The Religion of Nature Delineated

Book excerpt: The Religion of Nature Delineated is a book by Anglican cleric William Wollaston that describes a system of ethics that can be discerned without recourse to revealed religion. It was first published in 1722, two years before Wollaston's death. Due to its influence on eighteenth-century philosophy and his promotion of a natural religion, the book claims for Wollaston a ranking as one of the great British Enlightenment philosophers, along with John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume. It contributed to the development of two important intellectual schools: British Deism, and the pursuit of happiness moral philosophy of American Practical Idealism which appears in the United States Declaration of Independence.