Rapports du physique et du moral de lhomme.

Paris: Crapart, Caille et Ravier, An X [1802] Contemporary quarter calf over batik boards, gilt-lettered spines, speckled edges. . Two volumes, octavo. Hinges cracking, spines a bit scuffed, but a very good copy overall. In cloth open-end slipcase. This is Cabaniss (1757-1808) principle work. It is comprised of twelve Mémoires, the first six of which were read at sessions of the Institut de France. Cabanis sets forth a psychology and an ethical system based on the necessary effects of an animals organization upon its relationships with its environment. Even the unlimited perfectability 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. As a physician, Cabanis considered, in the seventh memoir of the Rapports, the influence of illnesses on the formation of ideas and values. The text is a summary of his physiological and medical conceptions. Borrowing the word from the German philosophers, Cabanis termed the science of man anthropologie, the methodical joining of the physical history and the moral science of man (George Canguilhem, Dictionary of Scientific Biography).