Denique ut si quid reipub. literariæ ex opera mea utile, et commodum hac in parte accederet, forsan recto fecisse me constaret, nec alii omnino inertem me vixisse vederent, et quod senex ait in Comœdia:
Nunquam quisquam ita bene subducta ratione ad vitam fuit,Quin res, ætas, usus aliquid apportet novi,Aliquid admoneat, ut illa quæ te scire credas, nescias.Et quæ tibi putaris prima in experiundo repudies. [Demea, in Terence, Adelphoe 855-58.]
[Finally, if any use or benefit to this department of the republic of letters should accrue from my labours, it will, perhaps, be allowed that I have not lived idly, and as the old man in the comedy says:
Never yet has anyone attained such a well-ordered way of life,but that experience, age, and custom have brought something new,or corrected him, so that what you thought you knew, you knew not;and what had seemed foremost to you, by testing you repudiate.]
—William Harvey, Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis (1628), Cap. I.
