takes clouds for mountains and mirage for lowlands; while the second
determines its length and breadth, and lays down on a chart its exact
place, so that, thenceforth, it serves as a guide to his successors,
and becomes a secure outpost whence new explorations may be pushed.
Nevertheless, as Priestley himself somewhere remarks, the first object
of physical science is to ascertain facts, and the service which he
rendered to chemistry by the definite establishment of a large number
of new and fundamentally important facts, is such as to entitle him to
a very high place among the fathers of chemical science.
It is difficult to say whether Priestley’s philosophical, political, or
theological views were most responsible for the bitter hatred which was
borne to him by a large body of his countrymen,[21] and which found
its expression in the malignant insinuations in which Burke, to his
everlasting shame, indulged in the House of Commons.
Without containing much that will be new to the readers of Hobbes,
Spinoza, Collins, Hume, and Hartley, and, indeed, while making no
pretensions to originality, Priestley’s “Disquisitions relating to
Matter and Spirit,” and his “Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity
illustrated,” are among the most powerful, clear, and unflinching
expositions of materialism and necessarianism which exist in the
English language, and are still well worth reading.
Priestley denied the freedom of the will in the sense of its
self-determination; he denied the existence of a soul distinct from the
body; and as a natural consequence, he denied the natural immortality
of man.
In relation to these matters English opinion, a century ago, was very
much what it is now.
A man may be a necessarian without incurring graver reproach than that
implied in being called a gloomy fanatic, necessarianism, though very
shocking, having a note of Calvinistic orthodoxy; but, if a man is a
materialist; or, if good authorities say he is and must be so, in spite
of his assertion to the contrary; or, if he acknowledge himself unable
to see good reasons for believing in the natural immortality of man,
respectable folks look upon him as an unsafe neighbour of a cash-box,
as an actual or potential sensualist, the more virtuous in outward
seeming, the more certainly loaded with secret “grave personal sins.”
Nevertheless, it is as certain as anything can be, that Joseph
Priestley was no gloomy fanatic, but as cheerful and kindly a soul as
ever breathed, the idol of children; a man who was hated only by those
who did not know him, and who charmed away the bitterest prejudices
in personal intercourse; a man who never lost a friend, and the best
testimony to whose worth is the generous and tender warmth with which
his many friends vied with one another in rendering him substantial
help, in all the crises of his career.
The unspotted purity of Priestley’s life, the strictness of
his performance of every duty, his transparent sincerity, the
unostentatious and deep-seated piety which breathes through all his
correspondence, are in themselves a sufficient refutation of the
hypothesis, invented by bigots to cover uncharitableness, that such
opinions as his must arise from moral defects. And his statue will do
as good service as the brazen image that was set upon a pole before
the Israelites, if those who have been bitten by the fiery serpents of
sectarian hatred, which still haunt this wilderness of a world, are
made whole by looking upon the image of a heretic, who was yet a saint.
Though Priestley did not believe in the natural immortality of man, he
held with an almost naïve realism, that man would be raised from the
dead by a direct exertion of the power of God, and thenceforward be
immortal. 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;”[22] and by Dr. Courtenay, Bishop of Kingston in Jamaica,
the first edition of whose remarkable book “On the Future States,”
dedicated to Archbishop Whately, was published in 1843 and the second
in 1857. According to Bishop Courtenay,
“The death of the body will cause a cessation of all the
activity of the mind by way of natural consequence; to
continue for ever UNLESS the Creator should interfere.”
And again:—
“The natural end of human existence is the ‘first death,’
the dreamless slumber of the grave, wherein man lies
spellbound, soul and body, under the dominion of sin
and death—that whatever modes of conscious existence,
whatever future states of ‘life’ or of ‘torment’ beyond
Hades are reserved for man, are results of our blessed
Lord’s victory over sin and death; that the resurrection
of the dead must be preliminary to their entrance into
either of the future states, and that the nature and even
existence of these states and even the mere fact that
there is a futurity of consciousness, can be known _only_
through God’s revelation of Himself in the Person and the
Gospel of His Son.”—P. 389.
And now hear Priestley:—
“Man, according to this system (of materialism), is no
more than we now see of him. His being commences at
the time of his conception, or perhaps at an earlier
period. The corporeal and mental faculties, in being in
the same substance, grow, ripen, and decay together;
and whenever the system is dissolved it continues in a
state of dissolution till it shall please that Almighty
Being who called it into existence to restore it to life
again.”—“Matter and Spirit,” p. 49.
