WILLIAM

See also:

• WILLIAM WOLLASTON (1659--1724)
• WOLLASTON, WILLIAM HYDE (1766-1828)

WOLLASTON (1659--1724)  , English philosophical writer, was born at Coton-Clanford in Staffordshire, on the 26th of March 16 J9 . On leaving Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1681, he became an ,assistant master at the Birmingham grammar-school, and took holy orders . In 1688 an uncle left him a fortune . He then moved to London, married a lady of wealth, and devoted himself to learning and philosophy . He embodied his views in the one book by which he is remembered, The Religion of Nature Delineated (1st ed . 1722; 2nd ed . 1724) . He died in October 1724 . Wollaston's Religion of Nature, which falls between Clarke's Discourse of the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion and Butler's Sermons, was one of the popular philosophical books of its day . To the 8th edition (1750) was added a life of the author . The book was designed to be an answer to two questions: Is there such a thing as natural religion? and, If there is, what is it ? Wollaston starts with the assumption that religion and morality are identical, and labours to show that religion is " the pursuit of happiness by the practice of truth and reason." He claims originality for his theory that the moral evil is the practical denial of a true proposition and moral good the affirmation of it (see ETHICS) .

Wollaston also published anonymously a small book, On the

Design of the Book of Ecclesiastes, or the Unreasonableness of Men's Restless Contention for the Present Enjoyments, represented in an English Poem (London, 1691) . See John Clarke, Examination of the Notion of Moral Good and Evil advanced in a late book entitled The Religion of Nature Delineated (London, 1725) ; Drechsler, Ober Wollaston's Moral-Philosophie (Erlangen, 18o2); Sir Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1876), ch. iii. and ch. ix.; H . Sidgwick's History of Ethics (1902), pp . 198 sq .