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HISTORY
OF THE
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
OF
EUROPE.
By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Chemistry in the University of New York, Author of a
"Treatise on Human Physiology," "Civil Policy of America,"
"History of the American Civil War," &c.
REVISED EDITION, IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
[iii]At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancementof Science, held at Oxford in 1860, I read an abstractof the physiological argument contained in this workrespecting the mental progress of Europe, reserving thehistorical evidence for subsequent publication.
This work contains that evidence. It is intended as thecompletion of my treatise on Human Physiology, in whichman was considered as an individual. In this he isconsidered in his social relation.
But the reader will also find, I think, that it is ahistory of the progress of ideas and opinions from a pointof view heretofore almost entirely neglected. There aretwo methods of dealing with philosophical questions—theliterary and the scientific. Many things which in apurely literary treatment of the subject remain in thebackground, spontaneously assume a more striking positionwhen their scientific relations are considered. It is thelatter method that I have used.
Social advancement is as completely under the control ofnatural law as is bodily growth. The life of an individualis a miniature of the life of a nation. These propositionsit is the special object of this book to demonstrate.
No one, I believe, has hitherto undertaken the labour ofarranging the evidence offered by the intellectual historyof Europe in accordance with physiological principles,[iv]so as to illustrate the orderly progress of civilization,or collected the facts furnished by other branches ofscience with a view of enabling us to recognize clearlythe conditions under which that progress takes place.This philosophical deficiency I have endeavoured in thefollowing pages to supply.
Seen thus through the medium of physiology, historypresents a new aspect to us. We gain a more just andthorough appreciation of the thoughts and motives of menin successive ages of the world.
In the Preface to the second edition of my Physiology,published in 1858, it was mentioned that this work wasat that time written. The changes that have been sincemade in it have been chiefly with