GOBINEAU, Joseph-Arthur, Comte de.

Essai sur L'Inélgalité des Races Humaines (Essays on the Inequality of the Human Races).

Paris : Librairede Firmin Didot Freres, 1853-1855. FIRST EDITION Volume 1: 1 blank leaf + half-title + TP + [I]-XI + [1]-492 + [493]-[494] = Errata + 1 blank leaf; Volume 2: 1 blank leaf + half-title + TP + [1]-512 + [513]-[514] = Errata + 1 blank leaf; Volume 3: 1 blank leaf + half-title + TP + [1]-423 + [424] = Contents + 1 blank leaf; Volume 4: 1 blank leaf + half-title + TP + [1]-359 + [360] = Contents + 1 blank leaf, Octavo. "The French Diplomatist and man of letters, Gobineau has, through the 'Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races'-his one excursion into the realms of anthropology and sociology-exerted an influence upon European thought and action which is quite disproportionate to its scholarly insignificance and inconsequential argumentation. The men of the Action Française, Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler were, at one remove, the disciples and propagandists of Gobineau's most outrageous ideas. Gobineau's racial theories were based on a complete misunderstanding of the positivism of Comte and the researches of Prichard into the physiological differences of the various human races. Fortified by the innate arrogance of a scion of an ancien régime family, and by his observations as an envoy in the Near and Middle East, he championed the theory, since entirely disproved, that 'race' is a permanent and immutable phenomenon, and he proclaimed the unchallengeable superiority of the white race over all others. Within the white race, Gobineau assigned the supreme position to the 'nordic'-or as he fatuously called them 'aryan'-peoples who, thanks to their praiseworthy qualities of hardiness and lust for power, are predestined to rule the rest of mankind. This farrago of biological nonsense, wishful romanticism and imperialistic dreams was lapped up eagerly by the French and German intellectuals. The German enthusiasm for Gobineau-the German translation of the Essai went through several editions-is the less comprehensible in that Gobineau thought very poorly of the 'German race', which he considered a mixture of Celts and Slavs with hardly any pure 'nordic' blood. But there was enough substance in Gobineau's book to provide nourishment for the growth of the pan-germanism and national self-adulation, and seemingly to justify anti-semitic and anti-slav excesses. Hence derived the 'superman' and the glorious 'blond beast' of Nietzsche and the germanomania and anti-semitism of Wagner, which reached their nadir in Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts (1899) by Wagner's English-born son-in-law, Houston Stewart Chamberlain. He in turn inspired Alfred Rosenberg's Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts (1930) from which Hitler and his henchmen imbibed the 'scientific' arguments of their racialist programme" Printing and the Mind of Man 335Gobineau's famous and notorious essays on the inequality of the races. These volumes were complimented by Nietzsche, beloved by Wagner and the ostensible foundation for the ultimate infamy of the Nazis. Certainly, PMM describes Gobineau and his theories in the most unflattering terms (see above) but the Encyclopedia of Philosophy takes a much less critical and hysterical view focusing on what Gobineau was actually saying rather than the ways in which he was misunderstood. Whatever his arguments (or their merit) these four volumes have been hugely influential on the 19th and 20th centuries with a long genealogy of admirers. Contemporary half-leather with lovely marbled boards. Each spine is ribbed with gilt lettering for the title in one field (on red) and for the volume number in another field (on black). Each volume has been expertly repaired on the top and bottom of the spine. Joints reinforced with thin leather seam on the outside and Japanese paper on the inside. Each volume and some of the initial half-titles have at least one very light, blue stamp on them ("Set d'Economie Social / Secretariat General / 54. Rue de Seine") measuring 3/4" x 2": Volume 1: two on TP; Volume 2: one on HT, one on TP; Volume 3: one on HT, one on TP; Volume 4: two on TP. Excepting only the stamps, these are absolutely lovely, contemporary copies of this work. PHOTOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST.

• USD 7,500.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: 145

• bookseller: Athena Rare Books (USA)