ABSTRACT
Joseph Butler was born at Wantage on 18 May 1692, the youngest of eight children. His father, a fairly well-to-do draper, was a Presbyterian, and wished Joseph to become a minister. His early education was in the local grammar school, but he was then sent by his father to a dissenting academy run by Mr Samuel Jones, first at Gloucester and later at Tewkesbury. He was still at the academy when he began a philosophical correspondence with Samuel Clarke, the moralist and theologian. The peaceable and respectful tone of Butler’s queries, combined with the intellectual rigour with which he pursued them, impressed Clarke; and the latter’s friendly response was undoubtedly part of the cause of the high regard Butler shows in several places for the work of a thinker whose methods are very different from his own.
