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Aristotle’s Treatise on Poetry, Translated: with Notes on the Translation, and on the Original; and Two Dissertations, on Poetical, and Musical, Imitation. By Thomas Twining, M.A. London: Printed and Sold by Payne and Son [and others], 1789.
4to, xix, [i], 565+[31] pp., ink stain to extreme tail of first few prelims, nineteenth-century half green morocco, spine decorated gilt with very minor damage, a very good copy.
First edition. A key text of literary and aesthetic neoclassicism, in 'a remarkably assured rendering of the elliptical Greek, made all the more valuable by its fine interpretative essays' (France). 'The work was highly praised by Greek scholars such as C.G. Heine (1729-1812) and Samuel Parr, who believed it "not surpassed by any translation in the English language". The Dissertations, addressing the question of the nature of imitation and engaging on it the latest scholarship … were hailed by contemporaries as a significant progress in Aristotelian studies and were translated into German by J.G. Buhle' (ODNB).
£350
The Politics of Aristotle with an introduction, two prefatory essays and notes critical and explanatory, by W.L. Newman …, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887-1902.
4 volumes, 8vo, Greek text with extensive notes and commentary in English, contemporary red calf, gilt, green and red morocco labels (a couple slightly chipped), some rubbing and marking, but an attractive set.
First edition of W.L. Newman’s principal monument. 'The whole work belonged to the grand, leisurely type of scholarship, in which even notes have a literary quality. …for soundness of interpretation, copiousness of illustration, and mature wisdom its value is permanent (ODNB). In prize bindings from Merchant Taylors’ School, with large gilt arms dated 1902 on front covers and presentation label to D.K. Hopkyns for Greek Scholarship on volume I front pastedown. There are scholarly notes in the margins of the Greek text, presumably the recipient’s.
£200
Logic; or, The Art of Thinking … done from the New French Edition, by Mr. Ozell, London: William Taylor, 1717.
Small 8vo, [xiv], 452, [4] pp., contemporary calf, worn, joints cracked, small inkstain to first 10 leaves, Macclesfield Library bookplate and blindstamped crests.
'The first English version of this work appeared at London in 1685 … later editions of this particular version appeared at the same place in 1693, 1696, and 1702. A second English version was done by John Ozell and published at London in 1717' (Howell). Ozell's career as a translator was marked by controversy. He was 'lampooned as the epitome of the hack translator in both Pope's Dunciad and Jonathan Swift's ‘Introduction to Polite Conversation’. Yet although he was mocked for his literary incompetence, his translations were not only good by the standards of the time, but also useful to Pope for his own work on the classics' (Abigail Williams in ODNB).
£300
Les Constitutions du monastere de Port Royal du S. Sacrement. Mons: Gaspard Migeot, [i.e. Amsterdam: Elzevier], 1665.
12mo, pp. [16], 528, [2]; M4 (contiguous with M9) bound after M8; dampstained at lower inner-margin; later mottled calf, worn, spine mostly lacking.
First edition thus, a disguised Elzevier publication, by the sister of Antoine Arnauld, abbess of the Jansenist Cistercian nuns at Port-Royal who was forced into exile in 1664. Her elder sister Angélique had also been abbess of Port-Royal. Brunet, II, 241; Willems 1353 (‘C’est positivement un Elzevier d’Amsterdam’). From the library of Peter Laslett, with his ownership inscription and bookplate dated 1952.
£150
Port-Royal versus the Jesuits
[A. ARNAULD] La the´ologie morale des Jesuites et nouveaux casuistes … : nouvellement combattue¨ par les curez de France et censure´e par un grand nombre de pre´lats et par des facultez de the´ologie catholiques … augmente´e en cette nouvelle e´dition d'une censure faite par la Sorbonne. Cologne: N. Schoute, 1667, [4], 893 pp. [bound with] [PASCAL, B.] Les provinciales ou les lettres écrites par L. de Montalte … nouvelle edition, augmentée de quelques pieces. Cologne: N. Schoute, 1667, [16], 355 pp.[bound with] Censura sacræ facultatis theologiæ Parisiensis in librum cui titulus est, (…). Paris: A. Vitré, 1667, 20 pp.
8vo, 3 works in 1 volume, contemporary calf, spine decorated gilt in compartments, early amorial bookplate, some browning and waterstaining but generally very good.
Early reprints of key works relating to the controversy between the Jansenists and the Jesuits in seventeenth-century France. Arnauld published his hostile La the´ologie morale des Jesuites … first in 1644, a year after his De la fréquent communion. Both these books were expanded in several subsequent editions. The controversy they generated led to many replies, and to Arnauld’s eventual expulsion from the Sorbonne in 1656. Arnauld’s friend Pascal came to his defence with his famous Provinciales, published psuedonymously in installments between January 1656 and May 1657. Pascal’s book, many of the arguments of which are pre-figured in La the´ologie moral, was put on the Index and publicly burned in Paris in 1660. The printings in this volume are all from 1667. The version of Arnauld’s The´ologie morale is supplemented by numerous ‘escrits’ and ‘censures’ from the intervening period, some of which, according to early annotations in this copy, are ‘Par Mr. Nicole’. The version of the Provinciales is the seventh edition, including the fragmentary nineteenth letter not present in most earlier editions. ‘The Jesuits' main ground of attack had been that the tenets of Jansenism came dangerously near to the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. Pascal's counter-attack took the form of a brilliant exposure of the casuistical methods of argument employed by the Jesuits (…). Pascal's weapon was irony, and the freshness with which the gravity of the subject contrasts with the lightness of the manner is an enduring triumph’ (PMM 140).
£600
Grundlinien der Rhetorik nach einem neuen und einfachen Systeme. München: Lindauer, 1820.
Small 8vo, 174, [2] pp., rebound in plain boards, isolated pencil marginalia, text otherwise remarkably clean and fresh.
First edition of one of a series of textbooks published by Ludwig Aurbacher (1784-1847) during his twenty-five-year tenure as Professor of German and Aesthetics at the Kadettencorps in Munich.
£50
With part of an autograph letter, signed
Fermenta Cognitionis. Berlin: Reimer, 1822-24; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1825 [bound with] Bemerkungen über einige antireligiöse Philosopheme unserer Zeit. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1824.
7 parts in 2 volumes, small 8vo, viii, 70, [2], 59, [1], 63; 60, 84, [4], 100, 66 pp., contemporary marbled boards, some edgewear and corners bumped, contrasting labels, speckled edges, ms fragment attached to ffe, some early underlining on 3 pages only, text otherwise very fresh, a particularly nice set.
First editions, with part of a letter in Baader's hand, dated and signed: 'Schwabing bei Munchen den 6. Octob. [1]824 Frans R. v. Baader Oberstbergrath und academiker. Diese Lehre der Autonomic ist die der Souverainite des Mensch und als solche eine Copie der Volkssouverainität, und der Mensch ist auch nach jener nur frei weil und insofern er nichts über sich hat, und ist gleich jedem anderen, weil diese Souverainite unter die Menschen gleich vertheilt ist. Man begreift sohin die Harmonia prästabilita der deutschen Theorie des sansculotisme mit der französischen früheren Praxis desselben. Ubrigens ist auch diese Grille nicht neu, und ich fand die ganze kantisch-fichtische Lehre bereits vor vielen Jahren in einem Pamphlet in England (vor der Zeit der Rebellion) unter dem Titel: No God, no King!' 'Franz von Baader (1765-1841) was opposed to the Enlightenment’s mechanistic and atomistic idea of nature … he derived his ideas not only from Christian sources, but from natural philosophy, hermetic and alchemical thought, and from the Jewish Kabbalah … Baader is often referred to as a theosophist because of his views relating creation to an emanation from God. But unlike some forms of theosophy, Baader’s theosophy is not pantheistic; he emphasizes the separation of Creator and creature. He is also opposed to any idea that would ascribe evil to God; he says that evil is a result of our free choice. Baader’s writings are extremely difficult to read, even for German readers. Although he was known as a brilliant conversationalist, his style of writing is so notoriously difficult that it became known even in his lifetime as the ‘Baader style’. He uses theosophical language, he frequently uses untranslated words from other languages such as French, and he sometimes invents new words … Baader said he did not mind if his work was regarded as unsystematic; he saw his own work in more organic terms, as ‘ferment,’ or ‘seeds’. The title of his main work, Fermenta Cognitionis, reflects this view … Baader had an influence on his contemporaries Schelling, Hegel, Goethe, Jacobi, Novalis, Friedrich Schlegel, Jean Paul, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Clemens Brentano' (J. Glenn Friesen, Ars Disputandi 3, 2003). 'Schelling took umbrage at Bemerkungen über einige antireligiöse Philosopheme unserer Zeit; he thought that it had been directed at him. Consequently, a serious rift developed between Schelling and Baader. Although the essay's content applied as much to Hegel as it did to Schelling, Hegel and Baader, nevertheless, managed to remain on good terms' (Franz von Baader's Philosophy of Love, Betanzos & Herman, 1998, p. 73).
£1800
Neues Organ der Wissenschaften. Aus dem Lateinischen übers., mit einer Einleitung und Anmerkungen begleitet von Anton Theobald Brück. Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1830.
8vo, [iv], 242 pp., later green cloth somewhat sunned and spotted, gilt spine label chipped, text browned and with some marginal markings in pencil.
First complete German edition. G. W. Bartholdy's earlier translation with comments by Salomon Maimon (1793) remained unfinished. The translator A.T. Brück was a physician who succeeded Joachim Dietrich Brandis as the spa doctor at Driburg. Besides this important Baconian edition, Brück published many articles on Erasmus Darwin. He is also credited as the discoverer of agoraphobia.
£250
Opus Majus ad Clementem Quartum, pontifecem romanum. Ex MS. Codice Dubliniensi, cum aliis quibusdam collato, nunc primum edidit S. Jebb, M.D.. London: William Bowyer, 1733.
Folio, [30], 477, [5] pp., title-page printed in red and black, one folding letterpress table, 2 folding engraved plates, woodcut initials and tail-pieces, contemporary vellum, light damp-stain in lower outer corners, both plates lightly browned, light soiling in a few margins, covers slightly bowed, still a very nice copy from the Macclesfield Library, with armorial bookplate and blindstamped crests.
First edition, large paper copy. Many of the details of the life of Roger Bacon (c. 1214/1220 - c. 1292) are uncertain and disputed. Born probably in Somerset, and nick-named Doctor Mirabilis ('The Astounding Doctor') he studied liberal arts in Oxford. Around 1237-40 he moved to Paris where he lectured on various parts of the Aristotelian corpus. 'In the late 1250s Bacon came into contact with Cardinal Guy de Foulques, future Pope Clement IV, who became interested in Bacon's appraisal of the status of learning and its theological implications. In 1265 Clement IV asked Bacon to "reveal to us as fast and secretly as possible your means against those critical problems to which you have called our attention". Bacon complied, and in 1267-8 he responded to the pope with his Opus majus … [in which] … mathematics, understood according to some version of the ancient quadrivium as including geometry, arithmetic, music and perspective [or optics], was conceived as the "door and key to all the sciences"' (Stephan Meier-Oeser in The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy). Samuel Jebb prepared this editio princeps of the Opus majus from the manuscript at Trinity College, Dublin, the most complete then known, containing six parts - a seventh part was later discovered but not published until 1860. The Earl of Macclesfield is listed among the subscribers.
£5500
A Collection of Practical Discourses. To which are added Six Others, before published. London: printed for H. Pemberton; and M. Bryson, at Newcastle, [1748] [with] Twenty Sermons … London: printed for T. Longman, C. Hitch, A. Millar, and J. and J. Rivington, 1750.
2 volumes, 8vo, [23], 283, [5], 120; viii, 397, [3] pp., uniformly bound in contemporary speckled calf, spines gilt ruled with raised bands and red labels, slight wear to heads, occasional light browning, a very sound set.
First editions of both these collections of Balguy's sermons, his last works. The latter was published posthumously by his son Thomas, and dedicated to Benjamin Hoadly, whom Balguy had defended in the Bangorian controversy.
£350
Metaphysica generalis, Leiden: Franciscus Moyard, 1654.
8vo, [xvi], 392 pp., 2 folding letterpress tables, contemporary panelled calf, red/black title with woodcut device, a very good copy from the Library of the Earls of Macclesfield, with armorial bookplate and blindstamped crests to first two leaves as usual.
