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 primitive cell, with which, it is supposed, all organisms begin, is in all the same, but, being placed in different situations, is developed here into a man, and there into a mushroom. "The offspring," he says, not without oracular twang, "is like its parent, not because it includes an immortal typical form, but because it is exposed in development to the same conditions as was its parent." Behold a cheap explanation of the mystery of life! If one inquire how the vast variety of parental conditions was obtained, Dr. Draper is ready with his answer:--"A suitableness of external situation called them forth," quoth he. An explanation nebulous enough to be sage! Behold, therefore, a whole universe of life constructed by "Situations"! "Situations" are the new _Elohim_. They say to each other, "Let us make man"; and they do it! But they cannot say, "Let us make man in our own image"; for they have no image. No matter: they succeed all the same in giving one to man! Wonderful "Situations"! Who will set up an altar to almighty "Situations"? We have ourselves a somewhat Benjamite tongue for pronouncing the popular shibboleths, but, verily, we would sooner try the crookedest of them all than endeavor to persuade ourselves that in a universe wherein no creative idea lives and acts "external situations" can "call forth" life and all its forms. We can understand that a divine, creative idea may develop itself under fixed conditions, as the reproductive element in opposite sexes may, under fixed conditions, prove its resources; but how, in a universe devoid of any productive thought, "external situations" can produce definite and animate forms, is, to our feeble minds, incomprehensible. Verily, therefore, we will have nothing to do with these new gods. The materialistic _savans_ may cry _Pagani_ at us, if they will; but we shall surely continue to kneel at the old altars, unless something other than the said "Situations" can be offered us in exchange.