Essai sur la Liberte de Produire ses Sentimens [with] Pensees sur l'Interpretation de la Nature

[Amsterdam?]: Au Pays Libre pour Le Bien Public, 1749. Full-Leather. Very Good/No Jacket. Paper label on spine base, corners a bit rubbed, minor loss of gilt, bookplate of philosopher Paul Desjardins on front endpaper. 1749 Full-Leather. [viii], 124; [iv], 99, [5] pp. 16mo. Original full leather, gilt titles, decorations, and triple rule, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Two works in one volume: Essai sur la Liberte de Produire ses Sentimens, attributed to either Elie Luzac or Julian Offroy de la Mettrie (1749) [with] Pensees sur l'Interpretation de la Nature by Denis Diderot (1754 first edition). French text. "Elie Luzac, wishing to justify his publication of the book [L'Homme machine], had in 1749 brought out anonymously the Essai sur la liberte de produire ses sentimens. It was a crisp and well-reasoned work, which contended … that the honest search for truth requires us to give a hearing to every possible point of view…. Luzac was simply reiterating the theme of the 'Avertissement' which he had prefixed to La Mettrie's book."—Aram Vartanian, La Mettrie's L'Homme Machine (Princeton 1960), pp. 97-98. Vartanian, that is, attributes the Essai to Luzac primarily based upon its content, an argument in favor of freedom of thought/press, as opposed to the medical themes characteristic of La Mettrie's works. Roger Stoddard, though, includes the Essai in his Bibliographical Inventory (Koln: Dinter, 2000) of La Mettrie's works (#39) while noting that it is printed by Luzac. Diderot's On the Interpretation of Nature discusses evolution, mathematics, experimental science, and materialism. Diderot is best known for his collaboration with d'Alembert on the Encyclopedie (1751-1772), and was a major figure in the Enlightenment.