The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 07, April 1868 to September, 1868
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
[Footnote 45:
1. _Human Physiology, Statical and Dynamical;
or, Conditions and Course of the Life of Man_.
By J. W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry
and Physiology in the University of New York.
New York: Harper & Brothers. 1856. 8vo, pp. 649.
2. _History of the Intellectual Development of Europe_.
By the same. Fifth edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 628
3. _Thoughts on the Civil Policy of America_.
By the same. Third edition. 1867. 8vo, pp. 323.
4. _History of the American Civil War_.
By the same. In three volumes.
Vol. I. 1867. 8vo, pp. 567.]
Professor Draper's works have had, and are having, a very rapid
sale, and are evidently very highly esteemed by that class of
readers who take an interest, without being very profoundly
versed, in the grave subjects which he treats. He is, we believe,
a good chemist and a respectable physiologist. His work on Human
Physiology, we have been assured by those whose judgment in such
matters we prefer to our own, is a work of real merit, and was,
when first published, up to the level of the science to which it
is devoted. We read it with care on its first appearance, and the
impression it left on our mind was, that the author yields too
much to the theory of chemical action in physiology, and does not
remember that man is the union of soul and body, and that the
soul modifies, even in the body, the action of the natural laws;
or rather, that the physiological laws of brute matter, or even
of animals, cannot be applied to man without many important
reserves. The Professor, indeed, recognizes, or says he
recognizes, in man a rational soul, or an immaterial principle;
but the recognition seems to be only a verbal concession, made to
the prejudices of those who have some lingering belief in
Christianity, for we find no use for it in his physiology. All
the physiological phenomena he dwells on he explains without it,
that is, as far as he explains them at all. Whatever his personal
belief may be, his doctrine is as purely materialistic as is Mr.
Herbert Spencer's, which explains all the phenomena of life by
the mechanical, chemical, and electrical changes and combinations
of matter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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