[638] Even Dutens, whose sole aim is to depreciate those whom modern science has most revered, cannot pretend to show that the ancients made use of glasses to assist vision. Origine des Découvertes, i., 218.

Of the microscope. 46. The microscope has also been ascribed to Galileo; and so far with better cause, that we have no proof of his having known the previous invention. It appears, however, to have originated, like the telescope, in Holland, and perhaps at an earlier time. Cornelius Drebbel, who exhibited the microscope in London about 1620, has often passed for the inventor. It is suspected by Montucla that the first microscopes had concave eye-glasses; and that the present form with two convex glasses is not older than the invention of the astronomical telescope.

Antonio de Dominis. 47. Antonio de Dominis, the celebrated archbishop of Spalatro, in a book published in 1611, though written several years before, De Radiis Lucis in Vitris Perspectivis et Iride, explained more of the phenomena of the rainbow than was then understood. The varieties of colour had baffled all inquirers, though the bow itself was well known to be the reflection of solar light from drops of rain. Antonio de Dominis, to account for these, had recourse to refraction, the known means of giving colour to the solar ray; and guiding himself by the experiment of placing between the eye and the sun a glass bottle of water, from the lower side of which light issued in the same order of colours as in the rainbow, he inferred that after two refractions and one intermediate reflection within the drop, the ray came to the eye tinged with different colours, according to the angle at which it had entered. Kepler, doubtless ignorant of De Dominis’s book, had suggested nearly the same. “This, though not a complete theory of the rainbow, and though it left a great deal to occupy the attention, first of Descartes, and afterwards of Newton, was probably just, and carried the explanation as far as the principles then understood allowed it to go. The discovery itself may be considered as an anomaly in science, as it is one of a very refined and subtle nature, made by a man who has given no other indication of much scientific sagacity or acuteness. In many things, his writings show great ignorance of principles of optics well known in his time, so that Boscovich, an excellent judge in such matters, has said of him, ‘Homo opticarum rerum supra quod patiatur ea ætas imperitissimus.’”[639] Montucla is hardly less severe on De Dominis, who, in fact, was a man of more ingenious than solid understanding.

[639] Playfair, Dissertation on Physical Philosophy, p. 119.

Dioptrics of Descartes.—Law of refraction. 48. Descartes announced to the world in his Dioptrics, 1637, that he had at length solved the mystery which had concealed the law of refraction. He showed that the sine of the angle of incidence at which the ray enters, has, in the same medium, a constant ratio to that of the angle at which it is refracted, or bent in passing through. But this ratio varies according to the medium; some having a much more refractive power than others. This was a law of beautiful simplicity as well as extensive usefulness; but such was the fatality, as we would desire to call it, which attended Descartes, that this discovery had been indisputably made twenty years before by a Dutch geometer of great reputation, Willibrod Snell. The treatise of Snell had never been published; but we have the evidence both of Vossius and Huygens, that Hortensius, a Dutch professor, had publicly taught the discovery of his countryman. Descartes had long lived in Holland; privately, it is true, and by his own account reading few books; so that in this, as in other instances, we may be charitable in our suspicions; yet it is unfortunate that he should perpetually stand in need of such indulgence.

Disputed by Fermat. 49. Fermat did not inquire whether Descartes was the original discoverer of the law of refraction but disputed its truth. Descartes, indeed, had not contented himself with experimentally ascertaining it, but, in his usual manner, endeavoured to show the path of the ray by direct reasoning. The hypothesis he brought forward seemed not very probable to Fermat, nor would it be permitted at present. His rival, however, fell into the same error; and starting from an equally dubious supposition of his own, endeavoured to establish the true law of refraction. He was surprised to find that, after a calculation founded upon his own principle, the real truth of a constant ratio between the sines of the angles came out according to the theorem of Descartes. Though he did not the more admit the validity of the latter’s hypothetical reasoning, he finally retired from the controversy with an elegant compliment to his adversary.

Curves of Descartes. 50. In the Dioptrics of Descartes, several other curious theorems are contained. He demonstrated that there are peculiar curves, of which lenses may be constructed, by the refraction from whose superficies all the incident rays will converge to a focal point, instead of being spread, as in ordinary lenses, over a certain extent of surface, commonly called its spherical aberration. The effect of employing such curves of glass would be an increase of illumination, and a more perfect distinctness of image. These curves were called the ovals of Descartes; but the elliptic or hyperbolic speculum would answer nearly the same purpose. The latter kind has been frequently attempted; but, on account of the difficulties in working them, if there were no other objection, none but spherical lenses are in use. In Descartes’s theory, he explained the equality of the angles of incidence and reflection in the case of light, correctly as to the result, though with the assumption of a false principle of his own, that no motion is lost in the collision of hard bodies such as he conceived light to be. Its perfect elasticity makes his demonstration true.

Theory of the rainbow. 51. Descartes carried the theory of the rainbow beyond the point where Antonio de Dominis had left it. He gave the true explanation of the outer bow, by a second intermediate reflection of the solar ray within the drop: and he seems to have answered the question most naturally asked, though far from being of obvious solution, why all this refracted light should only strike the eye in two arches with certain angles and diameters, instead of pouring its prismatic lustre over all the rain-drops of the cloud. He found that no pencil of light continued, after undergoing the processes of refraction and reflection in the drop, to be composed of parallel rays, and consequently to possess that degree of density which fits it to excite sensation in our eyes, except the two which make those angles with the axis drawn from the sun to an opposite point at which the two bows are perceived.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Jonston. 4. Jonston, a Pole of Scots origin, collected the information of his predecessors in a Natural History of Animals, published in successive parts from 1648 to 1652. The History of Quadrupeds appeared in the latter year. “The text,” says Cuvier, “is extracted, with some taste, from Gesner, Aldrovandus, Marcgraf, and Mouffet; and it answered its purpose as an elementary work in natural history, till Linnæus taught a more accurate method of classifying, naming, and describing animals. Even Linnæus cites him continually.”[640] I find in Jonston a pretty good account of the chimpanzee (Orang-otang Indorum, ab Angola delatus), taken perhaps from the Observationes Medicæ of Tulpius.[641] The delineations in Jonston being from copper-plates, are superior to the coarse wood-cuts of Gesner, but fails sometimes very greatly in exactness. In his notions of classification, being little else than a compiler, it may be supposed that he did not advance a step beyond his predecessors. The Theatrum Insectorum by Mouffet, an English physician of the preceding century, was published in 1634; it seems to be compiled in a considerable degree from the unpublished papers of Gesner and foreign naturalists, whom the author has rather too servilely copied. Haller, however, is said to have placed Mouffet above all entomologists before the age of Swammerdam.[642]

