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Updated: June 1, 2025
The story of this important discovery is probably best told in Priestley's own words: "There are, I believe, very few maxims in philosophy that have laid firmer hold upon the mind than that air, meaning atmospheric air, is a simple elementary substance, indestructible and unalterable, at least as much so as water is supposed to be.
No doubt what Priestley's friends repeatedly urged upon him that he would have escaped the heavier trials of his life and done more for the advancement of knowledge, if he had confined himself to his scientific pursuits and let his fellow-men go their way was true.
Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, vol. ii. pp. 34, 35. Ibid. vol. i. p. 40. Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, vol. ii. p. 48. Ibid. p. 55. Ibid. p. 60. The italics are Priestley's own. "In all the newspapers and most of the periodical publications I was represented as an unbeliever in Revelation, and no better than an atheist."
Edinburgh had made him an honorary doctor of laws at an early period of his career; but, I need hardly add, that a man of Priestley's opinions received no recognition from the universities of his own country.
And it may be as well for those who may be shocked by this doctrine to know that views, substantially identical with Priestley's, have been advocated, since his time, by two prelates of the Anglican Church: by Dr. Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, in his well-known "Essays"; and by Dr.
That Priestley's contributions to the knowledge of chemical fact were of the greatest importance, and that they richly deserve all the praise that has been awarded to them, is unquestionable; but it must, at the same time, be admitted that he had no comprehension of the deeper significance of his work; and, so far from contributing anything to the theory of the facts which he discovered, or assisting in their rational explanation, his influence to the end of his life was warmly exerted in favour of error.
Priestley's reasonings on the existence of God, well remarked that 'Theists are always for turning their God into an overgrown Man. Anthropomorphites has long been a term applied to them. They give him hand and eyes, nor can they conceive him otherwise than as a corporeal Being. We make a Deity ourselves, fall down and worship him. It is the molten calf over again. Idolatry is still practised.
Proclamations were issued to quell insurrections which never had been planned, and the militia called out when not a hand had been raised against the King throughout Great Britain. A mob burned Dr. Priestley's house near Birmingham for no better reason than because he was supposed to have attended a Reform dinner, which in fact, he did not attend.
Priestley's beautiful abode at Sunbury on the Susquehanna was still on the outside of the "Far West." He had more trouble in getting to Pittsburg than he would now have in going round the world. In the Alleghany Mountains he lost his way, and was rescued by the chance of finding a stray horse which he caught and mounted, and was carried by it to the only cabin in the region.
Philip's, stands a monument in honor and memory of a wife that died at the age of fifty-nine years, which has a bee-hive and the inscription: "She looked well to the ways of her household, and did not eat the bread of idleness." A number of fine statues adorn some of the public squares. One of these, a bronze statue to Peel faces east; while Priestley's marble statue faces south.
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