I
The translation of Goethe's "Prose Maxims" now offered to the public is
the first attempt that has yet been made to present the greater part of
these incomparable sayings in English. In the complete collection they
are over a thousand in number, and not more perhaps than a hundred and
fifty have already found their way into our language, whether as
contributions to magazines here and in America, or in volumes of
miscellaneous extract from Goethe's writings. Some are at times quoted
as though they were common literary property. To say that they are
important as a whole would be a feeble tribute to a work eloquent for
itself, and beyond the need of praise; but so deep is the wisdom of
these maxims, so wide their reach, so compact a product are they of
Goethe's wonderful genius, that it is something of a reproach to
literature to find the most of them left untranslated for the sixty
years they have been before the world. From one point of view, the
neglect they have suffered is in no way surprising: they are too high
and severe to be popular so soon; and when they meet with a wide
acceptance as with other great works, much of it will rest upon
authority. But even for the deeper side of his writings, Goethe has not
been denied a fair measure of popular success. No other author of the
last two centuries holds so high a place, or, as an inevitable
consequence, has been attacked by so large an army of editors and
commentators; and it might well be supposed by now that no corner of his
work, and least of all one of the best, had remained almost unnoticed,
and to the majority unknown. Many of these maxims were early translated
into French, but with little success; and even in Germany it was only so
late as the year 1870 that they appeared in a separate form, with the
addition of some sort of critical comment and a brief explanation of
their origin and history.[1]
But although to what is called the reading public these maxims are as
yet, no less in fact than in metaphor, a closed book, its pages have
long been a source of profit and delight to some of those who are best
able to estimate their value. What that value is, I shall presently
endeavour to explain. No one, I think, can perceive their worth without
also discerning how nearly they touch the needs of our own day, and how
greatly they may help us in facing certain problems of life and conduct,
some of them, in truth, as old as the world itself, which appear to us
now with peculiar force and subtlety.
It was in this respect that they were warmly recommended to me some
years ago by my excellent friend, Professor Harnack, the historian of
Dogma, a writer with a fine and prudent enthusiasm for all ennobling
literature. It is to him that I owe the resolve to perform for the
maxims, as far as I could, the office of translator; a humble office,
but not, as I have good reason to know, without its difficulty, or, as I
venture to hope, without its use. Of many of them the language is hardly
lucid even to a German, and I have gratefully to acknowledge the
assistance I have received from the privilege of discussing them with so
distinguished a man of letters.
To Professor Huxley I am also deeply indebted. I owe him much for
friendly encouragement, and still more for help of an altogether
invaluable kind; for in its measure of knowledge and skill, it is
admittedly beyond the power of any other living Englishman. The maxims
deal, not alone with Life and Character, where most of them are
admirable, but also with certain aspects of Science and Art; and these
are matters in which I could exercise no judgment myself, although I
understood that, while many of the maxims on Science and Art were
attractive, they were not all of great merit. Professor Huxley not only
did me the honour to select the maxims on Science, but he was further
good enough to assist me with them, and to read and approve the
translation as it now stands. The weight and the interest of his
authority will thus give additional value to that section of the book,
and also do much to overcome the objections that exist to making a
selection at all.
For a selection is a necessary evil. It is an evil because, even if it
leaves the best, it takes away something of a man's work; if it shows us
the heights he has reached, it obliterates the steps of his ascent; it
endangers thoughts that may be important but imperfectly understood; and
it hinders a fair and complete judgment. But in the end it is a
necessity: we are concerned chiefly with the best and clearest results,
and it is only the few who care to follow the elaborate details of
effort and progress, often painful and obscure. There is no author with
whom, for most readers, selection is so necessary as it is with Goethe;
and in no other kind of literature is it so amply justified or so
clearly desirable as where the aim is to state broad truths of life and
conduct and method in a manner admitting of no mistake or uncertainty.
When a writer attempts achievements, as Goethe did, in almost every
field of thought, it need be no surprise to any one who has heard of
human fallibility that in solid results he is not equally successful
everywhere. In deciding what shall be omitted, there is no difficulty
with maxims which time has shown to be wrong or defective; they have
only an historical interest. But great care is necessary with others
that are tentative, questionable, or obscure enough to need the light of
a commentary, sometimes dubious; where for most of us there is never
much profit and always occasion for stumbling. I count it a singular
piece of good fortune that the choice of the scientific maxims should be
undertaken by so eminent a judge of their practical value, who is also a
scholar in the language and a great admirer of Goethe in his other and
better known productions. For if a writer of this immense versatility
cannot always hope to touch the highest goal, it is well that all his
efforts should be weighed in a later day by the best and friendliest
knowledge.
The maxims on Art were at first a matter of some little difficulty. It
is plain, I think, that they are below the others in value and interest;
and in any collection of sayings the less there is of general worth, the
more delicate becomes the task of choosing the best. If I omitted them
all, the selection would not be duly representative, and it seemed
likely that some at least were worthy of being preserved, if only to
illustrate Goethe's theories. I therefore sought the best advice; and
here again I have to tender my thanks for assistance second to none in
skill and authority,--that of Sir Frederick Leighton, kindly given under
circumstances which much increase my obligation. For it is my duty to
say that Sir Frederick Leighton had no desire, but rather reluctance, to
make a selection from maxims on Art which he was often not prepared to
endorse, or to regard as in any way commensurate with Goethe's genius;
and nevertheless he did me the honour to point out a few which I might
insert, as being of interest partly for their own sake, partly also for
the name of their author.
The maxims on Science and Art are, however, when taken together, hardly
a fifth of this volume. The others I have selected on the simple and I
hope blameless principle of omitting only what is clearly unimportant,
antiquated, of past or passing interest, of purely personal reference,
or of a nature too abstruse to stand without notes of explanation, which
I should be sorry to place at the foot of any of these pages. I have
also omitted eleven maxims drawn from Hippocrates _On Diet_; fifteen
containing an appreciation of Sterne, together with some twenty more
which Goethe himself translated from a curious work wrongly attributed
to that writer. It will be convenient if I state that I have thus
omitted some hundred and twenty out of the six hundred and fifty-five
which make up the section styled in the original _Ethisches_, which I
translate by _Life and Character_, the section which also contains the
maxims on _Literature_, now collected and placed in a separate section
with those on _Art_. Sir Frederick Leighton chose thirty-five out of a
hundred and eighteen on Art, and Professor Huxley seventy-six out of two
hundred and eighty on Science.