Ramsay, [Andrew Michael], 'Chevalier'
The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion
£530
Auction: 05 February 2025 from 10:00 GMT
Description
Unfolded in a Geometrical Order. Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1748-9. 2 volumes, 4to (23.4 x 18cm), viii 538, 462 [2] pp., contemporary sprinkled calf, spines decorated in gilt, volume 1 with marginal damp-staining to first few quires, volume 2 with very small worm-track to lower margin of initial leaves [Gaskell 116]
Provenance
Sir James Gordon, Baronet (1779-1843), of Letterfourie, Moray, Scotland, with his engraved bookplate to each volume, showing Letterfourie, built 1783 by Robert Adam, in the background.
Footnote
First edition of the Jacobite thinker and writer's ‘great work' (ODNB), an immense attempt at reconciling Newtonian ideas with his highly idiosyncratic personal philosophy, a form of mystical Catholicism exhibiting an array of influences ranging from masonic ideas to ancient Chinese thinking. The first volume uses the ‘geometric method’ made famous by Spinoza in order to prove the compatibility of reason and revealed religion, while the second volume seeks to defend Christianity from deist critiques of its relative novelty by expounding the religious ideals of all known ancient peoples, namely the Indians, Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, Persians, Chinese and Egyptians, which are shown to share a singular patriarchal source. A leading member of Scottish Jacobite society in exile, Ramsay was for a time tutor to the young Prince Charles Edward Stuart in Rome, and was influential in assisting David Hume's passage into French intellectual circles during the 1730s. Hume would later quote The Philosophical Principles in ‘The Natural History of Religion’ (in Four Dissertations, 1757).