A very fine copy of the true first edition of the great English philosopher John Locke’s main work on the philosophy of education. The book stands as the practical application of Locke’s philosophy of mind as a ‘tabula rasa’ (‘blank slate’) in which individual humans are born without innate knowledge or understanding of the world, which only forms in time through our sensory perception and cognitive processing of our lived experiences. This philosophical approach is known as ‘empiricism’ whereby all human knowledge is derived from experience. Locke had earlier fully elaborated these ideas in his masterpiece An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689).
Some Thoughts Concerning Education began as a series of letters written by Locke in 1684 to his friend Edward Clarke, giving advice on the upbringing of his children. Locke put forward the idea of the pupil as a malleable entity, as a person who could be improved by a good education, but also corrupted by a bad one. He held that “the minds of children [are] as easily turned, this way or that, as water itself.” The ‘Thoughts’ were completed by March 1690, but it was not until July 1693 that Locke was convinced by William Molyneux to publish them. It quickly became one of his most popular and influential works.
The present example is the true first edition, with catchword ‘I my’ on A2v and ‘Patronnge’ on A3v line 19. Two editions appeared in rapid succession in 1695. For a full discussion of priority, see Jean Yolton The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 75, 1981, pp. 315-321.
Attig, The Works of John Locke: A Comprehensive Bibliography from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, 523; Yolton, John Locke: A Descriptive Bibliography, 166.
