"THE MOST WORTHY… OF THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS"

LOCKE, John. The Works of John Locke. London: C. and J. Rivington et al., 1824. Nine volumes. Octavo, contemporary full brown calf gilt, black morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers and edges. $4500.

Later edition of Locke's collected Works, with copper-engraved frontispiece portrait in Volume I, handsomely bound.

"Locke had a formative influence on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the early state constitutions" (Covenanted People 37). Jefferson, who had a fifth edition of the Works in his library, "ranked Locke with Bacon and Newton as the three greatest men that have ever lived, without any exception" (Sowerby 1362; emphasis in original). Includes the immensely important Two Treatises of Government, "the basis of the principles of democracy," as well as Locke's letters on Toleration and The Reasonableness of Christianity. Also included is the groundbreaking Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, "the first modern attempt" to analyze human knowledge (PMM 193, 194). "John Locke is the most worthy… of the indisputably great philosophers. His influence has been enormous." In his famous tribute, Voltaire observed, "Many a philosopher has written the tale of the soul's adventures, but now a sage has appeared who has, more modestly, written its history. Locke has developed human reason before men, as an excellent anatomist unfolds the mechanism of the human body. Aided everywhere by the torch of physics, he dares at times to affirm, but he also dares to doubt. Instead of collecting in one sweeping definition what we do not know, he explores by degrees what we desire to know" (Seymour-Smith, 242, 245). Stated "twelfth edition": the first collected edition was published in 1714. Bookplates of American politician and congressman W. Bourke Cockran, an early mentor and friend of Winston Churchill.

Volume I with small chip to front free endpaper expertly reattached, front joint expertly reinforced. Contemporary calf quite handsome.