William Wollaston

The Religion of Nature Delineated

Argument

The Religion of Nature Delineated was an attempt to create a system of ethics without recourse to revealed religion. He claimed originality for his theory that the moral evil is the practical denial of a true proposition and moral good the affirmation of it, writing that this attempt to use mathematics to create a rationalist ethics was "something never met with anywhere". Wollaston "held that religious truths were plain as Euclid, clear to all who contemplated Creation." Newton had induced natural laws from a mathematical model of the physical world; similarly, Wollaston was attempting to induce moral laws by a mathematical model of the moral world.

Influence

More than 10,000 copies were sold in the just first few years alone A biography of the author was added to the 8th edition in 1750.

Wollaston's idea of a Natural religion without revelation briefly inspired and revived the movement known as Deism in England. Some today consider him a "Christian Deist", while others note that there is no "significant evidence that William Wollaston was not a more or less orthodox Christian."

Although Wollaston's ideas could be argued to have anticipated both Scottish Common Sense Realism and Utilitarianism proponents of later schools of philosophy criticised and sometimes even ridiculed Wollaston. These included Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Richard Price, and Jeremy Bentham.

After 1759 no further edition of his work was published in the rest of the century.

Benjamin Franklin worked as a compositor on one of the 1726 editions of the book and wrote the short pamphlet A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain in response. Later, however, he found his pamphlet "so shallow and unconvincing as to be embarrassing", and burned as many copies as he could find. Although rejecting Deism, he retained a fondness for the "pursuit of happiness", believing that God was best served by doing good works and helping other people.

It was a major influence on the American educator Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson's college philosophy textbooks. Its focus on practice as well as speculation attracted a more mature Franklin, who commissioned and published Johnson's textbook Elementa Philosophica in 1752, then promoted it in the College of Philadelphia (now Penn University).

Family On 26 November 1689, Wollaston married Catharine Charlton (died 21 July 1720). They had eleven children together, four of whom died within his lifetime. They included:

Charlton, the eldest son, died unmarried in 1729 William, Member of Parliament for Ipswich John, fifth son, died 1720.