‎Jean-Baptiste-René Robinet ‎
‎De la nature‎

‎Mémoire topographique, physique et médicinal, ou Traité sur la situation de la ville de Tours ; sur la nature de son sol ; sur les qualités de l'eau & de l'air ; sur la nourriture, le tempérament, le caractère, les maladies de ses habitants, & des troupes qui y sont en garnison. Par M. Duvergé, docteur en médecine, ancien médecin-inspecteur des hôpitaux militaires, & membre de l'Académie des sciences & belles lettres d'Angers.‎

‎Duvergé, Mémoire topographique, physique et médicinal, ou Traité sur la situation de la ville de Tours ; sur la nature de son sol ; sur les qualités de l'eau & de l'air ; sur la nourriture, le tempérament, le caractère, les maladies de ses habitants, & des troupes qui y sont en garnison. Par M. Duvergé, docteur en médecine, ancien médecin-inspecteur des hôpitaux militaires, & membre de l'Académie des sciences & belles lettres d'Angers. Tours, imp. de F. Vauquer, 1774. In-12, [2]-XII-164 [i.e. 163]p. Edition originale de cet intéressant ouvrage sur la Touraine, le dernier feuillet mal chiffré étant l'errata. Intéressantes provenances : Louis Clément de Ris (1820-1882), collectionneur, conservateur du château de Versailles (signature en garde) ; Victor Guignard, chanoine, président de la Société Archéologique de Touraine (cachet à l'encre en garde). 6 exemplaires au CCfr dont 3 à la BM de Tours. Demi-maroquin à coins, tête dorée, mention « barth » en pied (provenance ?). Frottements aux nerfs et coiffes, papier bien conservé. Peu commun ‎

‎Systeme de la Nature ou Des Loix du Monde Physique & du Monde Moral. 2 vols. - [""MAN IS OF ALL BEINGS THE MOST NECESSARY TO MAN""]‎

‎London, 1774. 8vo. 2 volumes uniformly bound in contemporary half calf with gilt ornamentation to spine. Spines with wear of boards miscoloured. Internally fine and clean. (16) 397 pp."" (4), 500, (3) pp. Wanting the frontispiece.‎

