pts a piece of pure scientific exposition, his
thought always has a squint, a boomerang obliquity; it is afflicted with
_strabismus_, and never looks where it seems to look. He approaches
history only to subject it to the service of certain pet opinions
_already formed_ before his inspection of history began. He seeks only
to make it an instrument for the propagation of these. He is a
philosophical historian in the same sense that Bossuet was a
philosophical historian. Each of these seeks to subject history to a
dogma. The dogma of Bossuet is Papal Catholicism; that of Dr. Draper is
the creative supremacy of "Situations" and "the insignificance of man in
the universe."

It is quite proper for Dr. Draper to appear as a polemic in science, if
he will. It is not advocacy _per se_ of which we complain; it is
advocacy with a squint, advocacy round a corner. If he wishes to prove
the creative efficacy of "Situations," let him do so; but let him not in
doing so seem to be offering an impartial exposition of Human
Physiology. If he wishes to prove that physical science is the only
rational thing in the world, he may try; but let him not assume to be
writing a history of intellectual development. If he would convince us
that history has epochs corresponding to those of individual life, we
will listen; but we shall listen with impatience, if it appear after all
that he is merely seeking, under cover of this proposition, to further a
low materialistic dogma, and convince us of "man's insignificance in the
universe."

We are open to all reasonings. Any decent man, who has honorably gone
through with his Pythagorean _lustrum_ of silence and thought, shall, by
our voice, have his turn on the world's tribune; and if he be honest, he
shall lose nothing by it. But we hate indirections. We hate the
pretension implied in assuming to be an authoritative expounder, when
one is only an advocate. And, still further, we shall always resist any
man's attempt to make his facts go for a great deal more than they are
worth. Let him call his ten _ten_, and it shall pass for ten; but if he
insist on calling it a thousand, we shall not acquiesce. The science of
Physiology is just out of its babyhood. Of the nervous system in
particular--of its physiology and pathology alike--our knowledge is
extremely immature. We are just beginning, indeed, to know anything
_scientifically_ on that subject. The attempt in behalf of that little
to banish spiritual