[Bougeant, Pere Guillaume Hyacinthe]
Amusement Philosophique sur le Langage des Bestes
(Philosophical amusement on the language of beasts)
Paris: Gissey, Bordelet, Ganeau, 1739
First edition
Size 3 3/4 by 6 1/3"
157, [1] pp.
Original mottled calf binding, red stained edges
Very good condition, minor wear
Text in French

This was Bougeant's most famous work for which he was accused of heresy (claiming that demons inhabited animals) and imprisoned. The letters are defenses of his work.
One of the more interesting of a number of 18th century ‘philosophical’ works advocating the then radical idea that animals, far from being driven purely by instinct, could communicate with one another in their own language. A fact of which the work of Konrad Lorenz and many other modern naturalists has left us in no doubt. At the time of its publication however it caused considerable moral outrage and the author was exiled to La Fleche.

"This book, in which he maintains that the demons animate the brutes, is addressed to a woman, and strewn with madrigals which scandalized the devotees, and which did not seem light enough to people of the world."
This did not prevent its author from being one of the best historians of his time.
HOEFER VI, 907. BARBER I, 156



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