[640] Biogr. Univ.

[641] Grotius; Epist. ad Gallos, p. 21., gives an account of a chimpanzee, monstrum hominis dicam an bestiæ? and refers to Tulpius. The doubt of Grotius as to the possible humanity of this quam similis turpissima bestia nobis, is not so strange as the much graver language of Linnæus.

[642] Biogr. Univ. Chalmers. I am no judge of the merits of the book; but if the following sentence of the English translation does it no injustice, Mouffet must have taken little pains to do more than transcribe. “In Germany and England I do not hear that there are any grasshoppers at all; but if there be, they are in both countries called Bow-krickets, or Baulm-krickets,” p. 989. This translation is subjoined to Topsell’s History of Four-footed Beasts, collected out of Gesner and others, in an edition of 1658. The first edition of Topsell’s very ordinary composition was in 1608.

Fabricius on the language of brutes. 5. We may place under the head of zoology a short essay by Fabricius de Aquapendente on the language of brutes; a subject very curious in itself, and which has by no means sufficiently attracted notice even in this experimental age. It cannot be said that Fabricius enters thoroughly into the problem, much less exhausts it. He divides the subject into six questions:—1. Whether brutes have a language, and of what kind: 2. How far it differs from that of man, and whether the languages of different species differ from one another: 3. What is its use: 4. In what modes animals express their affections: 5. What means we have of understanding their language: 6. What is their organ of speech. The affirmative of the first question he proves by authority of several writers, confirmed by experience, especially of hunters, shepherds, and cowherds, who know by the difference of sounds what animals mean to express. It may be objected that brutes utter sounds, but do not speak. But this is merely as we define speech; and he attempts to show that brutes by varying their utterance do all that we do by literal sounds. This leads to the solution of the second question. Men agree with brutes in having speech, and in forming elementary sounds of determinate time; but ours is more complex; these elementary sounds, which he calls articulos, or joints of the voice, being quicker and more numerous. Man, again, forms his sounds more by means of the lips and tongue, which are softer in him than they are in brutes. Hence, his speech runs into great variety and complication, which we call language, while that of animals within the same species is much more uniform.

6. The question as to the use of speech to brutes is not difficult. But he seems to confine this utility to the expression of particular emotions, and does not meddle with the more curious inquiry, whether they have a capacity of communicating specific facts to one another; and if they have, whether this is done through the organs of the voice. The fourth question is, in how many modes animals express their feelings. These are by look, by gesture, by sound, by voice, by language. Fabricius tells us that he had seen a dog, meaning to expel another dog from the place he wished himself to occupy, begin by looking fierce, then use meaning gestures, then growl, and finally bark. Inferior animals, such as worms, have only the two former sorts of communication. Fishes, at least some kinds, have a power of emitting a sound, though not properly a voice; this may be by the fins or gills. To insects also he seems to deny voice, much more language, though they declare their feelings by sound. Even of oxen, stags, and some other quadrupeds, he would rather say that they have no voice than language. But cats, dogs, and birds, have a proper language. All, however, are excelled by man, who is truly called μεροψ, from his more clear and distinct articulations.

7. In the fifth place, however difficult it may appear to understand the language of brutes, we know that they understand what is said to them; how much more, therefore, ought we, superior in reason, to understand them. He proceeds from hence to an analysis of the passions, which he reduces to four: joy, desire, grief, and fear. Having thus drawn our map of the passions, we must ascertain by observation what are the articulations of which any species of animals is capable, which cannot be done by description. His own experiments were made on the dog and the hen. Their articulations are sometimes complex; as, when a dog wants to come into his master’s chamber, he begins by a shrill small yelp, expressive of desire, which becomes deeper, so as to denote a mingled desire and annoyance, and ends in a lamentable howl of the latter feeling alone. Fabricius gives several other rules deduced from observation of dogs, but ends by confessing that he has not fully attained his object, which was to furnish everyone with a compendious method of understanding the language of animals: the inquirer must therefore proceed upon these rudiments, and make out more by observation and good canine society. He shows finally, from the different structure of the organs of speech, that no brute can ever rival man; their chief instrument being the throat, which we use only for vowel sounds. Two important questions are hardly touched in this little treatise: first, as has been said, whether brutes can communicate specific facts to each other; and secondly, to what extent they can associate ideas with the language of man. These ought to occupy our excellent naturalists.

Botany—Columna. 8. Columna, belonging to the Colonna family, and one of the greatest botanists of the sixteenth century, maintained the honour of that science during the present period, which his long life embraced. In the academy of the Lincei, founded by Prince Fredric Cesi about 1606, and to which the revival of natural philosophy is greatly due Columna took a conspicuous share. His Ecphrasis, a history of rare plants, was published in two parts at Rome, in 1606 and 1616. In this he laid down the true basis of the science, by establishing the distinction of genera, which Gesner, Cæsalpin, and Camerarius had already conceived, but which it was left for Columna to confirm and employ. He alone, of all the contemporary botanists, seems to have appreciated the luminous ideas which Cæsalpin had bequeathed to posterity.[643] In his posthumous observations on the natural history of Mexico by Hernandez, he still farther developed the philosophy of botanical arrangements. Columna is the first who used copper instead of wood to delineate plants; an improvement which soon became general. This was in the Φυτοβασανος, sive Plantarum aliquot Historia, 1594. There are errors in this work; but it is remarkable for the accuracy of the descriptions, and for the correctness and beauty of the figures.[644]

[643] Biogr. Univ.

