Méchanique morale, ou essai sur l’art de perfectionner et d’employer ses organes, propres, acquis et conquis …

Geneva, [s.n.], 1789.

Two vols, 8vo, pp. viii, 416, [2]; [iv], 464, vi, [2]; vol. 2 has two quires on light blue paper; occasional light foxing, a little light damp staining to the upper margins in vol. 2, small loss to blank margin at foot of final errata leaf in vol. 1; a good copy in near contemporary calf, gilt decoration and contrasting lettering-pieces to spines, marbled endpapers, joints a little worn but holding firm, abrasions and small losses to covers.

£250

Approximately:
US $315€291

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Uncommon first edition of La Salle’s wide-ranging work in which he examines, inter alia, understanding, learning, reasoning, syllogism, the Baconian method, asking and answering questions, physiognomy, qualities of character, and eloquence. Having travelled widely in his youth – to Newfoundland, Africa, China, and India – La Salle (1754-1829) settled in Paris to devote himself to metaphysics, publishing Le désordre régulier (1786) and La balance naturelle (1788) before this work. After a period of exile in Italy writing against the French Revolution, he returned to France where he translated the works of Bacon, whose influence permeates the present work.

OCLC records just four copies in North America, at Columbia, Yale, Michigan, and Queen’s University, Kingston.

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