‎Later edition, published four years after the original, comprising ""The System of Nature"" - one of the most important works of natural philosophy ever written and the work that is considered the main work of materialism - and ""The Social System"", being d'Holbach's seminal ""social"" and political continuation of that groundbreaking work. D'Holbach (1723-1789), who was raised by a wealthy uncle, whom he inherited, together with his title of Baron, in 1753, maintained one of the most famous salons in Paris. This salon became the social and intellectual centre for the Encyclopédie, which was edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, whom he became closely connected with. D'Holbach himself also contributed decisively to the Encyclopédie, with at least 400 signed contributions, and probably as many unsigned, between 1752 and 1765. The ""Côterie holbachique"" or ""the café of Europe"", as the salon was known, attracted the most brilliant scientists, philosophers, writers and artists of the time (e.g. Diderot, d'Alembert, Helvetius, Voltaire, Hume, Sterne etc, etc.), and it became one of the most important gathering-places for the exchange of philosophical, scientific and political views under the ""ancient régime"". Apart from developing several foundational theories of seminal scientific and philosophical value, D'Holbach became known as one of the most skilled propagators and popularizers of scientific and philosophical ideas, promoting scientific progress and spreading philosophical ideas in a new and highly effective manner. As the theories of d'Holbach's two systematic works were at least as anticlerical and unaccepted as those of his smaller tracts, and on top of that so well presented and so convincing, it would have been dangerous for him to print any of them under his own name, and even under the name of the city or printer. Thus, ""Systême de la Nature"" appeared pseudonomously under the name of the secretary of the Académie Francaise, J.B. Mirabaud, who had died 10 years earlier, and under a fictive place of printing, namely London instead of Amsterdam. ""He could not publish safely under his own name, but had the ingenious idea of using the names of recently dead French authors. Thus, in 1770, his most famous book, ""The System of Nature"", appeared under the name Jean-Baptiste Mirabaud"" (PMM 215), and so the next ""System"" also appeared in the same manner three years later. D'Holbach was himself the most audacious philosophe of this circle. During the 1760's he caused numerous anticlerical tracts (written in large, but not entirely, by himself) to be clandestinely printed abroad and illegally circulated in France. His philosophical masterpiece, the ""Système de la nature, ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral"", a methodological and intransigent affirmation of materialism and atheism, appeared anonymously in 1770"" (D.S.B. VI:468), as did the social and political follow-up of it, the famous ""Systême social"" in 1773. That is to say, Mirabeau whom he had used as the author on the ""System of Nature"" in 1770 is not mentioned in the ""Social System"", on the title-page of which is merely stated ""By the Author of ""Systême de la Nature"". In his main work, the monumental ""Système de la Nature"", d'Holbach presented that which was to become one of the most influential philosophical theories of the time, combined with and based on a complex of advanced scientific thought. He postulated materialism, and that on the basis of science and empiricism, on the basis of his elaborate picture of the universe as a self-created and self-creating entity that is constituted by material elements that each possess specific energies. He concludes, on the basis of empiricism and the positive truths that the science of his time had attained, that ideas such as God, immortality, creation etc. must be either contradictory or futile, and as such, his materialism naturally also propounded atheism"" his theory of the universe showed that nature is the product of matter (eternally in motion and arranged in accordance with mechanical laws), and that reality is nothing but nature. Thus, having in his ""Systême de la Nature"" presented philosophical materialism in an actual system for the first time and having created a work that dared unite the essence of all the essential material of the English and French Enlightenment and incorporate it into a closed materialistic system, d'Holbach had provided the modern world with a moral and ethic philosophy, the effects of which were tremendous. It is this materialism and atheism that he continues three years later in his next systematic work ""Systême social"", through which politics, morality, and sociology are also incorporated into his system and take the place of the Christianity that he had so fiercely attacked earlier on. In this great work he extends his ethical views to the state and continues the description of human interest from ""Systême de la Nature"" by developing a notion of the just state (by d'Holbach called ""ethocracy"") that is to secure general welfare. ""Système social (1773"" ""Social System"") placed morality and politics in a utilitarian framework wherein duty became prudent self-interest."" (Encyclopaedia Brittanica). ""Holbach's foundational view is that the most valuable thing a person seeking self-preservation can do is to unite with another person: ""Man is of all beings the most necessary to man"" (Sysème social, 76"" cf. Spinoza's Ethics IVP35C1, C2, and S). Society, when it is just, unites for the common purpose of preservation and the securing of welfare, and society contracts with government for this purpose."" (SEP). Both works had a sensational impact. For the first time, philosophical materialism is presented in an actual system, and with the second of them, this system also comprised politics and sociology, a fact which became essential to the influence and spreading of this atheistic scientific-philosophical strand. The effects of the works were tremendous, and the consequences of their success were immeasurable, thus, already in the years of publication, both works were confiscated. The ""Système de la Nature"" was condemned to burning by the Parisian parliament in the year of its publication"" the ""Système social"" was on the list of books to be confiscated already in 1773, and it was placed on the Index of the Church in August 1775. Both works are thus scarce. In spite of their condemnation, and in spite of the reluctance of contemporary writers to acknowledge the works as dangerous (as Goethe said in ""Dichtung und Wahrheit"": ""Wir begriffen nicht, wie ein solches Buch gefährlich sein könnte. Es kam uns so grau, so todtenhaft vor""), the ""Systems"" and d'Holbach's materialism continued its influence on philosophic, political and scientific thought. In fact, it was this materialism that for Marx became the social basis of communism. ""In the ""Système"" Holbach rejected the Cartesian mind-body dualism and attempted to explain all phenomena, physical and mental, in terms of matter in motion. He derived the moral and intellectual faculties from man's sensibility to impressions made by the external world, and saw human actions as entirely determined by pleasure and pain. He continued his direct attack on religion by attempting to show that it derived entirely from habit and custom. But the Systeme was not a negative or destructive book: Holbach rejected religion because he saw it as a wholly harmful influence, and he tried to supply a more desirable alternative. ""(Printing and the Mind of Man, 215). ""In keeping with such a naturalistic conception of tings, d'Holbach outlined an anticreationalist cosmology and a nondiluvian geology. He proposed a transformistic hypothesis regarding the origins of the animal species, including man, and described the successive changes, or new emergences, of organic beings as a function of ecology, that is, of the geological transformation of the earth itself and of its life-sustaining environment. While all this remained admittedly on the level of vague conjecture, the relative originality and long-term promise of such a hypothesis -which had previously been broached only by maillet, Maupertuis, and Diderot- were of genuine importance to the history of science. Furthermore, inasmuch as the principles of d'Holbach's mechanistic philosophy ruled out any fundamental distinction between living an nonliving aggregates of matter, his biology took basic issue with both the animism and the vitalism current among his contemporaries...This closely knit scheme of theories and hypotheses served not merely to liberate eighteenth-century science from various theological and metaphysical empediments, but it also anticipated several of the major directions in which more than one science was later to evolve. Notwithstanding suchprecursors as Hobbes, La Mttrie, and Diderot, d'Holbach was perhaps the first to argue unequivocally and uncompromisingly that the only philosophical attitude consistent with modern science must be at once naturalistic and antisupernatural."" (D.S.B. VI:469).‎

