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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: but he is one who has had, for some years past, even more reason
than Alva for not speaking his mind. What he looked like we know
well, for Titian has painted him from the life--a tall, bold, well-
dressed man, with a noble brain, square and yet lofty, short curling
locks and beard, an eye which looks as though it feared neither man
nor fiend--and it has had good reason to fear both--and features
which would be exceeding handsome, but for the defiant snub-nose.
That is Andreas Vesalius, of Brussels, dreaded and hated by the
doctors of the old school--suspect, moreover, it would seem to
inquisitors and theologians, possibly to Alva himself; for he has
dared to dissect human bodies; he has insulted the mediaevalists at
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