Laurens Perseus Hickok was born in 1798 in Bethel, Connecticut. His teaching career began even before his career as a college student when he opened a small private school in Bethel. When he was twenty, Hickok entered Union College as a junior. Upon returning home he married his former student in Bethel, Elizabeth Taylor. Through this marriage he became related to Mrs. Hickok's brother-in-law, Deacon Seth Seelye (whose son, Julius Hawley Seelye, went on to become Amherst College's 5th president). Hickok then decided to become a minister. He received no formal education in theology, but instead apprenticed himself to practicing ministers. He was pastor of the church at Kent for six years, and went on to preach at Litchfield.

In 1836, Hickok became Professor of Theology at Western Reserve University in Hudson, Ohio. In 1844 he moved to the Auburn Theological Seminary, where he taught as a professor for eight years. He returned to Union College in 1855 as Vice President and Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy. He became president of Union in 1866, but resigned the same year due to continuing political opposition from a number of faculty and trustees.

Hickok spent the last twenty years of his life in Amherst, where he influenced a whole generation of rising teachers and students of philosophy through his books (revised with the help of his nephew and former student, then President Julius Seelye). Hickok's works include Rational Psychology (1849) and Rational Cosmology (1858). Many of his sermons are included in this collection.