[Rarebooks] FS: Lafcadio Hearn Manuscript: Speculations on life on another planet

[Charles Agvent]

HEARN, Lafcadio [BISLAND, Elizabeth: editor] THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LAFCADIO 
HEARN with THE JAPANESE LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN
Houghton Mifflin Boston & New York 1906/1910.  First Edition.  Three volumes in 
original green cloth with paper spine labels and extra labels tipped in at the 
rear.  Each title is one of 200 large-paper copies with the first title, THE 
LIFE AND LETTERS OF LAFCADIO HEARN in two volumes, also containing an ORIGINAL 
MANUSCRIPT PAGE of Hearn's, in this case part of an interesting philosophic 
discussion with some speculation on life on another planet.  In full: "...nor 
the sudden advent of larger knowledge from some elder planet prove for us, by 
reason of the present moral condition of mankind, nothing less than a 
catastrophe?-- might it not even result in the extinction of the human 
species?... The rule seems to be that the dissemination of dangerous higher 
knowledge, before the masses of a people are ethically prepared to receive it, 
will always be prevented by the conservative instinct; and we have...." Two of 
the volumes with the early bookplate of George Allison Armour, a member of the 
Grolier Club whose collection was sold at auction in 1937 and whose former home, 
now the Lowrie House, was donated by his daughter to Princeton University to 
serve as the residence for the president.  Near Fine, lacking as usual the 
dustwrappers and slipcase.      $2500.00
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