e 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 p