Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme. 2 vols.

Paris, Au bureau de la Bibliothèque Choisie, 1830. 8vo. Uniformly bound in two nice contemporary half calf bindings with four raised bands and gilt lettering and ornamentation to spine. Boards with scratches and loss of the marbled paper. Ex-libris pasted on to pasted down front end-papers. Internally with occassional light marginal brownspotting. 405, (2) pp. 430, (2) pp.

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Later edition of this work, which in the 19th century was considered as one of the finest works dedicated to the science of man. “As a philosopher, Cabanis sought in medicine an instrument for the analysis of ideas, that is to say, for the reconstruction of their genesis. His fundamental philosophical work, Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme, is presented as “simple physiological researches.”1 It is composed of twelve Mémoires (the first six of which were first read in the sessions of the Institute) collected in one volume in 1802. In this work Cabanis sets forth a psychology and an ethical system based on the necessary effects of an animal’s organization upon its relationships with its environment. Even the unlimited perfectibility of the human species, which renders it “capable of all things,” derives from the fact that “man is undoubtedly the most subject to the influence of exterior causes.”(DSB)