JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, the son of Jonas Priestley, "a maker and dresser of woollen cloth," was born at Fieldhead, near Leeds, in the year 1733. His mother, who was the daughter of a farmer near Wakefield, died when he was seven years old. From that time he was brought up by a sister of his father, who was possessed of considerable private means.
Priestley's surroundings in his young days were decidedly religious, and evidently gave a tone to his whole after life. We shall find that Priestley's work as a man of science can scarcely be separated from his theological and metaphysical work. His cast of mind was decidedly metaphysical; he was altogether different from Black, who, as we have seen, was a typical student of natural phenomena.
The house of Priestley's aunt was a resort for all the Dissenting ministers of that part of the county. She herself was strictly Calvinistic in her theological views, but not wholly illiberal.
Priestley's early schooling was chiefly devoted to learning languages; he acquired a fair knowledge of Latin, a little Greek, and somewhat later he learned the elements of Hebrew. At one time he thought of going into trade, and therefore, as he tells us in his "Memoirs," he acquired some knowledge of French, Italian and High Dutch. With the help of a friend, a Dissenting minister, he learned something of geometry, mathematics and natural philosophy, and also got some smattering of the Chaldee and Syriac tongues.
At the age of nineteen Priestley went to an "academy" at Daventry. The intellectual atmosphere here seems to have been suitable to the rapid development of Priestley's mind. Great freedom of discussion was allowed; even during the teachers' lectures the students were permitted "to ask whatever questions and to make whatever remarks" they pleased; and they did it, Priestley says, "with the greatest, but without any offensive, freedom."
The students were required to read and to give an account of the more important arguments for and against the questions discussed in the teachers' lectures. Theological disputations appear to have been the favourite topics on which the students exercised their ingenuity among themselves. Priestley tells us that he "saw reason to embrace what is generally called the heterodox side of almost every question."