Chapter XI · (continued 2)

“we may take a maxim so strongly for granted that the plainest evidence of sense will not entirely change, and often hardly modify, our persuasions; and the more ingenious a man is, the more effectually he is entangled in his errors, his ingenuity only helping him to deceive himself by evading the force of truth.”

The next paper in the volume, on “The Seeming Conversion of Water into Air,” is a record of experiments which cost Priestley much labour and the Lunar Society, for a time, much mystification. Priestley eventually detected the fallacy in the observation which originally induced him to believe that it was possible to transmute water into a permanently elastic fluid, but he got no further in his explanation than that air has a faculty of passing through the pores of an earthern vessel “by means of a power very different from that of pressure.”

This and the third paper in the series are classical, and this partly by reason of, and partly in spite of, their blunders, for they are the record of the work upon which James Watt largely based his conjectures concerning the real chemical nature of water, whereby his name has been associated with that of Cavendish and Lavoisier as the true discoverer of its composition. In the course of his inquiry Priestley studied the action of 217 steam upon red-hot iron by an arrangement generally similar to that employed by Lavoisier, but his explanation of the phenomena is essentially different from that of the French chemist, as may be seen from the following quotation:—

“Since iron gains the same addition of weight by melting it in dephlogisticated air, and also by the addition of water when red-hot, and becomes, as I have already observed, in all respects the same substance, it is evident that this air or water, as existing in the iron, is the very same thing; and this can hardly be explained but upon the supposition that water consists of two kinds of air, viz., inflammable and dephlogisticated.”

This, however, is how Priestley actually does explain it:—

“When iron is melted in dephlogisticated air we may suppose that, though part of its phlogiston escapes to enter into the composition of the small quantity of fixed air which is then procured, yet enough remains to form water with the addition of the dephlogisticated air which it has imbibed, so that this calx of iron consists of the intimate union of the pure earth of iron and of water; and therefore when the same calx, thus saturated with water, is exposed to heat in inflammable air, this air enters into it, destroys the attraction between the water and the earth, and revives the iron while the water is expelled in its proper form.

“Consequently, in the process with steam, nothing is necessary to be supposed but the entrance of the water and the expulsion of the phlogiston belonging to the iron, no more phlogiston remaining in it than what the water brought along with it, and which is retained as a constituent part of the water or of the new compound.”

No more striking illustration of how a man’s ingenuity may help him to deceive himself could be given than is afforded by this passage. Priestley to the end of his days never got a just conception of the real chemical constitution of water.

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The remaining papers call for little comment. In the course of some further inquiries Priestley discovered sulphuretted hydrogen, termed by him sulphurated inflammable air, and which he prepared by the action of oil of vitriol upon ferrous sulphide. This gas must of course have been frequently obtained or perceived by him, and possibly by others, as it is produced by a number of processes. Its characteristic smell was associated with sulphur: it was thought to be nothing but inflammable air modified or polluted by the accidental presence of sulphur. It cannot be held that Priestley drew the same sharp distinctions between the various kinds of inflammable air that we draw to-day. To us they are essentially different substances. Priestley, however, regarded them as in the main phlogiston combined or associated with other substances which affected the character of their flames or gave them different properties. In his opinion they were essentially the same. This fact serves to explain what is otherwise incomprehensible, and accounts for many of his mistakes.

The last paper in the volume, excluding the “Supplementary Observations,” has a special interest. It is entitled “Observations relating to Theory,” and is in fact Priestley’s Confession of Faith in the doctrine which enslaved and misled him throughout the whole of his scientific career. But he makes it so hesitatingly and with so many reservations that one wonders why he is constrained to make it at all. He appears to think, however, that it is expected of him.