‎Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie. Zum Behuf seiner Vorlesungen + Einleitung zu seinem Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie. Oder: Ueber den Begriff der speculativen Physik und die innere Organisation eines Systems dieser Wissens... - [THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE]‎

‎Jena und Leipzig, Christian Ernst Gabler, 1799. 8vo. Bound in one cont. marbled cardboardbdg. Spine soiled and worn at hinges and capitals, w. a bit of loss. Cont annotations to fly leaf. Old discrete owner's name to title-page, dated 1809. Four leaves w. cont. marginal annotations and underlinings. Internally well-preserved. (2), 83, (1, errata), (2, -blank) + (4), 321, (1, -Verbesserungen) pp.‎

‎Scarce first editions of these two fundamental works of Shelling's philosophy of nature. In his early works (1795-1800), Schelling sets out to give a new account of nature, and his ""Erster Entwurf..."" together with the ""Einleitung..."" for it are placed at the centre of this attempt. At the basis of his philosophy of nature is the status that Kant had given nature, but Schelling tries to avoid some of the consequences that come with Kant's notion. He is also largely inspired by Fichte's transcendental philosophy, and in the last five years of the 19th century, Schelling is thus occupied with the relationship of the subject to the object world, -a theme that comes to found the basis for his so famous philosophy of nature. At first Fichte and Schelling stood on good terms, but as their different conceptions of nature became evident, the divergences between them became too great. As Fichte regarded nature as Not-Self, this could not be a valid subject of philosophy, and he refused to understand Schelling's philosophy of nature as complementary to his own transcendental philosophy.Schelling's philosophy of nature presents us with a modern hermeneutic view of nature, allowing nature to be of significance beyond what can be scientifically established about it. Along with J.G. Fichte and Hegel, Schelling ranks as the most influential thinker of German Idealism. He stands in the centre of this most important and influential of philosophical traditions, and with his philosophy of nature, his anti-Cartesian view of subjectivity and his later critique of Hegelian Idealism, Schelling continues to be of the utmost importance to the development of continental philosophy to this day. ‎

‎Etudes de la Nature, par Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Nouvelle édition, revue, corrigée, et conforme à celle publiée par M. Aimé-Martin. On y a joint l'Etude littéraire sur la partie historique du roman de Paul et Virginie, et les Pièces officielles relatives au naufrage du vaisseau le Saint-Géran, par P.L. Lemontey (5 volumes).‎

‎ Aimé André, Libraire-Editeur, 1825, 5 volumes in-8 de 215x135 mm environ, Tome 1 : 1f.blanc, faux-titre, frontispice, titre, iv-xxiv-494 pages, 1f.(table, 1f.blanc, - Tome 2 : 1f.blanc, faux-titre, titre, 492 pages, 1f.blanc, - Tome 3 : 1f.blanc, faux-titre, titre, 448 pages, 1f.blanc, - Tome 4 : 1f.blanc, faux-titre, titre, xliii-32-334 pages, 1f.(table), 1f.blanc, - Tome 5 : 1f.blanc, faux-titre, titre, lxxviii-507 pages, 1f.blanc, reliures demi veau bleu nuit, titres et tomaisons dorés sur dos lisses, ornés de caissons à motifs dorés, gardes marbrées, tranches finement mouchetées. Contient un portrait-frontispice et 10 planches gravées (dont une carte dépliante "Hémisphère Atlantique"), pour Etudes de la Nature et 2 planches gravées pour Paul et Virginie.Des rousseurs fortes par endroits, traces d'humidité et mouillures claires, des passages soulignés dans les marges au crayon à papier, une partie des planches détachées, cuir insolé sur les dos avec frottements et petites épidermures, frottements sur le cartonnage également, début de fente sur un mors interne (tome 5). ‎

