First American Edition of the Book Which Shook the Intellectual World with its Theory of Immaterialism
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. With Prolegomena, and with Annotations, Select, Translated, and Original by Charles P. Krauth, D.D.
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874.
Full Description:
BERKELEY, George. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. With Prolegomena, and with Annotations, Select, Translated, and Original by Charles P. Krauth, D.D.. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1874.
First American edition of the book which shook the intellectual world with its theory of immaterialism. Octavo (8 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches; 222 x 144 mm). [2, blank], 424, [2, blank] pp.
Publisher's full orange cloth. Boards ruled in blind. Spine stamped and lettered in gilt. Brown coated endpapers. Previous owner's ink name on front and back pastedown. Some minor rubbing to head and tail of spine and corners. Otherwise about fine.
“The principle which underlay all Berkeley’s philosophical writing was based on a rejection of all speculation, such as Locke’s, about the meaning and necessity of matter as a primal necessity to any theory of human understanding. Briefly, Berkeley maintained that no existence is conceivable or possible which is not conscious spirit or the ideas of which such a spirit is conscious. This presupposes complete equation of subject and object: no object can exist without a Mind to conceive it. Without the pre-existence of the Mind, mater and substance, cause and effect, can have no meaning. In the Principles, externality absolutely independent of all mind is shown to be an unreal, impossible conception: true substance is the conscious spirit and true causality the free action of such a spirit. Physical substance and causes are relations among phenomena, arbitrary though (by the action of the Mind) constant. Connexions between them are viewed subjectively as the suggestion or associations of the human mind, and objectively as the operation of the Universal Mind. Thus the universe is the sum of human experience, and forms a symbol of the divine universal intelligence: esse est percipi” (Printing and the Mind of Man).
Norman Library 196. PMM 176.
HBS 69444.
$1,500.
Price: $1,500.00
Item #69444