[644] Id. Sprengel.

John and Gaspar Bauhin. 9. Two brothers, John and Gaspar Bauhin, inferior in philosophy to Columna, made more copious additions to the nomenclature and description of plants. The elder, who was born in 1541, and had acquired some celebrity as a botanist in the last century, lived to complete, but not to publish, an Historia Plantarum Universalis, which did not appear till 1650. It contains the descriptions of 5,000 species, and the figures of 3,577, but small and ill executed. His brother, though much younger, had preceded him, not only by the Phytopinax in 1596, but by his chief work, the Pinax Theatri Botanici, in 1623. “Gaspar Bauhin,” says a modern botanist, “is inferior to his brother in his descriptions and in sagacity; but his delineations are better, and his synonyms more complete. They are both below Clusius in description, and below several older botanists in their figures. In their arrangement they follow Lobel, and have neglected the lights which Cæsalpin and Columna had held out. Their chief praise is to have brought together a great deal of knowledge acquired by their predecessors, but the merit of both has been exaggerated.”[645]

[645] Biog. Univ. Pulteney speaks more highly of John Bauhin. “That which Gesner performed for zoology, John Bauhin effected in botany. It is, in reality, a repository of all that was valuable in the ancients, in his immediate predecessors, and in the discoveries of his own time, relating to the history of vegetables, and is executed with that accuracy and critical judgment which can only be exhibited by superior talents.” Hist. of Botany in England, i. 190.

Parkinson. 10. Johnson, in 1636, published an edition of Gerard’s Herbal. But the Theatrum Botanicum of Parkinson, in 1640, is a work, says Pulteney, of much more originality than Gerard’s and it contains abundantly more matter. We find in it near 3,800 plants; but many descriptions recur more than once. The arrangement is in seventeen classes, partly according to the known or supposed qualities of the plant, and partly according to their external character.[646] “This heterogeneous classification, which seems to be founded on that of Dodoens, shows the small advances that had been made towards any truly scientific distribution; on the contrary, Gerard, Johnson, and Parkinson, had rather gone back, by not sufficiently pursuing the example of Lobel.”

[646] P. 146.

Sect. II.

Sometimes ascribed to Servetus. 13. The famous work of Servetus, Christianismi Restitutio, has excited the attention of the literary part of the world, only by the unhappy fate it brought upon the author, and its extreme scarcity, but by a remarkable passage wherein he has been supposed to describe the circulation of the blood. That Servetus had a just idea of the pulmonary circulation and the aeration of the blood in the lungs, is manifest by this passage, and is denied by no one; but it has been the opinion of anatomists that he did not apprehend the return of the mass of the blood through the veins to the right auricle of the heart.[647]

[647] In the first volume of this work, p. 643, I have observed that Levasseur had come much nearer to the theory of a general circulation than Servetus. But the passage in Levasseur, which I knew only from the quotation in Portal, Hist. de l’Anatomie, i., 373, does not, on consulting the book itself, bear out the inference which Portal seems to deduce; and he has, not quite rightly, omitted all expressions which he thought erroneous. Thus Levasseur precedes the first sentence of Portal’s quotation by the following: Intus (in corde) sunt sinus seu ventriculi duo tantum, septo quodam medio discreti, per cujus foramina sanguis et spiritus communicatur. In utroque duo vasa habentur. For this he quotes Galen; and the perforation of the septum of the heart is known to be one of Galen’s errors. Upon the whole, there seems no ground for believing that Levasseur was acquainted with the general circulation; and though his language may at first lead us to believe that he speaks of that through the lungs, even this is not distinctly made out. Sprengel, in his History of Medicine, does not mention the name of Levasseur (or Vassæus, as he was called in Latin) among those who anticipated, in any degree, the discovery of circulation. The book quoted by Portal is Vassæus in Anatomen Corporis Humani Tabulæ Quatuor, several times printed between 1540 and 1560.

Andrès (Origine e Progressio d’Ogni Litteratura, vol. xiv., p. 37) has put in a claim for a Spanish farrier, by name Reina, who, in a book printed in 1552, but of which there seems to have been an earlier edition (Libro di Maniscalcheria hecho y ordenado por Francisco de la Reyna), asserts, in few and plain words, as Andrès quotes them in Italian, that the blood goes in a circle through all the limbs. I do not know that the book has been seen by anyone else; and it would be desirable to examine the context, since other writers have seemed to know the truth without really apprehending it.

That Servetus was only acquainted with the pulmonary circulation, has been the general opinion. Portal, though in one place he speaks with less precision, repeatedly limits the discovery to this; and Sprengel does not entertain the least suspicion that it went farther. Andrès (xiv. 38), not certainly a medical authority, but conversant with such, and very partial to Spanish claimants, asserts the same. If a more general language may be found in some writers, it may be ascribed to their want of distinguishing the two circulations. A medical friend who, at my request, perused and considered the passage in Servetus, as it is quoted in Allwoerden’s life, says in a letter, “All that this passage implies which has any reference to the greater circulation, may be comprised in the following points:—1. That the heart transmits a vivifying principle along the arteries and the blood which they contain to the anastomosing veins; 2. That this living principle vivifies the liver and the venous system generally; 3. That the liver produces the blood itself, and transmits it through the vena cava to the heart, in order to obtain the vital principle, by performing the lesser circulation, which Servetus seems perfectly to comprehend.