“It is always our endeavour, after making experiments, to generalise the conclusions we draw from them, and by this means to form a theory, or system of principles, to which all the facts may be reduced, and by means of which we may be able 219 to foretell the results of future experiments.... In my former publications I have frequently promised to give such a general theory of the experiments in which the different kinds of air are concerned, as the present state of our knowledge of them will enable me to do. But, like Simonides with respect to the question that was proposed to him concerning God, I have deferred it from time to time; and indeed I am more than ever disposed to defer it still longer, as I own that I am at present even less able to give such a theory as shall satisfy myself than I was some years ago; new difficulties having arisen, which unhinge former theories, and more experiments being necessary to establish new ones.

“Fluctuating, however, as the present state of this branch of knowledge is, I do not think that I can, on this occasion, entirely decline giving some observations of a theoretical nature, and though I cannot pretend to perform the whole of my promise, I shall give a summary view of what appears to me to be the constituent parts of all the kinds of air with which we are acquainted, and a more particular account of the hypothesis concerning phlogiston, which is at present more an object of discussion than anything else of a theoretical nature.”

Priestley then passes in review all the “airs” of which the chemistry of his time had any knowledge, giving the elements or constituent principles of which he imagined them to be composed.

The only kind of air that he thinks to be properly elementary, and to consist of a simple substance, is dephlogisticated air, with possibly the addition of the principle of heat, which, as it is not probable that it adds to the weight of bodies, can hardly be called an element in their composition.

“Dephlogisticated air appears to be one of the elements of water, of fixed air, of all the acids, and of many other substances which, till lately, have been thought to be simple. The air of the atmosphere, exclusive of a great variety of foreign impregnations, appears to consist of dephlogisticated and phlogisticated air.”

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As regards phlogisticated air—the mephitic air of Rutherford, the azote of Lavoisier, the nitrogen of Chaptal—Priestley, reasoning from Cavendish’s work, concluded that it was probably not elementary, but “that it consists of nitrous acid and phlogiston; this acid having always been produced by decomposing it with ... dephlogisticated air.”

He is conscious, however, of the insufficiency of this hypothesis, and suggests

“that the acid principle is supplied by the dephlogisticated air, while the nitrous air gives the base of the nitrous acid and phlogiston; and then this [phlogisticated] air may perhaps be considered as phlogiston combined not with all the necessary elements of nitrous acid, but only what may be called the base of it, viz., the dephlogisticated nitrous vapour, or something which when united to dephlogisticated air will constitute nitrous acid.”

“Fixed air (carbonic acid) seems to be a compound of phlogiston and dephlogisticated air.” In other words, carbonic acid and water have, according to Priestley, “the same elementary composition.” “It is something remarkable that two substances so different from each other as fixed air and water should be analysed into the same principles. But there is this difference between them, that water is the union not of pure phlogiston but of inflammable air and dephlogisticated air.”

Of the true nature of inflammable air, Priestley, as we have more than once had occasion to point out, had only the vaguest notions.

“Inflammable air,” he says, “seems now to consist of water and inflammable air, which however seems extraordinary, as the two substances are hereby made to involve each other, one of the constituent parts of water being inflammable air, and one of the constituent parts of inflammable air being water; and therefore, if the experiments would favour it (but I do not see that they do so) it would be more natural to suppose that water, 221 like fixed air, consists of phlogiston and dephlogisticated air in some different mode of combination.”

That Priestley to the last imagined that the various kinds of inflammable air known to him were at bottom one and the same substance, modified or affected by other substances, accidental and unessential, might be proved by a number of passages. He says with respect to inflammable air generally:—

“There is an astonishing variety in the different kinds of inflammable air, the cause of which is very imperfectly known. The lightest, and therefore, probably, the purest kind seems to consist of phlogiston and water only. But it is probable that oil, and that of different kinds, may be held in solution in several of them, and be the reason of their burning with a lambent flame, and also of their being so readily resolved into fixed air when they are decomposed with dephlogisticated air; though why this should be the case I cannot imagine.”

Nitrous air (nitric oxide) he conceives to be a combination of a dephlogisticated nitrous air and phlogiston, and that by adding to it dephlogisticated air and water it is converted into nitrous acid.