‎Tome 1. Avis de l'Editeur. Etude I. Immensité de la Nature. Plan de mon ouvrage. Etude II. Bienfaisance de la Nature. Etude III. Objections contre la Providence. Etude IV. Réponses aux objections contre la Providence, tirées des désordres du Globe. Etude V. Réponses aux objections contre la Providence, tirées des désordres du règne végétal. Etude VI. Réponses aux objections contre la Providence, tirées des désordres du règne animal. Etude VII. Réponses aux objections contre la Providence, tirées des maux du genre humain. Etude VIII. Réponses aux objections contre la Providence divine et les espérances d'une autre vie, tirées de la nature incompréhensible de Dieu, et des misères de ce monde. Notes de l'auteur. Tome 2. Etude IX. Objections contre les méthodes de notre raison, et les principes de nos sciences. Etude X. De quelques lois générales de la nature, et premièrement des lois physiques. De la Convenance. De l'ordre. De l'harmonie. Des couleurs. Des formes. Des mouvements. Des consonnances. De la progression. Des contrastes. De la Figure humaine. Des concerts. De quelques autres lois de la nature, peu connues. Etude XI. Application de quelques lois générales de la nature aux plantes. Harmonies élémentaires des plantes. Harmonies élémentaires des plantes avec le soleil, par les fleurs. Harmonies élémentaires des plantes avec l'eau et l'aire, par leurs feuilles et leurs fruits. Harmonies végétales des plantes. Harmonies animales des plantes. Harmonies humaines des plantes. Des harmonies élémentaires des plantes par rapport à l'homme. Harmonies végétales des plantes avec l'homme. Harmonies animales des plantes avec l'homme. Harmonies humaines ou alimentaires des plantes. Notes de l'auteur.Tome III. Etude XII. De quelques lois morales de la nature. Faiblesse de la raison. Du sentiment ; preuve de la Divinité et de l'immortalité de l'ame par le sentiment. Des sensations physiques. Du goût. De l'odorat. De la vue. De l'ouïe. Du toucher. Des sentiments de l'ame, et premièrement des affections de l'esprit. Du sentiment de l'innocence. De la pitié. De l'amoure de la patrie. Du sentiment de l'admiration. Du merveilleux. Plaisir du mystère. Plaisir de l'ignorance. Du sentiment de la mélancolie. Plaisir de la ruine. Plaisir des tombeaux. Ruines de la nature. Plaisir de la solitude. Du sentiment de l'amour. De quelques autres sentiments de la Divinité, et entre autres celui de la vertu. Etude XIII. Application des lois de la nature au maux de la Société. De Paris. De la noblesse. D'un élysée. du clergé. Etude XIV. De l'éducation. Récapitulation. Notes de l'auteur. Explication des Figures.Table du tome 4 : Avis de l'Editeur. Paul et Virginie, Avant-propos, Préambule. Paul et Virginie. - La Chaumière indienne. Avant-propos, Préambule, La Chaumière indienne. - Le Café de Surate. - Voyage en Silésie. - Eloge de mon ami. - Voyages de Codrus. - Le Vieux Paysan Polonais. - Notes de l'avant-propos de la Chaumière. Table du tome 5 : L'Arcadie, Fragment servant de Préambule à l'Arcadie. L'Arcadie, Livre premier. Les Gaules. Fragments de l'Arcadie, Préface de l'Editeur, Fragment du livre second, Fragment du livre troisième. Fragments de l'Amazone, Commencement de Mon Journal, Suite de Mon Journal. Essai sur J.-J. Rousseau. Epitaphe de J.-J. Rousseau par Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. Essai sur J.-J. Rousseau. Parallèle de Voltaire et de J.-J. Rousseau. De la Nature de la Morale. Fragment. Préface de l'Editeur sur les travaux de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre à l'Institut. De la Nature de la Morale. Merci de nous contacter à l'avance si vous souhaitez consulter une référence au sein de notre librairie.‎

‎Système social, ou principes naturels de la morale et de la politique, avec un examen de l'influence du gouvernement sur les moeurs. Par l'Auteur du Systême de la Nature [Mirabaud]. 3 Tomes. - [THE SYSTEM OF NATURE CONTINUED... THE SOCIAL SYSTEM]‎

‎London [recte: Amsterdam, M.M. Rey], 1773. 8vo. Bound in one beautiful contemporary full mottled calf binding with five raised bands to richly gilt spine triple gilt line-borders to boards and inner gilt dentelles. Edges of boards with single gilt line. All edges gilt. Corners abit bumped and a bit of overall wear. Inner hinges a bit weak. Internally very fine and clean. All in all a very fine copy indeed. (4), 210176" 167 pp. With all three half-titles, all three title-pages and all three indexes, as well as the introduction.‎

