In a notable but misty passage of his Christianismi Restitutio, where he speaks of the brighter and purer part of the mind as having its home in one of the chambers of the brain, he says: "There, calling up the germs of innate ideas in company with the images of things perceived and their similitudes, the mind excogitates and composes others that are new; from one infers another and another, contrasts, compares, distinguishes, and so, God giving the light, attains to truth at last." Somewhat freely interpreted we here meet with the very soul of the inductive philosopher -with the spirit that in after years found congenial resting-place in our Bacons, Newtons, and Harveys!

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1 “Ubi lucidior et purior est mentis pars; quæ, divinitus innata sibi idearum semina excerens, ex semel jam apprehensis imaginibus, potest res novas, similitudine quadam, cogitare sive componere, immaginata commiscere, ex aliis alia inferre, inter ea discernere, et puram ipsam veritatem colligere, lustrante Deo.”

SERVETUS.

SERVETUS (Michael), a native of the old Spanish Kingdom of Aragon, was born in the year 1509 of a family in easy circumstances, his father following law as a kind of hereditary profession in the town of Villanova. From all we know, Servetus must have received an elementary education calculated to qualify him for the service of the Church; but, of a singularly self-reliant, independent nature, he seems soon to have abandoned the idea of becoming either monk or priest, and betook himself to the study of law as his future profession. With this view he proceeded to Toulouse, the most celebrated legal school in those days; and there, beside other reading outside the faculty of jurisprudence, he found an opportunity to peruse the Bible —a kind of reading that may be said not only to have influenced the whole of his after life, but to have been that which brought him to his untimely end.

Recommended to Fra Juan Quintana, Confessor of the Emperor Charles V., in the quality of Secretary as we may presume, Servetus journeyed from Spain through France in the Imperial suite first to Italy,

and then to Germany; but neither at Bologna where he witnessed the coronation of the Emperor, nor at Augsburg during the sitting of the Diet, did he see aught that did not confirm the strong dislike of the Papacy, its dogmas and all that follows therefrom, which he appears to have imbibed from reading the forbidden book.

In the frame of mind with which we may now venture to credit Servetus, service with a priest in the atmosphere of a Court was not likely to endure. In the course of a year, or little more, accordingly, we find him free, and, full of certain new theological notions, seeking acquaintance with the Reformers of Basle and Strasburg, by whom, however, with a single exception perhaps, he was very coldly received.

Disappointed of recognition in quarters where he seems to have felt sure of sympathy, Servetus now resolved to appeal to a wider public, and to print the treatise he had written on Trinitarian Errors.' This he speedily accomplished; adding in the course of the following year a sequel to the work under the title of “Two Dialogues on the Trinity.”2

Both of these publications, be it said in a word, meant by the writer to be specially directed against the dogmas of the Church of Rome, were found highly heretical by the Reformers, although the daring specu

1 De Trinitatis Erroribus Libri Septem. Auctore Michael Serveto alias Reves, ab Aragonia, Hispano. 12mo, s. 1. 1531.

lations of Michael Servetus of Aragon, the Spaniard, were eagerly read and discussed by the very foremost men among them. No open countenance, however, could be given to the author of such innovations. Not only failing to find favour and footing with the Reformers of Basle and Strasburg, but observing that he had become an object of suspicion, and that his liberty if not his life was in danger from the civil authorities of Basle, Servetus now betook himself to France, under the assumed name of Villeneuve or Villanovanus, by which he continued to be known during the rest of his life. Reaching Paris in the course of the year 1533, he gave himself up to the study of mathematics, geography, and astronomy; and there, still hankering after theological matters, he sought out and made the acquaintance of the man who subsequently became his most determined enemy and persecutor

celebrated John Calvin.

the

The next we hear of Michel Villeneuve is in Lyons, engaged as reader and editor in the printing establishment of the brothers Trechsel; and there it was that he became known to Dr. Symphorien Champier, a patron of learning, besides being the physician of highest repute in the city, and well pleased to play the part of a Mecenas to struggling talent. Interesting himself in one so intelligent and well informed as Michel Villeneuve, Champier led him away from astronomy, mathematics, and theology to the study of medicine;'

1 1 See two interesting articles by the Rev. H. Tollin in Goschen's

into the rudiments of which great science Champier appears to have taken some pains to initiate him. But there was no established school of medicine at Lyons. Finding himself in funds, however, through the good work he had done with the Trechsels, he returned to Paris, then in the zenith of its fame as a school of medicine, and attending the prelections of Jacobus Sylvius, and engaging himself as prosector to Winter of Andernach, he acquired such a knowledge of the structure of the human body as led him in after years to the most brilliant induction of his age-the transit of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart by a lengthened passage through the lungs.

Graduating M.A. and M.B. in due course, Dr. Villeneuve settled as physician in Paris, and by way of making his existence known to the world of the metropolis, within a year or so of his reception by the Faculty of Medicine, he wrote and published a small volume on the class of medicines designated Syrups' —much akin, it would seem, to the tisanes still popular in the medical practice of the French.

The book was well received; practical in its tendency, and unmistakably written by a man of learning and ability; could its author but have had patience it must certainly have proved the foundation of his fortune. But business comes slowly to the young Deutsche Klinik, 1875, and Virchow's Archiv, 1874, Bd. 61, headed Wie Servet Mediciner werde.

1 Syruporum universa ratio ad Galeni censuram concinnata. 12mo. Paris, 1537.