Title and Date: Essays or Counsells, Civill and Morall, 1629
Author: Francis Bacon
(1561-1626) English philosopher, statesman, and essayist. Violently opposed to speculative philosophies and the syllogistic quibbling of the Schoolmen, Bacon argues that the only knowledge of importance to man was empirically rooted in the natural world and that this knowledge should be amassed and studied in a judicious, systematic fashion. For Bacon, a clear system of scientific inquiry would assure man’s mastery over the natural world. He deplored generalizations that might obscure the exceptions to every rule and vigorously sought the negative for every positive, in order to bring both into a unified system of thought. In these respects, his ideas anticipated aspects of utilitarianism, particularly in the work of John Stuart Mill.
Title and Date: Illustrated Bible, 1791
"The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: with the Apocrypha. Translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by the special command of King James I of England.
The first folio Bible printed in America was also the first to be illustrated and is considered the most distinguished Bible produced in the country during the 18th century. The printer, Isaiah Thomas, was called the Baskerville of America by Benjamin Franklin, himself an astute judge of typography.
The text was carefully considered, Thomas having consulted thirty different editions of the King James version to prepare the most correct copy. Proofs were examined by two clergymen of Worcester, the reverends Aaron Bancroft and Samuel Austin, who compared the settings with eight editions of the Bible.
Fifty copperplate engravings are interspersed throughout. Several of the most noted American engravers were engaged for the project: Samuel Hill, John Norman, Joseph Seymour and Amos Doolittle. Each book begins with an ornamental initial, and there are woodcuts at the beginnings of the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha."
ID #: 0113
Title and Date: Emacipation Proclamation, 1862
Author: Abraham Lincoln
First Public Printing in the New York Times Sep 23, 1862. A proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring that all slaves in areas still in rebellion against the U.S. were henceforth to be free. The proclamation did not affect slaves in the border states nor in territory under U.S. military occupation. A preliminary proclamation had been issued on September 22, 1862, after the Union success at Antietam had bolstered the likelihood of ultimate victory over the Confederacy. Slavery was not completely abolished until the adoption of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution in 1865.
ID #: 0120
Title and Date: The Praise of Folly, 1549
Author: Desiderius Erasmus
“This world as it is being lived just now has become a complete absurdity,” was all Erasmus intended to convey. “Allow me, therefore, my friends, to call upon the Goddess of Folly to explain to you how our religious, political, and social fabric has now assumed proportions of such grotesque stupidity and imbecility that only a complete fool can any longer hope to be happy while living under this kind of dispensation.
Erasmus lived long enough to welcome more than forty editions of his Praise of Folly. Nor did he have to wait long for his foreign translations. The first of these, a French one, appeared in 1517. Then in rapid succession came others in German, Dutch, Flemish, and English...
For these kind of Men that are so given up to the study of Wisdome are generally most unfortunate, but chiefly in their Children; Nature, it seems, so providently ordering it, lest this mischief of Wisdome should spread farther among mankind. For which reason itis manifest why Cicero's Son was so degenerate, and that wise Socrates' Children, as one has well observed, were more like their Mother than their Father, that is to say, Fools."
ID #: 0163
Title and Date: Leviathan, 1651
Author: Thomas Hobbes
""A PECULIAR RELEVANCE FOR THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES... A POWERFUL INFLUENCE ON THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION"": RARE FIRST ISSUE OF HOBBES' LANDMARK LEVIATHAN. First edition ""Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan... had a peculiar relevance for the American Revolutionaries... Hobbes had a fundamentally pessimistic view of human nature... [which] had a powerful influence on the framers of the Constitution... During the early years of the Revolutionary
period, American leaders found Locke's revolutionary compact ideas more useful than Hobbes' view of the unlimited authority of the state. But as the political and social experience of the 1780s seemed to bear out Hobbes's pessimistic view that men are essentially self-interested, the Hobbesian outlook became more relevant. When John Adams wrote that `he who would found a state, and make proper laws for the
government of it, must presume that all men are bad by nature,' he was expressing an idea that was derived at once from Hobbes"". ""Pepys, in his Diary, remarks on the scarcity of this work `because the Bishops will not let it be printed again.' Few books have caused more or fiercer controversy than this one... The system he constructed is the most profound materialistic system of modern times"". Hobbes's conclusion that an individual should, unless his life is threatened, submit to the State, because any government is
better than anarchy, ""produced a fermentation in English thought not surpassed until the advent of Darwinism"". Leviathan was among the `Pernicious Books and Damnable Doctrines' proscribed by the University of Oxford and ordered to be burnt. It was also placed on the Index in 1703. Later philosophical emphasis on the rights of the individual led to a decline in Hobbes' influence, but the growth of utilitarianism led to his reassessment as ""the most original political philosopher of his time"
ID #: 0182
Title and Date: Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding, 1748
Author: David Hume
Scottish philosopher and historian. Hume carried Berkley’s “immaterialist hypotheses” to their logical extreme. He restriced all knowledge to the experience of ideas or impressions, maintaining that the mind consists only of accumulated perceptions. His philosophical skepticism, and his insistence that there is no knowledge other than what is directly observable, have been of extraordinary importance in the history of modern metaphysical thinking. His empirical outlook is clearly seen in his Natural History of Religion and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, in which he assails anthropomorphism, denies the existence of miracles, and asserts that because God is only an idea in the mind of man, God cannot exist. His best known philosophical works are A Treatise of Human Nature and An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. He refuted the tenets of rationalism and insisted that neither substance nor casual activity could be verified; they can only be inferred on the basis of perceived probability. Hume was the author of many essays and treatises, including a monumental History of England that for many years was the definitive text on the subject.
