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Updated: June 1, 2025
Priestley's reputation as a man of science rests upon his numerous and important contributions to the chemistry of gaseous bodies; and to form a just estimate of the value of his work of the extent to which it advanced the knowledge of fact and the development of sound theoretical views we must reflect what chemistry was in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Every one knows, or can guess, to what sort of animal Churton Collins compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was in certain moods. William Cobbett, too, had his moods. Yet it is impossible to read Priestley's letters between 1798 and 1801 without indignation against those who preyed upon his peace of mind.
He has not, indeed, Priestley's superb optimism; for the rigid a priori morality of which he was the somewhat muddled defender was less favorable to a confidence in reason. He had a good deal of John Brown's fear that luxury was the seed of English degeneration; the proof of which he saw in the decline of the population.
The first outcome of Priestley's chemical work, published in 1772, was of a very practical character.
Priestley's scheme of Necessity; or against his idolized Paley, who explained the will as a sensation, produced by the action of the intellect on the muscles, and the intellect itself as a catenation of ideas, and ideas as configurations of the organized brain? Would not every syllable apply, yea, and more strongly, more indisputably?
In fact, a passage in Priestley's "Autobiography" on the occasion of the publication of his "Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit," which took place in 1777, indicates pretty clearly the state of the case:
I founded it on the other facts, and was obliged to stretch it a good deal before it would fit this experiment.... I maintain my hypothesis until it shall be shown that the water formed after the explosion of the pure and inflammable airs, has some other origin. He also writes to Mr. DeLuc on May 18th: I do not see Dr. Priestley's experiment in the same light that he does.
Priestley says that the only person who took 'much interest' was Mr. Hey, a surgeon. Mr. Hey was a 'zealous Methodist' and wrote answers to Priestley's theological papers. Arminian and Socinian were at peace if science was the theme. When Priestley departed from Leeds, Hey begged of him the 'earthen trough' in which all his experiments had been made.
Priestley's mind not only cheerfully endured it but actually toughened under it. The man was never afraid of work. Take as an illustration his experience in keeping school. He had pronounced objections to this business, and he registered his protest. But suppose the alternative is to teach school or to starve. A man will then teach school.
But the evidence that he brings is rendered needless by Priestley's positive statement. Dr. Price in 1784: 'It is said that scarce anybody but yourself and Dr.
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