first edition Contemporary calf over sprinkled boards, red skiver label, edges sprinkled red. Joints cracking and neatly repaired
1777 · London:
by Priestley, Joseph
London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1777 First edition. Contemporary calf over sprinkled boards, red skiver label, edges sprinkled red. Joints cracking and neatly repaired. Octavo. Engraved frontispiece after Bartolozzi. Nineteenth century bookplate and library stamp on verso of title of Trinity College Lending Library, Dublin. Some light foxing to plate and offsetting to title. A good copy. "Convinced that materialism was the natural metaphysical concomitant of Hartley's associative psychology, he [Priestley] set out, therefore in his Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit to demonstrate that materialism was theologically, scientifically, and metaphysically superior to orthodox dualism" (John Passmore, Encyclopedia of Philosophy). The Disquisitions is described by John Stephens in the Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers as "Priestley's most important philosophical work, containing the fullest expression of his rejection of dualism."
(Inventory #: 13672)