AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING: In Four Books.

Eighth edition, with large additions. Two volumes. Contemporary full panelled calf, with five raised bands, ruled and with titles in gilt to the spine. A made up set, the bindings similar but not quite identical. Portrait frontispiece of John Locke in volume one. Index at the rear of volume two. A good copy, the bindings square, with heavy rubbing to the extremities, the outer hinges cracked and a little tender, but firm. The spine tips are chipped and rubbed with some loss, the gilt almost completely perished from the spines and board edges. Volume one with the contemporary ownership inscription of Andrew Adam. Volume two with the Ex Libris ownership inscription of James Bones Coll: Regal Alumni, 1752 in ink to on the front endpaper and with the same owner's later Kings College, Cambridge bookplate to the front endpaper. The contents are lightly spotted and discoloured to the endpapers and pastedowns, volume two has damp staining to the top corner of the margin of the last few pages, a 3.5cm closed tear to page 221 (across the text) and two torn page corners (page 223 and 225) not affecting the text. Both volumes remain in entirely original condition, without repair or restoration.

Locke's principal philosophical work was first published in 1689. Locke was the first "to attempt to estimate critically the certainty and the adequacy of human knowledge when confronted with God and the universe" and concludes that man has a means of controlling his own destiny and is thus not the pure victim of chance (PMM). The work was one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley. (Printing and the Mind of Man 164).