“Now, according to this view of the passage, all the movement of the blood implied is that which takes place from the liver, through the vena cava to the heart, and that of the lesser circulation. It would appear to me that Servetus is on the brink of the discovery of the circulation; but that his notions respecting the transmission of his ‘vitalis spiritus,’ diverted his attention from that great movement of the blood itself, which Harvey discovered.... It is clear, that the quantity of blood sent to the heart for the elaboration of the vital spiritus, is, according to Servetus, only that furnished by the liver to the vena cava inferior. But the blood thus introduced is represented by him as performing the circulation through the lungs very regularly.”

It appears singular that, while Servetus distinctly knew that the septum of the heart, paries ille medius, as he calls it, is closed, which Berenger had discovered, and Vesalius confirmed (though the bulk of anatomists long afterwards adhered to Galen’s notion of perforation), and consequently, that some other means must exist for restoring the blood from the left division of the heart to the right, he should not have seen the necessity of a system of vessels to carry forward this communication.

To Columbus. 14. Columbus is acknowledged to have been acquainted with the pulmonary circulation. He says of his own discovery, that no one had observed or consigned it to writing before. Arantius, according to Portal, has described the pulmonary circulation still better than Columbus, while Sprengel denies that he has described it all. It is perfectly certain, and is admitted on all sides, that Columbus did not know the systemic circulation: in what manner he disposed of the blood does not very clearly appear; but, as he conceived a passage to exist between the ventricles of the heart, it is probable, though his words do not lead to this inference, that he supposed the aerated blood to be transmitted back in this course.[648]

[648] The leading passage in Columbus (De Re Anatomica, lib. vii., p. 177, edit. 1559), which I have not found quoted by Portal or Sprengel, is as follows: Inter hos ventriculos septum adest, per quod fere omnes existimant sanguini a dextro ventriculo ad sinistrum aditum patefieri; id ut fieret facilius, in transitu ob vitalium spirituum generationem demum reddi; sed longa errant via; nam sanguis per arteriosam venam ad pulmonem fertur; ibique attenuatur; deinde cum aere una per arteriam venalem ad sinistrum cordis ventriculum defertur; quod nemo hactenus aut animadvertit aut scriptum reliquit; licet maximè et ab omnibus animadvertendum. He afterwards makes a remark, in which Servetus had preceded him, that the size of the pulmonary artery (vena arteriosa) is greater than would be required for the nutrition of the lungs alone. Whether he knew of the passages in Servetus or no, notwithstanding his claim of originality is not perhaps manifest: the coincidence as to the function of the lungs in aerating the blood is remarkable; but, if Columbus had any direct knowledge of the Christianismi Restitutio, he did not choose to follow it in the remarkable discovery that there is no perforation in the septum between the ventricles.

And to Cæsalpin. 15. Cæsalpin, whose versatile genius entered upon every field of research, has, in more than one of his treatises relating to very different topics, and especially in that upon plants, some remarkable passages on the same subject, which approach more nearly than any we have seen to a just notion of the general circulation, and have led several writers to insist on his claim as a prior discoverer to Harvey. Portal admits that this might be regarded as a fair pretension, if he were to judge from such passages; but there are others which contradict this supposition, and show Cæsalpin to have had a confused and imperfect idea of the office of the veins. Sprengel, though at first he seems to incline more towards the pretensions of Cæsalpin, comes ultimately almost to the same conclusion; and giving the reader the words of most importance, leaves him to form his own judgment. The Italians are more confident: Tiraboschi and Corniani, neither of whom are medical authorities, put in an unhesitating claim for Cæsalpin as the discoverer of the circulation of the blood not without unfair reflections on Harvey.[649]

[649] Tiraboschi, x., 49. Corniani, vi., 8. He quotes, on the authority of another Italian writer, il giudizio di que illustri Inglesi, i fratelli Hunter, i quali, esaminato bene il processo di questa causa, si maravigliano della sentenza data in favore del loro concittadino. I must doubt, till more evidence is produced, whether this be true.

The passage in Cæsalpin’s Quæstiones Peripateticæ is certainly the most resembling a statement of the entire truth that can be found in any writer before Harvey. I transcribe it from Dutens’s Origine des Découvertes, vol. ii., p. 23. Idcirco pulmo per venam arteriis similem ex dextro cordis ventriculo fervidum hauriens sanguinem, eumque per anastomosin arteriæ venali reddens, quæ in sinistrum cordis ventriculum tendit, transmisso interim aere frigido per asperæ arteriæ canales, qui juxta arteriam venalem protenduntur, non tamen osculis communicantes, ut putavit Galenus solo, tactu temperat. Huic sanguinis circulationi ex dextro cordis ventriculo per pulmones in sinistrum ejusdem ventriculum optimè respondent ea quæ ex dissectione apparent. Nam duo sunt vasa in dextrum ventriculum desinentia, duo etiam in sinistrum: duorum autem unum intromittit tantum, alterum educit, membranis eo ingenio constitutis. Vas igitur intromittens vena et magna quidem in dextro, quæ cava appellatur; parva autem in sinistro ex pulmone introducens, cujus unica est tunica, ut cæterarum venarum. Vas autem educens arteria est magna quidem in sinistro, quæ aorta appellatur; parva autem in dextro, ad pulmones derivans, cujus similiter duæ sunt tunicæ, ut in cæteris arteriis.

In the treatise De Plantis we have a similar, but shorter passage. Nam in animalibus videmus alimentum per venas duci ad cor tanquam ad officinam caloris insiti, et adepta inibi ultima perfectione, per arterias in universum corpus distribui agente spiritu, qui ex eodem alimento in corde gignitur. I have taken this from the article of Cæsalpin in the Biographie Universelle.

