 Hume thinks that “systems and hypotheses” have also “perverted our natural understanding” of morality. The views of the moral rationalists—Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), Locke and William Wollaston (1660–1724)—are prominent among them. One distinctive, but unhealthy, aspect of modern moral philosophy, Hume believes, is that it allies itself with religion and thus sees itself as serving the interests of “popular superstition”. Clarke’s theory and those of the other rationalists epitomize this tendency.