And again:—
“The doctrine of the Scripture is, that God made man of
the dust of the ground, and by simply animating this
organised matter, made man that living percipient and
intelligent being that he is. According to Revelation,
_death_ is a state of rest and insensibility, and our
only though sure hope of a future life is founded on
the doctrine of the resurrection of the whole man at
some distant period; this assurance being sufficiently
confirmed to us both by the evident tokens of a Divine
commission attending the persons who delivered the
doctrine, and especially by the actual resurrection of
Jesus Christ, which is more authentically attested than
any other fact in history.”—_Ibid._, p. 247.
We all know that “a saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn;” but
it is not yet admitted that the views which are consistent with
such saintliness in lawn, become diabolical when held by a mere
dissenter.[23]
I am not here either to defend or to attack Priestley’s philosophical
views, and I cannot say that I am personally disposed to attach much
value to episcopal authority in philosophical questions; but it seems
right to call attention to the fact, that those of Priestley’s opinions
which have brought most odium upon him, have been openly promulgated,
without challenge, by persons occupying the highest positions in the
State Church.
I must confess that what interests me most about Priestley’s
materialism, is the evidence that he saw dimly the seed of destruction
which such materialism carries within its own bosom. In the course
of his reading for his “History of Discoveries relating to Vision,
Light, and Colours,” he had come upon the speculations of Boscovich
and Michell, and had been led to admit the sufficiently obvious truth
that our knowledge of matter is a knowledge of its properties; and that
of its substance—if it have a substance—we know nothing. And this led
to the further admission that, so far as we can know, there may be no
difference between the substance of matter and the substance of spirit
(“Disquisitions,” p. 16). A step farther would have shown Priestley
that his materialism was, essentially, very little different from the
Idealism of his contemporary, the Bishop of Cloyne.
As Priestley’s philosophy is mainly a clear statement of the views of
the deeper thinkers of his day, so are his political conceptions based
upon those of Locke. Locke’s aphorism that “the end of government is
the good of mankind,” is thus expanded by Priestley:—
“It must necessarily be understood, therefore, whether it
be expressed or not, that all people live in society for
their mutual advantage; so that the good and happiness
of the members, that is, of the majority of the members,
of any state, is the great standard by which everything
relating to that state must finally be determined.”[24]
The little sentence here interpolated, “that is, of the majority of
the members of any state,” appears to be that passage which suggested
to Bentham, according to his own acknowledgment, the famous “greatest
happiness” formula, which by substituting “happiness” for “good,” has
converted a noble into an ignoble principle. But I do not call to
mind that there is any utterance in Locke quite so outspoken as the
following passage in the “Essay on the First Principles of Government.”
After laying down as “a fundamental maxim in all governments,” the
proposition that “kings, senators, and nobles” are “the servants of the
public,” Priestley goes on to say:—
“But in the largest states, if the abuses of the
government should at any time be great and manifest; if
the servants of the people, forgetting their masters and
their masters’ interest, should pursue a separate one
of their own; if, instead of considering that they are
made for the people, they should consider the people as
made for them; if the oppressions and violation of right
should be great, flagrant, and universally resented; if
the tyrannical governors should have no friends but a few
sycophants, who had long preyed upon the vitals of their
fellow-citizens, and who might be expected to desert a
government whenever their interests should be detached
from it; if, in consequence of these circumstances, it
should become manifest that the risk which would be
run in attempting a revolution would be trifling, and
the evils which might be apprehended from it were far
less than those which were actually suffered and which
were daily increasing; in the name of God, I ask, what
principles are those which ought to restrain an injured
and insulted people from asserting their natural rights,
and from changing or even punishing their governors—that
is, their servants—who had abused their trust, or from
altering the whole form of their government, if it
appeared to be of a structure so liable to abuse?”
As a Dissenter, subject to the operation of the Corporation and Test
Acts, and as a Unitarian, excluded from the benefit of the Toleration
Act, it is not surprising to find that Priestley had very definite
opinions about Ecclesiastical Establishments; the only wonder is that
these opinions were so moderate as the following passages show them to
have been:—
“Ecclesiastical authority may have been necessary in the
infant state of society, and, for the same reason, it
may perhaps continue to be, in some degree, necessary as
long as society is imperfect; and therefore may not be
entirely abolished till civil governments have arrived
at a much greater degree of perfection. If, therefore,
I were asked whether I should approve of the immediate
dissolution of all the ecclesiastical establishments in
Europe, I should answer, No.... Let experiment be first
made of _alterations_, or, which is the same thing, of
_better establishments_ than the present. Let them be
reformed in many essential articles, and then not thrown
aside entirely till it be found by experience that no
good can be made of them.”
