Public orators denounced him, the
wits ridiculed him, and his associates in the peerage were
indignant that he should condescend to pursuits so unworthy. But
Boyle pressed on. His discoveries opened new paths in various
directions and gave an impulse to a succession of vigorous
investigators. Thus began the long series of discoveries
culminating those of Black, Bergmann, Cavendish, Priestley, and
Lavoisier, who ushered in the chemical science of the
nineteenth century.
Yet not even then without a sore struggle against unreason. And
it must here be noticed that this unreason was not all
theological. The unreasoning heterodox when intrusted with
irresponsible power can be as short-sighted and cruel as the
unreasoning orthodox. Lavoisier, one of the best of our race,
not only a great chemist but a true man, was sent to the
scaffold by the Parisian mob, led by bigoted "liberals" and
atheists, with the sneer that the republic had no need of
_savants_. As to Priestley, who had devoted his life to science
and to every good work among his fellow-men, the Birmingham mob,
favoured by the Anglican clergymen who harangued them as
"fellow-churchmen," wrecked his house, destroyed his library,
philosophical instruments, and papers containing the results of
long years of scientific research, drove him into exile, and
would have murdered him if they could have laid their hands upon
him.
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