulated thereby, their works do not proceed from their own proper nature but from the rule of that other; and, consequently, they seem to be associated with another and more divine body and to exceed the powers of the elements."[354]
In the very next Exercise, however, that On the Primitive Moisture, the last Exercise of Harvey's treatise On Generation, we come suddenly upon a reason why "the powers of the elements" must have seemed to him something to be treated rather as a convenient form of words than as a serious doctrine, despite his respectful argument just quoted. Speaking of the "primitive moisture," the great observer says that he sees in the hen's egg that out of that "crystalline colliquament," that "simplest body" alone, all the parts of the embryo are made and increased;[355] and proceeds bluntly to question the reality of the elements, "namely, the fire, air, water, and earth of Empedocles and Aristotle; or the salt, sulphur, and mercury of the chemists; or the atoms of Democritus."[356] Harvey says:—
"Therefore, the so-called elements do not exist prior to whatever is generated or arises; but rather are subsequent thereto, being remains rather than origins. Not even Aristotle himself, nor any one else, has ever demonstrated that elements exist separately in nature, or give rise to bodies which consist of parts similar one to another."[357]
Almost immediately after this tug at the foundations of the Aristotelian universe, Harvey brings his treatise On Generation to an end.
The admirable feature of Harvey's brief last-published discussion of the circulating blood is this, that the aged veteran ever strikes vigorous blows for observation, for the use of the senses, in the search for truth. But we have seen already that by his arm, as by another's, the blows are delivered both for better and for worse. Rightly does he drive out of court the spirits "ethereal and elemental" which no man can demonstrate. Wrongly does he discredit the real complexity of that humor, to the eye so simple and crystal-clear, out of which he believes all the diverse parts of the living bird to be developed. In Harvey's present polemic we find no new appeal to nature; he vindicates the justice of his former appeals and maintains with vigor the doctrines already familiar to us, that the blood is the principal part of the body, is itself the innate heat, and is the seat of the soul. This relation of blood and soul he reaffirms very impressively in this, his final public utterance; a most important passage of which, about the presence of the soul in the blood, has been embodied in the chapter on that subject of the present paper.[358]
But evidently the main purpose of his polemical Exercise on the Innate Heat is to cast out of the blood the futile spirits which obscure the real relation of that heat to the circulating blood; and so to defend the thesis best set forth in the following words of his own:—
"In truth, the blood alone is the innate warmth, or the first born psychical heat; as is proved excellently well by our observations of the generation of animals, especially of the chick in the egg; so that it were superfluous to multiply entities....[359] What need, then, is there, say I, of that foreign guest, ethereal heat, since all can be accomplished by the blood, even as by it?"[360]
Harvey has expelled from the blood the mythical spirits which had stood in the way of the direct identification of the blood with the innate heat. But how does he interpret the famous words of Aristotle which he quotes, and declares not to have been "rightly interpreted" by the champions of ethereal spirits? When we seek an answer to this question, we do not find the veteran discoverer at his best. The ancient philosopher surely would have been as much surprised at Harvey's interpretation of his words as at any use of them made by Scaliger or Fernelius. We have seen that Harvey follows up his quotation from Aristotle by promptly applying its language, literally or by paraphrase, to the innate heat and the blood.[361] Emphatic are the words which immediately follow the words of Aristotle. Harvey says:—
"I, too, would say the same, for my part, of the innate heat and the blood, to wit: that it is not fire and does not take its origin from fire, but is associated with another body and that more divine."
This denial he soon repeats, adding the words: "and this is taught excellently well by our observations."