First edition of this posthumous work by Robert Baron (1593-1639), Professor of Theology at Marischal College, Aberdeen. Second and third editions were published in England in 1657 and 1658. 'The fifteen sections of the Metaphysica generalis deal with being, and unity, transcendentals, act and potency, etc. - i.e. an Aristotelian metaphysics, with a rich commentary based not only on modern scholastics such as Suarez and Fonseca (with whom Baron often concurs) but also with the medievals. William Johnston claimed that Baron equalled Thomas Aquinas in dialectical skill and Scotus in mental dexterity, and that he agreed with them often except where Calvinism impinged' (John Durkan in The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers).
£350
Institutiones philosophiae rationalis methodo Wolfii conscriptae. Editio decima quinta auctior et emendatior. Wittenberg: J. J. Ahlfeld und G. F. Weinmann, 1761 [bound with] Frid. Christ. Baumeisteri Institutiones metaphysicae ontologiam, cosmologiam, psychologiam theologiam denique naturalem complexae methodo Wolfii adornatae. Wittenberg: Simmermann, 1754.
8vo, [xii], 232, [12], [iv], 638, [14] pp., contemporary vellum peeling from the unlettered spine, all edges red, some browning throughout.
Friedrich Christian Baumeister (1709-1785) was born in Groskörnern, near Gotha, and studied in Jena and Wittenberg. A follower of Wolff, he taught briefly at Wittenberg before accepting a position at the Gymnasium in Görlitz. He wrote several popular textbooks of which the two works in this volume are examples. Others include Philosophia definitiva (1733) and Philosophia recens controversa (1738). Kant used the Institutiones metaphysicae (first published in 1739) for his course on metaphysics during his first few years as a lecturer in the 1750s, before switching to a text by Baumgarten. Through these books, Baumeister played a major part in the dissemination of the Wolffian philosophy.
£180
Heavily annotated working copy
Dictionaire historique et critique, par Mr. Bayle. Quatrieme Edition, revue, corrigée, et augmentée. Avec la vie de l'auteur, par Mr. Des Maizeaux, Amsterdam, 1730.
4 volumes, folio, cxvi, 719; 915; 804; 831 pp., eighteenth-century half calf with marbled boards, considerably worn, joints cracked, green morocco labels working loose, three bookplates in each volume: Revd Edward Giddy, Tredrea, Cornwall; Bishop Phillpotts Library, Truro; Trelissick Library, very heavily annotated.
Fourth edition. The ink annotations throughout the four volumes, and on oversize sheets bound in as endpapers, are all in the same hand (probably pre-1750) and seem to be of three kinds: (1) marginal pickings-out of key words in French, as if to aid navigation; (2) long lists of French words and phrases, often with page references to the Dictionary, with English translations alongside; (3) extensive transcriptions of English verse. Potentially interesting are ten paragraphs transcribed from correspondence between Swift and Esther Vanhomrigh (“Vanessa”). The letters are in both directions (‘Swift to Van’ … ‘Van to Swift’) and dated between 1714 and 1722. When these transcriptions are checked against the best modern edition of Swift’s correspondence (ed. Woolley, 2001) it turns out that they tie in almost exactly (particularly in the bits they leave out) with the versions published by John Hawkesworth in his Letters written by the late Jonathan Swift, D.D. (3 vols, 1766). In each case Woolley footnotes things such as ‘Hawkesworth, III … the text from an earlier transcription running to only seven sentences” (e.g. the same seven as ours—in most cases the match is exact). Could these transcriptions be the ones Hawkesworth worked from? Possible, but unlikely (since he included much more Swift/Van material than is here). More likely is that our copyist was working from the same transcription(s) as Hawkesworth was. Of course it could be that our annotator was simply copying from the published Hawkesworth edition—but (a) that would make the handwriting post-1766, when it doesn’t appear so, and (b) these volumes look as if they weren’t bound much later than the publication date.
£500
The best English edition of Bayle
The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr Peter Bayle. The Second Edition, Carefully collated with the several Editions of the Original; in which many Passages are restored, and the whole greatly augmented, particularly with a Translation of the Quotations from eminent Writers in various Languages. To which is prefixed, the Life of the Author, revised, corrected, and enlarged, by Mr Des Maizeaux, Fellow of the Royal Society. London: Printed for J. J. and P. Knapton; D. Midwinter; J. Brotherton [and 27 others], 1734-8.
5 volumes, folio, engraved portrait by James Smith in volume one, all title-pages printed in red and black, beautifully rebound in half calf over marbled boards, with red and green spine labels, pages wide-margined, uncut and extraordinarily clean, a fine large-paper set.
Second and best edition in English, published serially (one volume per year), by the London-exiled French Hugenot Pierre des Maizeaux F.R.S (1666-1745), friend of Anthony Collins and editor of the writings of John Locke (1720). Bayle's two-volume Dictionnaire historique et critique (Rotterdam, 1697), had been originally conceived as a rectification of the errors in Moréri's Grand dictionnaire, but it soon grew vastly in scope as Bayle swelled his entries with annotation and illustrative quotation. 'Bayle championed reason against belief, philosophy against religion, tolerance against superstition. In a seemingly detached way he posed arguments and counter-arguments side by side, reserving his most daring insinuations to the renvois (references) which supplemented the actual entries. For over half a century, until the publication of the Encyclopédie, Bayle’s Dictionnaire dominated enlightened thinking in every part of Europe' (PMM, 155b).
£2000
Abelard and Heloise
Letters of Abelard and Heloise. To which is prefix'd a Particular Account of their Lives, Amours, and Misfortunes: Extracted chiefly from Monsieur Bayle. The Seventh Edition. London: Printed for J. Watts and sold by B Dod, 1743.
8vo, [x], 228, [9] pp., engraved frontispiece portrait by G. van der Gucht, title printed in red and black, contemporary half leather, quite rubbed, pages uniformly browned, still a sound copy.
John Hughes's translation of these letters was first published in 1713. His 76-page biographical preface is based on articles by Bayle in his Dictionnaire historique et critique. The story of Abelard and Heloise very much caught the public imagination, and this collection was often reprinted. Editions from the ninth (1760) onwards include Pope's famous poem from Eloisa to Abelard. John Hughes (1677-1720) also translated Fontenelle's Dialogues of the Dead.
£165
Extrait du Dictionaire historique et critique de Bayle, divisé en deux volumes avec une preface. Berlin: Voss, 1765.
2 volumes, engraved portrait frontispiece, vi, 291; 413 pp., contemporary mottled calf, blind-tooled floral motif and red / blue lettering pieces to spines (minor loss to head of volume 2), unusual hand-painted endpapers, bookplates of Albert Louis Comte de Schulenburg, some worm damage to covers but a pleasing set.
This selection of 'greatest hits' from Bayle isn't mentioned by either Collison or Yeo. The identity of the author of its somewhat gushing six-page Preface was unknown to us until a correspondent told us it was Frederick the Great.
£220
Remarques critiques sur le dictionnaire de Bayle, [vol. 1] Paris: Ganeau and Dijon: Desventes, 1752, [vol. 2] Paris: Guerin, and Dijon, Hermil-Andrea, 1748.
Folio, two volumes in one, liv, xxii, [2], 820 pp., contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments (minor loss to head and tail), red morocco lettering piece, edges and corners a little bumped, marbled endpapers, title-pages printed in red and black, a few leaves lightly browned and some mild marginal waterstaining, otherwise a decent copy.
First printing of volume two, second printing of volume one. The precise identity of the author remains unclear. The only reference we've been able to trace is in a footnote by Benjamin Disraeli's father in a work of 1824: 'This anonymous folio volume was written by Le Sieur Joly, a canon of Dijon, and is full of curious researches, and many authentic discoveries. The writer is no philosopher, but he corrects and adds to the knowledge of Bayle. Here I found some original anecdotes of Hobbes, from MS. Sources, during that philosopher’s residence at Paris' (Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Literature).
£950
The Theory of Language. In Two Parts. Part I: Of the Origin and General Nature of Speech. Part II: Of Universal Grammar. A New Edition, enlarged and corrected. London: printed for A. Strahan, T. Cadell, and W. Creech, Edinburgh, 1788.
8vo, [viii], 390, [2] pp., contemporary tree calf, rubbed, spine smooth with gilt motif in compartments, wanting label and with wear to head and tail, joints cracked but firm, browned, with the ownership inscription of [Lord] Adam Gifford on the title-page.
First separate edition of a treatise that originally appeared as part of Beattie's Dissertations Moral and Critical (same publishers, 1783). 'General treatises on the nature of language are, of course, the hallmark of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and there were several notable Scottish contributors to the genre. Not all of these have direct interest for the student of contemporary Scots phonology, but The Theory of Language (1788) by James Beattie, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logick in the Marischal College and University, Aberdeen, contains much sophisticated information on matters relating to pronunciation, syllabification, prosody and linguistic standards' (Charles Jones, 'Sources for Scots pronunciation in the Eighteenth Century', Paradigm, No 17, 1995). Perhaps surprisingly, Beattie was a supporter of RP: ‘The language … of the most learned and polite persons in London, and the neighbouring Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, ought to be accounted the standard of the English tongue, especially in accent and pronunciation’ (p. 92 in this edition).
£150
Bekker's banned Vaste Spyse, with the author's signature
De friessche godgeleerdheid … begrijpende alle desselfs werken in Friesland uitgegeven en ‘t gene daar af geoordeeld en daar over voorgevallen is. Waar van enige stukken nooit voor desen zijn gedrukt geweest. Amsterdam: Daniel van den Dalen, 1693.
4to, [viii], 72, 726 pp., contemporary vellum, autograph signature of Bekker at foot of his dedication to Prince Henrik Kasimyr, some browning in final 100 pages, a good tight copy.
'Bekker (1634-98) was one of the most important figures of Early Enlightenment in The Netherlands … In Franeker he became involved in the controversy over Cartesianism, writing De philosophia Cartesiana admonitio candida et sincera in which he held, that Cartesian philosophy posed no danger to church or faith because philosophy was a completely separate realm from theology … Bekker further angered Reformed tradionalists when he wrote an adult catechism [occupying 366 pp. of this volume], De Vaste Spyze der Volmaakten containing several unconventional ideas and interpretations' (Andrew Fix in The Dictionary of Seventeenth & Eighteenth-Century Dutch Philosophers). Perhaps this is something of an understatement: in fact Bekker's catechism so offended the authorities of the Reformed Church that its use was 'publicly prohibited by the sound of bells' (Dichtfield, Books Fatal to their Authors, p. 90). On Bekker and the European debate following the publication of his magnum opus De betoverde Weereld, see also Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 375ff. Contents: 1. Nodig Beright, behelsende een Verhaal van ‘t gene den Auteur in Friesland over sijne Schriften, en insonderheid het Boek de Vaste Spyse wedervaten is. 2. De Vooredens van het selve Boek, van den eersten en den tweeden druk. 3. De Vaste Spyse der Volmaakten. 4. Advysen over ‘t selve boek, en Nodig Antwoord op ‘t Advys der Faculteit tot Franeker. 5. Vergelijkinge van d’ Aanmerkingen der Classen met des Auteurs Aantekenngen op deselve. 6. Veranderde plaatsen in ‘t gemelde Boek. 7. Vergelykeningederselven mit den ersten druk. 8. Aanhangsel van het selve. 9. Gesneden Brood voor de Kristen Kinderen. 10. Kindermelk. 11. Kort Begryp der Godgeleerdheid. 12. Kort Bericht van de Lyk-reden and Lyk-predicatien. 13. Beright aangaande de Filosofie van Descartes. 14. Retractiones of Wederverhandelinge.
£950
Presentation copy
Chrestomathia: being a Collection of Papers, Explanatory of the Design of an Institution, Proposed to be Set on Foot, under the Name of the Chrestomathic Day School, or Chrestomathic School, for the Extension of the New System of Instruction to the Higher Branches of Learning, for the Use of the Middling and Higher Ranks in Life. London: Payne and Foss, and R. Hunter, 1816.
2 parts in one volume, 8vo, xxi, [v], 347, [2], 24 pp., 5 folding tables, publisher's boards, spine worn and with piece missing, joints cracked, inscribed on front free endpaper 'Presented by Dr Bowring', Mead-Row Library label, ink stamps on paste-downs and on final leaf of text, pages uncut and clean, apart from ink blotches on pp. 136-7.
Presentation copy from Sir John Bowring, the disciple and editor of Bentham, and the man in whose arms his mentor died, leaving him all his manuscripts together with money towards their publication. The proposed school was to be utilitarian in character ('Chrestomathia' = useful learning), although in fact the scheme foundered on arguments over the absence of theology from the projected curriculum. Bentham had offered his garden as a site for the school.
£1800
Berg said it first
Sextus oder über die absolute Erkenntniß von Schelling. Ein Gespräch herausgegeben von Franz Berg. Würzburg: gedruckt bey Sebastian Sartorius, 1804.
