Home / Browse / Philosophy & History of Ideas / Mosaicall philosophy: grounded upon the essentiall truth or eternal sapience.
FLUDD, Robert.
Mosaicall philosophy: grounded upon the essentiall truth or eternal sapience.
Written first in Latin, and afterwards thus rendred into English.
Publisher: London: Printed for Humphrey Moseley, 1659
Stock code: 60168
Price: £6,500 Currency Conversion
First English edition of Fludd's last work, Philosophia Moysaica, the Latin version published posthumously at Gouda in 1638, the English translation said to have been Fludd's own work, an "explicit, detailed and highly organized Neoplatonist-Cabalist-alchemical interpretation of the universe" (Huffman, William, Robert Fludd and the end of the Renaissance, London: Routledge, 1988, 105). "Fludd was a devoutly Christian Neoplatonist, or, as he would call himself, a Mosaical Philosopher, since he begins with what he believes to be infallible principles delivered from God directly to Moses and his followers. Since he made some unique contributions to his grand synthesis of knowledge, over and above what was formulated originally by the Renaissance Florentine Neoplatonists, he felt justified in calling his philosophy 'Fluddean' as well as Mosaical" (Huffman, 104). The work includes Fludd's defence of his position on the weapon-salve, the Paracelsian doctrine that a wound could be cured by anointing the weapon which caused it with a mixture of the patient's blood and various other morbid materials. "He quotes examples of the efficacy of the cure, including one performed by himself on one of his brother-in-law's servants, and argues that the cure is neither superstitious nor magical, but natural. He argues for the unity of the spiritual and physical worlds, for which he was able to cite much evidence in common experience (quoting liberally from Gilbert's recent work on the magnet), and does so in a traditional (syllogistic) way; as a result, the tract reads as sober, reasonable, and often witty" (ODNB).
Folio (272 × 185 mm), in 2 parts, part 2 with separate dated title page on leaf R4r. Twentieth-century half morocco, unlettered, marbled sides and endpapers. Lacks initial blank. Woodcut title vignettes, woodcuts in the text. Neat ownership inscription and faint inkstamp of the Scottish folklorist Rev. J. B. Mackenzie, Minister of Kenmore 1872-1911, at head and blank fore-margin of title. Trimmed a little close at head, very occasionally shaving the headline, minor dampstaining at extreme lower edge of first few leaves, a very good copy.
