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 that kind, he, being one of the kindest men living, would never have
pursued those researches which, as he tells us over and over again, he
was obliged to pursue in order to the ascertainment of those facts which
have turned out to be of such inestimable value to the human race; and
I say, if on such grounds he had failed to do so, he would have failed
in his duty to the human race. The third point is that Harvey was
devoid of care either for wealth, or for riches, or for ambition. The
man found a higher ideal than any of these things in the pursuit of
truth and the benefit of his fellow-men. If we all go and do likewise,
I think there is no fear for the decadence of England.
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