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GIULIANI, ANTONIO.

Saggio Politico sopra le vicissitudini inevitabili delle società civili. - [THE FIRST FORMULATION OF THE MALTHUSIAN THEORY OF POPULATION ]

Herman H. J. Lynge & Søn A/S
lyn55808
Vienna, Ignazio Alberti, 1791. 4to. Magnificent contemporary full mottled calf with richly gilt spine. gilt ornamental borders to boards and large oval centre-pieces, each encircled by a floriated gilt border, inside which a female figures of polished calf, in Roman style - presumably predicting Minerva (the goddess of wisdom and war) on the front and Juventas (the goddess of youth) on the back board. All edges of boards gilt and inner gilt dentelles. All edges gilt. Bound by G.F. Kraus of Vienna, with gold-stamped binder's signature to inside of back board. A bit of wear (mostly coming from the acid used to mottle the calf in the 18th century). A magnificent copy that is also internally in splendid condition. It is printed on thick, heavy paper and with wide margins. There's an elegant stamp to the title-page, a crowned monogram that we have not been able to identify.

Exceedingly scarce first edition - in a stunning binding - of the groundbreaking main work by Antonio Giuliani, in which he formulates his political and economic system, presenting his theory of population growth, which antedates Malthus' "Essay on Population" by seven years.This influential work actually constitutes the forerunner and the first formulation of The Malthusian theory of population and population growth, which had an immense impact on not only politics, economics and social sciences, but also on natural sciences. For instance both Darwin and Wallace considered the theory of population growth a main source in their development of the theory of natural selection.Malthus does not explicitly reference the work, but it is very likely that he read it. It was published in both Italian, German, and French - and apparently also in English as "A Political Essay on the Unavoidable Revolution incident to Civil Societies" (Molini, Paris, London, 1791) (see Watt: Bibliotheca Britannica) seven years before Malthus published his work, and it was reviewed in England the following year, where it was met with great critique - like some years later Mathus' "Essay on Population" would be too. "At a time when the science of politics is undergoing such extensive discussions, and when the improvement of our knowledge in the art of governing is sought practically, as well as in theory, this writer steps forward, and tells us that our reasoning is vain, and that our exertions are fruitless: that human wisdom and political fagacity neither impede nor hasten the fate of societies: that ministers and statesmen, who suppose that they govern the world, are mistaken, for the world governs itself: that there is a propelling force, of which politicians are ignorant, that drives all civil societies to their destruction; and that, from the excess of their strength, arises their decay: - in fact, that all our pretended knowledge is useless, if not hurtful; and that the science of legislation is like that of physic; its pretensions are quackeries, and its progress is marked with an increase of mischiefs, as a greater number of persons die since the art of healing has been practised. The mystery which our politician has developed amounts to this: that every country arrives in time to such a degree of population, that the produce of the ground is not sufficient to supply the wants of the inhabitants: the consequence necessarily is, that the nation is starved to death. - All the light, says he, that the most profound meditation on the nature of social bodies can furnith, must be reduced to this proposition, that there exists two classes of men, which ought to be exactly balanced: the one is the productive class, which furnishes the food by which life is sustained: the other is the consuming class, which exists only by the favour of the former. It is incontrovertible, then, that an equilibrium should be preserved between these two bodies; and that societies can flourish only while it remains unaltered. This fortunate state is of short duration: men multiply, without any law being provided to proportion their increase to their means of subsistence.This is the ground-work of our author's system, of which he afterward unfolds several parts. The inhabitants of cities, the monarch, the noble, the magistrate, the priest, the merchant, the soldier, the courtier, the man of letters, the artist, and all those whose industry and talents are employed in a thousand various manners, form the consuming class, and are, in fact, a heavy load, pressing down the farmers or cultivators of the ground, who are the productive class. ...In order to shew the danger resulting to society from an excess of population, and from the extension of commerce, (for this is also a doctrine held by our author,) he should have proved that there were more persons in existence than could have their wants supplied by the culture of the earth...He sees nothing but the approach of ruin in the increase of mankind; and the catastrophe of the tragedy must long since have been finished, had not Providence ordained that man, wanting, as in the case of other animals, a variety of different species to prey on his life, should take into his hands the work of thinning the world; and, by fighting, one against another, keep population within bounds; while, by destroying, from time to time, the superfluous number, he should make room for the entrance of fresh generations. - Hence, then, the utility and absolute necessity of wars!...Such is the ground-work and basis of Signor Guiliani's system: the superstructure is as perishable as the foundation is rotten: he has erected his house on the sand."