Author: MAILLET, (B.) de.- (J.A.G. Ed. (J.Ant.Guers)
Title: Telliamed ou entretiens d'un philosophe indien avec un missionaire françois. Sur la diminution de la mer: Par M. de Maillet. Nouvelle édition. Revue, corrigée & augmentée sur les Originaux de l'Auteur, avec une Vie de M. de Maillet. Tome Premier [Tome Second].
Description: A La Haye, Chez Pierre Gosse, Junior, 1755. [=fake imprint; probably printed in France]. 12mo. In 2 vols. 2 title pages in black w. small woodc. vignettes. W. a number of woodc. head- and tailpieces. Excellent contemp. polished mottl. clf., spines elaborate floral gilttooling w. 2 red title shields each, edges of covers w. single gilt rule. [n6, *12, a-c12, A-K12; n4, A-P12]. (IV, i-viii, 1-23, I (blank), i-lxviii, IV, 240 pp; VIII, 360 pp.). (A few quires some light even yellowing / browning, some unimportant foxing.). (All edges marbled.). (Fine original marbled endp. in blue.). (Blue silken reading ribbons preserved.). The original editon appeared in 1748 in 8vo in 1 volume, with a fake Amsterdam imprint. It was followed by a Basel 1749 edition and an English translation 1750. It wasn't until 5 years later in 1755 that 3 eds. w. fake The Hague imprints appeared, 2 of which were identical title imprints. Our copy w. the impressum 'Pierre Gosse, Junior' on the printed title of vol. I and no publisher mentioned on the printed title of vol. 2. DSB vol. IX, pp. 26-27: Benoît de Maillet pursued a diplomatic career during his life and while staying in Egypt he wrote most of this publication, a fundamental work of his system on the diminution of the sea. "....Maillet's concepts were unorthodox and highly materialistic. The proposed system did not admit God as an omnificent ruler, postulating instead an eternal universe undergoing natural changes at random....": Comp. Norman Coll. vol. II, item 1422 'Maillet's materialistic system of the world, presented under the name of a fictitious Indian philosopher, was written between 1692 and 1708, but its ideas were considered so disturbing and so dangerous that even though manuscript copies began circulating in the 1720ties the work did not appear in print until ten years after the author's death ... Maillet was thus a forerunner of the uniformitarian geologists of the 19th c., and he anticipated Lamarck as well in his claim that present day terrestrial life forms had adapted themselves from marine flora and fauna through a process of transformation.': Glass a.o., p. 123: '....(M.) develops a theory that the seas once covered the earth and are still receding. This accounts for the presence of what we now call fossils.': Geikie, founders of Geology, pp. 84-88: Maillet put his conclusions '...into the mouth of an Indian philosopher (Telliamed, his own name in anagram), but even with this precaution he did not venture to publish them, and his treatise only saw the light at Amsterdam in 1748, ten years after his death.': Ward & Carozzi, 'Geology emerging', item 1457: Barbier IV, 676: Guers edited the MS on request of LeMascrier who could not reduce the dangerous nature of Maillet's system and who was only acknowledged editor of the third ed.: Vernière p.535/8: See also The 'Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis'vol. 15 [2008], pp. 117 - 119: See also: Carozzi, 'De Maillet's Telliamed (1748). An Ultra-Neptunian Theory of the Earth'[in: C.J.Schneer (ed.), Towards a history of Geology. [Cambridge (MA), London, 1969, pp. 80 - 99].

Keywords: biology philosophy tides evolution evolutionary processes Vilic