Priestley goes on to suggest four such reforms of a capital nature:—
“1. Let the Articles of Faith to be subscribed by
candidates for the ministry be greatly reduced. In
the formulary of the Church of England, might not
thirty-eight out of the thirty-nine be very well spared?
It is a reproach to any Christian establishment if every
man cannot claim the benefit of it who can say that he
believes in the religion of Jesus Christ as it is set
forth in the New Testament. You say the terms are so
general that even Deists would quibble and insinuate
themselves. I answer that all the articles which are
subscribed at present, by no means exclude Deists who
will prevaricate; and upon this scheme you would at least
exclude fewer honest men.”[25]
The second reform suggested is the equalisation, in proportion to work
done, of the stipends of the clergy; the third, the exclusion of the
bishops from Parliament; and the fourth, complete toleration, so that
every man may enjoy the rights of a citizen, and be qualified to serve
his country, whether he belong to the Established Church or not.
Opinions such as those I have quoted, respecting the duties and
the responsibilities of governors, are the commonplaces of modern
Liberalism; and Priestley’s views on Ecclesiastical Establishments
would, I fear, meet with but a cool reception, as altogether too
conservative, from a large proportion of the lineal descendants of the
people who taught their children to cry “Damn Priestley;” and, with
that love for the practical application of science which is the source
of the greatness of Birmingham, tried to set fire to the doctor’s house
with sparks from his own electrical machine; thereby giving the man
they called an incendiary and raiser of sedition against Church and
King, an appropriately experimental illustration of the nature of arson
and riot.
If I have succeeded in putting before you the main features of
Priestley’s work, its value will become apparent, when we compare the
condition of the English nation, as he knew it, with its present state.
The fact that France has been for eighty-five years trying, without
much success, to right herself after the great storm of the Revolution,
is not unfrequently cited among us, as an indication of some inherent
incapacity for self-government among the French people. I think,
however, that Englishmen who argue thus, forget that, from the meeting
of the Long Parliament in 1640, to the last Stuart rebellion in 1745,
is a hundred and five years, and that, in the middle of the last
century, we had but just safely freed ourselves from our Bourbons and
all that they represented. The corruption of our state was as bad as
that of the Second Empire. Bribery was the instrument of government,
and peculation its reward. Four-fifths of the seats in the House of
Commons were more or less openly dealt with as property. A minister
had to consider the state of the vote market, and the sovereign secured
a sufficiency of “king’s friends” by payments allotted with retail,
rather than royal, sagacity.
Barefaced and brutal immorality and intemperance pervaded the land,
from the highest to the lowest classes of society. The Established
Church was torpid, so far as it was not a scandal; but those who
dissented from it came within the meshes of the Act of Uniformity, the
Test Act, and the Corporation Act. By law, such a man as Priestley,
being a Unitarian, could neither teach nor preach, and was liable to
ruinous fines and long imprisonment.[26] In those days, the guns that
were pointed by the Church against the Dissenters were shotted. The law
was a cesspool of iniquity and cruelty. Adam Smith was a new prophet
whom few regarded, and commerce was hampered by idiotic impediments,
and ruined by still more absurd help, on the part of government.
Birmingham, though already the centre of a considerable industry, was a
mere village as compared with its present extent. People who travelled
went about armed, by reason of the abundance of highwaymen and the
paucity and inefficiency of the police. Stage coaches had not reached
Birmingham, and it took three days to get to London. Even canals were a
recent and much opposed invention.
Newton had laid the foundation of a mechanical conception of the
physical universe: Hartley, putting a modern face upon ancient
materialism, had extended that mechanical conception to psychology;
Linnæus and Haller were beginning to introduce method and order into
the chaotic accumulation of biological facts. But those parts of
physical science which deal with heat, electricity, and magnetism,
and above all, chemistry, in the modern sense, can hardly be said
to have had an existence. No one knew that two of the old elemental
bodies, air and water, are compounds, and that a third, fire, is not a
substance but a motion. The great industries that have grown out of the
applications of modern scientific discoveries had no existence, and the
man who should have foretold their coming into being in the days of his
son, would have been regarded as a mad enthusiast.
In common with many other excellent persons, Priestley believed that
man is capable of reaching, and will eventually attain, perfection.
If the temperature of space presented no obstacle, I should be glad
to entertain the same idea; but judging from the past progress of our
species, I am afraid that the globe will have cooled down so far,
before the advent of this natural millennium, that we shall be, at
best, perfected Esquimaux. For all practical purposes, however, it
is enough that man may visibly improve his condition in the course
of a century or so. And, if the picture of the state of things
in Priestley’s time, which I have just drawn, have any pretence
to accuracy, I think it must be admitted that there has been a
considerable change for the better.
