CUDWORTH, RADULPH (RALPH).

Systema Intellectuale huius Universi seu de Veris Naturae rerum originibus Commentarii qvibus omnis eorum Philosophia, qvi Deum esse negant, funditus evertitur. Accedunt Reliquua eius Opuscula. Joannes Lavrentius Moshemius,...Omnia ex Anglico Latine vertit. 2 Vols.

Jena, Vidvae Meyer, 1733. Folio. 2 contemp. full calf, richly gilt backs in 8 compartments, raised bands. A few minor nicks to spine ends. Engraved frontispiece (showing Aristotle, Socrates, Strato, Epicur, Anaximander, Pythagoras). (58),1206 pp. + Index Auctorum. Also withbound, and with separate pagination, 4 of the author's other works. 47;88;42;25 pp. Engraved portrait of the author and 3 large engraved vignettes.

First Latin edition of the author's "The true Intellectual System of the World" from 1678. - "His most important work, The true Intellectual System..., is a fragment of an even larger work he had planned to refute materialism of Epicurus and of Thomas Hobbes. Cudworth believed that a "rightly understood" mechanical and corpuscular philosophy did not destroy traditional religion but instead offered it new support. If matter was inert and utterly passive, then a spiritual principle was necesssary to endow the universe with life and acticity. But the principle involved in the ordinary course of nature was not to be equated with God, for then He would be responsible for the "Errors and bungles" in nature. Such taks were performed by a subordinate and unconscious "plastic nature". Cudworth rejected Cartesian dualism and asserted cosmic continuity." (P.M. Rattansi in DSB). - Brunet II:437 - Graesse II:305.

Order-nr.: 35867