(Contemporary review of the original and the French translation, in: The Monthly Review, Vol. IX, London, 1792, pp. 559-562). The work outlines a well-rounded system of politics and economics, at the core of which we have the theory of population growth."An important contribution to the history of political philosophy is made by two small works recently disinterred by Croce and composed 1791 and 1793 by an Italian of Trieste, Antonio de Guiliani, an Austrian subject who studied with an alert and unprejudiced mind the political and economic vicissitudes of Europe in the period between the enlightened despotism of Joseph II and the outbreak of the French Revolution. From his first writing, "Saggio politico sopra le vicissitudini inevitabili delle societa civili," Guiliani, who in his youth had shared in the generous illusions of illuministic rationalism, already appears disillusioned, as if he no longer believed in the power of reason to regulate and guide the course of human events. According to him, man believes that everything is guided by reason because he reasons on everything that happens. On the contrary, the forces that govern the interweaving of events are much more elemental and natural, and politicians are rather passive instruments than active artificers of the course of history. There is an elemental principle of life that regulates the life and death of social groups. This principle is as much hidden from politicians as the principle that animates living species in concealed from physicians. Man falls sick and dies despite the efforts of much vaunted science; and societies languish and die in spite of the efforts of politics and legislation. This principle consists in the fact that there exist two classes which ought to balance one another - the class that produces economic goods, and the class of consumers that only exists by virtue of the former, and which corresponds to a certain extent with the "sterile" class of physiocrats. As long as the two classes balance, society has a prosperous and harmonious life, and these conditions are usually found in the less progressive phases of an historical period when the mass of production sufficiently covers consumption. But in the periods that are generally considered most progressive, when population is rapidly increasing and great urban agglomerations begin to appear, Giuliani is on the contrary inclined to note a beginning of decadence and dissolution. "The equilibrium of the two classes begins insensibly to alter; men multiply without any restraining law to regulate the increase of population according to the means of subsistence. Instead the politicians hail with satisfaction the increase of population and do not perceive that in nature the various living species are balanced by mutual destruction, while man, with whom no other animal can enter into competition, is condemned to regulate his species himself, and to be the author of his own destruction." Hence revolutions, wars, commercial rivalries, and all those vicissitudes of human history that are usually named from their apparent causes, though they have at the same time a hidden reason disguised in the undeviating order of nature. The English reader will easily recognize here the characteristic traits of the doctrine of Malthus, but it is Malthusian doctrine "avant la lettre", as it antedates by seven years the famous "Essay on Population". There are wanting in Giuliani the mathematical determination of the two series, arithmetical and geometrical (which is anyway the most arbitrary part of the "Essay" of Malthus), and the council of moral restraint. Nevertheless, both authors are equally alive to the complex consequences resulting from the disproportion between population and the means of subsistence, and both have, as Croce says, "the merit of having considered not only the paradisiacal aspect of "crescite et multiplicamini", that of placid, increasing, and idyllic prosperity, but the demonic and revolutionary aspect as well." ... Finally we may note the characteristic that Giuliani, like Mathus, deduces from his economic principle a political attitude that is not only conservative but to some degree reactionary." (Guido de Ruggiero: Philosophy in Italy. In: Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 34. (Apr. 1934), pp. 215-17).We have been able to locate only four copies of the true first edition (namely that in Italian, printed in Vienna) on OCLC and no copies at auctions whatsoever.Einaudi: 2603.
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Halle im Magdeburgischen, Hendel, 1721. 8vo. In contemporary full calf with four raise bands and richly gilt spine. Traces from old paper-label to upper part of spine. Leather on spine cracked, spine-ends slightly chipped. Internally nice and clean. (14), 620, (28) pp. First collected edition of Alberti’s essays. Alberti (1682–1757), professor of medicine and philosophy at Halle and later rector of the university, was a leading disciple of Georg Ernst Stahl who considered the soul as having control on the body. Therapies involved dealing with the internal senses and feelings.
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MARX, CARLOS [KARL] (+) GABRIELLE DEVILLE (+) [Translator:] ALBANO DE MORAES.