Dephlogisticated nitrous air (nitrous oxide) he conceives may, like dephlogisticated air, be an elementary substance and to be formed by depriving nitrous air of its phlogiston.

The various acid airs (e.g., marine acid air, vitriolic acid air, etc.) consist of the peculiar acids as vapours combined with phlogiston.

The Alkaline air (ammonia) he thought to consist of inflammable air and phlogisticated air (nitrogen),

“or of something capable of being converted into phlogisticated air.... That water enters into the composition of alkaline air seems necessary to be admitted, because it is decomposed into inflammable air, which I cannot help thinking necessarily requires water. It seems, however, clearly to be inferred ... that there is no occasion to admit the alkaline principle into the 222 number of elements; the alkalinity, as I may say, some way or other, arising from phlogiston, or phlogisticated air, as acidity arises from dephlogisticated air.”

After these theoretical speculations, “in which,” he says, “I fear I have not communicated much light, though it is as much as I have been able to get,” Priestley proceeds to make some observations relating to phlogiston, “the existence of which is at present a great subject of discussion with philosophers; some maintaining that there is no such thing, and others holding the doctrine of Stahl on the subject.”

“According to Stahl, phlogiston is a real substance, capable of being transferred from one body to another; its presence or absence making a remarkable difference in the properties of bodies, whether it add to their weight or not. Thus he concluded that oil of vitriol deprived of water, and united to phlogiston, becomes sulphur; and that the calces of metals, by the addition of the same substance, become metals.... What is now contended for is that in the oil of vitriol changing into sulphur something is lost and nothing gained, and also that a calx becomes a metal by the loss of air only. And did facts correspond to this theory it would certainly be preferable to that of Stahl, as being more simple; there being one principle less to take into our account in explaining the changes of bodies. But I do not know of any case in which phlogiston has been supposed to enter into a body, but there is room to suppose that something does enter into it....

“What has been insisted upon, as most favourable to the exclusion of phlogiston, is the revival of mercury without the addition of any other substance from the precipitate per se. In this case it is evident that mere heat ... is sufficient to revive the metal. And as what is expelled from this calx is the purest dephlogisticated air, it has been said that mercury is changed into this calx by imbibing pure air, and therefore becomes a metal again, merely in consequence of parting with that air.”

The dexterous Mr Kirwan, not long before he himself embraced the French doctrine, furnished Priestley with 223 an argument which satisfied him that this cardinal fact can be accounted for without excluding phlogiston. “Since therefore the supposition is exceedingly convenient, if not absolutely necessary, to the explanation of many other facts in chemistry, it is at least advisable not to abandon it.”

“That calces do not become metals merely by parting with the air they contain, is evident from my experiments on heating them in contact with inflammable air, in which the inflammable air, or some necessary part of it, is undoubtedly absorbed; and though a little moisture be deposited in the process, it may well be supposed to be that which in conjunction with phlogiston constituted the inflammable air. And what can the other principle that is absorbed by the calx be but the same thing which, when united to water, is recovered again from the metal and found to be inflammable air having all the same properties with that which was employed in the revival of it. Metals therefore are not simple substances, but consist of their calces, and something else which they take from inflammable air. And as the same may also be taken from any combustible substance, it corresponds exactly to Stahl’s phlogiston, and therefore the doctrine of it is confirmed by these experiments; that is, we must still say that in all combustible substances there is a principle capable of being transferred to other substances, which when united to the calces of metals makes them to be metals, and which, united to oil of vitriol (deprived of its water) makes it to be sulphur.”

Thus was the ingenious man effectually entangled in his errors, his ingenuity helping him to deceive himself by evading the force of truth. To err is human. If Priestley saw through a glass darkly, and but dimly discerned the truth, he at least strove, so far as in him lay, to reach the light. Posterity forgives, and may well forget, his errors in grateful recognition of the many noble services he rendered to our common humanity, and in humbling recollection of the suffering and sacrifice with which those services were requited.