Principles of Nature

by Elihu Palmer

Overview

Written by a Presbyterian minister who rejected Christianity in favor of Deism, Principles of Nature was first published in America in 1801 and has never since gone out of print. The British version was published in 1819 and the publisher, Richard Carlile, was imprisoned for blasphemy. Unusual for its time, this book is a classic of clear, almost modern-seeming expression.

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Product Details

BN ID:	2940012599445
Publisher:	Mobile Lyceum
Publication date:	05/24/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	245 KB

About the Author

Elihu Palmer was born in Canterbury, Connecticut in 1764. He studied to be a Presbyterian minister at Dartmouth College, whence he graduated in 1787. Soon after his graduation, however, he became a Deist. After rejecting the Calvinist doctrine of Presbyterianism, Palmer became somewhat of a physical, spiritual, and intellectual wanderer, ultimately making his way to New York City, where he formed the Deistical Society of New York in 1796.

He resided for a time in Augusta, Georgia, where he collected materials for Dr. Jedediah Morse's " Geography," and subsequently lived in Philadelphia and New York. In 1793 he became totally blind from an attack of yellow fever. He was a violent political agitator, and the head of the society of Columbian illuminati, which was established in New York in 1801.

Palmer kept writing until the end of his life and published a number of different written works including "A Fourth of July Oration" (1797), and was also the author of The Principles of Nature, or A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species. He also founded two newspapers, The Temple of Reason in 1800 and Prospect, or View of the Moral World in 1803. [From Wikipedia]