38 Philosophical Character of Dr. Priestley. 



mouvement qui a impritne a cette belle science une impulsion si forte 

 et une direction si sage ; c'est a I'exeraple et sur les traces de La- 

 voisier, de Gujton, de Fourcroy, de Berthollet, de Vauquelin, que 

 se sont formes et que marchent encore les grands chimistes etrangprs, 

 ici Priestley et Davy ; la Klaproth et Berzelius." (Cours de I'His- 

 toire de la Philosophic, torn. i. p. 25.) 



It is to be lamented that so enlightened a writer as Victor Cousin, 

 yielding, in this instance, to the seduction of national vanity, should 

 have advanced pretensions in behalf of his countrymen, vi^hich have 

 no foundation in truth or justice. Nothing can be more absurd or 

 unprofitable than to claim honors in science, either for individuals or 

 for nations, the title to which may be at once set aside by an appeal 

 to public and authentic records. 



It was in England, not in France, that the first decided advances 

 were made in our knowledge of elastic fluids. To say nothing of 

 anterior writers, Dr. Black had traced the causticity acquired by al- 

 kalies, and by certain earths, to their being freed from combination 

 with fixed air ; and Mr. Cavendish, in 1766, had enlarged our knowl- 

 •edge of that gas and of inflammable air. In England, the value of 

 these discoveries was fully appreciated; in France, little or no at- 

 tention was paid to them, till the philosophers of that country were 

 roused by the striking phenomena exhibited by the experiments of 

 Priestley. Lavoisier, it is true had been led, by an examination of 

 evidence derived from previous writers, to discard the hypothesis of 

 phlogiston. The discovery of oxygen gas by Dr. Priestley not only 

 completed the demonstration of its fallacy, but served as the corner- 

 storie of a more sound and consistent theory. By a series of re- 

 searc|jes executed at great ^expense, and with consummate skill, the 

 French philosopher verified in some cases, and corrected in others, 

 the results of his predecessors, and added new and important obser- 

 vations of his own. Upon these, united, he founded that beautiful 

 system of general laws, chiefly relating to the absorption of oxygen 

 by combustible bodies, and to the constitution of acids, to which, 

 alone, the epithet of the Antiphlogistic or French theory of chemistry 

 is properly applied. Of the genius manifested in the construction of 

 that system, a«d the taste apparent in its exposition, it is scarcely 

 possible to speak with too much praise. But it is inverting the order 

 of time to assert, that it had any share in giving origin to the research- 

 es of Priestley, which were not only anterior to the French theory, 

 but were carried on under the influence of precisely opposite views. 

 This, too, may be asserted of the discoveries of Scheele, who, at the 



