great English physiologist
proclaimed the circulation of the blood, and such suspicions were
rather openly expressed by those who were too conservative to accept
this new teaching. The heart had been considered, not figuratively as
we now speak, but seriously and very literally, as the seat of the
emotions. Over and over again, all men had had the experience that in
times of emotional stress the heart was disturbed. They could feel
their emotions welling up from their hearts, therefore there was no
doubt in their minds of the truth of the old teaching. Into the midst
of this perfectly harmonious concord of scientific opinion, without a
dissenting voice anywhere in the world, comes a young man not yet
twenty-five, who almost sacrilegiously declares that the heart is
merely a muscle and not a secreter of emotions. Fortunately for him,
he was of gentler disposition than most of the other {401} men who
have had the independence of mind to make discoveries, and so no very
bitter opposition was aroused against him. He was considered too
harmless to be taken very seriously, but at least when the
announcement first came, most of those who knew anything about
medicine, or thought they did, and this is much more serious in these
cases, recognized that young Stensen had somehow allowed himself to be
led astray into a very foolish notion, and one that could only emanate
from a mind not quite capable of realizing truth as it was; and they
did not hesitate to say so.

After this Stensen found the Netherlands quite an unsympathetic place
for his studies, and so moved down into Italy, where he could find
more freedom of thought for research and more appreciation, and
continue his original investigations with less scorn for his new
discoveries. Here he continued to hit upon original ideas that were
likely to make things quite uncomfortable for him, not because of
religious intolerance, but because of the more or less hide-bound
conservatism that always characterizes mediocre minds. Far from coming
into disrespect here, however, he acquired many and very close
friends. He laid the foundation of modern geology and wrote a little
book that is a very wonderful anticipation of supposedly nineteenth
century ideas in that science. He had come down into Italy a
Protestant, having been raised in that religion in his native Denmark.
He found so much of sympathy with every phase of intellectual activity
among the ecclesiastics in Italy, that he n