8vo, iv, 154 pp., contemporary paper covers, considerably worn at edges and spine, early ownership inscription and library stamp to title-page, pages remarkably clean.
First edition, Schneeberger 215. 'The ordinary objection to Schelling is that he has defined the Absolute in such universal terms that it can not be understood by human knowledge. It is therefore inconceivable and a meaningless abstraction. The preface of Hegel's Phenomenologie des Geistes is usually quoted as the source of this criticism. As a matter of fact it may be traced back to a pamphlet by one Franz Berg, at that time professor of church history in Würzberg. It was entitled Sextus oder über die absolute Erkenntniß von Schelling. It has been long forgotten - not so the polemic. Every writer since that time, who has had occasion to allude to Schelling, has re-stated it with apparent originality' (Arthur S. Dewing, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1910).
£280
Dialogues entre Hylas et Philonous, don’t le but est de de'montrer clairement La réalité & la perfection de l'entendement humain … Traduit L'Anglois, Amsterdam, 1750.
12mo. [4], xx, 288 pp, contemporary French speckled calf, green morocco label, gilt to spine with small worm holes at foot, an attractive copy.
First French edition, probably translated by Jean Paul de Gua de Malves. Keynes 12.
£450
Presentation copy
L'atheisme du dix-neuvième siècle devant l'histoire, la philosophie médicale et l'humanité. Paris: Renouard, 1869.
8vo, x, 520 pp., nineteenth-century quarter calf, spine lettered gilt, marbled boards and endpapers, speckled edges, author's presentation inscription to the Comte de Villeneuve on half title, a fine copy of a curious work.
Bertulus was a professor of pathology at the école de Médecine de Marseille. He published numerous medical tracts, including one on the effects gas street lighting on public health.
£200
über den Bildungstrieb. Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich, 1791.
Small 8vo, 116 pp., engraved title vignette and head and tail pieces, contemporary boards somewhat rubbed, loss to spine label, a good tight copy.
Third edition, revised. 'In August 1790, just after the publication of his Critique of Judgment, Kant penned an admiring letter to Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), a young star in the medical faculty at Göttingen. Kant wanted to acknowledge an intellectual debt. He wrote: "I wish to extend my thanks for sending me last year your excellent work on the formative force [Bildungstrieb]. I have learned a great deal from your writings. Indeed, in your new work, you unite two principles—the physical-mechanical and the sheerly teleological mode of explanation of organized nature. These are modes which one would not have thought capable of being united. In this you have quite closely approached the idea with which I have been chiefly occupied—but an idea that required such confirmation [as you provide] through facts." Kant mentioned that he was having his bookseller send along a copy of the Kritik der Urteilskraft, so that Blumenbach might see the use to which the concept of the Bildungstrieb had been put. In the Kritik, Kant introduced the notion of the Bildungstrieb at the beginning of a long appendix discussing the ‘methodology of teleological judgment’. As with Blumenbach himself, Kant urged the idea both as a solution to the problem of the origin of organic form and as a way of comprehending how organisms achieved species-specific goals—both perennial concerns of philosophers of nature. Blumenbach was obviously flattered by the recognition given him by the great Königsberg sage, for in his subsequent works he usually added to his description of the Bildungstrieb a parenthesis, stemming directly from Kant's letter, which indicated that this force ‘united the mechanistic with the purposively modifiable’ (Robert J. Richards, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Vol. 31, no 1, 2000).
£400
Lebensbeschreibung des Dr. B. Bolzano mit einigen seiner ungedruckten Aufsätze und dem Bildnisse des Versaffers eingeleitet und erläutert von dem Herausgeber. Sulzbach: Seidel, 1836.
8vo, engraved frontis portrait, lvi, 272 pp., contemporary mottled brown boards with black spine label lettered in gilt, edges yellow, a very good copy.
First edition of the autobiography of the mathematician and logician Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848), edited and introduced by his pupil Michael Joseph Fesl, of Leitmeritz. Fesl appends three previously unpublished speeches by Bolzano, one of them concerning his dismissal from the University of Prague in 1819 for his outspoken views on the social waste of militarism and the needlessness of war.
£200
Bolzano's masterpiece
Wissenschaftslehre. Versuch einer ausführlichen und grõsstentheils neuen Darstellung der Logik mit steter Rücksicht auf deren bisherige Bearbeiter. Herausgegeben von mehren seiner Freunde. Mit einer Vorrede des Dr. J.Ch.A. Heinroth. Sulzbach: Seidel, 1837.
4 volumes, 8vo, xvi, 571 [3], folding plate; viii, 568; viii, 575; xx, 683 [1] pp., some very light damp-staining affecting inner margins of a few leaves, contemporary half calf with marbled boards, contrasting labels to spines, rubbed, but overall a good clean set.
First edition. Bolzano's masterpiece and, without doubt, one of the most important works of the nineteenth century. 'His acumen, mastery of the contemporary logical and methodological literature, intellectual honesty and life-long self-criticism more than make up for his numerous short-comings. Bolzano remains a towering figure in the epistemology, logic and methodology of the first half of the nineteenth century' (Y. Bar-Hillel in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy; see also Kneale, The Development of Logic, pp. 358-78)
£2500
Was ist Philosophie? Wien: Braumüller, 1849.
8vo, 30, [2] pp., contemporary paper covers, small tears to side margin (not affecting text) and a light waterstain to lower margin, still a very good copy.
Rare first printing of this introductory essay, edited again by Bolzano's disciple M. J. Fesl.
£550
Symbolical Methods of Study. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1884.
8vo, xix, 197, 39 pp., publisher's ruled and gilt-stamped cloth, head of spine chipped, lower cover marked, some annotations in pencil and blue crayon, still a decent copy.
First edition of a work by Mary Everest Boole (1832-1916), widow of the famous logician, and niece of the man after whom Mount Everest is named. 'While Mary tried to shield their children from seeing animals killed, George Boole paid them to kill snails in the garden' (Katie Proctor, An Investigation of the Laws of Boole). 'Mary Boole's Collected Works, published posthumously in 1931, is a remarkable mixture of insight, educational innovation, tedious banality, and an incomprehensible confusion of mathematics, religion, and philosophy. However, although undoubtedly an eccentric and unorthodox in many ways, she had a vision of early mathematical education that remains relevant, and her ideas on educational psychology deserve a wider audience' (ODNB).
£100
Die Religion der Vernunft. Ideen zur Beschleunigung der Fortschritte einer haltbaren Religionsphilosophie. Göttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1824.
8vo, xviii, 436 pp., contemporary blue boards, rubbed, spine label largely gone, internally fresh and clean, with early annotations on front endpapers.
First edition of a late work by the Göttingen professor Friedrich Bouterwek (1766-1828) which shows his adherence to the views of F.H. Jacobi. In earlier life Bouterwek had been a follower of Kant, publishing Aphorismen nach Kants Lehre vorgelegt (1793).
£400
roberT boylE on religion
Some Considerations about the Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion. By T.E. a Lay-Man. To which is annex'd… A discourse of Mr. Boyle about the Possibility of the Resurrection. London: printed for T.N. for H. Herringman, 1675.
8vo, [4], xviii, [2], 162, [2], [8], 39pp., contemporary panelled calf with minor scuffing to upper cover, shelfmark labels, armorial bookplate and blindstamped crests of the Macclesfield Library, front free endpaper working loose, overall a pleasing copy.
‘Any approach to Boyle’s writings has to take account of two major figures in the field … Thomas Birch, the celebrated author of the only eighteenth-century history of the Royal Society, who edited Boyle’s Works [and] the famous Yale physiologist and bibliophile J.F. Fulton, whose Boyle bibliography is a classic, a monumental study and a model of scholarship …. In 1675 [the above] book was published. Fulton was “unable to identify” T.E. … in spite of the fact that Fulton himself notices the possibility that T.E. stands for roberT boylE. This is not as arbitrary as it sounds, since it was quite customary then to invert one’s name. Thus, Boyle’s friend Oldenburg at times signed his name as Grudenbol’ (Joseph Agassi, ‘Robert Boyle’s Anonymous Writings’, Isis, 1977, p. 285).
£950
Tractatus quidam logici de praedicabilibus, et praedicamentis (Tractatus duo… de meteoris… de oculo). Oxford: Hen. Hall for John Adams, 1659.
8vo, 3 parts in one volume, [xxxii], 431, [2], 104, [4], 26 pp., 2 woodcut illustrations, contemporary panelled calf, a very tidy copy from the Macclesfield Library, with the appropriate shelf labels, bookplate and blindstamped crests.
Brerewood was born around 1565 and died in 1613, having been the first Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London. He wrote on various topics, and his works were all published posthumously. The main work in this volume deals with the five 'predicables' (genus, species, difference, property and accident) and the 'predicaments' (the ten Aristotelian categories). See Andrew Pyle's article in his Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers.
£450
The physiological origin of words
Traité de la formation mécanique des langues, et des principes physiques de l'étymologie. Paris: Saillant, Vincent & Desaint, 1765.
2 volumes, small 8vo, lix, 489; iv, 533 pp. with nine folding plates, contemporary tree calf, spines gilt in compartments with red and green labels, marbled endpapers with armorial bookplates, an excellent set.
First edition. Charles de Brosses (1709-1777) was president of the parliament of Dijon (hence the early title-page inscriptions here, 'par le Président Des Broches'). He was a close friend of the naturalist Buffon, and a personal enemy of Voltaire, who barred his entry to the Académie française in 1770. He wrote variously on exploration, anthropology, ancient history, music, philology and linguistics, and some of his shorter pieces were used by Diderot and D'Alembert in the Encyclopédie. This book, De Brosses's masterpiece, was the first ever to give an account of the origin of language in terms of the physiological make-up of the human body: 'The system of the first fabric of human language, and of the imposition of names on things, is therefore not arbitrary and conventional, as we have been accustomed to picture it, but rather a true system of necessity, determined by two causes. The first is the construction of the vocal organs, which can only produce certain sounds, analogous to their structure; the other is the nature and propriety of the real things that one would name—this obliges one to apply to their names the sounds that depict them, establishing between thing and word a connection by which the word can excite an idea of the thing' (trans. Conrad H. Roth). The Traité had an influence on Condillac's Grammaire, and played a big part in the emergence of a scientific conception of language.
£750
Essays on the Characteristics, by John Brown, M.A. London: printed for C Davis, 1751.
8vo, [2], viii, 408 pp., contemporary panelled calf, spine elaborately gilt with morocco lettering piece, Macclesfield Library bookplate, endpapers stained at edges but overall a very good copy.
Second edition of Brown’s attack on Shaftesbury’s Characteristiks (1751). 'Examination of the second edition shows many additional substantive, authorial revisions in all three essays' (Eddy). The three essays are on ridicule considered as a test of truth, on the motives to virtue, and on revealed religion and Christianity. Brown dedicated the essays to Ralph Allen of Prior Park, near Bath, who had introduced him to William Warburton, who in turn suggested he take up his pen against Shaftesbury. The Essays show that Brown had read Hume’s ‘Of Miracles’ in the first Enquiry (1748). Brown’s proto-utilitarian account of moral virtue was later praised by John Stuart Mill (Westminster Review, vol. xxix, p. 477). Brown committed suicide by cutting his throat in 1766.
£350
The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding, London: printed for William Innys, 1728.
8vo, [vi], 477 pp., contemporary calf somewhat rubbed, inked shelfmark to spine, speckled edges, Macclesfield Library bookplate and blindstamped crests.
First edition. A development of Browne's earliest work, A Letter in answer to a book entitled Christianity not mysterious (Dublin, 1697) - an attack on John Toland. In the Procedure … Browne, who by now had become Bishop of Cork, takes issue with Locke's Essay for what he calls its 'sensationalism'. Browne's views were later criticised by Berkeley in Alciphron (1732) as leading to atheism.
£400
Institutionum metaphysicarum lib. II. London: R.N. for J. Crook & J. Baker, 1653.
12mo, [12], 369, [3] pp., contemporary calf, skillfully rebacked.
Franck Pieterszoon (sometimes Franco Petri) Burgersdijk, 1590-1635, was one of the most influential Dutch philosophers of the first half of the seventeenth century. This is one of a series of textbooks he was commissioned to write by the authorities of the States of Holland, as part of the establishment of the school regulations that were applied right up until 1815. It was first published posthumously in Leiden in 1640, with a Preface by Adriaan Heereboord praising its 'perspicuous brevity'. Burgerskijk was certainly influential on Spinoza. Gunther Coppens has pointed out that Spinoza sometimes even quotes Burgersdijk verbatim. 'When Spinoza writes “Si Deus, ajunt actus est purus, ut revera est, necessario est ubique et infinitus; nam si non esset ubique, aut non poterit esse, ubicunque vult esse, aut necessario moveri debebit’, we also read in Burgersdijk's Institutionum Metaphysicarum: ”Tertio, Deus est actus purus, ergo infinitus est et ubique; nam si non sit ubique, aut non poterit esse ubicunque vult esse, aut necessario moveri debet.”'(Geschiedenis van de wijsbegeerte in Nederland, 12, p. 7).
