Tucker, ABRAHAM

Tucker, ABRAHAM, was born in London, September 2, 1705, studied at Merton College, Oxford, and entered the Inner Temple, but being rich and unambitious settled down to the quiet domestic happiness of the country gentleman's life, on the estate of Betchworth near Dorking, which he bought in 1727. He died November 20, 1774. All his life long a student of ethical questions, he began about 1756 the preparation of his great work, The Light of Nature Pursued (1768-78). Of its seven volumes only three were published in his lifetime, under the name of 'Edward Search, Esq.' Not a regular systematic treatise, but a series of disquisitions on metaphysics, theology, morals, it shows originality, ingenuity of illustration, and solidity of understanding. The standard edition is that edited, with a life, by the author's grandson, Sir Henry Mildmay (1805).