But it was to bring these things about, and to enforce the recognition of these truths, that Joseph Priestley laboured. If the nineteenth century is other and better than the eighteenth, it is, in great measure, to him, and to such men as he, that we owe the change. If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley's footsteps.

Such men are not those whom their own generation delights to honour; such men, in fact, rarely trouble themselves about honour, but ask, in another spirit than Falstaff's, "What is honour? Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday." But whether Priestley's lot be theirs, and a future generation, in justice and in gratitude, set up their statues; or whether their names and fame are blotted out from remembrance, their work will live as long as time endures. To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehood and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.

Footnotes

  1. ["Quasi] cursores, vitai lampada tradunt."--LUCR. De Rerum Nat. ii. 78.
  2. [Life] and Correspondence of Dr. Priestley, by J. T. Rutt. Vol. I. p. 50.
  3. [Autobiography,] §§ 100, 101.
  4. [See] The Life of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck. Mrs. Schimmelpenninck (née Galton) remembered Priestley very well, and her description of him is worth quotation:--"A man of admirable simplicity, gentleness and kindness of heart, united with great acuteness of intellect. I can never forget the impression produced on me by the serene expression of his countenance. He, indeed, seemed present with God by recollection, and with man by cheerfulness. I remember that, in the assembly of these distinguished men, amongst whom Mr. Boulton, by his noble manner, his fine countenance (which much resembled that of Louis XIV.), and princely munificence, stood pre-eminently as the great Mecaenas; even as a child, I used to feel, when Dr. Priestley entered after him, that the glory of the one was terrestrial, that of the other celestial; and utterly far as I am removed from a belief in the sufficiency of Dr. Priestley's theological creed, I cannot but here record this evidence of the eternal power of any portion of the truth held in its vitality."
  5. [Even] Mrs. Priestley, who might be forgiven for regarding the destroyers of her household gods with some asperity, contents herself, in writing to Mrs. Barbauld, with the sarcasm that the Birmingham people "will scarcely find so many respectable characters, a second time, to make a bonfire of."
  6. [Experiments] and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, vol. ii. p. 31.
  7. [Experiments] and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, vol. ii. pp. 34, 35.
  8. [Ibid.] vol. i. p. 40.
  9. [Experiments] and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, vol. ii. p. 48.
  10. [Ibid.] p. 55.
  11. [Ibid.] p. 60. The italics are Priestley's own.
  12. ["In] all the newspapers and most of the periodical publications I was represented as an unbeliever in Revelation, and no better than an atheist."--Autobiography, Rutt, vol i. p. 124. "On the walls of houses, etc., and especially where I usually went, were to be seen, in large characters, 'MADAN FOR EVER; DAMN PRIESTLEY; NO PRESBYTERIANISM; DAMN THE PRESBYTERIANS,' etc., etc.; and, at one time, I was followed by a number of boys, who left their play, repeating what they had seen on the walls, and shouting out, 'Damn Priestley; damn him, damn him, for ever, for ever,' etc., etc. This was no doubt a lesson which they had been taught by their parents, and what they, I fear, had learned from their superiors."--Appeal to the Public on the Subject of the Riots at Birmingham.
  13. [First] Series. On Some of the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion. Essay I. "Revelation of a Future State."
  14. [Not] only is Priestley at one with Bishop Courtenay in this matter, but with Hartley and Bonnet, both of them stout champions of Christianity. Moreover, Archbishop Whately's essay is little better than an expansion of the first paragraph of Hume's famous essay on the Immortality of the Soul:--"By the mere light of reason it seems difficult to prove the immortality of the soul; the arguments for it are commonly derived either from metaphysical topics, or moral, or physical. But it is in reality the Gospel, and the Gospel alone, that has brought life and immortality to light." It is impossible to imagine that a man of Whately's tastes and acquirements had not read Hume or Hartley, though he refers to neither.
  15. [Essay] on the First Principles of Government, Second edition, 1771.
  16. ["Utility] of Establishments," in Essay on First Principles of Government, 1771.
  17. [In] 1732 Doddridge was cited for teaching without the Bishop's leave, at Northampton.

[II]

ON THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SCIENCES

[1854]

The subject to which I have to beg your attention during the ensuing hour is "The Relation of Physiological Science to other branches of Knowledge."