The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated

[1] Between 1774 and 1778, while serving as an assistant to Lord Shelburne, Priestley wrote a series of five major metaphysical works, arguing for a materialist philosophy even though such a position "entailed denial of free will and the soul.

"[3] Priestley explicitly stated that humans had no free will: "all things, past, present, and to come, are precisely what the Author of nature really intended them to be, and has made provision for.

He argued that the associations made in a person's mind were a necessary product of their lived experience because Hartley's theory of associationism was analogous to natural laws, such as gravity.

If anyone is not convinced by this supremely clearly and accessibly written book, his understanding must really be paralysed by prejudices,"[8]: 77  and that the work contributed to Kant taking the complete necessity of acts of will as a settled matter to which no further doubt could pertain.

The narrator reads this philosophical treatise to get ideas on how to treat his obstinate employee Bartleby and to examine their relation to one another in God's larger plan.