I need not advert to the well-worn topic of material advancement, in
a place in which the very stones testify to that progress—in the town
of Watt and of Boulton. I will only remark, in passing, that material
advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky
Sharp’s acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten
thousand a year, has its application to nations; and it is futile to
expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and
gross. But as regards other than material welfare, although perfection
is not yet in sight—even from the mast-head—it is surely true that
things are much better than they were.
Take the upper and middle classes as a whole, and it may be said
that open immorality and gross intemperance have vanished. Four and
six bottle men are as extinct as the dodo. Women of good repute
do not gamble, and talk modelled upon Dean Swift’s “Art of Polite
Conversation” would be tolerated in no decent kitchen.
Members of the legislature are not to be bought; and constituents are
awakening to the fact that votes must not be sold—even for such trifles
as rabbits and tea and cake. Political power has passed into the hands
of the masses of the people. Those whom Priestley calls their servants
have recognised their position, and have requested the master to be
so good as to go to school and fit himself for the administration of
his property. No civil disability attaches to any one on theological
grounds, and the highest offices of the state are open to Papist, Jew,
or Secularist.[27]
Whatever men’s opinions as to the policy of Establishment, no one
can hesitate to admit that the clergy of the Church are men of pure
life and conversation, zealous in the discharge of their duties; and,
at present, apparently, more bent on prosecuting one another than
on meddling with Dissenters. Theology itself has broadened so much,
that Anglican divines put forward doctrines more liberal than those
of Priestley; and, in our state-supported churches, one listener may
hear a sermon to which Bossuet might have given his approbation, while
another may hear a discourse in which Socrates would find nothing new.
But great as these changes may be, they sink into insignificance
beside the progress of physical science, whether we consider the
improvement of methods of investigation, or the increase in bulk of
solid knowledge. Consider that the labours of Laplace, of Young, of
Davy, and of Faraday; of Cuvier, of Lamarck, and of Robert Brown; of
Von Baer, and of Schwann; of Smith and of Hutton, have all been carried
on since Priestley discovered oxygen; and consider that they are now
things of the past, concealed by the industry of those who have built
upon them, as the first founders of a coral reef are hidden beneath the
life’s work of their successors; consider that the methods of physical
science are slowly spreading into all investigations, and that proofs
as valid as those required by her canons of investigation, are being
demanded of all doctrines which ask for men’s assent; and you will
have a faint image of the astounding difference in this respect between
the nineteenth century and the eighteenth.
If we ask what is the deeper meaning of all these vast changes, I
think there can be but one reply. They mean that reason has asserted
and exercised her primacy over all provinces of human activity: that
ecclesiastical authority has been relegated to its proper place; that
the good of the governed has been finally recognised as the end of
government, and the complete responsibility of governors to the people
as its means; and that the dependence of natural phenomena in general,
on the laws of action of what we call matter has become an axiom.
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.
VI.
ON THE METHOD OF ZADIG:
RETROSPECTIVE PROPHECY AS A FUNCTION OF SCIENCE.
“Une marque plus sûre que toutes celles de Zadig”—CUVIER.[28]
It is a usual and a commendable practice to preface the discussion of
the views of a philosophic thinker by some account of the man and of
the circumstances which shaped his life and coloured his way of looking
at things; but, though Zadig is cited in one of the most important
chapters of Cuvier’s greatest work, little is known about him, and that
little might perhaps be better authenticated than it is.
It is said that he lived at Babylon in the time of King Moabdar;
but the name of Moabdar does not appear in the list of Babylonian
sovereigns brought to light by the patience and the industry of the
decipherers of cuneiform inscriptions in these later years; nor indeed
am I aware that there is any other authority for his existence than
that of the biographer of Zadig, one Arouet de Voltaire, among whose
more conspicuous merits strict historical accuracy is perhaps hardly
to be reckoned.
Happily Zadig is in the position of a great many other philosophers.
What he was like when he was in the flesh, indeed whether he existed at
all, are matters of no great consequence. What we care about in a light
is that it shows the way, not whether it is lamp or candle, tallow or
wax. Our only real interest in Zadig lies in the conceptions of which
he is the putative father; and his biographer has stated these with so
much clearness and vivacious illustration, that we need hardly feel a
pang, even if critical research should prove King Moabdar and all the
rest of the story to be unhistorical, and reduce Zadig himself to the
shadowy condition of a solar myth.