If Priestley had lived, I should certainly have corresponded with him. His friend Cooper, who, unfortunately for him and me and you, had as fatal an influence over him as Hamilton had over Washington, and whose rash hot head led Priestley into all his misfortunes and most of his errors in conduct, could not have prevented explanations between Priestley and me.
I should propose to him a thousand, a million questions. And no man was more capable or better disposed to answer them candidly than Dr. Priestley.
Scarcely anything that has happened to me in my curious life, has made a deeper impression upon me than that such a learned, ingenious, scientific and talented madcap as Cooper, could have influence enough to make Priestley my enemy.
I will not yet communicate to you more than a specimen of the questions I would have asked Priestley.
One is; Learned and scientific, Sir!—You have written largely about matter and spirit, and have concluded there is no human soul. Will you please to inform me what matter is? and what spirit is? Unless we know the meaning of words, we cannot reason in or about words.
I shall never send you all my questions that I would put to Priestley, because they are innumerable; but I may hereafter send you two or three.
I am, in perfect charity, your old friend.
JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
Quincy, August 9, 1813.
I believe I told you in my last that I had given you all in Linsey's memorial that interested you, but I was mistaken. In Priestley's letter to Linsey, December 19th, 1803, I find this paragraph: