David Mason Fine and Rare Books

SULLY, James. Pessimism A History And A Criticism. (1877 – First Edition)

London: Henry S. King & Co., 1877.First edition. Tall thick 8vo., original green cloth decorated in black, with title in gilt on the upper cover and the spine, (xvi), (1)-477, (478 blank), (2)pp. ads. Inner hinges very slightly cracked, ownership signature on half-title, a touch of rubbing to the foot of the spine but in fact a near fine copy of this uncommon.

James Sully [1842-1923] English psychologist. Sully was studying for the ministry but in 1871 he changed course and adopted a literary and philosophic career. Between 1892 and 1903, he was Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London. An adherent of the associationist school of psychology, his views had great affinity with those of Alexander Bain. Sully wrote monographs on subjects such as pessimism; he also wrote psychology textbooks, some of the first in English, including The Human Mind (1892). His 1881 Illusions was commended by both Freud and Wundt. The above work was ‘one of the first and most carefully prepared on pessimism as a speculative subject.' (Byron: Pessimism of James Thomson). ‘Three points in particular have been dwelt upon by him: First, the systematic proof which the doctrine has found in the works of Schopenhauer and Hartmann; secondly, its chance of realisation in the present and future; and lastly, the conditions of genesis in the individual mind, and the causes of its rapid propagation.' (Plumacher. Mind. Jan. 1879, Vol.4, No.13).