According to Aristotle the soul in the semen is associated with a body diviner than the four lower elements, viz.: the generative heat, an analogue of the element of the stars, which analogue resides in spirits, i.e., in hot vapor within bubbles of seminal foam. In the case of the blood, according to Harvey, it is the heat itself, the innate heat alias the blood, which is associated with "another body and that more divine," and Harvey, having denied the reality of the spirits, uses the word "spirits" as equivalent to "some power" in the blood, which power is "very conspicuous in the nourishing and preserving of the several parts of an animal." In the spirits, so understood, and the blood, dwells the soul; and it is the soul itself which Harvey states to be "a nature analogous [respondens not proportione respondens] to the element of the stars." Even as the word "spirits" has become, in effect, a label for powers of the blood, so the analogue of the ether becomes, in effect, a pious epithet applied to the soul; and only to the soul itself can Harvey have referred as "another body and that more divine." In the next page to the passage now under discussion he says:—
"The blood, therefore, is spirits, because of its extraordinary virtues and powers. It is also celestial, inasmuch as in the spirits aforesaid is lodged a nature, the soul, to wit, which is analogous to the element of the stars; something, that is, analogous to heaven, the instrument of heaven, vicarious of heaven....[362] The heat of the blood is psychical, inasmuch as it is governed in its operations by the soul;[363] it is also celestial, because subservient to heaven; and divine, because the instrument of God, the best and greatest....[364] The lower world, according to Aristotle, is so connected with the courses on high that all its motives and changes seem to take thence their origin and to be governed thence.[365] Truly, in that world which the Greeks called the 'Cosmos' from the beauty of its order,[366] lower and corruptible things are subject to other higher and incorruptible things; but all are beneath the highest, the omnipotent and eternal Creator, and obey Him."[367]
It is obvious that, although Harvey in dealing with the blood does not forego the use of the phrases used by the ancient master in dealing with the semen, nevertheless, the entities recognized by Harvey are not only fewer than those of Aristotle, but are differently disposed within the draperies of Aristotelian language. Harvey's entities are simply the innate heat alias the blood, and the soul which dwells therein; but he sincerely takes himself to be an interpreter of Aristotle's words, as appears a second time from an echo of those words which we meet in an earlier Exercise of Harvey's treatise On Generation. Here, pleading that it is true that the soul is in the blood, Harvey refers to Aristotle by name and immediately says:—
"Indeed, if he is constrained by the truth to acknowledge that there is a soul in an egg, even in a wind-egg;[368] and that in the semen and the blood also there is found something which is divine and analogous to the element of the stars and is vicarious of the omnipotent Creator; and if certain of the modems truly say," etc., etc.[369]
These zealous words show Harvey drawn into statements by no means warranted by the text of Aristotle. We have seen that the Aristotelian heaven was uncreated;[370] and, whatever Harvey in his day may have thought, no "omnipotent Creator" is revealed by more modern study of the Aristotelian philosophy. Whatever inferences Harvey may have drawn from Aristotle's words, Aristotle does not "acknowledge"[371] that the analogue of the ether exists in the blood. Moreover, when in Harvey's Exercise On the Innate Heat that analogue of the element of the stars which Aristotle associated with the soul is identified by Harvey with the soul itself, the change is almost as great as if one should declare that protoplasm is life, instead of styling it with Huxley "the physical basis of life." In a third Exercise of the treatise On Generation, the earliest of the three, Harvey had dealt in a better and more characteristic way with the analogue of the ether; though here, too, his exposition gives no accurate idea of Aristotle's doctrine. In discussing Aristotle's opinion as to how the semen of the cock causes the formation of the embryo Harvey says of Aristotle:—
"Indeed, where he appears to settle and determine with certainty what that may be in whatsoever seed, whether of plants or of animals, which renders the same fruitful, he rejects heat and fire as unfit for the work, but does not give recognition to any similar faculty, nor yet discover in the seed aught suitable for that duty; but is forced to admit something incorporeal, and coming from without, which shall act with understanding and foresight (like art or mind) to form the fœtus, and therein shall establish and order all things to a purpose and for the better. He betakes himself, I say, to something obscure and to us unknown, 'spirits included in the semen and in foaminess, and in the spirits the nature which is analogous to the element of the stars.' But what that may be he has nowhere taught us."[372]
We have found that Aristotle describes "the element of the stars" as a "body,"[373] and that in the passage about the semen which Harvey quotes Aristotle expressly applies the same term, "body," to the analogue of the element of the stars.[374] Yet to this analogue Harvey seems to refer as "something incorporeal" in his last-quoted words, which tend to confound it with soul. Harvey agrees with Aristotle, however, in calling fire a "body";[375] and where in his Exercise On the Innate Heat he extols at some length[376] fire, air and water in motion as flame, wind and flood, he also sets forth how they each claim the title of spirits "by virtue of their movement and perpetual flux,"[377] and says:—
"These three, therefore, in so far as they acquire a certain life, appear to act beyond the powers of the elements and to have a share[378] of another and diviner body; wherefore they were reckoned among the deities by the heathen. For that of which the outcome is some extraordinary work, exceeding the bare faculties of the elements, that same they held to proceed from some diviner agent; as though it were one and the same to act beyond the powers of the elements and to have a share of another and diviner body—diviner, because it does not derive its origin from the elements."[379]
Nowhere but in the third chapter of the second book of Aristotle's treatise On Generation does he refer to the analogue of the ether; and the complete text of this chapter—rugged, here and there, especially in Gaza's Latin translation—may help us perhaps to account for some of Harvey's efforts at exposition.[380] But when these and his reports of his predecessor's doctrines are compared with the words of Aristotle, Harvey and those other biologists of the Renaissance seem like sturdy children reaching forward in the dust, each still clasping a finger of the strong old father who strides among them.