physical universe: Hartley, putting a modern face upon ancient
materialism, had extended that mechanical conception to psychology;
Linnaeus 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