Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/113

Rh this led to the further admission that, so far as we can know, there may be no difference between the substance of matter and the substance of spirit ("Disquisitions," p. 16). A step further would have shown Priestley that his materialism was, in substance, very little different from the idealism of his contemporary, the Bishop of Cloyne.

As Priestley's philosophy is mainly a clear statement of the views of the deeper thinkers of his day, so are his political conceptions based upon those of Locke. Locke's aphorism, that "the end of government is the good of mankind," is thus expanded by Priestley:

The little sentence here interpolated, "that is, of the majority of the members of any state," appears to be that passage which suggested to Bentham, according to his own acknowledgment, the famous "greatest happiness" formula, which, by substituting "happiness" for "good," has converted a noble into an ignoble principle. But I do not call to mind that there is any utterance in Locke quite so outspoken as the following passage in the "Essay on the First Principles of Government." After laying down, as "a fundamental maxim in all governments," the proposition that "kings, senators, and nobles," are "the servants of the public," Priestley goes on to say:

As a Dissenter, subject to the operation of the Corporation and Test Acts, and as a Unitarian, excluded from the benefit of the Toleration Act, it is not surprising to find that Priestley had very definite