LEBRUN (Pierre). Letters which discover the illusion... Lot 560

[LEBRUN (Pierre). Letters which discover the illusion of the philosophers on the rod, and which destroy their systems. Paris, Jean Boudot, 1693. In-12, [16] ff. 309 pp. with a figure in the text and 2 plates out of the text, brown calf, spine ribbed and decorated, spotted tr. Restoration on the lower spine otherwise a good copy. First edition of the author's very first work, with two letters to Malebranche, and a reply from the author of the Recherche de la vérité, where he shows himself quite embarrassed. After a reprint in 1696, the text will be annexed to the Histoire critique des pratiques superstitieuses. The origin of this dissertation was a request of the cardinal Le Camus on the use then practiced in Dauphiné to probe the grounds by means of rods (letter of June 8, 1689). The learned Oratorian, native of Brignoles, who was to become a figure of denunciation of superstitions and pious impostures, wrote this refutation, which earned him his first polemics (with the lord Comiers, of Embrun). (Caillet II, 6323.)