Title and Date: Two Treatises of Government, 1690
Author: John Locke
The foundation of liberalism Two Treatises of Government, The foundation of the principles of democracy. English philosopher. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, Locke was a lecturer in Greek, rhetoric, and philosophy at that university and apparently practiced medicine, though he never received a medical degree. He became confidential secretary to the Earl of Shaftesbury, who, as one of the proprietors of Carolina, induced Locke to write a well-known constitution for the colony in 1669.
Suspected of complicity in Shaftesbury's plot against the government, Locke was forced to leave England, and he lived in the Netherlands from 1684 to 1689. He returned to England at the accession of William and Mary and was appointed commissioner of appeals.
Locke's influence on political theory was enormous. His Two Treatises on Government, written in defense of the Glorious Revolution, revealed his belief in the natural goodness and cooperative spirit of man and his theory that the state should operate according to natural laws of reason and tolerance. He advocated religious tolerance and rights to personal property. The American Declaration of Independence, in particular, echoes his contention that government rests on popular consent and that rebellion is permissible when government subverts the ends – the protection of life, liberty, and property – for which it is established."
ID #: 0218
Title and Date: The Prince, 1640
Author: Niccolo Machiavelli
Hitherto political speculation had tended to be a rhetorical exercise based on the implicit assumption of Church or Empire. Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind... Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing must stand in the way of its machinery"".
""Niccolo Machiavelli, is a popular symbol for the... completely unprincipled, and unscrupulous politician whose whole philosophy is that the end justifies the means. The highest law to Machiavelli, it is universally believed, was political expediency... From a comparative reading of [The Discourses and The Prince], one must come to the startling conclusion that Machiavelli was a convinced republican. He had no liking for despotism, and considered a combination of popular and monarchical government best. No ruler
was safe without the favor of his people. The most stable states are those ruled by princes checked by constitutional limitations... His ideal government was the old Roman republic, and he constantly harked back to it in the Discourses... It is hardly disputable that no man previous to Karl Marx has had as revolutionary an impact on political thought as Machiavelli"". ""[He] more than any other political thinker created the meaning that has been attached to the state in modern political usage"". As Lord Acton noted, "The authentic interpreter of Machiavelli is the whole of later history.”
Title and Date: Areopagitica, 1644
Author: John Milton
""HE WHO DESTROYS A BOOK, KILLS REASON ITSELF"": EXCEPTIONALLY RARE 1644 FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S AREOPAGITICA, THE MOST FAMOUS OF ALL DEFENSES OF FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The extraordinarily rare first edition of the greatest of Milton's prose works and the most famous of all defenses of freedom of the press.
Milton wrote his Areopagitica in direct response to the clerical outrage-- and attempt to revive the censorship laws-- that had greeted his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce the year before, and this work is in effect a protest against an ordinance of Parliament, which sought to license all printing. Areopagitica was printed in open defiance of the law, without license, and the printer of Areopagitica might have been rather less courageous than its author, as he has never been identified.
