Dr. Draper, evidently, has not read the _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ in vain. Not only does the same anti-Christian spirit breathe through his pages, but he has seized the stilted style of Gibbon, deemed philosophical, which is never at home but when soaring amid the clouds. There is a pomp and parade of philosophy, an assumption of dignified tranquillity, a tone of mock impartiality, which vividly recall the defective qualities of Gibbon’s work. But in studying these features of style, which necessitate a deal of dogmatism, Draper has allowed himself to be betrayed into numberless errors in philosophy. Perhaps an illustration or two will help to give point to our remarks. On page 243 he writes: “If there be a multiplicity of worlds in infinite space, there is also a succession of worlds in infinite time. As one after another cloud replaces cloud in the skies, so this starry system, the universe, is the successor of countless others that have preceded it, the predecessor of countless others that will follow. There is an unceasing metamorphosis, a sequence of events, without beginning or end.” Is not this “A pithless branch beneath a fungous rind”? Is Dr. Draper aware that Gassendi, Newton, Descartes, and Leibnitz devoted the highest efforts of their noble intellects to the consideration of time and space, and would long have hesitated before thus flippantly affixing the epithet “infinite” to either? What is space apart from the contained bodies? If it contains nothing, or rather if there is nothing in space, space itself is nothing; it merely represents to us the possibility of extended bodies. And if it is nothing, how can it be infinite? The application of the word infinite to time is still more inappropriate. There can be no such thing as infinite time. Let us take Dr. Draper’s own successive periods, though embracing millions of years, and we contend that there must be some beginning to them. For if there is no beginning to them, they are already infinite in number--that is, they are already a number without beginning or end. But this cannot be. For we can consider either the past series of periods capable of augmentation by periods to come; and what then becomes of Draper’s infinity? For surely that is not infinite which is susceptible of increase. Or we can consider the past series minus one or two of its periods--a supposition equally fatal to the notion of infinity. Time, then, is of a purely finite character, and is nothing else than the successive changes which finite beings undergo. More nonsensical still is the notion of “a sequence of events without beginning or end.” We must discriminate here between an actual series and a potential series of events, which Dr. Draper forgets to do; for on the distinction a great deal depends. An actual series can never be infinite, for we can take it at any given stage of its progress, whether at the present moment or in the past, and consider it increased by one; but any number