£280
Institutionum logicarum libri duo. Ad juventutem Cantabrigiensem (Institutionum logicarum synopsis, sive rudimenta logica). Cambridge: J. Field, 1668.
12mo, [20], 219, [2], 44 pp., early nineteenth-century panelled calf with red/gilt spine, binder's label (Hatton, Manchester), Macclesfield Library bookplate to front pastedown, and earlier personal bookplate of 'Thomas Parker of the Inner Temple Esq, 1704', occasional browning and pencil marginalia, still a nice copy.
Early English-printed edition of Burgersdijk's popular Latin textbook on logic, first published in 1626. It appeared in at least 27 editions and sought a compromise between Aristotelian and Ramist logic. The 'Synopsis', a brief summary of his main text, was almost as popular. This copy of both works belonged Thomas Parker while he was still an up-and-coming young lawyer, before he became Lord Chief Justice (1710) and first Earl of Macclesfield (1718).
£350
Telluris theoria sacra: orbis nostri originem & mutationes generales, quas aut jam subiit, aut olim subiturus est, complectens. London: R. N. for Walter Kettilby, 1681.
Small 4to, [14], 306, [2] pp., with two plates of maps, but wanting the initial blank, contemporary calf, rebacked, preserving original spine label, a very good copy.
First edition of Burnet’s extraordinarily influential Cartesian cosmogany, treating of the deluge, primeval earth and paradise; an English translation, The Theory of the Earth, followed in 1684 and a second part in 1689. Wing B 5948. From the library of Peter Laslett, who acquired the book in 1963. Earlier ownership inscriptions include those of C. J. Blomfield (later bishop of London), 1806, and 'John Cotton, Coll. Corp. Xti Cantab., 1684'.
£650
Anticipations of Kant
An Essay upon Reason, and the Nature of Spirits. London: John Dunton, 1694.
8vo, [8], 280 pp., with an initial blank; cut close at head, but a good copy in modern calf, with red and green spine labels.
First edition, dedicated to Locke, of whom Burthogge was a noted critic. In this work he explicitly anticipates one of the key aspects of Kantianism, known also as Hamilton's 'doctrine of the relativity of knowledge'. Harrison & Laslett 538; from the library of Peter Laslett, acquired 1974.
£500
Philosophiae Leibnitianae et Wolffianae usus in theologia, per praecipua fidei capita. Praemittitur dissertatio de ratione et revelatione, natura et gratia. Auctore J. Th. C. Frankfurt & Leipzig: [np], 1733 … Tomus secundus, Ubi doctrina de praedestinatione uberius explicatur. Frankfurt: [np], 1732.
2 volumes in one, 8vo, [xvi], 525, 202, [2], [4 blank], [xvi], 432 pp., contemporary calf, spine gilt in compartments with red morocco label, a little rubbed with minor damage to spine and a tiny wormhole in leading hinge, both title-pages printed in red and black, a sound, tight copy.
Israel Gottlieb Canz was born in 1690 near Tübingen. In 1720 Canz became Diakon in Nürtingen, and in the following year Klosterpräzeptor in Bebenhausen. In 1734 he bacame professor of rhetoric at the university of Tübingen. In 1739 he switched to logic and metaphysics, and in 1747 he switched again to theology. These works are two of several that Canz wrote on the Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy, arguing for its compatibility with Christianity.
£400
Praised by Jung
Vorlesungen über Psychologie, gehalten im Winter 1829/30 zu Dresden. Leipzig: Gerhard Fleischer, 1831.
8vo, xvi, 432 pp., contemporary marbled boards, quite worn, especially the spine, but clean and unbrowned internally.
First edition of a pioneering work by Carl Gustav Carus (1789-1869), the Leipzig-born physiologist, painter, and friend of Goethe credited with the discovery of the unconscious. 'At the time Carus wrote, he certainly could not have guessed that he was building the philosophical bridge to an empirical psychology of the future … had Carus lived today, he would undoubtedly have been a psychotherapist' (C.J. Jung, Collected Works, 14: 791 and 16: 204).
£425
Natural History of the Passions. [London] In the Savoy: Printed by T.M. for James Magnes, 1674.
Small 8vo, [xlviii], 188pp., title-page printed in red and black, with engraved vignette, several early annotations to margins, a few splash-marks to two leaves of Preface, occasional browning, some minor marginal tears and some worming affecting lower inner margins, recent quarter calf with marbled boards, gilt lettering to spine.
First edition. Attributed by Wing (2501) to Jean Francois Senault, but the British Library Catalogue has the work as Charleton's, based on Senault's 'De l'usage des passions'.
£550
Philosophical Principles of Religion: Natural and Reveal'd … the second edition corrected and enlarged. London: printed for George Strahan, 1715-16.
8vo, [xxxi], 360, [xxiv], 188, [4] pp., contemporary blind-tooled calf, spine gilt in compartments with slight loss, Macclesfield Library bookplate and blindstamped crests, some browning but overall a nice copy.
Two parts in one volume. The first part had been previously published in 1705. Cheyne's Philosophical Principles continued the tradition of Boyle lecturers in using Newtonian principles to support Christian belief. The second part - 'The Nature and Kinds of Infinities, their Arithmetick and Uses' - contains an attempt to deduce religious truths mathematically. Cheyne (1671-1743) was an exceedingly large man, at one time weighing close to 500 pounds. In later life he became a vegetarian and published popular works on health and nutrition.
£750
A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God: More Particularly in Answer to Mr. Hobbs, Spinoza, And their Followers. Wherein the Notion of Liberty is Stated, and the Possibility and Certainty of it Proved, in Opposition to Necessity and Fate. London: printed by Botham for James Knapton, 1705.
8vo, [xiv], 264 pp., contemporary panelled calf, raised bands, hinges a little weak, top of spine chipped but a decent and clean copy.
First edition. Samuel Clarke was by far the most gifted and influential Newtonian philosopher of his generation. His Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which constituted the 1704 Boyle Lectures, was one of the most important works of the first half of the eighteenth century, generating a great deal of controversy about the relation between space and God, agent causation, and the immateriality of the soul. Here Clarke puts forward the Cosmological Argument in what is thought to be its most powerful formulation ever.
£450
Samuel Clarke versus Anthony Collins
A Defense of an Argument made use of in a Letter to Mr Dodwel … London: James Knapton, 1707 [bound with] A Second Defense of an Argument made use of in a Letter to Mr Dodwel … London: James Knapton, 1707 [bound with] A Third Defense of an Argument made use of in a Letter to Mr Dodwel … London: James Knapton, 1708 [bound with] A Fourth Defense of an Argument made use of in a Letter to Mr Dodwel … London: James Knapton, 1708.
8vo, [ii], 28, [2], [ii], 54, [ii], 93, [3], 93, [3] pp., attractively rebound in quarter calf with red morocco lettering piece, all four title-pages present, some light browning but on the whole very good.
All first editions. The exchange of pamphlets (four from each side) between Clarke and Collins ranks alongside the Malebranche/Arnauld dispute as one of the great philosophical punch-ups of the early modern period. It was provoked by the publication in 1706 of Henry Dodwell’s Epistolary Discourse, in which Dodwell had claimed that the soul was by its nature mortal, and could only have immortality conferred on it in baptism by a properly ordained priest. Clarke replied with a proof of the soul’s natural immortality in his open Letter to Mr. Dodwell (1706, see the following item). Collins then sprang to Dodwell’s defence – not so much because he had any interest in the soul, mortal or immortal, as because he wanted to enlist the unwitting Dodwell on the side of materialism (see John H. Gay, 'Matter and Freedom in the Thought of Samuel Clarke', JHI, Vol. XXIV, No 1). The dispute expanded beyond its original topic to encompass free will and the nature of universals. It had a profound influence on the subsequent development of philosophy in Britain. Most notably, ‘Hume and Reid drew lessons from the exchange that were foundational for their opposed accounts of the workings of the mind’ (Lorne Falkenstein).
£650
A Letter to Mr. Dodwell; wherein all the Arguments in his Epistolary Discourse against the Immortality of the Soul are particularly answered, and the Judgment of the Fathers concerning that Matter truly represented. Together with a Defense of an Argument made use of in the above-mentioned Letter to Mr Dodwell, to prove the Immateriality and Natural Immortality of the Soul. In Four Letters to the Author of Some Remarks on a pretended Demonstration of the Immateriality and Natural Immortality of the Soul, in Dr Clark’s Answer to Mr Dodwell’s late Epistolary Discourse, &c. To which is added, Some Reflections on that Part of a Book called Amyntor, or the Defense of Milton’s Life…. London: for James Knapton, 1718.
8vo, 279, [1] pp., contemporary pale calf showing only minor wear, a bright, fresh copy from the Macclesfield Library, with bookplate and blindstamped crests.
Fifth edition of Clarke's initial salvo in this important controversy (see the previous item). The volume incorporates the third editions of Clarke's third and fourth Defences, and a reprint of his Reflections on Amyntor (1699).
£200
A Treatise of Humane Reason. London: printed for Henry Brome, 1675.
12mo, [iv], 91 pp., contemporary panelled calf, rebacked, a very good copy from the Macclesfield Library, with the armorial bookplate and blindstamps.
Second edition of a work first published the previous year. Little is known about the author except that he was eductated at Trinity College, Cambridge, became Master of the Charterhouse in 1671, and died in 1677. Here he 'emphasizes the role of reason in religious belief. To believe something on the basis of authority, he argues, following Spinoza and antipating Locke, is itself a matter of reason' (Andrew Pyle in The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers).
£300
Traité de la raison humaine … Augmenté d'une preface qui contient plusieurs autoritez justificatives des sentimens de l'auteur. Francfort sur le Meyn: François Varrentrapp, 1744.
12mo, [lviii], 78 pp., contemporary quarter calf, red morroco label, nicely rebacked, elaborate gilt to spine, a fine copy.
French translation of A Treatise of Humane Reason (see the previous item) by Poppel, with his lengthly preface. An earlier French translation had been published in 1682.
£350
A Philosophical Treatise on the Passions: second edition, corrected. Bath: S. Hazard, 1802.
8vo, xix, 369, [1] pp., newly and well rebound in quarter calf with red morocco label, some isolated spotting but otherwise fresh and clean.
Thomas Cogan (1736-1818) earned his MD from Leiden, having previously spent several years as a unitarian minister in Holland. His dissertation topic of 1767 – ‘On the Influence of the Passions in causing and healing Diseases’ – suggests that he'd developed an interest matters of moral psychology early on. This interest was put aside for many years, however, while he practised as an obstetrician in Holland and London. He achieved considerable fame for his efforts to introduce the English to Dutch techniques for reviving drowning victims. He and Dr William Hawes co-founded the Royal Humane Society in 1774 to further this purpose. Contemporary estimates put the number of lives saved in the first few years of the RHS in the thousands. Cogan retired early from his prosperous medical practice, devoting himself for nearly forty years to the study of moral philosophy. Cogan's main work was a series of treatises on the passions. These were A Philosophical Treatise on the Passions (1800), An Ethical Treatise on the Passions (part 1, 1807; part 2, 1810), and Theological Disquisitions on Religion as Affecting the Passions and on the Characteristic Excellencies of Christianity (2 vols., 1812–13). All five treatises were published as a set entitled A Treatise on the Passions and Affections of the Mind in 1813. 'Unlike many of his predecessors, Cogan sharply separates psychological from ethical analysis, devoting the Philosophical Treatise exclusively to discourse on the nature and classification of the passions, emotions, and affections and to observations regarding their causes, interrelations and effects. Here we have what may well be the first clear distinction between sudden evaluative appraisal precipitating an emotional reaction (passion) and emotion as a bodily reaction to that appraisal. It is surely the first attempt to separate enduring evaluation (affection) from transient passion by linking passion to the sudden and powerful influence of particularly interesting or unexpected objects and events. Contributions such as these, subtle and original, are scattered throughout the Philosophical Treatise' (Robert H. Wozniak in The Dicitonary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers).
£300
An Ethical Treatise on the Passions, founded on the Principles investigated in the Philosophical Treatise. Bath: Hazard and Binns, 1807; Binns, 1810.
