[HELVETIUS, CLAUDE-ADRIEN.] De l'Esprit. [4], xxiii, [1], 365, [3]; [4], iv, 383 pages. 2 volumes in one. 12mo, contemporary sheep gilt; old stamp on first title. Amsterdam & Leipzig: Arkstee & Merkus, 1759E400-600 The author's principal work, first

[HELVETIUS, CLAUDE-ADRIEN.] De l'Esprit. [4], xxiii, [1], 365, [3]; [4], iv, 383 pages. 2 volumes in one. 12mo, contemporary sheep gilt; old stamp on first title. Amsterdam & Leipzig: Arkstee & Merkus, 1759E400-600 The author's principal work, first published the year before which " . . . proved to be one of the ideological causes celebres ofthe eighteenth century. Appearing at a moment of political reaction, De l'Esprit was noisily condemned by the authorities, both ecclesiastical and ministerial, for its dangerously heretical and subversive opinions . . . The thought of Helvetius sprang mainly from the predominant current of sensualism in the Enlightenment, which he fashioned with marked originality into what may be described as a thoroughgoing doctrine of 'environmental behaviorism' . . . His basiccontention was that the intellectual and moral capabilities, no less than the entire complex of values and motivations peculiar to any individual, are to be explained solely as the product of education that is, of the total cumulative environment from the moment of birth"(EP). This edition not in Tchemerzine (1977).