146 • MEMOIR OF PRIESTLEY. 



"been made. We have just seen liim marching from one success to 

 another in the cultivation of the merely human sciences, which he 

 looked upon only as the employment of his leisure moments. We 

 must now observe him engaged in the struggle to unveil those first 

 principles which the nature of things hides from our reason beneath 

 the folds of impenetrable mystery, striving to force the world into an 

 acceptance of his conjectures, consuming almost his whole life in these 

 fruitless efforts, and sinking at last into an abyss of misfortune. 



Every indulgence will be here needed as well for the recital as its 

 subject. It may even appear to some that such details are out of 

 place before this audience ; but where else ought the admonition they 

 afford to be listened to with more interest ? 



It has been already said that Priestley was an ecclesiastic ; it must 

 now be added that he passed successively through three creeds or 

 formsof belief in arriving at one which he could conscientiously adopt 

 as the basis of his teachings. 



Reared in all the severity of the Presbyterian communion, which is 

 called Calvinistic in France, he passed at the age of twenty years into 

 the ranks of Arianism. * * * * Arianism, while holding 

 Christ to be a creature, regards him as a Being of superior nature, pro- 

 duced before the world, and himself the organ of the Creator in the 

 production of other beings. It is the doctrine which the " Paradise 

 Lost" has invested with so magnificent a garb of poetry. Priestley 

 professed it for a length of time, and then abandoned it to become 

 what we should call in France, a Socinian. Few, perhaps, of those 

 who hear me know in what these two sects differ; but the Socin- 

 ians deny the pre-existence of Christ, and regard him only as a 

 man, though they revere in him the Saviour of the world. This subtle 

 distinction between two creeds occupied for thirty years a head 

 which the most important questions of science might rightfully have 

 claimed, and was to Priestley the occasion of incomparably more 

 pages than he has written on the different kinds of air. * * * 

 * * * Nor was he less peculiar in the metaphysical part of 

 his creed. It seems to have been demonstrated by the sounder meta- 

 physics of modern times that it is impossible for the thinking sub- 

 stance to take direct cognizance of its own proper nature, just as it is 

 impossible for the eye to see itself. For any such purpose, to contem- 

 plate itself or compare itself with other existences, it should be able to 

 do so from without, while it is only within and through its own pecu- 

 liar modifications that it perceives, or receives the impression of those 

 existences. Priestley either overlooked or disregarded these conclu- 

 sions. In his view. Scripture and experience agree in making the soul 

 material ; the fibres of the brain are the depositary of the images 

 produced by the senses, while the power which these fibres possess of 

 communicating their vibrations to one another is the source of the 

 association of ideas. Sensation perishes with the body, but will revive 

 with it at tlie day of resurrection, in virtue of the will and power of 

 God. Till then we shall sleep in absolute insensibility ; the distiibu- 

 tion of punishments and rewards awaits us only thereafter.* 



*It should be remarked that the above is far from being an accurate representation of the, 

 materialism of Priestley, nhich should not be confounded with the grosser forms of thatdoc- 



