ioo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



fleet how different were the ideas which the great French chemist at- 

 tached to the body which Priestley discovered. 



They are like two navigators, of whom the first sees a new country, 

 but takes clouds for mountains and mirage for lowlands; while the 

 second determines its length and breath, and lays down on a chart its 

 exact place, so that it, thenceforth, serves as a guide to his success- 

 ors, and becomes a secure outpost whence new explorations may be 

 pushed. 



Nevertheless, as Priestley himself somewhere remarks, the first 

 object of physical science is to ascertain facts, and the service which 

 he rendered to chemistry, by the definite establishment of a large 

 number of new and fundamentally important facts, is such as to en- 

 title him to a very high place among the fathers of chemical science. 



It is difficult to say whether Priestley's philosophical, political, or 

 theological views were most responsible for the bitter hatred which 

 was borne to him by a large body of his countrymen, 1 and which found 

 its expression in the malignant insinuations in which Burke, to his 

 everlasting shame, indulged in the House of Commons. 



Without containing much that will be new to the readers of 

 Hobbes, Spinoza, Collins, Hume, and Hartley, and, indeed, while mak- 

 ing no pretensions to originality, Priestley's " Disquisitions relating 

 to Matter and Spirit," and his " Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity 

 illustrated," are among the most powerful, clear, and unflinching ex- 

 positions of materialism and necessarianism which exist in the English 

 language, and are still well worth reading. 



Priestley denied the freedom of the will in the sense of its self- 

 determination ; he denied the existence of a soul distinct from the 

 body ; and, as a natural consequence, he denied the natural immor- 

 tality of man. 



In relation to these matters, English opinion, a century ago, was 

 very much what it is now. 



A man may be a necessarian without incurring graver reproach 

 than that implied in being called a gloomy fanatic, necessarianism, 

 though very shocking, having a note of Calvinistic orthodoxy : but, 

 if a man is a materialist; or, if good authorities say he is and must be 

 so, in spite of his assertion to the contrary ; or, if he acknowledge him- 

 self unable to see good reasons for believing in the natural immortality 



1 " In all the newspapers and most of the periodical publications I was represented as 

 an unbeliever in Revelation, and no better than an atheist." Autobiography, Hutt, 

 vol. i., p. 124. " On the walls of houses, etc., and especially where I usually went, were 

 to be seen, in large characters, ' Madan forever ; Damn Priestley ; No Presbyterian- 

 ism ; Damn the Presbyterians,' etc., etc. ; and, at one time, I was followed by a number 

 of boys, who left their play, repeating what they had seen on the walls, and shouting out, 

 ' Damn Priestley ; damn Mm, damn him, forever, forever,'' etc., etc. This was no doubt 

 a lesson which they had been taught by their parents, and what they, I fear, had learned 

 from their superiors." Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots at Birmingham. 



