Ferguson, Adam An Essay on the History of Civil Society Edinburgh: for A. Millar and T. Caddel [sic], 1767. First edition, 4to (25.6 x 20cm), contemporary mottled calf, joints cracking but firm, occasional light spotting, chiefly to margins, 3A3-4 untrimmed at upper fore corners [ESTC T76205; Goldsmiths' 10264] Qty: (1) Note: An attractive copy of Ferguson's masterpiece, a major Scottish Enlightenment text which proved hugely influential among contemporary British and continental European readers alike. Ferguson's analysis of the problems facing advanced commercial societies 'touched a chord in its British readers because it offered a detailed, colourful, non-deterministic historical account of the way nations advance morally and materially towards the state of commerce, refinement, and liberty associated with eighteenth-century Britain ... Ferguson rejected the legalistic accounts of the rise of states in terms of social contracts, and cast doubt on the simplistic economic and moral evolutionism associated with theories of natural law. Instead, he followed Montesquieu by acknowledging a great variety of factors, climatic and geographic, as well as cultural and moral, affecting the rise and fortunes of polities in Europe and beyond ... The Essay made its author famous throughout Europe. It was hailed by men of letters as diverse as James Boswell, Baron d'Holbach, and Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi. Of special significance was the Essay's impact on the early attempts at creating the disciplines of social sciences by Ferguson's contemporaries' (ODNB). Provenance: From the library of the ducs de Luynes at the château de Dampierre (bookplate and shelfmark label to front pastedown).