8vo, two parts in one volume, xxviii, 495; viii, 282, [1] pp., recent attractive quarter calf, slight spotting to end leaves and some occasional pencilling, otherwise a nice copy.
First editions of both parts of this further installment of Cogan's exploration of the passions. 'Cogan's remorseless application of human reason to subjects often regarded as divine mysteries, his denial of the devil's existence, and his use of humour caused offence to more orthodox friends. To protect their sensibilities, Cogan restrained himself at first, but his expressions became more uncompromising, culminating in his assertion that, if any human being were condemned to eternal torment, then is the propagation of the human species to be placed among the most atrocious of crimes’ (ODNB).
£380
Essays upon Several Moral Subjects. The Second Edition, Corrected and Much Enlarged. London: R. Sare and H. Hindmarch, 1697.
8vo, two parts in one volume, [vi], 222, [viii], 190, [2] pp., contemporary panelled calf with gilt-stamped Phelipps family name supralibros, spine gilt in compartments, red morocco label, two tiny wormholes, text mostly bright and fresh, a sound copy.
Jeremy Collier was born in Quire, Cambridgeshire and died in London. Educated at Caius College, Cambridge (BA, 1672/3; MA, 1676), he was ordained in 1677, but in 1685 he gave up his living and moved to London. In 1688 he published a pamphlet stating that James II’s flight from the country did not represent an abdication, a view for which he was imprisoned for several months by the incoming government of William III. Collier refused to take the oath of allegiance, and became one of the most prominent non-juring clergymen; his pamphlets and activities resulted in several more periods of imprisonment, until greater toleration for non-jurors emerged under Queen Anne. He became famous as a pamphleteer, particularly after the publication of his Short View on the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, which singled out playwrights such as Dryden and Congreve for particular attack. His philosophical work is largely to be found in Essays upon Several Moral Subjects. This contains some thirty-five essays on subjects as diverse as liberty, pride, kindness, duelling, fame, music, prostitution and human nature. The essays are written in the style of his pamphlets; they are usually short and well argued with a specific point in mind. In ‘Of the Weakness of Human Reason’, for example, Collier argues that ‘there are few things reason can discuss with so much uncertainty and ease, as its own insufficiency’, and he points out the various impairments to reason, including illness, old age and fashion. He attacks both the ‘regard for antiquity and the charms of novelty’, which he says cloud men’s ability to reason clearly. In ‘Of Liberty’ he argues that liberty is essential but it must be bounded; absolute liberty is neither desirable nor possible.
£150
Landmark in the history of Deism
A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion … London: 1724.
8vo, xlii, [6], 284 pp, contemporary panelled calf a little worn, upper joint cracked, spine gilt in compartments with red morocco label, minor wear to head and foot, front endpaper loose, Macclesfield Library bookplate and crests blindstamped to first two leaves, text clean and fresh, a decent copy.
First edition of Collins’s most important and controversial assault on revealed religion. It provoked no fewer than thirty-five published responses, notably those by Samuel Clarke, Edward Chandler and Arthur Sykes.
£600
Oeuvres. Revues, corrigées par l'auteur, imprimées sur ses manuscrits autographes, et augmentées de La Langue des Calculs, ouvrage posthume. A Paris, De l'imprimerie Ch. Houel. An VI - 1798. (E.vulg).
23 volumes, 8vo, contemporary speckled calf, sides with double gilt fillet, spines smooth with gilt devices in compartments and red labels, most corners sharp and internally very fresh, an attractive set.
Complete run of Arnoux and Mousnier's first collected edition, with the portrait of Condillac by Duval, engraved by Clément. 'étienne Bonnot was born in Grenoble in 1714, and belonged to a family of lawyers. He took the name Condillac from a family estate at the death of his father. Rousseau was tutor to his elder brother, and from this came a friendship between Rousseau and Condillac. He was ordained priest in 1741, but it seems that he did not pursue the sacerdotal office. In Paris, his circle included the encyclopedists Diderot and d'Alembert. Though it appears that he did not directly contribute articles to the Encyclopédie, some of its entries are textually very close to what Condillac himself had written. His first fame was earned with the publication of his Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines in 1746. In the following year, his prize essay Les Monades was published anonymously in the proceedings of the Academy of Berlin, of which he was made an associate member in 1749, the year in which he published his Traité des systèmes. There followed the Traité des sensations in 1754, and the Traité des animaux in 1755. In 1758, he was appointed tutor to Prince Ferdinand of Parma (grandson of Louis XV), a post which he held for nine years, and which resulted in the eventual publication in 1775 of his Cours d'études pour l'instruction du prince de Parme in 16 volumes covering a variety of subjects. On his return to France, he was made an abbé in 1765, and a member of the Académie française in 1768. He published his Le Commerce et le gouvernement considérés relativement l'un à l'autre in 1776, and in 1780 La Logique ou les premiers développements de l'art de penser. He was working on a comprehensive edition of his works, and on a further work, La langue des calculs, when he died in 1780. His collected works were eventually published in 1798' (hat tip to F.C.T. Moore, University of Hong Kong).
£1100
Englished out of French
A Discourse written to a Learned Friar [Gabriel Cossart] by M. Des Fourneillis [G. de Cordemoy]; shewing that the systeme of M. Descartes, and particularly his opinion concerning brutes, does contain nothing dangerous… To which is annexed the systeme general of the same Cartesian philosophy. By Francis Bayle… Englished out of French. London: M. Pitt, 1670.
Small 8vo, 139, [5] pp., contemporary sheep skilfully rebacked, a decent copy from the Macclesfield Library.
This is an early translation of Cordemoy's Copie d'une lettre écrite à un scavant religieux de la Compagnie de Jesus (1669) - an attempt to reconcile Cartesianism with the story of creation as found in the Book of Genesis. No library holdings recorded on Worldcat.
£950
Interest van Holland, ofte gronden van Hollands-Welvaren. Amsterdam: van der Graft, 1662.
12mo. [viii], 267, [2] pp., contemporary vellum slightly soiled, but internally clean.
Second, enlarged and improved edition published in the same year as the first edition. 'Pieter de la Court (1618-85), a textile manufacturer in Leiden, co-authored this work along with Jan de Witt. The section on politics and economics presents the basic principles of liberal Dutch commercial politics, which allow for freedom of opinion, as long as it does not interfere with commerce or industry' Katalog. Wolfenbüttel (Spinoza) 1977, 5. The Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Philosophers describes this as 'the first unequivocal expression of republicanism in the Dutch Republic'. Kress 1092. Schumpeter 368. Palgrave I, 447.
£550
Consideratien van Staat, ofte Politike Weeg-schaal waar in met veele Reedenen, Omstandigheden, Exempelen en Fabulen werd ooverwoogen; Welke forme der Regeeringe, in speculatie geboud op de practijk, onder de menschen de beste zy. Beschreven door V.H. ... Amsterdam, Dirk Dirksz, 1662.
Small 8vo, [xxvii], 670 pp., contemporary vellum, engraved frontispiece and two fold-out plates, some underlinings but otherwise a very good copy.
Fourth revised edition of the first of three works by the famous Dutch economist and republican, Pieter de la Court (1618-85). 'He never published under his own name: he mostly used initials such as V.D, V.D.H., or D.C. But from letters and other contemporary documents it is apparent that people generally knew who the author was. At this point a difficulty presents itself: from the introductions to his books we know that his brother Johan, before his untimely death in 1660, must have participated in the conception of these publications. However, it is not possible to ascertain exactly to what degree. This problem has occasioned a long discussion between scholars, some of whom have even denied Pieter's part in writing the books' (E.O.G. Haitsma Muler in The Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Dutch Philosophers). The first edition of this book, 'Considerations about the State, or the Political Scales' (these scales attractively engraved on the title-page), was published in 1660. It was reprinted and enlarged five times in two years, and a shortened German translation followed in 1669. Spinoza had an earlier edition of this work in his library (Inventory 8vo, nr. 11 states: `Politycke Weegschael door V.H. 1661').
£450
Logicae Libri Quinque, De Praedicabilibus, Praedicamentis, Syllogismo .... Huc accessit Introductio in Metaphysicam, et Tractatus de Providentia Dei ..... Editio Tertia priori auctior & emendatior. Oxford: Lichfield. 1670.
Quarto: [xii], 439[1] pp., minor worming to lower margin of first three leaves not affecting text. Contemporary calf, very good copy.
The third edition, first published in 1622, and still referred to in the eighteenth century by Dr. Johnson. Wing C6740.
£300
Admired by Kant
Anweisung vernünftig zu leben, darinnen nach Erklärung der Natur des menschlichen Willens die natürlichen Pflichen und allgemeinen Klugheitslehren im richtigen Zusammenhange vorgetragen werden. Leipzig: Johann Friedrich Gleditsch, 1744.
8vo, engraved frontispiece, [xxxvi], 886, [52] pp., contemporary vellum a little dusty, all edges red, early light pencil annotations on endpapers, isolated spotting, on the whole a tidy, well-preserved copy.
First edition. 'The dominant philosophy in Protestant Germany during Crusius's lifetime (1715-75) was that of Christian Wolff. Crusius, a strongly Pietist Lutheran, was opposed to it on religious grounds and came to be known as its most acute and effective critic. If Crusius is now remembered mainly for his influence on Kant (who in his early years admired Crusius) his work is worth reading for an understanding of the development of the modern vocabulary of morality as well as for an insight into the most important of the philosophical controversies in Germany during the first half of the eighteenth century' (J.B. Schneewind, Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant, pp. 568-9). Anweisung vernünftig zu leben (advice for a rational life) - the first of Crusius's main works - was a student textbook produced while he was teaching philosophy at Leipzig. It is written in a dense, compact style, full of cross references to earlier and later paragraphs.
£680
Against Hobbes
De legibus naturae disquisitio philosophica … quinetiam elementa philosophiae Hobbianae … Dublin: James Carson, to be sold by Joseph Leathey and Patrick Dugan, 1720.
8vo, [lxv], 426 pp., contemporary blind-tooled calf, spine gilt in compartments with red morocco label, slight loss to head and foot, ownership inscription 'T. Clark, Trin. Coll. 1723' on flyleaf, isolated small reading marks in margins and occasional spotting, a handsome copy from the Macclesfield Library with the usual armorial bookplate and blindstamps.
Richard Cumberland (1631-1718) was a friend of Samuel Peyps and Orlando Bridgeman, later Lord Keeper, whose chaplain he was before becoming Bishop of Peterborough. This, his chief work (first published 1672), is in part a reply to Hobbes, and has an important place in the history of utilitarian ethics. 'Cumberland attempts to construct a theory of natural law not in the manner of Grotius by deduction, but by proceeding by first principles from cause to effect … unlike Hobbes he supposes that society is a consequence of man's nature rather than a necessary restraint … he insists on the dualistic nature of man and on the irreducibility of the understanding and will, neither of which can be mechanically determined as Hobbes would argue' (John Stephens in The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers).
£400
One of the most significant 18th-century books on the education of women
A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools. Derby: printed by J. Drewry for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard, London, 1797.
4to, engraved frontispiece, 128 pp., near contemporary quarter sheep, covers lightly rubbed, a well-preserved copy.
First edition of one of the scarcer books by Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus (1731-1802), translator of Linnaeus, co-founder of the Lunar Society, and glutton: 'his love of food (particularly fruits, sugar, cream and butter) was matched by his dislike of exercise, and by the age of 46 he had grown so corpulent that a semi-circle had to be cut out of his dining table to accommodate his girth at meal times. Married twice, he sired twelve Darwin offspring and, in between marriages, a further two (known) illegitimate daughters by a Miss Parker. These girls were raised in his home with his other children, and later were the inspiration for a lengthy tract by Erasmus on female education' (Russell Grigg, answersingenesis.org). '… one of the most significant books on the education of women published in the eighteenth century. Many of Darwin’s views echo those of Mary Wollstonecraft. His outlook is soundly practical, and if the work often seems patronizing, girls are no more patronized than boys. He puts a great deal of emphasis on physical well-being and exercise, and while he wants young ladies to learn how to take shorthand, he also wants them to have the same education in the physical and biological sciences that young men have' (John Valdimir Price in The Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers).
£1600
A Discourse upon Grants and Resumptions. Showing how our ancestors have proceeded with such ministers as have procured to themselves grants of the crown-revenue; and that the forfeited estates ought to be applied towards the payment of the publick debts … London: James Knapton, 1700.
8vo, [16], 167, 176-263, 272-448, [8] pp., complete, with the scarce postscript (†1-4, apparently slit at inner margin for removal but still present, final leaf tipped on to rear pastedown); title-page dusty, light dampstain at foot, contemporary speckled calf, rebacked, contemporary armorial bookplate of the Carew family to title verso (and signatures of Thomas Carew at close).
