«Merge Record #»«Title» - Susanne Schulz-Falster

Einaudi 775; not in Kress or Goldsmiths', not in Mattioli; OCLC locates copies at Keio university, Japan
and the University of Essex only; see Patriarca, Silvana, Numbers and Nationhood, writing Statistics in
Nineteenth Century Italy. Cambridge, 1996.
16.
CALDANI, Petronio Maria. Della Proporzione Bernoulliana fra il Diametro, e la
Circonferenza del Circolo e dei Logaritmi. Bologna, Lelio dalla Volpe, 1782. $560
4to, pp. viii, 32; engraved title vignette, paper lightly dust-soiled, and a little browned; a widemargined
copy in slightly later pink boards.
First and only edition of this interesting treatise on Bernoullian-Riccati equation by
Petronio Maria Caldani (1755-1808), brother to the well-known anatomist Leopoldo
Marcantonio Caldani.
Riccardi I, 209.
The Beckford Copy
17.
[CARLI, Gian Rinaldo.] L'Uomo Libero o sia Ragionamento sulla Libertà naturale e
civile dell'Uomo. Lyon, 1778.
$5600
8vo, pp. [ii] title, [4] catalogue of Carli's publications, [iv] contents and errata, [iii]- 182 (vere 184,
119/120 twice); woodcut vignette to title, woodcut tail-pieces; contemporary calf, joints cracked,
but cords holding, spine and corners very worn, preserved in a custom-made fold-over cloth box;
later bookplate of the Mount Street Jesuit Center; with the ownership inscription of William
Beckford 'William Beckford from Comte Carli Rubbi 1778' with occasional manuscript underlings
in the text.
First edition, very rare, of this almost forgotten work, which was considered of
exceptional importance to the Italian Enlightenment. Carli, one of the main figures of the
Italian Enlightenment, was together with Verri and Beccaria the leading intellectual of the
école de Milan. This copy was apparently presented by Carli to William Beckford who
was in Geneva in 1778, where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire and many important
figures of the time.
In this stringent criticism of Rousseau's Contrat Social he formulates his picture of an
anti-egalitarian society in strict opposition to Rousseau. 'Men are condemned by nature
to a state of permanent inequality, physical, moral and economic. It is not an accident
that society is divided into two classes, rich and poor. Unlike Verri, for whom economic
development had in itself the power to improve the conditions of the poorer classes by
allowing them to participate in consumption, and unlike Beccaria who continued to see
inequality as the chief problem to be solved, Carli was convinced that development
would increase not only inequality but also class conflict. The only remedy was the power
of the sovereign, of a monarch who could guard against despotism but at the same time
defend civil society against anarchy' (Carpanetto p. 270). He exposes the myth of a