French political and economic theorist (1760-1825). Mémoire sur la Science de l'homme". Manuscript signed ("Henry de St Simon"). [Paris, at end:] "Rue des maçons Sorbonne. Small folio (212 x 316 mm). Manuscript on paper. 140 ff. Contemporary half calf with giltstamped spine labels. Marbled endpapers.
$ 37,401 / 35.000 €
(72689/BN46616)
A very rare manuscript which the author had not intended for publication. Henri Fournel, in his Saint-Simonian bibliography (Alexandre Johanneau, March 1833, p. 13), placed the number of manuscript copies at 60 (erroneously giving a date of 1811); the text was first printed in 1858 in a collection, with the "Physiologie religieuse d’Enfantin" (Paris & Leipzig, Masson), and then again in the following year within Volume II of the "Œuvres choisies", with a list of some 30 known recipients of the original "Mémoire".
- This work was planned as part of a series of studies based on the work of Vicq d'Azyr, Cabanis, Bichat, and Condorcet, the four scholars who had supposedly done most to study the human mind. The author proposes that his Mémoire be copied and criticized before being presented to learned societies. It is an attempt to develop a positive social science, man being studied as a species, not as an individual; Physiology would thus be raised to the rank of the natural sciences. Saint-Simon gives a long homage to his masters MM. Burdin, Bougon and Olsner, and then proceeded to the critical examination of the works of the great physiologist and anatomist Vicq d'Azyr. He reflected on the case of the Savage of Aveyron, and exposed the twelve terms of the evolution of mankind..