Second edition, containing three of Davenant’s best-known political essays. Goldsmiths 3683; Kress 2215; Wing D 304. From the library of Peter Laslett.
£160
' … more 'physico' than 'theology' …'
Physico-Theology; or, a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from His Works of Creation. Being the substance of sixteen sermons … The Seventh Edition. London: Printed for W. Innys, 1728.
8vo, [xvi], 444, [12] pp., one folding plate, contemporary blind-tooled calf, raised bands with red morocco label, minor damage to spine, text clean, a decent copy.
William Derham, F.R.S (1657-1734) was the first man adequately to measure the speed of sound. These Boyle Lectures of his, first published in 1713, contain versions of the Argument to Design that were influential on Paley. 'Derham's Physico-Theology is more 'physico' than 'theology'. His method is to present in immense detail all aspects of the world and its workings (plants, animals, man, wind air, light, the organs of men and animals, etc.) as a way of revealing the power and wisdom of God' (John Yolton in The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers).
£150
Astro-Theology: Or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, From a Survey of the Heavens. Illustrated with copper plates. The Fifth Edition. London: Printed by William and John Innys, 1726.
8vo, [xvi], lvi, [viii], 246, [10] pp., three folding plates, contemporary blind-tooled calf with small black mark on lower cover, raised bands with red morocco label, some loss to foot of spine, a little worming to pastedowns and margins of first and last few leaves, text and tables clean, an acceptable copy.
The Astro-Theology continues and develops the views Denham had put forward in his earlier Physico-Theology (see the previous item). Both books were very popular and frequently reprinted in the eighteenth century.
£150
Commentaires sur la Géométrie de M. Descartes. Lyon: Marcellin Duplain, 1730.
4to, [8], 590, [2], 23 folding tables, contemporary red quarter morocco with more recent matching boards, spine gilt with floral motif in compartments, waterstain to front pastedown, all edges uncut, an attractive copy.
Depending on which way you look at it, Descartes's first published book (1637) is either the celebrated Discours de la méthode, with the three treatises on mathematical and physical subjects - the Geometry, the Dioptic and the Meteors - appended to it; or else the book really comprises those three works together, with the Discours merely prefixed to them. Either way, the importance of the Geometry in the history of mathematics is hard to overstate, since it's here that Descartes shows how certain geometrical problems can be solved by means of algebraic equations. There is evidence that Descartes had been working on the Geometry for a long time: in letters dating from March and April 1619 he discusses the work's subject matter, and even explicitly mentions the book's title. This elaborate commentary on the Geometry by the Jesuit mathematician Claude Rabuel was itself the work of over 20 years. Rabuel writes: 'J'entreprends d'expliquer la Géométrie de Mr Descartes … je suivrai le Texte depuis le commencement jusqu'a la fin, je l'examinerai par Parties, & sur chaque endroit je mettrai tout ce que j'ai cru utile pour le rendre intelligible' (p. 1). Rabuel taught at the College de la Trinité in Lyon.
£750
Against Spinoza and Hobbes
Die Wahrheit der christlichen Religion, aus der Auferstehung Jesu Christi auf eine demonstrativische Art in drey Theilen bewiesen … Nebst einem Anhange, darinn die wichtigsten Stücke der natürl. Religion abgehandelt werden. Anfangs in englscher Sprache herausgegben, nun aber auf vielfältiges Verlangen in die Deutsche überseste. Mit Anm., Reg., dem Leben des Verf. Und einer Vorrede Sr. Hochw. Des Herrn Abt Mosheims verm. Durch Gabriel Wilhelm Goetten. Braunschweig und Hildesheim: Schröder, 1734.
8vo, engraved frontispiece, [xxxii], xli, 642, [28] pp., title-page printed in red and black, contemporary vellum slightly marked, all edges red, light even browning and occasional spotting, a decent copy.
First edition of the earliest German translation of Humphrey Ditton's important main work, A Discourse concerning the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1712). Here Ditton provides one of very few analyses of non-demonstrative certainty prior to Hume. He argues that we can be 'morally certain' of the truth of the Resurrection even though we cannot prove it happened. 'Locke devoted some space in the Essay and the Conduct to belief, assent, probability and the testimony of the Bible, but Ditton's is a more systematic approach' (John Yolton). The long appendices contain detailed arguments against Spinoza and Hobbes, and against the possibility that perceptual awareness can be caused by physical processes (pp. 557 ff. of this edition).
£200
The Scripture Account of the Eternal Rewards or Punishments of all that hear of the Gospel … London: printed for George Straughan, 1708.
8vo, [2], 293, [4] pp., contemporary speckled calf with blind-tooled panels, head of lower joint slightly cracked, Macclesfield Library bookplate and blindstamped crests, front free endpaper clipped, overall a very sound copy.
First edition of a work by Henry Dodwell, the elder (1641-1711), supplementary to his highly controversial Epistolary Discourse (1706). These were major contributions to the great British debate on immortality sparked off by Locke's speculation on 'thinking matter'.
£200
A collection of works by 'The Cornish Metaphysician'
'Samuel Drew (1765–1833) started out as a journeyman shoemaker in a shop at St Austell. The death of an elder brother, who had been a studious Methodist, and the funeral sermon preached by Adam Clarke had a great effect on him, and he joined the Wesleyan society in June 1785. Drew took a keen interest in politics, began to read all the books he could find, and was much impressed by a copy of Locke's Essay. His first publication, Remarks upon Paine's ‘Age of Reason’, prompted by some controversy with a freethinking friend, appeared in 1799 and was favourably noticed in the Anti-Jacobin Review for April 1800. He made the acquaintance of the antiquary John Whitaker [who] encouraged him to complete a book upon which he had long meditated, published by subscription in 1802 as Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul; it enjoyed considerable success. After the first publication Drew sold the copyright to a Bristol bookseller for £20. When four editions had appeared in England and two in America, he brought out a fifth with additions in 1831, which he sold for £250. Drew became famous as ‘The Cornish Metaphysician’ and made many friends among the Anglican clergy. He formed a close friendship with Adam Clarke, through whose influence he was elected in 1804 a member of the Manchester Philological Society. Another friend was Thomas Coke, who was writing various books for the Wesleyan conference. Coke was also superintendent of the Wesleyan missions, and, being overwhelmed with work, employed Drew to write for him. The books appeared under the name of Coke, and were in fact from his notes, but it seems that Drew was the chief author, though he did not complain of the concealment of his name. In 1806 Drew was invited through Clarke to revise metaphysical works for the Eclectic Review, but the connection did not last long. In 1809 he published an Essay on the Identity and Resurrection of the Body, which attracted little interest, though it reached a second edition in 1822. About the same time he began to write an essay for the Burnett prize, which, however, went in 1814 to J. L. Brown and J. B. Sumner. He published his essay in 1820, but it enjoyed little notice. Drew was among the Methodist laity what Adam Clarke was among the ministers, the foremost thinker and writer of his day, offering a sober and analytical description of religious experience and Methodist piety’ (ODNB).
9 volumes, 8vo, in contemporary bindings, individual condition described below.
1) An Essay on the Identity and General Resurrection of the Human Body; in which the evidences in favour of these important subjects are considered, in relation both to philosophy and scripture. London: printed by R. Edwards, and sold by T. Hamilton and by the author, 1809. 8vo, xxxii, 439, (9, list of subscribers) pp., contemporary green half calf, spine gilt, lightly rubbed. First edition. 2) An Essay on the Identity and General Resurrection of the Human Body; in which the evidences in favour of these important subjects are considered, in relation both to philosophy and scripture. London: printed by Richard Edwards; sold by Ogle, Duncan; T. Blanshard; and T. Hamilton, 1822. 8vo, xxxii, 487, [1] pp., contemporary black half calf, spine gilt, rubbed. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 3) An Original Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Human Soul, founded solely on Physical and Rational Principles. St Austell: printed and sold by Edmund Hennah: sold also by T. Hurst, London [et al], 1802. First edition. 4) An Original Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Human Soul, founded solely on Physical and Rational Principles. Bristol: printed by and for Richard Edwards; sold also by T. Hurst, London [et al], 1803. Second edition, 'revised, corrected, enlarged, and greatly improved'. 5) An Original Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Human Soul, founded solely on Physical and Rational Principles. London: printed by R. Edwards, and sold by T. Hamilton, and T. Blanshard, 1811. 8vo, xxxix, (i), 275, [1] pp., contemporary half calf, spine gilt, lightly rubbed. Third edition, 'revised, corrected, enlarged, and greatly improved', with a new preface to the third edition. 6) An Original Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Human Soul, founded solely on Physical and Rational Principles. London: printed for R. Edwards; and sold by T. Hamilton, T. Blanshard [etc.], 1819. 8vo, xxxix, [i], 312 pp., contemporary half calf, slightly worn, but sound. Fourth edition. 7) An Attempt to Demonstrate, from Reason, and Revelation, the Necessary Existence, Essential Perfections, and Superintending Providence, of and External Being, who is the Creator, the Supporter, and the Governor, of all things. Cornwall [i.e. St Austell]: printed and published for the author, by H.J. Drew, 1820. First edition. 8) The Life, Character, and Literary Labours, of Samuel Drew, A. M. By his eldest son. London: Longman; and Fisher, 1834. 8vo, xii, 530 pp., engraved portrait (foxed), editor's slip, occasional light foxing, original black linen, printed label, head of spine torn. First edition, with a six-page list of subscribers. 9) An Original Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality of the Human Soul, founded solely on Physical and Rational Principles. Bristol: printed by and for Richard Edwards; sold also by T. Hurst, London [et al], 1803. [Second edition 'revised, corrected, enlarged, and greatly improved'] [bound with] DREW, Jacob Halls, Samuel Drew, M.A., the self-taught Cornishman. A Life Lesson. By his eldest son. [Bodmin: Drew, printer], London: Ward and Co., 1861 viii, 13-304 pp., engraved portrait, first edition [bound with] The Remains, Religious and Literary, of Samuel Drew, A.M. comprising Sermons, Controversial Pieces, Essays and Letters. Edited by his eldest son. London: Fisher, Son and Co., 1836, 551 pp. First edition.
£1200
Hobbes's 'magisterial haughtiness'
Dr. Eachard's Works, Viz. 1. The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion enquir'd into; in a Letter to R.L. II. Observations on an Answer to the Enquiry; in a second Letter to the Same. III. Mr. Hobb's State of Nature considered; in a Dialogue between Philautus and Timothy. To which are added Five Letters, &c. The Eleventh Edition Corrected. London: J. Phillips, H. Rhodes and J. Taylor, 1705.
8vo, [vi], 111, [vi], 151, [x], 113, [ii], 76 pp., contemporary blind-tooled calf, scuffed, upper joint cracked but firm, some loss to spine label, some slight worming, some browning, a characterful copy from the library at Newton Surmaville, with the family name Phelipps gilt-stamped on the upper cover.
John Eachard (1636–97) was Master of St Catherine’s Hall, Cambridge, and was twice Vice-Chancellor of the University. Eachard’s assaults on Hobbes were substantially different from earlier ones, which had largely been written from within the scholastic tradition which still dominated teaching in the universities. Eachard, however, was writing with a different audience in mind. His concern was the corrupting effect of Hobbes’s philosophy on undergraduates, and he chose to write in a way which he considered would be attractive to young men. Eachard writes: ‘Mr Hobbes by affected garbs of speech, by a starched mathematical method, by counterfeit appearances of novelty and singularity, by magisterial haughtiness, confidence and the like, has cheated some people into a vast opinion of himself’. It is this ‘vast opinion’ which Eachard intends to deflate. 'It is particularly Hobbes’s account of the state of nature that Eachard ridicules. Hobbes writes that there was once a time when any man might justly murder his fellow men to advance his own interest. But this was never so. The picture Hobbes draws of the state of nature is quite incompatible with the way in which the majority of men respond to each other and if it had been true, their behaviour in society would be quite different from what we observe. Of course there are some men who behave as badly as Hobbes implies but they are a small minority. Hobbes’s account of human nature, and thus of society, may safely be rejected. Eachard underlines his attack by claiming that only the naturally wicked, or ‘pretty fine gents’ of little wit, or old pompous academics, are at all impressed by Hobbes’s argument. But Hobbes is mistaken on virtually every front. He makes the king superior to the Church and undermines the great traditions of English society. He is also mistaken in many other particulars: in his rejection of free will, for example, and in his mathematical dispute with John Wallis. Eachard’s attacks on Hobbes caught something of the age and were much admired by John Dryden. Whether they had the sought-for effect on the young is less clear. Jonathan Swift’s judgement that ‘I have known men happy enough at ridicule, who were on grave subjects perfectly stupid of which Dr Eachard of Cambridge was a great instance’ is far too harsh’ (G.A.J. Rogers in The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers).