Herman H. J. Lynge & Søn A/S
lyn62679
Lisboa, De Francisco Luiz Goncalves, 1912. 8vo. In the original red printed cloth-binding with black and white lettering. Spine with loss of the white lettering. Paper-label pasted on to lower inner margin of front board. Very light wear to extremities, Internally very fine and clean. 240 pp. The exceedingly scarce first Portuguese edition of the most important abridged version of Marx's Capital ever to have appeared, published fifty-six years before the first full Portuguese (but published in Brazil) translation and whole sixy-two years before the first full translation published in Portugal. Curiously, two translations of the present work were made 1912 but the present translation seems to have priority (see Bastien, "Readings and Translations of Karl Marx in Portugal"). After the 1933 rise of Salazar's dictatorial Estado Novo regime, suppression of the relatively newly founded Communist party grew. Members were arrested, tortured, and executed and many were sent to the Tarrafal concentration camp in the Cape Verde Islands. Communist literature suffered an equally repressive fate, hence the rarity of the present work. Marxism and especially Marxist writing caught on comparatively late in Portugal: "As for the Socialist Party - supposed to be the main expression of Marxism -, it revealed itself unable to stimulate effective theoretical and doctrinal efforts. Its existence was an example of ambiguity and inconsequence. Its political programme went on mixing Marxian elements, associationist tradition and positivist thinking. Its strategy balanced continuously between an alliance with republican politicians and the maintenance of political autonomy. Its tatics balanced between electoral abstencionism and an involvement in election processes, that never led it to a relevant position in parliament. Even its international relations showed a lasting ambiguity: it had been created according to the instructions of the Marxist majority at the Hague Congress, when most of its members tended to support political abstencionism. When the formation of the Second lnternacional was taking place in Paris in 1889 Portuguese socialists tried to join the Marxist congress, after being present at the possibilist congress. In 1920 they decided to join the Third lnternacional (what was not accomplished), at the same time that an internal reformist turn was taking place." (Bastien, "Readings and Translations of Karl Marx in Portugal"). "The epitome, here translated, was published in Paris, in 1883, by Gabriel Deville, possibly the most brilliant writer among the French Marxians. It is the most successful attempt yet made to popularize Marx's scientific economics. It is by no means free from difficulties, for the subject is essentially a complex and difficult subject, but there are no difficulties that reasonable attention and patience will not enable the average reader to overcome. There is no attempt at originality. The very words in most cases are Marx's own words, and Capital is followed so closely that the first twenty-five chapters correspond in subject and treatment with the first twenty-five chapters of Capital. Chapter XXVI corresponds in the main with Chapter XXVI of Capital, but also contains portions of chapter XXX. The last three chapters-XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX-correspond to the last three chapters-XXXI, XXXII, and XXXIII-of Capital." (ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE, Intruductory Note to the 1899 English translation). Capital de Marx also had a Portuguese edition at this time, or better, two different editions, both in 1912, but only in translation of the survey of Book I published in France by Gabriel Deville in 1883 (Marx, 1912a and Marx, 1912b). This version omitted material dealt with in at least four chapters of the original text and was not particularly appreciated by Engels. It was a simplified text, aimed at supporting the training of socialist militants and that made it possible for them to have access, indirect, to the work of Marx. The other summaries and anthologies of Capital, which, with a purpose similar to that of Deville, circulated in Europe during this period or ignored in Portugal, as was the case with Carlo Cafiero, or were only occasionally mentioned, as was the case with Paul Lafargue and Karl Kautsky, in its French versions. OCLC list two copies, both in the US.
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Herman H. J. Lynge & Søn A/S
lyn62681
(Kharkiv), Derzhavne medychne vyd-vo (State Medical Publishing House), 1936. 8vo. In publisher's original grey cloth binding with black lettering to spine with Darwin's portrait embossed on front board. Wear to extremities, corner bumped and light spoling to back board. Inner hinges split and first 3 leaves partly detached. Last 20 ff. slighly creased due to dampstain, otherwise internally a nice and clean copy. 674 pp. + frontispiece, portrait of Darwin and 1 plate with genealogical tree. The exceedingly rare first Ukranian translation of Darwin's landmark 'Origin of Species'. OCLC only list two copies (Library of Congress and The Huntington Library, USA) Freeman F797.
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Fridericia, S. Elmenhoff, 1809. 8vo. In nice recent marbled paper covered boards with leather title-label with gilt lettering to spine. Ex-libris (Bent W. Dahlstrøm) to verso of front board. A nice and clean copy. 40 pp. Biblioteca Danica III, 572.
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Herman H. J. Lynge & Søn A/S
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Lisboa, Officina de Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, 1803. Folio-oblong (365 x 255 mm). In contemporary half calf. Wear to extremies, upper part of spine with loss of leather. Ex-libris pasted on to pasted down front end-paper. With, primarily marginal, brownspotting throughout. Dampstain to inner margin and upper outer margin of last 10 ff. 32 ff. Rare first edition of the most celebrated Portuguese treatise on calligraphy. Joaquim José Ventura da Silva (1777–1849), regarded as one of Portugal’s finest calligraphers and teachers of writing, composed this methodological guide to handwriting in which he combines a historical survey of scripts used in Portugal with practical instruction for teaching and learning penmanship.Ventura da Silva is reffered to by Innocencio (Diccionario Bibliographico) as "one of the best Portuguese Calligraphers". A second edition was published in 1819, a third in 1841, and a facsimile was published in Porto in 1899.
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