Generally unknown before Harvey. 16. It is thus manifest that several anatomists of the sixteenth century were on the verge of completely detecting the law by which the motion of the blood is governed; and the language of one is so strong, that we must have recourse, in order to exclude his claim, to the irresistible fact that he did not confirm by proof his own theory, nor announce it in such a manner as to attract the attention of the world. Certainly, when the doctrine of a general circulation was advanced by Harvey, he both announced it as a paradox, and was not deceived in expecting that it would be so accounted. Those again who strove to depreciate his originality, sought intimations in the writings of the ancients, and even spread a rumour that he had stolen the papers of Father Paul; but it does not appear that they talked, like some moderns, of plagiarism from Levasseur or Cæsalpin.

His discovery. 17. William Harvey first taught the circulation of the blood in London, in 1619; but his Exercitatio de Motu Cordis was not published till 1628. He was induced, as is said, to conceive the probability of this great truth, by reflecting on the final cause of those valves, which his master, Fabricius de Aquapendente, had demonstrated in the veins; valves whose structure was such as to prevent the reflux of the blood towards the extremities. Fabricius himself seems to have been ignorant of this structure, and certainly of the circulation; for he presumes that they serve to prevent the blood from flowing like a river towards the feet and hands, and from collecting in one part. Harvey followed his own happy conjecture by a long inductive process of experiments on the effects of ligatures, and on the observed motion of the blood in living animals.

Unjustly doubted to be original. 18. Portal has imputed to Harvey an unfair silence as to Servetus, Columbus, Levasseur, and Cæsalpin, who had all preceded him in the same track. Tiraboschi copies Portal, and Corniani speaks of the appropriation of Cæsalpin’s discovery by Harvey. It may be replied, that no one can reasonably suppose Harvey to have been acquainted with the passage in Servetus. But the imputation of suppressing the merits of Columbus is grossly unjust, and founded upon ignorance or forgetfulness of Harvey’s celebrated Exercitation. In the proœmium to this treatise he observes, that almost all anatomists have hitherto supposed with Galen, that the mechanism of the pulse is the same as that of respiration. But he not less than three times makes an exception for Columbus, to whom he most expressly refers the theory of a pulmonary circulation.[650] Of Cæsalpin he certainly says nothing; but there seems to be no presumption that he was acquainted with that author’s writings. Were it even true that he had been guided in his researches by the obscure passages we have quoted, could this set aside the merit of that patient induction by which he established his own theory? Cæsalpin asserts at best, what we may say he divined, but did not know to be true; Harvey asserts what he had demonstrated. The one is an empiric in a philosophical sense, the other a legitimate minister of truth. It has been justly said, that he alone discovers who proves; nor is there a more odious office, or a more sophistical course of reasoning, than to impair the credit of great men, as Dutens wasted his erudition in doing, by hunting out equivocal and insulated passages from older writers, in order to depreciate the originality of the real teachers of mankind.[651] It may indeed be thought wonderful that Servetus, Columbus, or Cæsalpin should not have more distinctly apprehended the consequences of what they maintained, since it seems difficult to conceive the lesser circulation without the greater; but the defectiveness of their views is not to be alledged as a counterbalance to the more steady sagacity of Harvey. The solution of their falling so short is that they were right, not indeed quite by guess, but upon insufficient proof; and that the consciousness of this embarrassing their minds, prevented them from deducing inferences which now appear irresistible. In every department of philosophy, the researches of the first inquirers have often been arrested by similar causes.[652]

[650] Pæne omnes huc usque anatomici medici et philosophi supponunt cum Galeno eundem usum esse pulsus, quam respirationis. But though he certainly claims the doctrine of a general circulation as wholly his own, and counts it a paradox which will startle everyone, he as expressly refers (p. 38 and 41 of the Exercitatio) that of a pulmonary transmission of the blood to Columbus, peritissimo, doctissimoque anatomico; and observes, in his proœmium, as an objection to the received theory, quomodo probabile est (uti notavit Rualdus Columbus) tanto sanguine opus esse ad nutritionem pulmonum, cum hoc vas, vena videlicet arteriosa (hoc est, uti tum loquebantur, arteria pulmonalis) exsuperet magnitudine utrumque ramum distributionis venæ cavæ descendentis cruralem, p. 16.

[651] This is the general character of a really learned and interesting work by Dutens Origine des Découvertes attribuées aux Modernes. Justice is due to those who have first struck out, even without following up, original ideas in any science; but not at the expense of those who, generally without knowledge of what had been said before, have deduced the same principles from reasoning or from observation, and carried them out to important consequences. Pascal quotes Montaigne for the shrewd remark, that we should try a man who says a wise thing, for we may often find that he does not understand it. Those who entertain a morbid jealousy of modern philosophy, are glad to avail themselves of such hunters into obscure antiquity as Dutens, and they are seconded by all the envious, the uncandid, and by many of the unreflecting among mankind. With respect to the immediate question, the passages which Dutens has quoted from Hippocrates and Plato, have certainly an appearance of expressing a real circulation of the blood by the words περιοδος and περιφερομενου αἱματος; but others, and especially one from Nemesius, on which some reliance has been placed, mean nothing more than the flux and reflux of the blood, which the contraction and dilatation of the heart was supposed to produce. See Dutens, vol. ii., p. 8-13. Mr. Coleridge has been deceived in the same manner by some lines of Jordano Bruno, which he takes to describe the circulation of the blood: whereas, they merely express its movement to and fro, meat et remeat, which might be by the same system of vessels.

[652] The biographer of Harvey in the Biographie Universelle strongly vindicates his claim. Tous les hommes instruits conviennent aujourd’hui que Harvey est la véritable auteur de cette belle découverte.... Césalpin pressentoit la circulation artérielle, en supposant que le sang rétourne des extrémités au cœur; mais ces assertions ne furent point prouvées; elles ne se trouvèrent étayées par aucune expérience, par aucun fait; et l’on peut dire de Césalpin qu’il divina presque la grande circulation dont les lois lui furent totalement inconnues; la découverte en était réservée a Guillaume Harvey.

