'I intend, in this work, to consider in what manner the advancement of Europe in civilization has taken place, to ascertain how far its progress has been fortuitous, and how far determined by primordial law. 'Does the procession of nations in time, like the erratic phantasm of a dream, go forward without reason or order? Or, is there a predetermined, a solemn march, in which all must join, ever moving, ever resistlessly advancing, encountering and enduring an inevitable succession of events? 'In a philosophical examination of the intellectual and political history of nations, an answer to these questions is to be found. * * * Man is the archetype of society. Individual development is the model of social progress.' It will be sufficient for our present purpose to indicate the line of Dr. Draper's argument, in seeking for a solution to the problem of progress, and to sum up the conclusions to which he is ultimately led by his investigations. In the intellectual infancy of a savage state, man regards all passing events as depending on the arbitrary volition of a superior but invisible power. The tendency is necessarily to superstition. After reason, aided by experience, has led him forth from these delusions as respects surrounding things, he still clings to his original ideas as respects objects far removed, believing the stars to be inhabited by mysterious powers, or to be such themselves. Gradually he emerges from star worship as he did from fetichism, still venerating and perhaps exalting into immortal gods the genii whom he once supposed to inhabit the stars, long after he has ascertained that the latter are without any perceptible influence on him. He is exchanging, by ascending degrees, his primitive doctrine of arbitrary volition for the doctrine of law. As the fall of a stone, the flowing of a river, and the ordinary operations of nature familiar to him have been traced to physical causes, to like causes are at last traced the revolutions of the stars. In events and scenes continually increasing in greatness and grandeur, he is detecting the dominion of law. This perception is extended, until at last it embraces all natural events, until they are seen to be the consequences of physical conditions, and therefore the results of law. 'But if we admit that this is the case, from the mote that floats in the sunbeam to multiple stars revolving round each other, are we willing to carry our principles to their consequences, and recognize a like operation of law among living as among lifeless things, in the organic as well as the inorganic world? What testimony does physiology offer on this point?'