THE GROWTH OF TRUTH
AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE DISCOVERY OF THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD
I.
Only those of us, Mr. President and Fellows, who have had the good fortune to hold the distinguished position which by your kind grace, Sir, I hold to-day, only those of us who have delivered the Harveian Oration, can appreciate the extraordinary difficulties besetting a subject, every aspect of which has been considered, very often too, by men who have brought to the task a combination of learning and literary skill at once the envy and the despair of their successors. But I take it, Sir, that in this Ambarvalia or commemorative festival for blessing the fruits of our great men, ordained definitely as such by him whose memory is chiefly in our minds to-day, our presence here in due order and array, confers distinction upon an occasion of which the oration is but an incident. But, honour worthy of such a theme should be associated with full knowledge of the conditions under which these great men lived and moved; and here comes in the real difficulty, because it is rarely possible to bring the fruits of independent critical investigation into their lives and works. Particularly hard is it for those of us who have had to live the life of the arena : our best efforts bear the stamp of the student, not of the scholar. In my own case, a deep