‎The rare first edition, first issue (though Tchermerzine mentions an unknown 2-volume-edition form the same year - this edition has never been verified), of one of d'Holbach's most important works, his influential ""social"" and political continuation of his seminal main work ""Systeme de la nature"" - the bible of materialism. D'Holbach (1723-1789), who was raised by a wealthy uncle, whom he inherited, together with his title of Baron, in 1753, maintained one of the most famous salons in Paris. This salon became the social and intellectual centre for the Encyclopédie, which was edited by Diderot and d'Alembert, whom he became closely connected with. D'Holbach himself also contributed decisively to the Encyclopédie, with at least 400 signed contributions, and probably as many unsigned, between 1752 and 1765. The ""Côterie holbachique"" or ""the café of Europe"", as the salon was known, attracted the most brilliant scientists, philosophers, writers and artists of the time (e.g. Diderot, d'Alembert, Helvetius, Voltaire, Hume, Sterne etc, etc.), and it became one of the most important gathering-places for the exchange of philosophical, scientific and political views under the ""ancient régime"". Apart from developing several foundational theories of seminal scientific and philosophical value, D'Holbach became known as one of the most skilled propagators and popularizers of scientific and philosophical ideas, promoting scientific progress and spreading philosophical ideas in a new and highly effective manner. D'Holbach was himself the most audacious philosophe of this circle. During the 1760's he caused numerous anticlerical tracts (written in large, but not entirely, by himself) to be clandestinely printed abroad and illegally circulated in France. His philosophical masterpiece, the ""Système de la nature, ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral"", a methodological and intransigent affirmation of materialism and atheism, appeared anonymously in 1770"" (D.S.B. VI:468), as did the social and political follow-up of it, the famous ""Systême social"" in 1773. That is to say, Mirabeau whom he had used as the author on the ""System of Nature"" in 1770 is not mentioned in the ""Social System"", on the title-page of which is merely stated ""By the Author of ""Systême de la Nature"". As the theories of d'Holbach's two systematic works were at least as anticlerical and unaccepted as those of his smaller tracts, and on top of that so well presented and so convincing, it would have been dangerous for him to print any of them under his own name, and even under the name of the city or printer. Thus, ""Systême de la Nature"" appeared pseudonomously under the name of the secretary of the Académie Francaise, J.B. Mirabaud, who had died 10 years earlier, and under a fictive place of printing, namely London instead of Amsterdam. ""He could not publish safely under his own name, but had the ingenious idea of using the names of recently dead French authors. Thus, in 1770, his most famous book, ""The System of Nature"", appeared under the name Jean-Baptiste Mirabaud."" (PMM 215), and so the next ""System"" also appeared in the same manner three years later.In his ""Systême de la Nature"", d'Holbach had presented philosophical materialism in an actual system for the first time and had created a work that dared unite the essence of all the essential material of the English and French Enlightenment and incorporate it into a closed materialistic system"" on the basis of a completely materialistic and atheistic foundation, he provided the modern world with a moral and ethic philosophy, the effects of which were tremendous. It is this materialism and atheism that he continues three years later in his next systematic work ""Systême social"", through which politics, morality, and sociology are also incorporated into his system and take the place of the Christianity that he had so fiercely attacked earlier on. In this great work he extends his ethical views to the state and continues the description of human interest from ""Systême de la Nature"" by developing a notion of the just state (by d'Holbach calle ""ethocracy"") that is to secure general welfare. ""Système social (1773"" ""Social System"") placed morality and politics in a utilitarian framework wherein duty became prudent self-interest."" (Encyclopaedia Brittanica). ""Holbach's foundational view is that the most valuable thing a person seeking self-preservation can do is to unite with another person: ""Man is of all beings the most necessary to man"" (Sysème social, 76"" cf. Spinoza's Ethics IVP35C1, C2, and S). Society, when it is just, unites for the common purpose of preservation and the securing of welfare, and society contracts with government for this purpose."" (SEP).As the ""Systême de la Nature"" had been condemned to burning in the year of its publication, so the ""Systême social"" was on the list of books to be confiscated already in 1773, and it was placed on the Index of the Church in August 1775. As the ""Systême de la Nature"", the ""Systême social"" is thus also of great scarcity. Another edition of the work appeared later the same year, in 12mo. Tchermerzine says that ""Il ya une édition, que nous ne connaissons pas, en 2 vol. in-8. C'est sans doute l'originale."" The present edition was reprinted the following year, in 1774.Tschermerzine VI:246" Graesse III:317 Barbier IV:622 (only listing later editions).‎