Guiding the followers of Vesalius was the belief that the human body expressed in miniature the divine workmanship of God, and that its form corresponded to the greater form of the macrocosm. Such ideas did not vanish overnight, to be replaced by the clear light of Cartesian rationality. Indeed, William Harvey himself leaned on a system of beliefs inherited from Aristotle, which held that the universe and the human body—the interior and exterior worlds—were united in the common bond of correspondence. Within this system, features observed within the body were held to replicate features to be seen in the world at large.41