Elements of Modern Materialism: Inculcating the Idea of a Future State, in which All Will Be More Happy, under Whatever Circumstances They May Be Placed, Than If They Experienced No Misery in This Life.

viii, 448 pp. 4to. Contemporary sheep, maroon morocco spine label, gilt titles and rules. Shaw & Shoemaker 39237 (13). First book by the physician and author of Fruits of Philosophy (1832), the first American book to advocate and explain methods of birth control. The present title, which the author wrote while imprisoned on the charge of illegally dissecting corpses, was one of the earliest American works to advance philosophic materialism, is "a defense of agnosticism and an attempt to demonstrate that human thought and behavior could best be understood as the result of environmental conditioning and physical laws." (American National Biography) It rejects the duality of body and spirit, and discusses topics ranging from matter and knowledge to insanity and sleep-walking. The title seems to suggest a utopian ideal similar to that set forward by contemporaries such as Robert Dale Owen (founder of New Harmony), with whom Knowlton was acquainted. Knowlton founded The Friends of Mental Liberty in 1845, which in its tenets stressed the equality of women and men in terms of rights and privileges.