He has collected many facts respecting ancient thought, (for his industry is laudable,) but the evil is that he has no real use for his facts when obtained.  Think of finding in an elaborate “History of the Intellectual Development of Europe” no use for the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” but that of bolstering up the proposition that there was in Greece an age of unreasoning credulity!  It is like employing Jove to turn a spit or to set up tenpins.  Everywhere, save in a single direction, and that of secondary importance with respect to antique thought, he practises the same enormous waste of material.  Socrates is a mere block in his way, which he treats with nothing finer than a crow-bar.  Socrates had set a higher value on ethical philosophy, derived from the consciousness of man, than on physical science; consequently, Dr. Draper’s choice must be between treating him weakly and treating him brutally; he chooses the latter, and plays his role with vigor,—­talks of his “lecherous countenance,” and calls him “infidel” and “hypocrite.”  Plato he treats with more respect, but scarcely with more intelligence.  He makes an inventory of Plato’s opinions, as a shopman might of his goods; and does it with an air which says, “He who buys these gets cheated,” while occasionally be cannot help breaking out into an expression of impatience.  Indeed, not only Plato, but Athens itself, represents to Dr. Draper’s mind the mere raw youth, the mere ambitious immaturity of Grecian intellect, amusing itself with “faith” because incapable of “reason.”  He finds its higher and only rational stage at Alexandria, at Syracuse, or wherever results in physical science were attained.  In Aristotle, indeed, he is able to have some complacency, since the Stagirite is in a degree “physiological.”  But this pleasure is partial, for Aristotle has the trick of eminent intelligences, and must needs presently spread his pinions and launch forth into the great skies of speculation; whereupon, albeit he flies low, almost touching the earth with the tips of his wings, our physiological philosopher begins to pish and pshaw.

In his treatment of modern or post-Roman history, Dr. Draper goes over new ground in much the same spirit.  He seems, indeed, nearer to his facts, deals more with actual life, is more lively, graphic, engaging, and has not that air of an intellectual shopman making an inventory.  Considered as a general review of the history of Europe, written chiefly in the interest of physical science, but also in marked opposition to Roman Catholicism, it might pass unchallenged and not without praise.  But considered as a final scientific interpretation of the last fifteen centuries, its shortcomings are simply immeasurable.  The history of Europe, from the fusion of the Christian Impulse with Roman imperialism to the time of Columbus, Copernicus, and Luther, is the history of a grand religious idealism established over men’s heads in the form of an institution, because too