""The vulgar reaction to his English-language book on divorce made Milton wish he had written it in Latin and he gave Greek titles to his next pamphlets. The meaning of Areopagitica would be clear enough to the readers he wanted to reach. Named after Areopagus, the hill near the Acropolis where the governing council of ancient Athens met, it was cast as an oration… Milton pleaded for reform in England to liberate
""For books are not absolutely dead things, but… do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good Book, kills reason itself, kills the
Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.""
Despite Milton's eloquence the licensing act was not repealed. But the issue remained alive and Milton's plea became an endless refrain. ""Jefferson made Milton one of his heroes and always put the Areopagitica on his reading list for young disciples"".
"What we owe to Milton first and foremost is the isolation of the freedom of the press from all other forms of toleration, especially religious tolerations, disputed and advocated at the time; it is this, and the vigor of the matchless prose in which it was advocated, that give Milton's works their life today""."
ID #: 0255-56
Title and Date: Complete Works, 1777
French lawyer, philosopher, and man of letters. He is noted for his Letters, a series of 160 fictional letters exchanged, for the most part, between two Parisians, satirizing Parisian institutions, individuals, gambling, religious intolerance, and royal power. He often discusses how a democracy, once having lost those public virtues that constitute the very essence of its existence, perishes through tyranny. His most famous work The Spirit of the Laws analyzes the relation between human and natural law.
ID #: 0261
Title and Date: First Corrected Edition of Robinson's Translation of More's Utopia, 1624
Author: Thomas More
First Corrected Editon of Robinson's translation of More's "Utopia". Utopia was published in the great year of Erasmian reform, when the new enlightenment seemed about to carry all before it. Here is the difference between Erasmus and More. More had been born and brought up in the law, the most traditional and the most English of all professions: to him, human institutes were not a matter for radical, theoretical reform, but were organic things to which change came slowly. In Utopia More is concerned to show that the old, medieval institutes, if freed from abuse, are the best; not the new theoretic reforms, which he justly feared. He is a saint to the Catholic, and a predecessor of Marx to the Communist. His manifesto is and will be required reading for both, and for all shades of opinion between.
ID #: 0268
Title and Date: Age of Reason, 1794
Author: Thomas Paine
Before Paine was imprisoned, he started his most controversial major work, Age of Reason, and he continued writing behind bars. While he commended Christian ethics, believed Jesus was a virtuous man, and opposed the Jacobin campaign to suppress religion, he attacked the violence and contradictions of many Bible stories. He denounced the incestuous links between church and state. He also defended the deist view of one God and a religion based on reason. He further urged a policy of religious tolerance.
Title and Date: Law of Nature and Nations, 1703
Author: Samuel Puffendorf
A landmark in the German Enlightenment. It is a large work in eight books which presents an entire system of jurisprudence, private, public and international, based on the conception of natural law. Pufendorf was a disciple of Grotius, and was considered of first rank by Kant. Pufendorf teaches that the will of the state is but the sum of the individual wills that constitute it, and that this association explains the state. In this “ priori” conception he shows himself to be one of the precursors of J.J. Rousseau and of the Social Contract. He powerfully defends the idea that international law is not restricted to Christendom, but constitutes a common bond between all nations because all nations form part of humanity. When it was first published in German in 1672, this work was received with great favor and commented upon by the learned throughout all Europe. He restored natural law to that superiority which belonged to it, and with great propriety treated the Law of Nations as only one main branch of the parent stock.
Title and Date: Opera, 1675
The mathematician and engineer Archimedes (ca 287-212 BC) was one of the greatest minds of antiquity, making important discoveries in geometry, statistics, hydrostatics and mechanics. He determined the value of Pi. He was also a practical engineer who constructed war machines and other devices for his patron. He is said to have invented a system of compound pulleys capable of lifting entire ships and their contents in order to demonstrarte to King Hieron the principle of mechanical advantage. He is also said to have designed the water pump that we now know as the Archimedes Screw in order to raise water from the hold of another King Hieron's ships. Greek and latin text in double colums. A sumptuously bound copy for Queen Marie de' Medicis, widow of Henry IV of France, of this important edition of Archimedes. This is the first edition of the influential translation and commentary of David Rivault.
