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    Untitled Article

    During its higher progress , when the object is to include large classes of facts under some general theory , or to measure the precise amount of causes already discovered , the quality most needed is a searching discriminative power ; a quality most rarely

    united with the former , and certainly not distinguishing the philosopher of whom we speak . Had he possessed it , few names greater than his would have appeared in the world ' s roll of honour . Because he wanted it , many of his philosophical works will have to be rewritten . JVon omnis morietur : but while his

    opinions will live , and , with few exceptions probably , become the faith of posterity , his own exposition of them will hardly satisfy the wants of a future age . That Dr . Hartley , at a time when no very precise limits had been drawn between physical and metaphysical science , should have entwined together the greatest truth in the philosophy of mind with a most gratuitous speculation in

    the physiology of brain , is not surprising : that Dr . Priestley should have perceived that the doctrine of association was a fact and the doctrine of vibrations a fancy , and have disentangled them from each other , is no more than might have been expected of his discernment ; but that he should have separated them merely on the ground of their different evidence , without

    discovering their different provinces ; that , in his character of metaphysician , he should still have manifested a hankering after the very theory of which he had disencumbered his great master ' s philosophy ; that he should have been misled by the plausible analogy which promises to explain the phenomena of mind by the changes of matter , indicates a want of clear perception with

    respect to the due limits of mental science which should have been reserved as the exclusive glory of the phrenologists . Dr . Priestley evidently thought , that , if there were but proof of the doctrine of vibrations , it might be duly expounded from the chair of moral philosophy ; and had no idea that the professor who

    should do so would deserve a caning for his impertinence from his brother of the physiological school . Nor is this the only instance which marks his deficiency of acute discriminative power . The true test of this rarest and highest of human faculties is to be found in the researches of mental science ; its most

    refined exercise is required and its greatest triumphs are achieved , in unravelling the subtle processes of reason * in penetrating the moving throng of thoughts and feelings , and , through all their magic changes , distinguishing the separate history ot each from its origin amid the obscurity of infancy ; and clear as a lens must

    that mind be , which , in transmitting through it the white light of intellect , can faithfully decompose it into its elemental colours . Dr . Priestley had far too much perspicacity not to perceive that mental analysis might be pushed much further , and , if intellectual science is to rank with other sciences , must be pushed much further , than it had been carried by the orthodox philosophers of

    Untitled Article

    88 On the Life , Character , and Writings of Dr . Priettley .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1833, page 88, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2608/page/16/