Harvey’s treatise on Generation. 19. Harvey is the author of a treatise on generation, wherein he maintains that all animals, including men, are derived from an egg. In this book, we first find an argument maintained against spontaneous generation, which, in the case of the lower animals, had been generally received. Sprengel thinks this treatise prolix, and not equal to the author’s reputation.[653] It was first published in 1651.

[653] Hist. de la Médécine, iv., 299. Portal, ii., 477.

Lacteals discovered by Assellius. 20. Next in importance to the discovery of Harvey, is that of Assellius as to the lacteal vessels. Eustachius had observed the thoracic duct in a horse. But Asellius, more by chance, as he owns, than by reflection, perceived the lacteals in a fat dog whom he opened soon after it had eaten. This was in 1622, and his treatise, De Lacteis Venis, was published in 1627.[654] Harvey did not assent to this discovery, and endeavoured to dispute the use of the vessels; nor is it to his honour that even to the end of his life he disregarded the subsequent confirmation that Pecquet and Bartholin had furnished.[655] The former detected the common origin of the lacteal and lymphatic vessels in 1647, though his work on the subject was not published till 1651. But Olaus Rudbeck was the first who clearly distinguished these two kinds of vessels.

[654] Portal, ii., 461. Sprengel, iv., 201. Peiresc soon after this got the body of a man fresh hanged after a good supper, and had the pleasure of confirming the discovery of Asellius by his own eyes. Gassendi, Vita Peirescii, p. 177.

[655] Sprengel, iv., 203.

Optical discoveries of Scheiner. 21. Scheiner, the Jesuit, proved that the retina is the organ of sight, and that the humours serve only to refract the rays which paint the object on the optic nerve. This was in a treatise entitled, Oculus, hoc est, Fundamentum Opticum, 1619.[656] The writings of several anatomists of this period, such as Riolan, Vesling, Bartholin, contain partial accessions to the science; but it seems to have been less enriched by great discoveries, after those already named, than in the preceding century.

[656] Sprengel, iv., 270.

Medicine—Van Helmont. 22. The mystical medicine of Paracelsus continued to have many advocates in Germany. A new class of enthusiasts sprung from the same school, and calling themselves Rosicrucians, pretended to cure diseases by faith and imagination. A true Rosicrucian, they held, had only to look on a patient to cure him. The analogy of magnetism, revived in the last and present age, was commonly employed.[657] Of this school the most eminent was Van Helmont, who combined the Paracelsian superstitions with some original ideas of his own. His general idea of medicine was that its business was to regulate the archæus, an immaterial principle of life and health; to which, like Paracelsus, he attributed a mysterious being and efficacy. The seat of the archæus is in the stomach; and it is to be effected either by a scheme of diet or through the imagination. Sprengel praises Van Helmont for overthrowing many current errors, and for announcing principles since pursued.[658] The French physicians adhered to the Hippocratic school, in opposition to what Sprengel calls the Chemiatric, which, more or less, may be reckoned that of Paracelsus. The Italians were still renowned in medicine. Sanctorius, De Medicina Statica, 1614, seems the only work to which we need allude. It is loaded with eulogy by Portal, Tiraboschi, and other writers.[659]

[657] All in nature, says Croll of Hesse, one of the principal theosophists in medicine, is living; all that lives has its vital force, or astrum, which cannot act without a body, but passes from one to another. All things in the macrocosm are found also in the microcosm. The inward or astral man is Gabalis, from which the science is named. This Gabalis or imagination, is as a magnet to external objects, which it thus attracts. Medicines act by a magnetic force. Sprengel, iii., 362.

[658] Vol. v., p. 22.

[659] Portal, ii., 391. Tiraboschi, xi., 270. Biog. Univ.

Sect. III.

On Oriental Literature—Hebrew Learning—Arabic and other Eastern Languages.

Diffusion of Hebrew. 23. During no period of equal length, since the revival of letters, has the knowledge of the Hebrew language been, apparently, so much diffused among the literary world as in that before us. The frequent sprinkling of its characters in works of the most miscellaneous erudition, will strike the eye of every one who habitually consults them. Nor was this learning by any means so much confined to the clergy as it has been in later times, though their order naturally furnished the greater portion of those who laboured in that field. Some of the chief Hebraists of this age were laymen. The study of this language prevailed most in the protestant countries of Europe, and it was cultivated with much zeal in England. The period between the last years of Elizabeth and the Restoration, may be reckoned that in which a knowledge of Hebrew has been most usual among our divines.

Language not studied in the best method. 24. Upon this subject, I can only assert what I collect to be the verdict of judicious critics.[660] It seems that the Hebrew language was not yet sufficiently studied in the method most likely to give an insight into its principles, by comparing it with all the cognate tongues, latterly called Semitic, spoken in the neighbouring parts of Asia, and manifestly springing from a common source. Postel, indeed, had made some attempts at this in the last century, but his learning was very slight; and Schindler published in 1612 a Lexicon Pentaglottum, in which the Arabic, as well as Syriac and Chaldaic, were placed in apposition with the Hebrew text. Louis De Dieu, whose “Remarks on all the Books of the Old Testament,” were published at Leyden in 1648, has frequently recourse to some of the kindred languages, in order to explain the Hebrew.[661] But the first instructors in the latter had been Jewish rabbis; and the Hebraists of the sixteenth age had imbibed a prejudice, not unnatural though unfounded, that their teachers were best conversant with the language of their forefathers.[662] They had derived from the same source an extravagant notion of the beauty, antiquity, and capacity of the Hebrew; and, combining this with still more chimerical dreams of a mystical philosophy, lost sight of all real principles of criticism.

