great to be held in solution by their thoughts.  Of such a matter the writer in question could give no other than a very inadequate account.  Wanting that which is highest in the reason of man, namely, imaginative intellect, he has no natural fitness for explaining such a fact; while his unconsciousness of any such deficiency, his persuasion that an imagination and a delusion are one and the same, and his extreme dogmatic momentum cause him to handle it with all the confidence of commanding power.

Considered, again, as a polemic to the point that history revolves forever through five recurring epochs, and that, as our civilization has been now four centuries in the “age of reason,” it must next (and probably soon) pass into the fifth stage, that of decrepitude, and thence into infantile credulity and imbecility once more,—­as a demonstration that history is such a Sisyphus, his induction is weak even to flimsiness.

But on approaching times yet more modern, the dominating predilection of the writer no longer misleads him; it guides him, on the contrary, to the truth.  For of the last four centuries the grand affirmative fact is the rise of physical science.  Or rather, perhaps, one should say that it was the grand fact until some fifty years ago.  Science is still making progress; indeed, leaving out of sight one or two great Newtonian steps, we may say that it is advancing more rapidly than ever.  But now at length its spiritual correlative begins to emerge, and a new epoch forms itself, as we fully believe, in the history of humanity.

In celebrating this birth and growth of science, in treating it as the central and commanding fact of modern times, and in suggesting the vast modification of beliefs and habits of thought which this must effect, Dr. Draper has a large theme, and he treats it con amore.  In this respect, his book has value, and is worth its cost to himself and his readers.  In some branches of science, moreover, as in Physiology, and in questions of vital organization generally, he is to be named among the authorities, and we gladly attend when he raises his voice.

Yet even in respect to this feature, his work cannot be praised without reserve.  Though a man of scientific eminence, yet in the pure and open spirit of science it is impossible for him to write.  He is a dogmatist, a controversialist, a propagandist.  No matter of what science he treats, his exposition ever has an aim beyond itself.  It is always a means to an end; and that end is always a dogma.  For example, he has written a work on Human Physiology; and in the present volume he avows that his “main object” therein was to “enforce the doctrine” of the “absolute dominion of physical agents over organic forms as the fundamental principle in all the sciences of organization.”  This “main object” is no less dear to him in the work immediately under consideration.  He still teaches that the