Title and Date: Republic, 1763
Glasgow edition. First edition in English of Plato's greatest work, The Republic, printed at the Foulis Press. "In this, the greatest of the dialogues of Plato, Socrates, while seeking an answer to the question What is justice? described an ideal of perfect society, the republic after which the book is named... The Republic is Plato's masterpiece and one of the greatest books in literature." "The `Republic' is the model for all ideal commonwealths, e.g. More's `Utopia,' Bacon's `New Atlantis,' etc... His philosophy has affected all subsequent philosophers." This, the first edition in English, is "a very faithful translation, with an admirable discourse, containing not only a general epitome of the Republic of Plato, but an accurate delineation of the characters, manners, and philosophy of the ancient Greeks." "[Plato's] master Socrates had laid the foundation of scientific method in asking the essential question `What is...?' rather than improvising theories and this passionate belief in the answerableness of questions and the certainty that good came from knowledge was developed and idealized in the writings of Plato... the dialogues are pervaded by two dominant impulses: a love of truth and a passion for human improvement... it has been truly said that the germs of all ideas can be found in Plato."
Title and Date: Works, 1675
Author: Nicolo Machiavelli
Florentine statesman and political philosopher. Famous for The Prince, Discourses, and other political, historical and literary writings. His early experience as an envoy for the Florentine republic filled him with first hand knowledge of Italian and political squabbles and intrigues of powerful figures like Caesar Borgia, all of which shaped his thought. The Prince, dedicated to a younger member of the Medici clan and in part motivated by a desire to show how useful its author could be as a political advisor, ranges from philosophical discussion of the nature and origins of principalities to realistic and practical comments on the relations between a prince and his subjects. Ruthlessness is praised, but senselessness cruelty is condemned; Italian politics are viewed with cynicism, but there is also an idealistic and stirring call to unity. In Discourses, the method is to compare ancient and modern events and draw from the comparison aphorisms of universal validity, and Machiavelli makes clear his true republican sentiments. The ideal government is a republic in which the various social and political groups are given a say. His concept of the qualities demanded from a ruler and the absolute need of a national militia came to fruition in the monarchies of the seventeenth century and their national armies.
Title and Date: Rubricated manuscript Leaf, 1447
Author: Thomas Aquinas
Rubricated Manuscript in Latin. Scribe: Iohannes de Ubera.
Title and Date: Philosophie, 1603
"A profound influence on Renaissance thinking" -- First Edition in English of Plutarch's complete Moralia, containing all of his surviving writings on ethical, religious, physical, political and literary topics.
Title and Date: City of God, 1494
Author: St. Augustine of Hippo
"Illuminated. An apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire. It interprets human history as a conflict between the City of God, which includes the body of Christians belonging to the Church, and the Earthly City, composed of pagans and heretical Christians. Augustine foresees that, through the will of God, the people of the City of God will eventually win immortality, and those in the Earthly City destruction.
Title and Date: The Idiot in Four Books, 1650
Author: Nicholas of Cusa
The first and second of Wisdom, the third of the Mind and the fourth of Statick Experiments, or experiments of the Balance.
Title and Date: Sentences on the Contemplative Life, 1727
Author: Isidore of Seville
2 manuscripts/1 binding. Two early medieval writings on contemplative values much influenced by Saint Augustine are paired in this rare manuscript probably used in an educational context in Poland or perhaps Bohemia. The first, one of the "great books" of the Middle Ages by the famed encyclopedist Isidore of Seville, the Book of Maxims helped assure the survival of the thinking of the Church Fathers through the Dark Ages. The second, the earliest pastoral handbook to have survived, Julian Pomerius's manuscript still requires a modern critical edition. Both works enjoyed enormous popularity throughout the Middle Ages and were used frequently in monastic and cathedral schools.
Title and Date: Council of Trent, 1670
Author: Catholic Church
Council of Trent (1545-1563) written in response to the Protestant Reformation, whish was to have a great impact in Europe and America. The work of the Council had a profound effect on the intellectual community in empowering the inquisition with new censorship privileges as typified by the Papal Index of Forbidden Books, which has been included here in the second volume.
Title and Date: Redividus; or, a Dialogue concerning Government, 1681
Redivivus: or, a Dialogue concerning Government, wherein, by Observations drawn from other Kingdoms and States both Ancient and Modern, an Endeavor is used to discover the present Politick Distemper of our own, and the Causes and Remedies.
Title and Date: Summa Theologia, 1496
Author: Thomas Aquinas
One of five known copies. This is the monumental work by Aquinas (1225-1274), intended to synthesize all Christian thought, written beginning in 1265 or 1266 and being left unfinished at his death. Using a scholastic method, and arguing with force and elegance, Thomas made statements of belief on all Christian mysteries, speaking equally from the point of view of logic and revelation. Although his views were rejected by some contemporaries, notably Duns Scotus, the largest share of his work was embraced,and it has been accepted ever since as central to the beliefs of the church. Althought the "Summa" in its complete form consists of three books in four parts (the second being divided into two), early printers very often undertook the printing of a single book only. A fundamental work of the 15th century, issued by the period's best known printer.
