was borne to him by a large body of his country-men, [12] 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 Hobbs,
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 Calvanistic 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."