I JOSEPH PRIESTLEY 3 



the lire kindled, in the childhood of the world, at 

 the Promethean altar of Science. 



The main incidents of Priestley's life are so well 

 known that I need dwell upon them at no great 

 length. 



Born in 1733, at Fieldhead, near Leeds, and 

 brought up among Calvinists of the straitest 

 orthodoxy, the boy's striking natural ability led to 

 his being devoted to the profession of a minister 

 of religion; and, in 1752, he was sent to the 

 Dissenting Academy at Daventry an institution 

 which authority left undisturbed, though its ex- 

 istence contravened the law. The teachers under 

 whose instruction and influence the young man 

 came at Daventry, carried out to the letter the 

 injunction to " try all things : hold fast that which 

 is good," and encouraged the discussion of every 

 imaginable proposition with complete freedom, 

 the leading professors taking opposite sides ; a 

 discipline which, admirable as it may be from a 

 purely scientific point of view, would seem to be 

 calculated to make acute, rather than sound, 

 divines. Priestley tells us, in his " Autobiography/' 

 that he generally found himself on the unorthodox 

 side : and, as he grew older, and his faculties 

 attained their matiirity, this native tendency 

 towards heterodoxy grew with his growth and 

 strengthened with his strength. He passed from 

 Calvinism to Arianism ; and finally, in middle life, 