Title and Date: Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett of West Tennessee, 1834
Author: David Crockett
Compilation of the now famous stories ascribed to the personage of Davy Crockett. Including "Not yours to give".
Title and Date: The Works of Jonathan Swift (vols 1&2 of 12), 1755
Author: Jonathan Swift
Volume 2 contains an early edition of Gulliver's Travels, arguably Swift's most famous work.
Title and Date: The Apology, 1675
Plato's apology for Socrates and Phaedo or Dialogue concerning the Immortality of Mans Soul and Manner of Socrates his death: carefully translated from the Greek and Illustrated by reflections upon both the Athenian Laws and ancient Rites and Traditions concerning the Soul, therein mentioned.
Title and Date: Nichomachean Ethics, 1488
Manuscript. This rubricated manuscript in the Latin translation of Leonardo Bruni, the first Florentine scholar to use the word "humanitas" as a term for literary studies was used in grammar schools. This couples with the large number of interlinear and marginal notations are evidence that the text was not only transmitted among the intellectual elites. Originally written in Greek and base on lectures Aristotle gave in Athens in the fourth century B.C., concerns the end to which human behaviour should be directed. For a person to be happy, he says, they must not simply pursue pleasure, but to do well those things which are distinctly human, namely the exercise of intellectual abilities. But, as he also explains, virtue is not solely intellectual, and mankind has a moral aspect as well.
Title and Date: Liber Primus Sententiarum, 1440
Author: Peter Lombard
Peter Lombard (1100-1160), professor at school of Notre-Dame, was made famous by his Sentences.
Accompanied here by a rare series of charming and imaginative historiated initials colorfully painted in water color washes, its marginal glosses and commentary warrant further study. Toward the thirteenth century, the books of the Sentences were divided into distinciones, a Latin work that first meant a pause in reading, then a division into chapters. The present manuscript contains the 48 Distinctiones of Book I, including its Prologue and Table. Book I deals with the evidences for the existence of God, including
Trinity, on God's attributes, on providence, predestination, and evil. Numerous marginal commentaries and annotations on the Distinctions written by several scholars add to the interest of this manuscript.
Title and Date: Historia Scholastica, c.1450
Author: Peter Comester
"In Latin, illustrated manuscript on paper. One of the greatest and most popular teaching texts of the Middle Ages. Bound with Peter of Poitier's ""Historia actuum apostolorum"" made in the milieu of the ""Devotio Moderna"", the very reform movement that promoted the use of translations of the Dutch Bible together with those of the ""Historia Scholastica"" for teaching the Bible to the laity. Peter Comestor (died c. 1178) was known as ""Peter the Eater"" based on his voracious appetite for knowledge. Written between 1169 and 1173, brought Comestor lasting renown.
Title and Date: Institutio Astronomica, Sidereus Nuncius, and Dioptrice, 1653
Authors: Gassendi, Galileo, and Kepler
Gassendi's work has been called the first modern astronomy textbook. Galileo's "Starry Messenger" contains some of the most important discoveries in scientific literature. With his observations with the telescope Galileo initiated modern observational astronomy and announced himself as a Copernican. In order that the enormous possibilities harbored in the telescope could develop, it was necessary to clear up the theoretical laws by which it worked. This achievement was reserved solely for Kepler. "Dioptrie" is a word that Kepler himself coined and introduced into optics.
Title and Date: Geneologia degli dei de gentili, 1796
Author: Giovanni Boccaccio
This was the most influential of four Latin compiliations of classical mythology and history produced by Boccaccio after 1350. The work is divided into 15 books and involves a systemically allegorical approach to mythology and to history and ranks as the first critical treatise of the Renaissance.
Title and Date: Triumphant Democracy, 1886
Author: Andrew Carnegie
Carnegie's love letter to America extolling the young republic's politcal and economic virtues and recommending them as moxdels for the world. Carnegie's first major writing.
Title and Date: De Liberis Educandis, c.1470-80
Attributed to Plutarch during the Renaissance, this treatise served as a model for humanist education, especially in the great schools of Vittorino de Feltre and Guarino Guarini.
