Du Demon de Socrate specimen d'une application de la science psychologique a celle de lâ  histoire. Nouvelle edition revue, corrigee et augmentee d'une preface.

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8vo. 348 pp. Foxed. Later quarter mustard-green marbled boards, gilt-stamped spine, with original printed wrappers bound in. Bookplate of Karmin. Very good. Socrates' Demon, an example of an application of psychological science to history. Originally published in 1836. The work also deals with hallucinations. When it was issued it caused a scandal. / "It was in 1836 that the Demon of Socrates was published. After having made Socrates the character of antiquity, the incarnated type of philosophy and virtue, he nevertheless declares him to be suffering from madness, and presenting hallucinations, not only of hearing, but also of sight. Socrates, it is true, says that among the gods who are favorable to us, none makes himself visible, but he would thus designate, according to Lelut, only the true gods, and not the demons. Antiquity, with its beliefs, could not consider as mad a man whose intellectual disorders consisted of acts of communication or divine assistance. He believed in his familiar demon; consequently Lelut declares him to be hallucinated, and for him hallucinations are an unmistakable sign of madness. The Athenian philosopher, independently of the exclusive consecration of his life to the triumph of one or two ideas, independently of its singularities of more than one kind, presents, for perhaps forty years, this irrefragable character of mental alienation. Socrates' madness has retained its sensory character, without passing into a state of general and truly manic delirium. Socrates was able to remain thus, throughout his life, the representative and the martyr no doubt, but, certainly, the at least hallucinated expression of reason, philosophy and virtue. . . . For [Lelut], hallucination constituted sensory madness." - Serge Nicolas, Un medecin philosophe : Louis Francisque Lelut (1804-1877). PROVENANCE: Possibly Otto Karmin (1882-1920), translator, journalist, teacher, anarchist and free-thinking activist. Otto Karmin arrived in Geneva in 1898 with his family, began his studies there and obtained Swiss citizenship. In July 1900, he was among the founders of the Reveil socialiste-anarchiste, to which he mainly offered translations. In particular, he was the French translator of L'Anarchisme, by Paul Eltzbacher (Paris, Giard et Briere, 1902). His studies and his activities for the Free Thought led him to many trips: London, Halle, Florence, Paris, Munich, etc. He participated in the foundation of the Ferrer School of Lausanne in 1910 and was the secretary of the International Bureau of the Free Thought during the First World War. His books and articles deal with religious issues and the French Revolution. He died in Geneva. N° de ref. del artículo AH1334

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