[660] The fifth volume of Eichhorn’s Geschichte der Cultur is devoted to the progress of Oriental literature in Europe, not very full in characterising the various productions it mentions, but analytically arranged, and highly useful for reference. Jenisch, in his preface to Meninski’s Thesaurus (Vienna, 1780), has traced a sketch of the same subject. We may have trusted in some respects to Simon, Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament. The biographical dictionaries, English and French, have, of course, been resorted to.

[661] Simon, Hist. Critique du Vieux Testament, p. 494.

[662] This was not the case with Luther, who rejected the authority of the rabbis, and thought none but Christians could understand the Old Testament. Simon, p. 375. But Munster, Fagius, and several others, who are found in the Critici Sacri, gave way to the prejudice in favour of rabbinical opinions, and their commentaries are consequently too Judaical, p. 496.

The Buxtorfs. 25. The most eminent Hebrew scholars of this age were the two Buxtorfs of Basle, father and son, both devoted to the rabbinical school. The elder, who had become distinguished before the end of the preceding century, published a grammar in 1609, which long continued to be reckoned the best, and a lexicon of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, in 1623, which was not superseded for more than a hundred years. Many other works relating to these three dialects, as well as to that of the later Jews, do honour to the erudition of the elder Buxtorf; but he is considered as representing a class of Hebraists which, in the more comprehensive Orientalism of the eighteenth century, has lost much of its credit. The son trod closely in his father’s footsteps, whom he succeeded as professor of Hebrew at Basle. They held this chair between them more than seventy years. The younger Buxtorf was engaged in controversies which had not begun in his father’s lifetime. Morin, one of those learned protestants who had gone over to the church of Rome, systematically laboured to establish the authority of those versions which the church had approved, by weakening that of the text which passed for original.[663] Hence, he endeavoured to show, though this could not logically do much for his object, that the Samaritan Pentateuch, lately brought to Europe, which is not in a different language, but merely the Hebrew written in Samaritan characters, is deserving of preference above what is called the Masoretic text, from which the protestant versions are taken. The variations between these are sufficiently numerous to affect a favourite hypothesis, borrowed from the rabbis, but strenuously maintained by the generality of protestants, that the Hebrew text of the Masoretic recension is perfectly incorrupt.[664] Morin’s opinion was opposed by Buxtorf and Hottinger, and by other writers even of the Romish church. It has, however, been countenanced by Simon and Kennicott. The integrity, at least, of the Hebrew copyist, was gradually given up, and it has since been shown that they differ greatly among themselves. The Samaritan Pentateuch was first published in 1645, several years after this controversy began, by Sionita, editor of the Parisian Polyglott. This edition, sometimes called by the name of Le Jay, contains most that is in the Polyglott of Antwerp, with the addition of the Syriac and Arabic versions of the Old Testament.

[663] Simon, p. 522.

[664] Id. p. 522. Eichhorn, v., 464.

Vowel points rejected by Cappel. 26. An epoch was made in Hebrew criticism by a work of Louis Cappel, professor of that language at Saumur, the Arcanum Punctuationis Revelatum, in 1624. He maintained in this an opinion promulgated by Elias Levita, and held by the first reformers and many other protestants of the highest authority, though contrary to that vulgar orthodoxy which is always omnivorous, that the vowel points of Hebrew were invented by certain Jews of Tiberias in the sixth century. They had been generally deemed coeval with the language, or at least brought in by Esdras through divine inspiration. It is not surprising that such an hypothesis clashed with the prejudices of mankind, and Cappel was obliged to publish his work in Holland. The protestants looked upon it as too great a concession in favour of the Vulgate; which having been translated before the Masoretic punctuation, on Cappel’s hypothesis, had been applied to the text, might now claim to stand on higher ground, and was not to be judged by these innovations. After twenty years, the younger Buxtorf endeavoured to vindicate the antiquity of vowel-points; but it is now confessed that the victory remained with Cappel, who has been styled the father of Hebrew criticism. His principal work is the Critica Sacra, published at Paris in 1650, wherein he still farther discredits the existing manuscripts of the Hebrew scriptures, as well as the Masoretic punctuation.[665]

[665] Simon, Eichhorn, &c. A detailed account of this controversy about vowel-points between Cappel and the Buxtorfs will be found in the 12th volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle; and a shorter précis in Eichhorn’s Einleitung in das alte Testament, vol. i., p. 242.

Hebrew scholars. 27. The rabbinical literature, meaning as well the Talmud and other ancient books, as those of the later ages since the revival of intellectual pursuits among the Jews of Spain and the East, gave occupation to a considerable class of scholars. Several of these belong to England, such as Ainsworth, Godwin, Lightfoot, Selden, and Pococke. The antiquities of Judaism were illustrated by Cunæus in Jus Regium Hebræorum, 1623, and especially by Selden, both in the Uxor Hebraica, and in the treatise De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta Hebræos. But no one has left a more durable reputation in this literature than Bochart, a protestant minister at Caen. His Geographia Sacra, published in 1646, is not the most famous of his works, but the only one which falls within this period. It displays great learning and sagacity; but it was impossible, as has been justly observed, that he could thoroughly elucidate this subject at a time when we knew comparatively little of modern Asia, and had few good books of travels. A similar observation might of course be applied to his Hierozoicon, on the animals mentioned in Scripture. Both these works, however, were much extolled in the seventeenth century.

Chaldee and Syriac. 28. In the Chaldee and Syriac languages, which approach so closely to Hebrew, that the best scholars in the latter are rarely unacquainted with them, besides the Buxtorfs, we find Ferrari, author of a Syriac lexicon, published at Rome in 1622; Louis de Dieu of Leyden, whose Syriac grammar appeared in 1626; and the Syriac translation of the Old Testament in the Parisian Polyglott, edited by Gabriel Sionita, in 1642. A Syriac college for the Maronites of Libanus, was founded at Rome by Gregory XIII.; but it did not as yet produce anything of importance.

