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.
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