JOSEPH PKIESTLEY. 131 



electricity, and magnetism, and above all, chemistry, in 

 the modern sense, can hardly be said to have had an 

 existence. No one knew that two of the old elemental 

 bodies, air and water, are compounds, and that a third, 

 fire, is not a substance but a motion. The great indus- 

 tries that have grown out of the applications of modern 

 scientific discoveries had no existence, and the man who 

 should have foretold their coming into being in the days 

 of his son, would have been regarded as a mad enthusiast. 



In common with many other excellent persons, 

 Priestley believed that man is capable of reaching, and 

 will eventually attain, perfection. If the temperature 

 of space presented no obstacle, I should be glad to 

 entertain the same idea; but judging from the past 

 progress of our species, I am afraid that the globe 

 will have cooled down so far, before the advent of this 

 natural millennium, that we shall be, at best, perfected 

 Esquimaux. For all practical purposes, however, it is 

 enough that man may visibly improve his condition in 

 the course of a century or so. And, if the picture of 

 the state of things in Priestley's time, which I have 

 just drawn, have any pretence to accuracy, I think it 

 must be admitted that there has been a considerable 

 change for the better. 



I need not advert to the well-worn topic of material 

 advancement, in a place in which the very stones testify 

 to that progress in the town of Watt and of Boulton. 

 I will only remark, in passing, that material advance- 

 ment has its share in moral and intellectual progress. 