Title and Date: Progress of the Human Mind, 1796
Author: M. de Condorcet
Although composed while Condorcet was iin hiding from the Terror in Revolutionary Frnace, this work stands among the most optimistic works written during the Enlightenment. Foreseeing the dawning of a golden age, Condorcet reviewed all of human history and developed a theory of progress that be connected both to Bacon and Hegel.
Title and Date: Politicus, 1670
Author: Baruch Spinoza
"Written by the philosopher and pantheist Baruch Spinoza, the Theologico-Political Treatise or Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was an early criticism of religious intolerance and a defense of secular government. In particular, it was a preemptive defense of his later work, Ethics (published posthumously in 1677), for which Spinoza anticipated harsh criticism.
In the treatise, Spinoza put forth his most systematic critique of Judaism, and all organized religion in general. To Spinoza, all ""revealed"" religion had to be analyzed on the basis of reason, not simply blind faith.
Title and Date: Patricarcha, 1680
Author: Robert Filmer
Robert Filmer's prime assumption is that the Bible contains the entire truth about the nature of the world and the nature of society. Along with details of recorded history from the beginning to the death of the Apostles, the Bible also includes the laws that would govern history from that time to the end of the world. This central assumption was shared by nearly every member of Tory Christendom in England in the seventeenth century. In the same way, Filmer holds that it is impossible for a people to escape political anarchy once it is assumed that all individuals are independent and equal. It is also impossible for people to escape from collectivism, if it is granted that everyone has a moral right to an equal share of the gifts of nature. In explaining why Filmer remains both important and influential, d. His work passed almost unnoticed when it was first issued. Only the position of the Tory party gave his views prominence. The value of Patriarcha as a historical document consists primarily in its revelation of the strength and persistence in European culture of the patriarchal attitude to political problems.
Title: Opera Philosophica
Author: Rene Descartes
Contains: Meditationes de Prima Philosohpia, Epistola ad Celeberrimum virum D. Gisbertum Voetium, Dissertatio de Methodo. Dioptrice, Meteora/Tractatus de Passinibus anime.
Title and Date: Speech delivered on American Institutions, delivered on July 4, 1860
Author: Edward Everett
Delivered during the presidential campaign of 1860, the speech announced Everett's middle position supporting both the Constitution (slavery) and the Union (anti-seccession). Given in Boston before the city fathers.
Title and Date: The Age of Reason Trial, 1797
Author: Thomas Erskine
Erskine's account of the trial of a publisher of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason for blasphemy. Erskine was the famous author of a defense of Christianity against Paine and a supporter of the King's prosecution of Thomas Williams, the publisher.
Title and Date: A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of Inequality among Mankind, 1761
Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseau's "Second Discourse" argues that social (as opposed to natural) inequality arises soley from unequal distribution of wealth. Condemns private property and the advanced society of the 18th century that he believes exists only to protect unnatural inequality: "The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."
Title: Bible Vulgate,
In Latin, Illuminated Manuscript on Parchment. Northern France, Paris. The earliest examples of these portable Bibles were copied in Paris at the end of the 1220's or the early 1230's, and the format was adopted quickly throughout Europe.
Title and Date: Humanist Miscellany, c. 1450-60
A miscellany of humanist translations of and commentaries on Cicero, including work by Lorenzo Valla and Leonardo Bruni.
Title and Date: The Illustrated Life of Confucius by Shengji Ti, 1592
Author: Confucius/Shengji Ti
A wood block print life of Confucius.
Title and Date: Scivias libri tres, 1513
Author: Hildegard of Bingen
First printed edition of Hildegard's visionay work from 1142. Contains Hildegard's comprehensive theology, a brief note on her cosmology, and attempts to connect her theology to her later works on music.
Title and Date: The American Bible, 1993
This four folio set contains original leaves from significant American Bibles, including translations into Native American languages done by the Moravians inthe 18th century. Also includes all importnat English versions and European versions that circulated among American immigrants.
Title and Date: The Works of William Shakespeare, 1714-1757
Author: William Shakespeare
Nine volume collection of the complete works of Shalespeare. A fifth edition of the collection in an important 18th century version.
ID#: 1262 and 1266
Title and Date: Cuneiform Cone and Tablet, c. 2200-2500 BCE
A Sumerian foundation cone and terra cotta tablet, among the earliest artifacts associated with writing.
Title and Date: Elements of the Critical Philosophy, 1798
Author: Immanuel Kant
Kant's "system of sytems" in which he articulates a complex theory of 'perspective that, for him, is at the center of all experience and all knowing.