The Idea of Progress: A Collection of Readings

A little confusing on the edition. 1949 is on both the title and copyright page with no additional printing cited which would indicate the book is a First Edition. However, the jacket and title page state that it is a 'revised edition, with an introduction by.' In any event, it is a very rare book (only one other copy--also published in 1949-- is listed for sale on the Internet), and my copy is singularly rare due to its still having its dust jacket. Part One beginning after the introduction (The Idea of Progress: An Historical Analysis) is titled Classical Antiquity (735 B.C.-- 422 A.D.) and is composed of writings by Hesiod, Aeschylus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Aratus, Polybius, Lucretius, Cicero, Ovid, Seneca Florus, and St. Augustine. Part Two is titled The Early Modern Period (1512-- 1690) and is composed of writings by Machiavelli, Bowdin, Francis Bacon, Descartes, Pascal, Hobbes, Fontenelle, Perrault, and Locke. Part Three is titled The Idea of Progress in the Nineteenth Century (1697-1803). So at least three years of it anyway. It includes the writings of Leibniz, Bernard Mandeville, Lafitau, Montesquieu, Hume, Turgot, Helvetius, Ferguson, Adam Smith, William Robertson, Volney, Kant, Herder, and Condorcet. Part Four is titled The Search for a Law of Progress in the Nineteenth Century (1830-1871). It's writings include Comte, Hegel, Marx and Engels, Marx (alone, Hegel was busy), Mill, Spencer, and Charles Darwin. The book concludes with a Selected Bibliography. The book's in very nice condition. The covers are exceptionally clean. I don't see any soiling. The gilt lettering on the spine is very bright. The edges and corners are in solid shape. The spine ends have just a little bit of crinkling. There are some very light scratches on the front and rear. The page edges are clean. The book is square and the spine is straight. The binding is solid. The covers too. The pages are exceptionally clean. Scrolling through, I found only one tiny light spot on the white margin of two facing pages. The pages are also an excellent shape. I'm not finding any creasing. There are no markings. No attachments of any kind. And no one has written their name or anything else anywhere in the book. You can see the dust jacket in the first few photos. I've had it in a fitted protective cover for all the years that I've owned the book. As you can see, there is a loss off the top edge of the spine extending a little bit onto the front, and across the way there's a small loss at the front top corner. There's also a smallish loss at the middle edge between the rear flap and the rear cover which can just be seen at the top corner of the rear flap. There is a tear off the top edge of the rear cover just adjacent to the spine and there appears to be a few other smaller tears, one off the bottom edge at the juncture between the rear cover and spine. The spine is somewhat toned in comparison to the front and rear. The jacket is clean, including the flaps. The flaps are in solid condition with just a tiny sliver of loss at the top edge of the front one. There is also a tiny triangular-shaped mark near the bottom edge of the rear flap, not sure what that is. The jacket is NOT price-clipped, not clipped at all. I'm rating it Fair taking into account its age, but you can judge for yourself by the photos. From the dust jacket: 'A selection of the major writings in the history of the idea of progress in humanistic inquiry from Hesiod to Charles Darwin. This is the only collection in existence of primary source materials on the idea of progress. 'By building from a collection of originals gathered by Professor Teggart for class use as a syllabus in 1929,' writes the editor, 'I have been able to link together representative selections from primary documents extending over a period of 2,500 years.' So this, in fact, appears to be the first edition of a published book, the revisions being made from a class syllabus that Prof. Teggart had put together.…