moment has arrived for the savant to
assume the sway that rightfully devolves upon him and declare the
confiscation of all claims to the supreme interest of the search after
truth.

For my part, therefore, so far from blaming Vesalius because he had
dissected a living man, I should have accorded him most profound
reverence for this proof of elevation above ordinary prejudice. And
the more I thought over the matter, the more I became convinced that
the accusation was well founded, that the deed had really been
performed, which moral cowardice alone induced the glorious criminal
to disavow.

My brooding fancy, satiated with the image of the great anatomist,
began to occupy itself with his so-called victim. Who was he? what
motive had induced him to surrender his body to the scalpel of the
master, his life to the realization of the master's idea? A slave, a
debtor, from whom the ingenious savant had thus exacted a pound of
flesh? A trembling poltroon, forced to the sacrifice more reluctantly
than Isaac to the altar? I preferred rather to believe that it was a
favorite pupil, burning with enthusiasm for the master, joyful to
participate in his mighty labors at the cheap expense of his own
lesser life. Had Vesalius been a general, and he an aide-de-camp
before a rampart, all the world would have applauded him, rushing upon
death at the word of command. I myself had known, by a brief
experience, the thrilling impulse to fight, to die, in behalf of a
cause. Rivers of blood had been shed for honor, for loyalty, for
patriotism. Was the desire for truth less ardent than these worn-out
passions! Could it not rather supply their place in the new world
about to be created by science? What could produce a greater
impression upon the entire world, and more forcibly announce the
inauguration of a new era, than the voice of a man who should declare,
"I refuse to draw my sword for the hideous folly of war; to surrender
my life at the absurd caprice of princes; but I offer myself
cheerfully, unreservedly, as the instrument of Science, in her
majestic schemes for the discovery of truth!"

My recent studies on the problem of the heart's movements brought me
into peculiar sympathy with the object of Vesalius' researches. The
tantalizing results as often obtained by experiments on lower animals,
the uncertainty of the inferences that could be deduced from them to
form a theory of the human organism, had often excited in me a lively
desi