«Merge Record #»«Title» - Schulz-Falster Rare Books

8vo, pp. [ii], 100, [1] errata, two engraved plates bound at the end; old
paper repair to verso of title; contemporary pastepaper boards, some
surface abrasions to spine, worm trace to inner hinge; from the
Breitenbauch library with engraved book plate to front pastedown; a
good copy.
First edition (second issue, with a cancel title page), uncommon, of Blumenbach's
doctoral dissertation and best known work, his 'On the native Varieties of the
Human Race', now considered as the foundation of the science of physical
anthropology - the study of the origin and evolution of the races of men.
He was preceded by Tyson and Linné who had prepared the ground for his studies
by relating man to the order of the primates. Linné had distinguished four races of
man chiefly by the colour of their skin. From these premises Blumenbach was able to
develop the thesis that all living races are varieties of a single species, homo sapiens,
and that their differences were small compared with those between man and the
nearest animal; 'innumerable varieties of mankind run into each other by insensible
degrees'. It is not surprising therefore that Blumenbach was opposed to the practice
of slavery and the then current belief in the inherent savagery of the coloured races.'
(PMM 219). 'In his dissertation one can find the first reliable survey of the
characteristics and distribution of the human races; its most significant points were
included in almost all later anthropological classifications.
The first issue was published without a date (apparently 1775) with the imprint F.A.
Rosenbusch, this is the second issue with a cancel title page.
Provenance: From the library of the writer, scientist, and government official Georg
August von Breitenbauch (1731-1817), friend of Goethe, Herder, and Lessing.
Garrison-Morton 156 (first issue 1775), Printing and the Mind of Man 219 (first issue);
Norman 250; Blake p. 51
On Generation
6.
BLUMENBACH, Johann Friedrich. Über den Bildungstrieb und das
Zeugungsgeschäfte. Göttingen, Johann Christian Dieterich, 1781.
£ 1250
Small 8vo, pp. 87, [1] blank, large engraved title vignette by J.W. Meil,
one engraved plate; contemporary half tan calf over sprinkled boards,
spine in compartments, spine label; an attractive copy.
First edition, rare, of Blumenbach's work on the Bildungstrieb (nisus formativus),
which made a great impression on his contemporaries - as well as later scientists.
Influenced by Haller and the eighteenth-century school of vitalism, Blumenbach
conceived of the Bildungstrieb, ie the 'innate tendency in living creatures toward selfdevelopment.
This impulse was to be added to irritability, sensibility and
contractility as essential feature of vitalism' (PMM 219). In this theory of
reproduction and embryonic development, he rejected the 'preformation theory and