Item #19151 A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will. Thomas C. Upham.

A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will.

Portland [Maine]: Published by William Hyde, for Z. Hyde, 1834. First edition. 8vo, original brown cloth, green leather spine label, gilt lettering, 400 pages. Some light rubbing and bumping, with a few spots; some light foxing; a very good copy. Item #19151

An important early American work on psychology and philosophy of the mind from the Bowdoin professor Upham (1799-1872), who per the ANB, "Upham’s division of the human mind into two 'departments,' the intellect and the sensibilities (cognitive and emotional processes), was expanded in 1834 with the publication of A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will. The will, in Upham’s theory, was responsible for initiating action in response to intellectual and emotional mental states; the latter included feelings of moral obligation. Upham’s philosophy was influenced by John Locke and the Scottish philosophers Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, the triumvirate who constituted the dominant influence in American antebellum college courses in philosophy. Upham included chapters on abnormal mental states in his text, unique to the texts of the time, and published the first American book on abnormal psychology, Outlines of Imperfect and Disordered Mental Action (1840), as part of Harper’s Family Library series." DAB notes that the Philosophical and Practical Treatise of the Will "has been called 'one of the first original and comprehensive contributions of American scholarship to modern psychology.' " Two early ownership signatures on the front free endpaper.

Price: $400.00

See all items in Medicine or Quacks
See all items by