£250
Early champion of Spinoza
Historische Nachrichten von Joh. Chr. Edelmanns, eines berüchtigten Religionsspötters, Leben, Schriften und Lehrbegrif, wie auch von den Schriften, die für und wider ihn geschrieben worden. Zwote verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Hamburg, Chr. Wilh. Brandt, 1755 [bound with] Lebensbeschreibung eines Dänischen Freydenkers … übersetzt von Christian Gottlob Mengel. Kopenhagen und Leipzig: Friederich Christian Pelt, 1762 [bound with] Das erste schlimmste Buch, oder Historisch Critische Abhandlung von der Religionslästerlichen Schrift De Tribus Impostoribus. Chemnitz: Johann Cristoph Stößel, 1764.
8vo, 3 works in one volume, engraved frontispiece portrait of Edelmann, [xiv], 376, [12], [ii], 170, [4], [xii], 100 pp., contemporary half calf, spine gilt with white label, edges marbled, neat biographical notes in early ink on front endpapers, a fine copy.
1) Second edition (first, 1753). Johann Christian Edelmann (1698-1767) was the first radical writer in a vernacular language other than Dutch openly to champion Spinoza's doctrines and books (see Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp. 659ff). The first work in this volume is by his bio-bibliographer Johann Hinrich Pratje (1710-1791). Worldcat locates 8 copies in the US, 2 in Germany and 1 in the Netherlands. 2) Apparently unrecorded. Guldberg (1731-1808) was Danish statesman who previously had been professor of rhetoric at Sorø academy. He was appointed tutor to Prince Frederick, half brother of the future king Charles VII, in 1764. No copies recorded on Worldcat. 3) First edition. Mehlig's was the first book devoted entirely to the Trois imposteurs, in its French and Latin versions. Worldcat lists 3 library holdings in Germany and 1 in the Netherlands.
£1650
Practical Education. London: printed for J. Johnson, 1798.
4to, 2 volumes in one, x, [ii], 1-385, [v], 387-775, [16] pp., 3 engraved plates (2 folding), half-title to volume 2 only, nineteenth-century half calf, gilt panelled spine, extremities rubbed, occasional light foxing, a tidy copy.
First edition of an important work in the history of education. 'Maria Edgeworth's father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, was an enlightened man who enthused about science and wrote about educational topics. From 1782 Maria lived at the family estate at Edgeworthstown in County Longford, where she worked as the estate’s manager and accountant, and educated her siblings. Mr Edgeworth upheld Bentham's utilitarian creed, which in turn influenced his daughter. He encouraged Maria to write, frequently editing her work, and they collaborated to produce educational material and stories. Whilst visiting France in 1802–1803, Maria regretfully declined a marriage proposal so that she could remain with her father. After his death she completed his Memoirs, which were published in 1820 … With her father she produced the treatise Practical Education (1798), which reflected ideas from Helvétius and Locke and was particularly inspired by Rousseau’s Emile. The Edgeworths advocated ‘education of the heart’ for both sexes. Their enlightened text made a significant contribution to the ongoing debate about child rearing. The emphasis was on reason: the child should be given rational explanations in answer to questions, and should be encouraged to explore and observe the world through studying nature and through play and active learning' (Stephanie Forward in The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Philosophy).
£600
Essays on Practical Education. A New Edition. In Three Volumes. London: printed for R. Hunter [etc.], 1822.
3 volumes, 12mo, xvii, 396; [iv], 488; [iv], 283, [2] pp., 3 plates (1 folding), contemporary half calf over marbled boards, slightly rubbed, a very good set.
A second edition of Practical Education was published in 1801 and a third in 1811. Jane Austen was an admirer of Maria Edgeworth, and by the time this re-titled three-volume edition appeared, Austen had sent her one of the ten presentation copies of Emma that her publishers had allowed her. According to Austen's recent biographer David Nokes, Edgeworth failed to acknowledge the gift, and in private conversation was disparaging about Austen's writing.
£120
Essays on Professional Education. London: printed for J. Johnson, 1809.
4to, viii, 496 pp., untrimmed in contemporary boards, rebacked preserving earlier paper title label, worn at extremities but still a very good copy.
First edition, dedicated to Earl Spencer. From the Advertisement to the Reader: 'It was difficult to find a proper title for the following Essays. That which has been adopted is confessedly liable to objection. The term Profession is usually confined to the Church, the Law, Physic, and Arms; but in fact Gentlemen, Statesmen, and Princes [each also the subject of a chapter], exercise functions of the highest consequence in the state; and no word seems more proper to designate their occupations than the term Profession'.
£480
Essays on Professional Education. Second Edition. London: printed for J. Johnson, 1812.
8vo, xiii, [ii], 541 pp., contemporary green half calf, spine gilt with red morocco label, bookplate of the Church of the Messiah Vestry Library, some spotting and browning.
From the Preface to the Second Edition: 'It is prudent in the preface to a new edition of a book to say what it does not contain … The author of 'Professional Education' disclaims the opinion, that all men are born with equal talents. He disclaims the idea, that artifice should be used in the education of children, or that petty contrivances should bias their early minds. The author disclaims the opinion, that boys should be bred up from their infancy by conversation, instruction, and books exclusively adapted to peculiar professions. He utterly disclaims the doctrine, that the children of the same family should be taught different morality and religion. In one word, he disclaims every thing that does not tend in education to general knowledge …'.
£100
The Socinian Creed: or, A Brief Account of the Professed Tenents [sic] and Doctrines of the Foreign and English Socinians. Wherein is shew’d The Tendency of them to Irreligion and Atheism. With Proper Antidotes against them. London: J. Robinson and J. Wyat, 1697.
8vo, [xxiv], 264 pp., short tear in M4 without loss, corners of G1 and M5 torn away without loss, tiny marginal wormholes to a few leaves, wax spots affecting L2-3, contemporary blindstamped calf, newly rebacked.
First edition, one of several works in which the Church of England clergyman Edwards (1637–1716) outlined his position against Locke after the publication of The Reasonableness of Christianity. Attig 677; Harrison & Laslett 1027; Wing E 212; Yolton C1697-7. From the library of Peter Laslett.
£250
Die Philosophie in ihrem U¨bergang zur Nichtphilosophie. Erlangen: Walters, 1803 [bound with] Philosophie und Religion. Tu¨bingen: I.G. Cotta, 1804.
8vo, one folding table, [ii], 107, vi, 80 pp., contemporary light green boards, rubbed, early ownership inscription on first title, half a page of early annotations on rear free endpaper, overall a very good copy.
First editions of two related works, the Schelling (another copy of which is listed later in this catalogue) having been written partly under the influence of the Eschenmayer. 'In his opus, Die Philosophie in ihrem übergang zur Nichtphilosophie (1803) , Eschenmayer argued that, because it is an unintelligible mystery for human thinking that the ideas come from God, philosophy must give its place to theology. According to Schelling in his Philosophie und Religion, the origin of the sensory world can only be thought of as a rupture, a leap and an apostasy (ein Abfall). It is this apostasy or "Abfall" by which Spirit, grasping Its own Self in its Selfhood, subordinates its Infinity to the finite, and ceases to be in God … Not only was it Eschenmayer's influence, but also Schelling's reading Jacob Böhme that brought Schelling's thought into this direction. In addition to this, Kant's thought of transcendental freedom and of its intelligible character affected Schelling's thought. In this manner, Schelling's mystical doctrine of Freedom came into being. Sometimes, people call it Theosophy' (Eiichi Shimomissé, Centre for Philosopy and Phemonenological Studies). Eschenmayer (176-1852) was professor of philosophy and medicine at Tübingen. Carl Jung mentions reading Eschenmayer as a young man in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962).
£450
Refutation des Erreurs de Benoit de Spinosa. Par M. De Fenelon ….., par le P. Lami …… & par M. le Comte de Boulainvilliers. Avec la vie de Spinosa, Ecrite par M. Jean Colerus, Ministre de l'Eglise Lutherienne de la Haye; augmentée de beaucoup de particularités tirées d'une Vie Manuscrite de ce Philosophe, faite par un de ses Amis. A Bruxelles: François Foppens, 1731.
12mo, [iv], 483, [3] pp., contemporary calf, raised bands with gilt tooled panels, red morocco label, slight worming to front hinge, marbled endpapers with armorial bookplate of Mailly, text extremely clean – a most attractive copy.
First edition of this collection. The life of Spinoza by Colerus announced on the title-page is not present having evidently been separated from the Refutations prior to first binding, to leave a volume continuously paginated 1-483. The mispagenation at pp. 482-3 has been unobtrusively corrected in pencil. Contents: Pages 1-162: Réfutation de Spinoza [by de Boulainvilliers]. Première partie: De l'être en général et en particulier. Pages 163-320: [again by de Boulainvilliers]. Seconde partie: Des passions. Pages 321-359: Extrait du nouvel athéisme renversé, ou réfutation du sistême de Spinosa, par Dom François Lami, Religieux Benedictin de la Congregation de S. Maur. A Paris, 1696. Pages 360-375: Analise ou idée abrégée de la première partie de la Réfutation de Spinosa. Pages 376-386: Extrait d'une lettre de Monseigneur de Fenelon, Archéveque de Cambray, sur la réfutation de Spinosa. Pages 387-483 contain: OROBIO, I. Certamen philosophicum Propugnatae Veritatis Divinae ac Naturalis adversus Joh: Bredenburg, Principia in fine annexa. Ex quibus quod Religio rationi repugnat, demonstrare nititur. Quo in Atheismi Spinosae barathro immersus jacet. Quod Religio nil rationi repugnans credendum proponit, evidenter oftenditur. Amstelaedami, A. Theodori Offaan, 1703. This is the second edition of a tract by the Portugese-born Baltazar Orobio da Castro (c.1618-87), who took the name Isaac upon officially converting to Judaism in Amsterdam. First published in Amsterdam in 1684, it is an assault on both Bredenburg and Spinoza. Orobio da Castro is at pains to try to refute the axiom ex nihilo, nihil fit; he also uses scholastic arguments to oppose Spinoza’s doctrine of substance. The text was reprinted in a compilation published by Nicolas Lenglet du Fresnoy in 1731. Van der Linde 107 & 108.
£950
Oeuvres philosophiques, ou demonstration de l'existence de Dieu, Tirée de l'Art de la Nature, dans la premier Partie: Et dans la seconde, des preuves purement intellectuelles, & de l'idée de l'Infini même … edition nouvelle, augmentée de diverses Reflexions, qui ne se trouvent dans aucune des Editions precedentes. Amsterdam: Honore et Chatelain, 1721.
Small 8vo, engraved frontispiece, [xvi], 317 pp., contemporary calf somewhat rubbed, spine faded gilt, red morocco label, joints cracked but holding, early ownership inscription and bookplate, front free endpaper cut, title-page printed in red and black, some light browning.
The most important of Fénelon's philosophical works, Part I was written during his years at Cambrai and first published in Paris in 1712. An expanded edition appeared, again in Paris, in 1718, three years after his death. In this third edition, the previous Preface by the Jesuit Pére Tournemine is enlarged and appears at the end of the book under the title: Reflexions ... sur l'athéisme, sur la démonstration de Monseigneur de Cambrai, et sur le sisteme de Spinosa.
£60
Essai sur L'histoire de la société civile. Par M. Adam Ferguson … Ouvrage traduit de l'Anglois, par M. Bergier. Paris: chez la Veuve Desaint, 1783.
2 volumes, 12mo,[(i]), xxiv, 372; [ii], iv, 416 pp.,wormhole in a few lower margins in vol. II, contemporary mottled calf, spines gilt, a fine set.
First edition in French; originally published in English in 1767. According to a preliminary "Avertissement" the sheets were actually printed five years earlier and are only now being published.
£600
Institutes of Moral Philosophy. The Second Edition. Revised and Corrected. Edinburgh: Printed for A. Kincaid & W. Creech, and J. Bell, 1773.
12mo, xvi, 294, [2] pp., contemporary calf, rubbed and with some loss to spine, ownership signature of J Gasking, 1795 and later ink stamp, some browning and spotting, a good copy overall.
Carlyle called this ‘the book that did the most honour to any of the Scotch Philosophers’. First published in 1769, it went through several English editions, and during Ferguson’s lifetime was translated into French, German, Italian and Russian.
£400
Anthropologie. Die Lehre von der menschlichen Seele. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1856.
