A Collection of Miscellanies: Consisting of Poems, Essays, Discourses, & Letters, Occasionally Written

London: for J. Crosley, and Samuel Manship, 1692 Second edition, revised. Contemporary panelled calf, expertly rebacked, gilt spine with morocco label. Octavo. Occasional foxing, a few leaves missing portions of lower margins, not affecting text. A very good copy, with the armorial bookplate of Gerald Chippindale Rivington. The volume contains several of Norris's most famous essays, including A Metaphysical Essay toward the Demonstration of a God and Contemplation and Love: Or, the Methodical Ascent of the Soul to God, by steps of Meditation. The central argument of the collection is that since truth is by its nature eternal and immutable, it must relate (truncated) ideas which are also eternal and immutable; this condition, according to Norris, can be fulfilled only by ideas which are in the mind of Godthat is, manifestations of Gods essence. Thus, the existence of God is deducible from the very nature of truth; the atheist is involved in a self-contradictory skepticism (Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Norris (1657-1711), the English philosopher and poet, was perhaps the chief exponent of the ideas of Malebranche in England. He was influenced by the Cambridge Platonists and has been compared to such idealists as Berkeley and Coleridge. (Inventory #: 11161)