The Mechanism of Man: An Answer to the Question, What Am I? A Popular Introduction to Mental Physiology and Psychology (Two volumes).
London: Longman & Co., 1876, 1879. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo. Two volumes (complete). xxii + 508pp + i page advert. viii + 560pp. + vipp publisher's catalogue. Original brown cloth bordered in blind, gilt lettering to spine, index in each volume. The author, Edward William Cox (1807-1879), was a lawyer, writer and publisher (he founded the immensely popular British paper of small advertisements: "Exchange and Mart") with an interest in the then-nascent study of Spiritualism. He was a member of the London Dialectical Society, which was originally founded with the idea of examining and dismissing the ideas of Spiritualism, but in it's well-known report, published in 1871, found some points in support of it. While not dismissive of the phenomena as such, Cox thought that there must be natural/physical forces at play, a thesis he set forth in a 62 page booklet "Spiritualism Answered by Science" (1871). The present work is basically a completely re-written, and drastically enlarged version of that work in which he seeks to examine first what is known of the physical and psychological makeup of mankind, and then seeks to provide a rational new theory that allows for the phenomena of trance, somnamublism, psychism, etc. etc. In the preface to Volume II the author explains that Volume II took him much longer to complete than he anticipated and thus this is a "first edition" set despite the different publication dates. Cloth a bit rubbed and faintly discoloured, spine heavily faded and somewhat bruised and chafed at ends with a few tiny tears at top, corners bumped and lightly frayed, owner's ink stamped name of front pastedowns, edges darkened with some light chipping to fore-edge, a very few scattered underlines in text, a few creased corners - but many pages unopened thus it is generally clean and bright inside -overall a tight clean VG set. Very scarce. Item #62992
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