Arabic. 29. But a language incomparably more rich in literary treasures, and long neglected by Europe, began now to take a conspicuous place in the annals of learning. Scaliger deserves the glory of being the first real Arabic scholar; for Postel, Christman, and a very few more of the sixteenth century, are hardly worth notice. His friend, Casaubon, who extols his acquirements, as usual, very highly, devoted himself some time to this study. But Scaliger made use of the language chiefly to enlarge his own vast sphere of erudition. He published nothing on the subject; but his collections became the base of Rapheling’s Arabic lexicon; and it is said that they were far more extensive than what appears in that work. |Erpenius.| He who properly added this language to the domain of learning was Erpenius, a native of Gorcum, who, at an early age, had gained so unrivalled an acquaintance with the Oriental languages as to be appointed professor of them at Leyden in 1613. He edited the same year the above-mentioned lexicon of Rapheling, and published a grammar, which might not only be accounted the first composed in Europe that deserved the name, but became the guide to most later scholars. Erpenius gave several other works to the world, chiefly connected with the Arabic version of the Scriptures.[666] |Golius.| Golius, his successor in the Oriental chair at Leyden, besides publishing a lexicon of the language, which is said to be still the most copious, elaborate, and complete that has appeared,[667] and several editions of Arabic writings, poetical and historical, contributed still more extensively to bring the range of Arabian literature before the world. He enriched with a hundred and fifty manuscripts, collected in his travels, the library of Leyden, to which Scaliger had bequeathed forty.[668] The manuscripts belonging to Erpenius found their way to Cambridge; while, partly by the munificence of Laud, partly by later accessions, the Bodleian Library at Oxford became extremely rich in this line. The much larger collection in the Escurial seems to have been chiefly formed under Philip III. England was now as conspicuous in Arabian as in Hebrew learning. Selden, Greaves, and Pococke, especially the last, who was probably equal to any Oriental scholar whom Europe had hitherto produced, by translations of the historical and philosophical writings of the Saracenic period, gave a larger compass to general erudition.[669]

[666] Biogr. Univ.

[667] Jenisch, præfatio in Meninski Thesaurus Linguarum Orientalium, p. 110.

[668] Biogr. Univ.

[669] Jenisch, Eichhorn, Biogr. Universelle, Biogr. Britannica.

Other Eastern languages. 30. The remaining languages of the East are of less importance. The Turkish had attracted some degree of attention in the sixteenth century; but the first grammar was published by Megiser, in 1612, a very slight performance; and a better at Paris, by Du Ryer, in 1630.[670] The Persic grammar was given at Rome by Raymondi, in 1614; by De Dieu, at Leyden, in 1639; by Greaves, at London, in 1641 and 1649.[671] An Armenian dictionary, by Rivoli, in 1621, seems the only accession to our knowledge of that ancient language during this period.[672] Athanasius Kircher, a man of immense erudition, restored the Coptic, of which Europe had been wholly ignorant. Those farther eastward had not yet begun to enter much into the studies of Europe. Nothing was known of the Indian; but some Chinese manuscripts had been brought to Rome and Madrid as early as 1580; and not long afterwards, two Jesuits, Roger and Ricci, both missionaries in China, were the first who acquired a sufficient knowledge of the language to translate from it.[673] But scarcely any farther advance took place before the middle of the century.

[670] Eichhorn, v., 367.

[671] Id. 320.

[672] Eichhorn, 351.

[673] Id. 64.

Sect. IV.

On Geography and History.

Purchas’s Pilgrim. 31. Purchas, an English clergyman, imbued by nature, like Hakluyt, with a strong bias towards geographical studies, after having formed an extensive library in that department, and consulted, as he professes, above 1,200 authors, published the first volume of his Pilgrim, a collection of voyages in all parts of the world, in 1613; four more followed in 1625. The accuracy of this useful compiler has been denied by those who have had better means of knowledge, and probably is inferior to that of Hakluyt; but his labour was far more comprehensive. The Pilgrim was at all events a great source of knowledge to the contemporaries of Purchas.[674]

[674] Biogr. Univ. Pinkerton’s Collection of Voyages and Travels. The latter does not value Purchas highly for correctness.

Olearius and Pietro della Valle. 32. Olearius was ambassador from the Duke of Holstein to Moscovy and Persia from 1633 to 1639. His travels, in German, were published in 1647, and have been several times reprinted and translated. He has well described the barbarism of Russia and the despotism of Persia; he is diffuse and episodical, but not wearisome; he observes well and relates faithfully: all who have known the countries he has visited are said to speak well of him.[675] Pietro della Valle is a far more amusing writer. He has thrown his travels over Syria and Persia into the form of letters written from time to time, and which he professes to have recovered from his correspondents. This perhaps is not a very probable story, both on account of the length of the letters, and the want of that reference to the present time and to small passing events which authentic letters commonly exhibit. His observations, however, on all the countries he visited, especially Persia, are apparently such as consist with the knowledge we have obtained from later travellers. Gibbon says that none have better observed Persia, but his vanity and prolixity are insufferable. Yet I think that Della Valle can hardly be reckoned tedious; and if he is a little egotistical, the usual and almost laudable characteristic of travellers, this gives a liveliness and racy air to his narrative. What his wife, the Lady Maani, an Assyrian Christian, whom he met with at Bagdad, and who accompanied him through his long wanderings, may really have been, we can only judge from his eulogies on her beauty, her fidelity, and her courage; but she throws an air of romance over his adventures, not unpleasing to the reader. The travels of Pietro della Valle took place from 1614 to 1626; but the book was first published at Rome in 1650, and has been translated into different languages.