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never brings into question their integrity or good intentions ; and throughout conducts himself as an earnest , and perhaps sometimes too vehement , but yet as an honourable and fair opponent Even when his indignation and contempt are at their height , he never adopts a style which is unsuitable either to the scholar or the gentleman .
With respect to the character and merits of this distinguished person , I am indeed well aware of the circumstances which may be supposed to render it difficult for me to form a fair and impartial judgment . He in whose mind a celebrated name has been almost-invariably associated with , feelings of respect and admiration , is not perhaps the person most likely to arrive at a perfectly just and accurate conclusion upon such a subject ; but he may possibly deserve at least as much confidence as they to whom such a name
has habitually suggested only the idea of a formidable and not always unsuccessful opponent . Notwithstanding , therefore , the acknowledged influence of this not unnatural bias , I must be allowed to say , that the general outcry against the controversial asperity of Dr . Priestley seems to me to have been carried far beyond its due bounds . There are very few instances in which he was the first aggressor , and scarcely any in which the account is not much more than balanced by the violence and bigotry of his antagonists , of
whom there are few ( Dr . Price and Bishop Newcome are perhaps the only exceptions ) from whose pages it would not be easy to select passages which we might safely challenge any one to parallel in the whole range of Priestley ' s polemical writings . Few of them fail to call in question his motives , and io blacken his character as a man and a Christian , while he is on all occasions desirous as much as possible to keep the person of his opponent out of view in the examination of his doctrine .
My attention , not long ago , was attracted by a passage in a work of the eminent Professor Dugald Stewart , published six years after Priestley ' s death , where , without the apology which others might have pleaded from the excitement of a personal controversy , he has shewn himself a little under the influence of this polemical spirit . Not contented with endeavouring to
shew his arguments to be inconclusive , he strives to convict him of a wilful imposition upon his readers . The peculiar , and perhaps somewhat fanciful , theory with repect to the nature of matter , oh which Dr . P . lays so much stress in his Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit , is first mentioned in his History of Light and Vision , and is there introduced by the following sentence :
" This scheme of the immateriality of matter , as it may be called , or rather the mutual penetration of matter , first occurred to my friend , Mr . Michell , in reading Baxter on the Immortality of the Soul . " Mr . Stewart , in his Dissertation entitled " On the Metaphysical Theories of Hartley , Priestley , and Darwin , " after having inserted the whole passage
of which this is the introductory sentence , proceeds as follows : —** In the Disquisitions on Matter and S p irit by the same author , the above passage is quoted at length ; but it is somewhat remarkable , that as the aim of the latter work is to inculcate the materiality of the mind , Dr . Priestley has prudently suppressed the clause which I have distinguished in the first sentence of the foregoing extract by printing it in capitals , *
Our author seems to think that he has detected Dr . Priestley in a notable piece of disingenuity , and evidently exults not a little in his discovery . One might be inclined , however , to suspect that he had not read the disquisitions on Matter and Spirit with the attention which might have been expected , - ' - ——— - — . « .,. ¦ > •<¦*
. Philosophical Eesays , p . 133 , 4 to edit ,
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Controversial Character of Dr . Priestley . 153
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1828, page 153, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2558/page/9/
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