‎Stierlin‎
‎Le monde de l'‎

‎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).‎

‎Avis a une Personne engagée dans le Monde. Ouvrage ascetique, dans lequel on trouvera des Regles certaines pour assurer une Conscience scrupuleuse & une Direction exacte, pour conduire à la plus haute perfection au milieu du Monde.‎

‎Paris, Guerin & Delatour, 1759. 12mo. Contemp. full mottled calf. Richly gilt spine. Titlelabel with gilt lettering. Light wear to spine ends and hinges. VIII,244 pp.‎

‎Voyage de La Pérouse autour du Monde, publié conformément au Décrets du 22 Avril 1791, et rédigé par M.L.A. Milet-Mureau. 4 Vols. + Atlas.‎

‎Paris, Plassin, 1798. 8vo. and folio (44 x 30) cm. Textvolumes bound in 4 contemporary half calf. Gilt spines with gilt lettering. Tome-label on volume one eroded. Stamp on title-pages. (4),LXVIII,368(4),414316,(120 = Tables)"(4),328 pp. A few scattered brownspots. Atlasvolume bound in matching hcalf. Spine gilt and rubbed. Lower compartment of spine with wear and tear. Engraved portrai of Pérouse as frontispiece. Engraved pictorial titlepage with cupids and naviogational instruments (dessinée par Moreau le Jeune) and 69 engraved maps, plans and plates of which 32 are large folded engraved maps. Mild foxing to some parts of some maps, occasionally mild dampstains to some plates, marginal browning and some spotting. One map with a repair to folding.‎

‎Second edition of the textvolumes (the first appeared the year before, 1797) and first edition of plates. (69 plates to the first, 70 to the second).""In 1785, Jean-Francois de Galaup, Comte de la Perouse, began preparations for an extensive sea voyage. His aim was to explore the Pacific regions of North and South America, Asia and Australasia. The sponsor of the expedition was the French king, Louis XVI, who was inspired by Captain James Cook's Pacific voyages. Louis ordered the French expedition to show the world that France could also dominate in ocean exploration. The expedition consisted of two ships - La Boussole and L'Astrolabe. They carried a total of 225 crew, officers and scientists. The ships left France in August 1785 and sailed south around Cape Horn. The voyage was expected to last four years. During the voyage, La Perouse sent back regular reports to France. The expedition mapped coastlines and explored uncharted areas of ocean. The expedition's scientists also spent time onshore at various ports, observing the habits and customs of local people and collecting natural history specimens. The expedition's progess until September 1787 was published by the French government as Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde [La Perouse's voyage around the world]. It was reprinted many times and translated into several languages. In 1791, when La Perouse had not returned to France or made any contact by dispatch, the French government sent out a search party. It was commanded by Rear Admiral Joseph Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux and consisted of two ships, Recherche and Esperance.... The complete disappearance of La Perouse caught the imagination of the European public. Songs, stories and plays were written about the possible fate of the expedition, including a popular play called, Perouse, or, The desolate island..... It was not until 1964 that the wreck of La Boussole was finally discovered on Vanikoro's reefs. At last the fate of La Perouse and his crew was known. The expedition is commemorated in the name of a Sydney suburb on the shores of Botany Bay - La Perouse."" (State Library of New South Wales, Website).Sabin, 38960.‎

‎Voyage autour du Monde, par la Frégate du Roi La Boudeuse et la Flûte L'Étoile" en 1766, 1767, 1768 & 1769.‎

‎Paris, Saillant & Nyon, 1771. 4to. Near contemp. hcalf. Gilt spine with gilt lettering. Very light wear along edges. Stamps on title-page. (8, incl. htitle),417,(1) pp., 20 engraved maps and charts (numb. 1-19 + 16 bis) of which 18 are folded, including the large world map. 2 engraved plates (numb. 1-2). Internally clean and fine, a few leaves with marginal brownspots.‎

‎First edition of this famous circumnavigation, being the first voyage around the world with professional naturalists and geographers onboard. Bougainville was the first Frenchman to sail around the world. In 1771, Bougainville published his travel log from the expedition under the title ""Le voyage autour du monde, par la frégate La Boudeuse, et la flûte L'Étoile"". The book describes the geography, biology and anthropology of Argentina (then a Spanish colony), Patagonia, Tahiti and Indonesia (then a Dutch colony). The book was a sensation, especially the description of Tahitian society. Bougainville described it as an earthly paradise where men and women lived in blissful innocence, far from the corruption of civilisation.Bougainville's descriptions powerfully expressed the concept of the noble savage, influencing the utopian thoughts of philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau before the advent of the French Revolution. Denis Diderot's book Supplément au voyage de Bougainville retells the story of Bougainville's landing on Tahiti, narrated by an anonymous reader to one of his friends. Diderot used his fictional approach, including a description of the Tahitians as noble savages, to criticise Western ways of living and thinking.Sabin, 6864.‎

‎Exposition du Système du Monde. Sixieme Edition. 2 vols. ‎

‎Paris, Bachelier, 1836. 8vo. Uniformly bound in two contemporary black half calf bindings with gilt lettering to spine. Ex-libris pasted on to pasted down front end-papers. Internally occassionally brownspotted. VIII, XXVIII, 358 pp. (2), VII, (1), 568 pp.‎