An enterprise such as THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS is to be judged from
two different standpoints. It may be judged with respect to its specific
achievement--the material of which it consists; or it may be judged with
regard to its general utility in the scheme of literature to which it
belongs.
In an age which is sometimes ironically called "remarkable" for its
commercialism, nothing has been more truly remarkable than the
advancement in learning as well as in material progress; and of all the
instruments that have contributed to this end, none has been more
effective, perhaps, than the practical popularisation of literature.
In THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS an attempt has been made to effect a
_compendium_ of the world's best literature in a form that shall be at
once _accessible_ to every one and still _faithful_ to its originals;
or, in other words, it has been sought to allow the original author to
tell his own story over again in his own language, but in the shortest
possible space.
Such a method differs entirely from all those in which an author is
represented, either by one or more _extracts_ from his work, or else by
a formal summary or criticism of it in a language not his own. And,
since the style and language of an original is what often constitutes
the wings upon which alone its thought will fly, to have access to its
thought without its form is too often to possess a skeleton without the
spirit which alone could animate it.
Notwithstanding this, however, we are aware that even THE WORLD'S
GREATEST BOOKS will not escape the criticism of a small class of people
who will profess to object to this, as to any kind of interference with
an author's original--in reply to which it can only be said that such
objections are seldom, if ever, made in the true interests of learning,
or in a genuine spirit of inquiry, and too often only proceed from a
knowledge of books or love of them which goes no deeper than their
title-page.
For better than all books are the truths which books contain, and to
condense those truths into a form that makes them available is not only
to invest them with new powers and an enlarged range of usefulness, but
is also not necessarily to interfere with any of those essential
qualities that make up the exquisite literary flavor of a fine original.
The selections in THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS have been collected, and
are alphabetically arranged, in ten different divisions,--namely,
Fiction, Lives and Letters, History, Religion, Philosophy, Economics,
Science, Poetry and Drama, Travel and Adventure and Miscellaneous
Literature.
An important additional feature of the work is _the brief, yet highly
critical biographical and bibliographical note_ which accompanies every
author and every selection throughout the twenty volumes. To this must
be also added the not less important _Introductories_, and other
explanations written by experts, which often accompany the selections in
the text--cardinal examples of which will be found in particular in the
section of Religion of this work, in the articles dealing with such
subjects as the Book of the Dead, Brahmanism, Confucianism, the Koran,
Talmud, etc.
With respect to the selections themselves, it may be added that, even
where they are derived from foreign originals, they have often been
prepared from those originals rather than from any existing translations
of them, as in the fine translation of Catullus by Professor Wight Duff,
or the condensations from Euripides, Corneille, Kant, Tacitus, and very
many more. In other cases, again, the selections have been _specially
prepared for_ THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS _by their authors_ or their
agents, such as the two selections by Major Martin Hume in History, by
Dr. Bramwell and Sir Francis Galton in Science, by Mr. Robert Hichens in
Fiction, etc. From this, and still more from the list of authors itself,
it will be found, we hope, that besides a completely modern aim, a
distinctly proper proportion of modern literature has found a place in
the work, and that the best of French, German, Scandinavian, Russian,
and other authors take rank in it with American and English, as do the
best of the ancients with the best among the moderns.
As the aim of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS has been directed first of all
towards those forms of literature which were in the most need of
condensation to make them readily available, it will not be expected
that the Poetry section of the work will contain the shorter kind of
poems. Moreover, even if the shortness of such poems and their general
accessibility in present-day anthologies did not render their inclusion
here a work of supererogation, it was felt that their place could be far
better filled in a work like the present by the world's best _dramatic_
literature,--as has been done. This does not apply, however, to
translations from the shorter poems of ancient classical literature,
which, however short they may be, cannot be said to be already generally
available for everyday reading.
Throughout, the claims of literature proper, or of fine writing, have
been intimately considered in conjunction with the claims of pure
learning, or of information, with the result, it is hoped, that to the
authority of the world's best thinkers is added the picturesqueness of
their fine writing. Plato, Spencer, Newton; Darwin, Haeckel, Virchow;
Æschylus, Shelley, Ibsen; Burton, Mandeville, Loti; or Brandes, Matthew
Arnold, and Demosthenes--from old and from modern times they yield up
their pearls.
The notion of finality, or of an utter inclusiveness, for such a work as
THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS may be readily disclaimed. To set it up even
would seem ridiculous to any one acquainted with the enormous range of
the subject. Not so ridiculous, however, may seem the claim to have
established a standard and a form of achievement new in the annals of
literary production; and one, moreover, _whose importance as an
educative factor,_ no less than as a test of the special needs of the
era wherein we are living, may be as valid in its own way and in its own
time as some of those other contributions which have helped along the
revival of learning and of letters, from that first awakening of the
Renascence humanists down to our own day.
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