'the germ of all ideas'. A handsome, two-volume edition of Plato's Republic, the most famous of his Socratic dialogues, often considered the first great work of Western political philosophy. It 'has truly been said that the germ of all ideas can be found in Plato' (PMM).

Known originally as the Politeia, its title derives from the Greek for city-state (polis), meaning 'constitution' or 'community of citizens', and gave rise through Cicero (res publica) to the modern term republic. The text explores the nature of justice, explaining that the same qualities which order the hypothetical, ideal polis also govern the immortal soul. The resultant discussion contains one of the earliest examples of a written thought-experiment in Plato's allegory of the cave, which solidifies his theory of forms that it is the intelligible world perceived through reason which is the basis of all knowledge, rather than physical, sensory experience.

The text of this edition is taken from the English translation by John Llewelyn Davies and David James Vaughan completed in 1852. Our copy with excellent provenance for Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray (1856-1927), owner of the Pearson conglomerate, and President of the Air Board in 1917.

First Humphreys edition; 2 vols; small 4to (22.5 x 18.5 cm); text in English, printed on thick-paper, armorial bookplate to front pastedown, monogrammed armorial bookplate to front free endpaper recto of each vol., offsetting to margins of endpapers, free endpaper slightly cockled, a little offsetting; contemporary pigskin, expertly rebacked in blind-tooled calf, top-edge gilt, others rough-trimmed, extremities a little rubbed, very good;[4], 389, [1];[4], 351, [1]pp.