‎(ISELIN, I.)‎
‎Träume eines Menschenfreundes. Erster [-Zweyter] Theil.‎

‎Carlsruhe, bei Christian Gottlieb Schmieder, 1784. With one folding table. Two volumes bound in one. (iii)-xvi, 288 pp.; (iv), 369, (1) pp. 8vo. 19th-century half cloth, spine gilt in compartments, gilt lettering, marbled boards, corners, sprinkled edges. Not in Kress; not in Goldsmiths; not in Einaudi; not in Menger; for other editions see Goldsmiths 11382 and Humpert 12691; Mattioli 1690; NUC locates only two copies (NNC, CU). Second edition of the author's principal work on physiocracy, and very rare. In 1755 Iselin published his Patriotische und Philosophische Träume eines Menschenfreundes. 'Afterwards, by good fortune, the Ephémérides du Citoyen came into his hands after reading which Quesnay became in his eyes 'what Newton is in the eyes of a mathematician.' The new standpoint comes to light, fully matured in the work which appeared in 1776: Träume eines Menschenfreundes. This book is by no means a second edition of the work published in 1755, as is generally supposed, and as might have been conjectured from the kindred title, but quite a new work' (Palgrave, vol. ii, p. 459) in which he embraces the authors who had adopted Quesnay's teaching, as the marquis de Mirabeau, Baudeau, Comte d'Albon and others. The present edition is a reprint of the 1776 edition, the first volume contains the representation of Quesnay's Tableau Economique.According to Iselin human institutions have corrupted the natural order and in this book he concludes with a new constitution aiming at the reconciliation of the republicanism of his Swiss homeland with the enlightened despotism of Quesnay. Iselin was the editor of the German economic journal Ephemeriden der Menschheit which soon gained a great reputation and counted among its contributors many of the most eminent German economists of the time.- The half-titles, carrying the serial-title "Sammlung der bestend deutschen prosaischen Schriftsteller und Dichter. Hundert und vierzigster (Ein und vierzigster) Theil", are absent, tear in page v-vi repaired, title-pages with contemporary ownership's entry in blank portion. ‎

Reference : 26127

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