Abstract
Near the end of his last major treatise, De generatione animalium (1651), William Harvey confronts for one final time the vexing philosophical difficulties attending the physiological activity and generation of living organisms.' Harvey's analysis results in an overt, if somewhat speculative and incomplete, theory of living matter that complements his noted insistence on the primacy and inherent vitality of the blood.2 This theory of matter more precisely, some extraordinarily suggestive musings about living matter is framed by Harvey's rejection of alternative explanations of vital activity. With force and telling specificity, he informs us that
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