Priestley, JOSEPH

Priestley, JOSEPH, son of a cloth-dresser, was born at Fieldhead, near Leeds, 13th March 1733. For some time he was obliged to abandon school studies, owing to weak health, and betook himself to mercantile pursuits, but with returning strength his literary studies were resumed at a dissenting academy at Daventry (founded by Dr Doddridge). Though his father and family were strong Calvinists, young Priestley, during his residence at the academy, felt called on to renounce nearly all the theological and metaphysical opinions of his youth. 'I came,' he says, 'to embrace what is called the heterodox side of every question.' In 1755 he became minister to a small congregation at Needham Market, in Suffolk. While here he composed his work against the doctrine of Christ's death being a sacrifice or satisfaction for sin, entitled The Scripture Doctrine of Remission. In this he taught that the Bible is indeed a divine revelation, made from God to man through Christ, himself a man and no more, nor claiming to be more, and rejected the doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement. In 1758 he quitted Needham for Nantwich; and in 1761 he removed, as teacher of languages and belles-lettres, to an academy at Warrington; and here his literary career may be said first fairly to have begun. A visit to London led to his making the acquaintance of Franklin, who supplied him with books which enabled him to write his History and Present State of Electricity, published in 1767. It was followed by a work on Vision, Light, and Colours. In 1762 he published his Theory of Language and Universal Grammar. In 1764 he was made LL.D. of Edinburgh, and F.R.S. in 1766. In the following year he removed to Leeds, having been appointed minister of the Mill Hill dissenting chapel there. The fact of a brewery being beside his dwelling gave a new direction to his energetic and versatile mind; he began to study chemistry. In 1773 he was appointed literary companion to Lord Shelburne, and accompanied the earl on a continental tour in 1774. Having been told by certain Parisian savants that he was the only man of understanding they had ever known who believed in Christianity, he wrote, in reply, the Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, and various other works, containing criticisms on the doctrines of Hume and others. But, while laughed at in Paris as a believer, at home he was branded as an atheist. To escape the odium arising from the latter imputation, he published, in 1777, his Disquisition relating to Matter and Spirit, in which, partly materialising spirit and partly spiritualising matter, he holds that our hopes of resurrection must rest solely on the truth of the Christian revelation, and that on science they have no foundation whatever. On leaving Lord Shelburne, he became minister of a dissenting chapel at Birmingham. The publication, in 1786, of his History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ occasioned the renewal of a controversy, which had begun in 1778, between him and Dr Horsley, concerning the doctrines of Free-will, Materialism, and Unitarianism. His reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution led to his being made a citizen of the French Republic; and this led to a mob on one occasion breaking into his house and destroying all its contents, books, manuscripts, scientific instruments, &c. A brother-in-law, however, about this time left him £10,000, with an annuity of £200. In 1791 he was elected to a charge at Hackney; but his honestly-avowed opinions had made him unpopular, and he (1794) removed to America, where he was heartily received. He died at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, 6th February 1804, expressing (though he agreed that he should be called a materialist) his confidence in immortality. He was a man of irreproachable character, serene of temper, fearless in searching after and confessing the truth. His services to chemistry are summed up at Vol. III. p. 147 (and see OXYGEN); recent research fully justifies Priestley's title to be called the father of pneumatic chemistry; Thorpe, at the British Association, 1890 (see Nature, xlii. 449), not merely defended the priority of his discovery of oxygen (1774) and of the composition of water (1781), but denied Lavoisier's claim to be considered an independent discoverer. See J. T. Rutt's edition of Priestley's Works (25 vols. 1832), including Autobiographical Memoir; and Martineau's Essays, Reviews, and Addresses (vol. i. 1891).