Excerpt from The Growth of Truth: As Illustrated in the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood, Being the Harveian Oration Delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, October 18, 1906 History is simply the biography of the mind Of man; and our interest in history, and its educational value to us, is directly proportionate to the completeness of our study of the individuals through whom this mind has been manifested. To understand clearly our position in any science today, we must go back to its beginnings, and trace its gradual development, following certain laws, difficult to interpret and often obscured in the brilliancy of achievements - laws which everywhere illustrate this biography, this human endeavour, working through the long ages; and particularly is this the case with that history of the organized experience of the race which we call science. In the first place, like a living organism, Truth grows, and its gradual evolution may be traced from the tiny germ to the mature product. Never springing, Minerva like, to full stature at once, Truth may suffer all the hazards incident to generation and gestation. Much of history is a record of the mishaps Of truths which have struggled to the birth, only to die or else to wither in premature decay. Or the germ may be dormant for centuries, awaiting the fullness of time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.