about philosophy, in Bacon. In the beginning of the
period, Harvey revolutionized the biological sciences, and at the end of
it, Newton was preparing the revolution of the physical sciences. I know
not any period of our history--I doubt if there be any period of the
history of any nation--which has precisely such a record as this to
show for a hundred years. But I do not recall these facts to your
recollection for a mere vainglorious purpose. I myself am of opinion
that the memory of the great men of a nation is one of its most precious
possessions--not because we have any right to plume ourselves upon their
having existed as a matter of national vanity, but because we have a
just and rational ground of expectation that the race which has brought
forth such products as these may, in good time and under fortunate
circumstances, produce the like again. I am one of those people who
do not believe in the natural decay of nations. I believe, to speak
frankly, though perhaps not quite so politely as I could wish--but I
am getting near the end of my lecture--that the whole theory is a
speculation invented by cowards to excuse knaves. My belief is, that so
far as this old English stock is concerned it has in it as much sap
and vitality and power as it had two centuries ago; and that, with due
pruning of rotten branches, and due hoeing up of weeds, which will grow
about the roots, the like products will be yielded again. The "weeds"
to which I refer are mainly three: the first of them is dishonesty, the
second is sentimentality, and the third is luxury. If William Harvey had
been a dishonest man--I mean in the high sense of the word--a man who
failed in the ideal of honesty--he would have believed what it was
easiest to believe--that which he received on the authority of his
predecessors. He would not have felt that his highest duty was to know
of his own knowledge that that which he said he believed was true, and
we should never have had those investigations, pursued through good
report and evil report, which ended in discoveries so fraught with
magnificent results for science and for man. If Harvey had been a
sentimentalist--by which I mean a person of false pity, a person who
has not imagination enough to see that great, distant evils may be much
worse than those which we can picture to ourselves, because they
happen to be immediate and near (for that, I take it, is the essence of
sentimentalism)--if Harvey had been a person of