390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



driven from his native country, in his old age he found an asylum in 

 the United States, where Mr. Jefferson, then President, received him 

 with kindness and distinction, and in America he died. 



In relating this melancholy but instructive story, we cannot but 

 remark how Priestley forgot that the experience of all nations and of 

 thousands of years has proved the utter impossibility of any one man 

 convincing the whole human race, and converting them all to his 

 views. He shut his eyes to that anarchy of opinion infesting the 

 world, brought on in no small degree by such polemics as those in 

 which he delighted. In an exact science, like chemistry, he could 

 describe some new discovery, and every man in Europe at once admit- 

 ted its truth. He never realized how different it is in politics and 

 theology. The library of volumes he wrote on these toj^ics has al- 

 ready dropped into that gulf of oblivion which has received all the 

 works, of the authors of the early and middle ages, and no man cares 

 to learn what he wrote or what he thought of the matter. But not so 

 with his philosophical labors ; they stand out clear and distinct, monu- 

 ments of the advance of the human mind in knowledge and power 

 during the eighteenth century. His discovery of oxygen gas will 

 last as long as the world endures. 



From the life of this remarkable man we may draw a lesson, a les- 

 son which the liighest authority, with brief emphasis, has given us — 

 " Study to be quiet, and mind your own business." We here see a 

 great man effecting his own shipwreck on the shoals of politics and 

 controversial theology. To what an eminence might Priestley have 

 attained, if he had limited himself to those objects for which Provi- 

 dence had so well fitted him, and abandoned the vain pursuits in 

 which he delighted, to men of less intellect and force ! How is it pos- 

 sible, in our times, for a man to be at once a great philosopher, physi- 

 cian, theologian, politician? He must make his selection of one pur- 

 suit and stand by it. Not that I would wish an intelligent man, whose 

 opinions must always control or guide those of a large circle around 

 him, to shut himself up from public affairs of great interest. If he 

 perceives, in those to whom the authority of government is committed, 

 a disposition to jeopardize national interests, and pursue an obvious 

 career of profligacy, let him resist them with whatever influence he 

 has, and give his support to those who are the uj^holders of the peace, 

 prosperity, and hapj^iness of the nation. I would have him set his 

 face against all social disorganizers, and give no countenance to reli- 

 gious disputants. 



In thus freely criticising, for your benefit, a character historic in 

 science, I trust I have not infringed in an unkind spirit on the gener- 

 ous jnaxim, " Say nothing but good of the dead." I join in the dy- 

 ing exclamation of Croesus, the King of Lydia : "Judge not of the life 

 of a man until you have witnessed his death." And what can there 

 be more touching, or even more beautiful, than the last scene of 