8vo, xxviii, 609 pp., publisher's green cloth with spine lettered in gilt, small mark on lower cover, early ownership inscription, one leaf loose and with a small tear not affecting text, the usual spotting, especially to the first and last few leaves, but a neat copy on the whole.
First edition of a work by Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s son, Immanuel Hermann (1797-1879). The younger Fichte was a schoolteacher at Saarbrucken and Dusseldorf before becoming professor of philosophy at Bonn, 1836-42, and later at Tubingen, 1842-63. He edited his father's works, founded and edited the Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und spekulative Theologie, and was himself a prolific writer on philosophy. In metaphysics he occupied a cross-over position between the conflicting views of Hegel and Herbart. His great aim was to secure a philosophical basis for the personality of God. Taking the monadology of Leibniz as the model of a system embracing unity in plurality and plurality in unity, he sought to fuse extreme spiritualistic monism and extreme pluralistic realism into what he called ‘concrete theism’. This was his only book on anthropology.
£250
A walk in the park
A Plurality of Worlds. Written in French by the Author of Dialogues of the Dead. Translated into English by Mr. Glanvill. London: Printed for R.W. and sold by Tho. Osbourne, 1702.
Small 8vo, engraved frontispiece and one folding plate, [xii], 156, [4] pp., contemporary panelled calf, spine gilt in compartments, slight worming to lower inner margins late on, not affecting text, a very good copy.
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) is sometimes said to be the first successful populariser of science. His Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686) takes the form of a series of five witty conversations between a gallant philosopher and a fictitious marquise, who walk in the garden of the latter's chateau at night and gaze at stars. The philosopher explains the heliocentric model of the universe and muses on the possibility of extraterrestrial life. The book was wildly successful and eventually translated into every major European language. There were two English translations published in 1688, one by Aphra Behn and this one by Joseph Glanvill, whom Richard H. Popkin called 'the most interesting sceptical thinker in England before Hume'. 'Difficult some of the ideas were, but good writing and the device of correspondence or dialogue facilitated attractive exposition; when a physicist like Newton was too austere to do this for himself a writer like Fontenelle was available to undertake the necessary haute vulgarisation' (PMM, xxx).
£200
Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. By M. De Fontenelle. A New Translation From the last Edition of the French, with Great Additions, Extracted from the best modern Authors, on many Curious and Entertaining Subjects. Adorned with Copper-Plates … The Second Edition. By a Gentleman of the Inner-Temple. London: Printed for Thomas Caslon, 1767.
8vo, four folding plates, lxiv, 401, [1] pp., contemporary speckled calf, small traces of worming but otherwise very good.
Fontenelle later published a new edition of his Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (see the previous item), adding a sixth chapter here rendered as 'The Sixth Evening. New Thoughts, which confirm those of the preceding discourses, lately discovered, which have been made in the heavens'. This, the first English translation to incorporate the extra chapter, and much other material omitted by Glanvill, was first published in 1715. The editor and translator is one William Gardiner.
£200
Some Thoughts concerning Religion, Natural and Revealed. With Reflexions on The Sources of Incredulity With regard to Religion. Edinburgh: Printed for G. Hamilton and J. Balfour, 1750.
8vo, [ii], 214, [2], 123 pp., gilt-decorated full red morocco, minor wear to head and tail of spine, upper joint cracked but holding, all edges gilt, an attractive copy.
Duncan Forbes (1685-1747) was educated at Inverness Grammar school, 'where he and his brother became known as "the greatest boozers in the North" … he drank freely until 1725, when delicate health brought about enforced, if temporary, abstinence. He was appointed Lord President of the Court of Session in 1737' (John Stephens in The Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers). Forbes was also a considerable Hebrew scholar; Some Thoughts concerning Religion - in part a response to Tindal - was first published in 1735, with a second edition the following year and a third in 1743. Reflexions on The Sources of Incredulity with regard to Religion was first published posthumously in 1750 by a group of Forbes's friends 'who [we]re willing to believe, that even a fragment by so masterly a hand may not be an unacceptable present to the publick'. This is the first appearance of the two works in the same volume.
£600
Dialogues Concerning Education. London [no publisher], 1745-1748.
2 volumes, 8vo, iv, 435, [1]; [viii], 464 pp., contemporary marbled boards, rebacked, engraved title vignettes, book label of Bristol Education Society and gifting bookplate of Thomas Llewelyn, shelf numbers in red and black ink on titles, some spotting but a decent set, well-margined and uncut.
Second edition of Volume One, first edition of Volume Two. ‘In 1745, Fordyce published his first work, Dialogues concerning Education, and this successful volume was followed by another in 1748. Fordyce’s approach to education is an archetype of enlightenment, with a strong awareness of and emphasis on civic duty and the academic values and virtues. Fordyce clearly thinks of education as a commitment not primarily to the life of the mind, but to the life of the mind in so far as it can serve the larger and more comprehensive imperatives and prerequisites of one’s country and mankind in general. Casting his work in the eighteenth century’s most popular genre, the dialogue, Fordyce effectively dilutes some of the didacticism of his view, but in any case the values and duties that he extols would have been unexceptionable to his contemporaries: few would disagree that self-improvement is a desirable goal’ (John Valdimir Price in The Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers). Fordyce died by drowning at sea off the coast of Holland in 1751, aged only 40.
£350
The first treatise on logic in the Portugese language
Logica racional, geometrica, e analitica, obra utilissima, e absolutamente necessaria para entrar em qualquer sciencia, e ainda para todos os homens, que em qualquer particular, quizerem fazer uso do seu entendimento, e explicar as suas ideas por termos claros, proprios, e intelligiveis. Lisboa: Plates, 1744.
4to, engraved frontispiece and title vignette (one closed tear unobtrusively repaired), [xxxii], 151, 270, 224 pp., contemporary tree calf rubbed at extremities, spine gilt in compartments with red morocco label, some loss to head, pages clean and fresh, a nice copy.
First edition. After an education in France and Italy, Manoel de Azevedo Fortes (1660-1749) was professor of mathematics at Siena before returning to his native land to become chief engineer of the kingdom of Portugal. This work in three parts, the first treatise on logic to be written and published in Portugese, imports the influences of Port-Royal, Descartes and Locke, without entirely breaking with the Aristotelian tradition.
£850
Julius und Evagoras oder: die Schöneit der Seele. Heidelberg: C.F. Winter, 1822.
2 volumes, 8vo, 384, 399 pp., early boards covered in printed green cloth with leaf design, spine labels red with gilt lettering, printed plate of Kaatzer's Leihbibliothek, Aachen on front pastedown of volume 1, pages remarkably clean, an attractive set.
First editon thus (a one-volume work by Fries called Julius und Evagoras, oder: Die neue Republik had been published in Heidelberg in 1814). Fries taught at the University of Jena at the same time as Hegel, and was greatly disliked by him. 'One could say that one reason Hegel published the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) was to try to get university positions before Fries got them. Fries did get a position at the University of Heidelberg in 1805 and Hegel was stunned. … Fries was a follower of Kant, but not with the Idealism of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Rather he wanted the post-Kantians to go toward an empiricist and moralistic way' (www.hegel.net). Fries's most important treatise, the Neue oder anthropologische Kritik der Vernunft, was an attempt to provide a new psychological foundation for the critical theory of Kant. In 1811 he published his System der Logik; and then came this book, his ‘philosophical novel’ Julius und Evagoras. At its centre are dialogues that try to show how ultimate questions about existence and morality can be discussed in ordinary language.
£350
Menschenseele und Physiologie: eine Streitschrift gegen Prof. Carl Vogt in Genf. Mu¨nchen: Literarisch-artistische Anstalt, 1855.
8vo, v, [iii], 212 pp., contemporary marbled boards, ms title on paper spine label, worn, bookplate of Bibliothek Liebenstein on front pastedown, endpapers a little dusty but main textblock clean.
First edition. Jakob Frohschammer (1821-93) was a priest and professor of philosophy at Munich. This book was a follow-up to his Ueber den Ursprung der menschlichen Seelen (1854), in which he argued that the human soul was not implanted by a divine creative act in each case, but was the result of a secondary creative act by the parents: in other words that the soul, just as much as the body, was subject to the laws of heredity. In 1862 Frohschammer was denounced by the Pope in an apostolic brief, and students of theology were forbidden to attend his lectures.
£175
The cornerstone of Gassendi's Epicurean atomism
De vita et moribus Epicuri libri octo. Lyon: Barbier, 1647.
4to, 4 leaves, 5-236, [17] pp., contemporary French sheep with some abrasions, morocco spine label lettered in gilt, some gatherings browned but still a very good copy of a scarce and important book.
First edition of a major part of Gassendi's 'Epicurus Project', so influential on Boyle and Newton (see Antonia Lolordo's recent book Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge, 2007). 'Gassendi was aware that he needed to do some work in order to make Epicurianism acceptable to his readers. After a seven-chapter account of Epicurus' life and moral standing, Gassendi planned a five-chapter book giving an account of the various criteria for judging truth and on the canons of words, sense, anticipation, and physics … [the first book to come out of this was] De vita et moribus Epicuri libri octo - the seven chapters of the 1631 outline had grown to eight. This was published in 1647 and followed two years later by the second half of the original project, the Animadversiones in decium librum Diogenis Laerti …' (pp. 20 ff.).
£3500
'The making of the modern mind'
Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri, cum Refutationibus dogmatum quae contra Fidem Christianam ab eo asserta sunt. Hagæ-Comitis: Ex typographia Adriani Vlacq, 1659 [bound with] Exercitationes paradoxicæ adversus Aristoteleos. In quibus præcipua totius Peripateticæ doctrinæ fundamenta excutiuntur. Opiniones vero` aut novæ, aut ex vetustioribus obsoletæ stabiliuntur [Liber primus]. Hagæ-Comitum: Apud Adrianum Vlacq, 1656.
4to, [vi], engraved portrait (with small hole), [xlii], 495, [14], 106 pp., contemporary vellum, edges green, some spotting and browning but very good copies.
Second edition of Gassendi's famous and important treatise on Epicurean philosophy. It is prefixed by the 42-page life of Gassendi by his disciple Samuel de Sorbière (1615-1670), the philosopher-translator known also for his promotion of the works of Hobbes. The publishing history of Gassendi's works is complicated (see Antonia Lolordo's new book Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Philosophy, CUP, 2007). This Syntagma first appeared as an appendix to Gassendi's Animadversiones in decimum librum Diogenis Laertii (Lyon, 1649). It is easily confused with the larger Syntagma philosophicum, prepared from Gassendi's manuscripts by Sorbière and Montmor and published as volumes 1 and 2 of the posthumous Opera omnia (Lyon, 1658). Bound in with the Syntagma is the second edition of Gassendi's critique of Aristotle, first published in Grenoble in 1624. Gassendi originally intended this as a seven-book project, but only ever completed two books. The latter remained unpublished during Gassendi's lifetime, only seeing the light of day in Volume 3 of the Opera omnia. 'Gassendi, in his lifetime, had an extremely important intellectual career whose development, perhaps more than that of René Descartes, indicates and illustrates the making of the modern mind' (Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, p. 100).
£2500
Einleitung zu den Oeconomischen Politischen und Cameral-Wissenschaften. Halle: in Verlegung des Wäysenhauses, 1729.
4to, [8], 24, 347 pp., nineteenth-century half calf and marbled boards, edges red, Macclesfield Library bookplate, red/black title-page shaved at fore-edge with slight loss, one folding table on 2 sheets at p.148, a very good copy.
First edition of this rare introduction to the thought of the German cameralists, who sought to increase the economic power of the state by raising national revenue. Gasser had two years previously been appointed the first professor of economics at Halle, a chair founded at the instigation of Friedrich Wilhelm I, to whom this work is dedicated. This treatise is practical rather than theoretical and provides a clear introduction to financial administration at both the macro and the micro levels. The book is rare, Worldcat locating North American copies only at Columbia, Michigan and Kansas.
£2500
Tourneisen edition of Gillies
The History of Ancient Greece, its Colonies, and Conquests; from the Earliest Accounts till the Division of the Macedonian Empire in the East. Including the History of Literature, Philosophy, and the Fine Arts. Basil: Tourneisen and Legrand, 1790.
5 volumes, 8vo, xii, 382; vi, 401; vi, 386; vi, 427; viii, 382 pp., contemporary half calf, marbled boards, spines gilt with green morocco lettering pieces and library shelfmark labels, a fine set.
John Gillies (1747-1836) was Historiographer Royal for Scotland and made major contributions to classical studies, including translations of Aristotle, Isocrates and Lysias. His pioneering History of Ancient Greece was first published in two large volumes in 1786, and later translated into French and German. This early Basil reprint of the English edition in five volumes is particularly attrac