9 



Philosophical Character of Dr. Priestley. 37 



feelings or overstrain the attention ; and he proposes it to the young, 

 the high-born, and the affluent, as a source of pleasure unalloyed 

 with the anxieties and agitations of public life. He regarded the 

 benefits of its investigations, not merely as issuing in the acquire- 

 ment of new facts, however striking and valuable ; nor yet in the de- 

 duction of general principles, however sound and important ; but as 

 having a necessary tendency to increase the intellectual power and 

 er^ergy of man, and to exalt human nature to the highest dignity, of 

 which it is susceptible. The springs of such inquiries he represents 

 as inexhaustible ; and the prospects, that may be gained by successive 

 advances in knowledge, a$in themselves "truly sublime and glorious." 

 Into our estimate of the intellectual character of an individual, the 

 extent and the comprehensiveness of his studies must always enter 

 as an essential element. Of Dr. Priestley it may be justly affirmed, 

 that few men have taken a wider range over the vast and diversified 

 field of human knowledge. In devoting, through the greater part of 

 his life, a large portion of his attention to theological pursuits, he ful- 

 filled, what he strongly felt to be his primary duty as a minister of 

 religion. This is not the fit occasion to pronounce an opinion of the 

 fruits of those inquiries, related as they are to topics, which still con- 

 tinue to be agitated as matters of earnest controversy. In Ethics, 

 in Metaphysics, in the philosophy of Language, and in that of Gen- 

 eral History, he expatiated largely. He has given particular histo- 

 ries of the Sciences of Electricity and of Optics, characterized by 

 strict impartiality, and by great perspicuity of language and arrange- 

 ment. Of the mathematics, he appears to have had only a general 

 or elementary knowledge ; nor, perhaps, did the original qualities, 

 or acquired habits, of his mind, fit him to excel in the exact scien- 

 ces. On the whole, though Dr. Priestley may have been surpass- 

 ed by many, in vigor of understanding and capacity for profound 

 research, yet it would be difficult to produce an instance of a wri- 

 ter more eminent for the variety and versatility of his talents, or 

 mofe meritorious for their zealous, unwearied, and productive em- 

 ployment. 



•Appendix. — Since the foregoing pages were written, I have added 

 a few remarks on a passage contained in a recent work of Victor Cou- 

 sin, in which that writer has committed a material error as to the or- 

 igin of Dr. Priestley's philosophical discoveries. " La cbimie," he 

 observes, " est una creation du dixhuitieme siecle, une creation de 

 la France ; c'est PEurope entiere qui a appele chimie Francaise le 



