DR. DRAPER.
In consequence of the eulogy passed by Prof. Tyndall on Dr. Draper’s book, which is entitled a History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, we inquired with some curiosity for this work, and have since examined it. It is evident that Prof. Tyndall himself is largely indebted to it, as he states; but a more flimsy and superficial attempt to trace the history of philosophy we have never met with. It seems that this gentleman, Dr. Draper, is a professor of chemistry and physiology at New York. His object, as he informs us, in this compilation, was to arrange the evidence of the intellectual history of Europe on physiological principles. The style is feeble and incorrect, and the analysis of the Greek philosophy positively ludicrous. As, however, it might be inferred from Prof. Tyndall’s address that Dr. Draper was, like himself, a disciple and admirer of Democritus, we will give the American philosopher the benefit of citing his own appreciation of the atomic theory. After stating that the theory of chemistry, as it now exists, essentially includes the views of Democritus (a point on which we bow to his authority), he proceeds thus, if we may be permitted slightly to abridge a very clumsy sentence:
“A system thus based on secure mathematical considerations, and taking as its starting-point a vacuum and atoms—the former actionless and passionless, which recognizes in compound bodies specific arrangements of atoms to one another; which can rise to the conception that even a single atom may constitute a world—such a system may commend itself to our attention for its results, but surely not to our approval, when we find it carrying us to the conclusion that the soul is only a finely-constituted form fitted into a grosser frame; that even to reason itself there is an impossibility of all certainty; that the final result of human inquiry is the absolute demonstration that man is incapable of knowledge; that the world is an illusive phantasm; and that there is no God.”
Such is the sentence passed upon Democritus and the atomic theory by Dr. Draper, on whom Prof. Tyndall assures us that he relies implicitly as an authority in the history of philosophy. Dr. Draper’s account of the philosophical opinions and writings of Cicero is in the highest degree inaccurate. But enough; we have done with him, and we advise Prof. Tyndall to seek a better guide. Suppose, for example, he were to read the dialogue of Velleius and Cotta in the first book of the De Natura Deorum.[153]—Edinburgh Review.