A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



the disengaged caloric is not sufficient for keeping up 

 the necessary temperature the combustion ceases. 

 This circumstance is expressed in the common lan- 

 guage by saying that a body burns ill or with diffi- 

 culty." 10 



It needed the genius of such a man as Lavoisier to 

 complete the refutation of the false but firmly grounded 

 phlogiston theory, and against such a book as his Ele- 

 ments of Chemistry the feeble weapons of the support- 

 ers of the phlogiston theory were hurled in vain. 



But while chemists, as a class, had become con- 

 verts to the new chemistry before the end of the cen- 

 tury, one man, Dr. Priestley, whose work had done so 

 much to found it, remained unconverted. In this, as 

 in all his life-work, he showed himself to be a most re- 

 markable man. Davy said of him, a generation later, 

 that no other person ever discovered so many new and 

 curious substances as he ; yet to the last he was only an 

 amateur in science, his profession, as we know, being 

 the ministry. There is hardly another case in history 

 of a man not a specialist in science accomplishing so 

 much in original research as did this chemist, physiolo- 

 gist, electrician; the mathematician, logician, and 

 moralist ; the theologian, mental philosopher, and polit- 

 ical economist. He took all knowledge for his field; 

 but how he found time for his numberless researches 

 and multifarious writings, along with his every-day du- 

 ties, must ever remain a mystery to ordinary mortals. 



That this marvellously receptive, flexible mind 

 should have refused acceptance to the clearly logical 

 doctrines of the new chemistry seems equally inex- 



36 



